I am interested in David Warlick’s latest blog about Hacking the system. He mentioned my recent decision to move away from the classroom to enter a different arena of education. I am grateful for his kind words on my ability as a classroom teacher and I am glad I was able to share insights to my classrooms with recordings of different lessons through my podcast show. However, I have been doing some thinking about why it was I felt I needed to leave the classroom. Obviously, I wrote a substantial amount a few weeks back with my blog entry “Crushing the passion.” I explained that there were aspects of the profession that were getting me down on a daily basis and any exceptional classroom practice was unrecognised or not given the time and attention it needed.
With further thought after looking at David’s blog I have come to the conclusion that disappointed classroom practitioners, such as myself, have a responsibility to gain the skills needed to be an instrument of change in schools for the future. I believe the deciding factor for me leaving the classroom, was that I knew I could gain skills in management and curriculum development much quicker outside of the classroom than I would have staying where I was. If I were to stay where I was much longer I think I would have left education all together. We only need to do a survey of any school and unfortunately we will find disgruntle and negative educators who have lost the desire that hopefully drove them to the classroom in the first place.
Sometimes I worry that I was simply after perfection and a place where everyone did it the way I thought was best. However, I still believe supportive, encouraging, relational and interested leaders and administrators make great classroom practitioners brilliant practitioners. I guess I would have loved to of heard from my leaders something along the lines of… “We can see your amazing abilities in Educational Technologies and that your students thrive on what you are doing, what can we do to see that go further and become even better? I can only begin to understand the pressures of administration, but I can see there is a great need for our time and energies to be spent helping them reassess what parts of their role in education are crucial to classroom success. I look at educators like Bob Sprankle and wonder how he did it and how he continues to stay so passionate in the classroom? It would be interesting to see how his school leaders support his teaching styles.
I guess this brings me to leadership models and what works best today and what may work best in the future?
Perhaps it is at the administration level, and above, that we need change.
If the schools are to be pupil centric they must first discern what type of world the pupils will likely enter when they graduate.
Then they will need to engineer backwards for teaching methods.
The desired end result is to develop in the students the necessary skills and attitudes to excel in an information based networking world.
Well, your attitude is shared by many educators all around the world
Teaching is a thankless job. You work hard to suit the needs of all learners and you try to include innovative activities to making learning fun, engaging and challenging for your students.
We tend to not get acknowedgement for our efforts from the majority of parents nor administrators. It wouldn’t take much other than, “You’re efforts are appreciated. Thank you for being a great teacher.”
It is hard to not get discouraged about teaching. It is an internally motivated professiona. Thats why we tended to move towards using technology in the classroom. We were internally motivated to be different, to be innovative and to make a difference. It’s too bad we don’t get a little pat on the back more offen.
Good luck in the future. I have enjoyed reading your blog and your perspectives.
Uh do you teachers really mind if we students are prying into your personal weblogs? With that asked, perhaps I should provide some of my insight into the matter.
Simply, it seems as if you like to teach. But it seems as if the classroom in not the only means to that end. And that’s why you’re leaving. Your general goals haven’t changed but you recognize the need to move on.
Uh do you teachers really mind if we students are prying into your personal weblogs? With that asked, perhaps I should provide some insight into the matter.
Simply, it seems as if you like to teach. But it seems as if the classroom in not the only means to that end. And that’s why you’re leaving. Your general goals haven’t changed but you recognize the need to move on.
(Whops, I realized that I made a weird sentace error the second I pushed the submit button. Can you use this one instead? Thanks!)