The Polliwog Journal

Download Video: Posted by jsdt4 at TeacherTube.com.

Okay, if you watched this video, which is a lot of facts/stats set to music, you might be thinking “yeah, exactly” or perhaps you are simply confused by the message.

I want to put myself into the consciousness of a typical traditional teacher for a moment. I know a few of these, so I feel as if I can do this fairly accurately.

When I say typical traditional teacher (ha, TTT : ) ), I mean someone who has graduated from a typical teacher preparation program. This person has some technology savvy, that is, he or she can use e-mail, but may twitch if you’d whisper words like “blog,” “Moodle,” or “Web 2.0″ in their ear.

So I don’t mean a techie. I mean a regular teacher, one who knows his subject matter, one who cares about her students, one who puts in countless hours trying to do the best job he or she can do.

If I am this typical traditional teacher, I view this video with a lot of questions, questions I have no way of begining to answer, and I wonder . . . .

• If I’m supposed to be doing all this stuff with my digital kids, who’s going to teach me how to do that?
• How am I supposed to know where to go and what to do with all this technology?
• Why didn’t someone in my teacher prep program tell me this?
• No one else in my school is doing any of this tech stuff. Is it really that important?

There is an achievement gap here, with teachers, as big as ever was with disadvantaged students. And who is to blame? The sincere and earnest teacher who only wanted to turn kids on to science or literature? Hardly.

The techie teachers I know (including myself) are only techie teachers because they have a personal love for computers and technology. I’ll bet none of them learned this love in any teacher preparation class. We’re self taught. We’re sort of nerdy. And we are NOT the norm.

The problem that exists is how to bridge the gap. If we are 30-50 years behind in our teaching strategies and techniques, how are we ever going to catch up? There are simply not enough nerds at each school to lead the multitudes to the future.

I blame, and maybe that’s a harsh word, but when the edupundits are screaming at helpless classroom teachers and telling them they cannot possibly prepare their students for a world they cannot imagine themselves, someone must take responsibility. So, I blame (not in this order):

• teacher preparation programs. When is the ivory tower going to bow down and touch the real world? Now, granted, there are some very fine programs that are forward thinking and on the right track, but too many are doing what they’ve always done. Are their lesson plans still run off on mimeograph machines, too. Where are the standards for colleges who train teachers?
• administrators. I have a principal license, and a curriculum and instruction license, so I know a bit about what it takes to get one of these. I had absolutely no instruction in what students must know to be global citizens. If I didn’t read about this and care about this subject on my own, how would I know? And how the heck would I ever lead my staff without that? Leadership is dismal, overall. I do not mean that our administrators are bad people, not at all. They simply do not have the tools, the know-how, the vision to help their teachers close the technology gap.
• school-based technology coordinators. Maybe it’s not their fault that most of their energy is spent on hardware. These people should be shining a light on what classroom teachers can do to integrate technology.
• cooperative education agencies, assuming that states other than Wisconsin also have these. Where is the leadership? The research is out there. Plan and conduct in-service training that gives teachers more than a spanking for not doing what they should be doing. Give them the tools to do what they must do.
• school boards. Know what needs to be done and help your schools get it done.
• state departments of instruction. What else are you there for? Isn’t this gap important?
• finally, the feds. Oh, if we could only dismantle the department of screwing up education. And yet, could they help? Should they help? I have no faith that they ever could. What they do is impede, block, and obfuscate. Their “well-meaning” laws are based on fear and do little more than slow the effort to close the gap.

I do not blame the typical teacher for the fact that we are still teaching with a 1950’s model. This is what all of us were raised on. How can we know there is more, that there is something else? But, I do wish more of them were more open to trying technology integration. I wish more of them were not so skittish at trying new things. I wish more of them used Web 2.0 tools on their own, but many of them are not digital people. They probably never will be.

If I am pessimistic, I apologize. I have been trying to lead a quiet digital revolution for six years and not many have noticed. I suppose I am to blame for being too quiet. And yet, what has mattered to me in those years is the progress I have made with my own students each day, knowing that Web 2.0, while we might not call it that, is alive and well with them. Someday, some of them will be teachers, and I hope it will not be too late for them to close the gap.