Submitted by Bonnie Bracey (not verified) on May 17, 2007 - 11:18.
I am an educator who has been involved in reform, in use of technology to change the learning landscape, but who also has been frustrated by the " reform" efforts. I have done unit teaching, team teaching, cluster teaching and then back to working on my own.
I have learned new math, old math, new science, old science, and then some. Many organizations have invested in my skills but the buck stops in a place where what I do could always be thwarted. I have learned physics, astrophysics, marine biology, geography, and social studies . But mostly what I learned is that it is not about me. Someone somewhere else can dictate what I teach without knowing much about students, teachers or the place in which we work , or the systems that control reform.
Charter schools, magnet schools, and online cooperation and collaboration happened and then was disallowed. It is like a dance. Before technology and before NCLB you could
wait for the reform and then not do it by simply shelving the things you didn't like it took that long for things to filter down. Now there is a different we have access to just about all policy.
An interesting thing was that technology gave us lots of more information but then
took out a lot the change process. Change was supposed to happen faster and we we didn't have to wait for a supervisor to tell us what the new things were in education we could find out on line. WIth NCLB in charge there has been more a view of teachers as customers and students as customers than as collaborators.
Then there is the school calendar. You might think I am against the changes in a school calendar, I am not . I am against the cramming in of more and more responsibilities .. let's face it , we all go just about year round in responsibility and there are the ubiquitous summer workshops and the learning that is planned for us whether we want to contribute our summers or not.
Time has always been a big problem. The school calendar is a national problem because their has been no change in a hundred years.
WIth the thinking on time for schools, that is a new day for learning or the old research I know that time is a problem. But the people who don't teach don't get it.Their is always addition to the work that teachers do, but there is the problem of having to pay for the extra time. The public doesn't want to do it.
Some of us helped to pave the information highway. Lots of the work we did has been unsupported , and experts who don't know teaching and learning make fun of teachers by saying that they don't know much of anything. But there are teachers who kow a lot. What difference does it make if what you can use is decided by non educators.
So spin comes in and the press and some pundits have a field day beating up on teachers. There is not a level playing field so you can usually not talk back.
The mechanisms like this, the blog, the listservs and other groups give us a little bit of a chance to talk back.. but not much.
Perhaps many of the innovators, agents of change and those who want to make a difference are muted by those who have political power in the nation. We do fine with our school boards , there you have a chance but to talk to the national leaders?( and be understood?)
Difficult.
Reform and Innovation
Submitted by Bonnie Bracey (not verified) on May 17, 2007 - 11:18.
I am an educator who has been involved in reform, in use of technology to change the learning landscape, but who also has been frustrated by the " reform" efforts. I have done unit teaching, team teaching, cluster teaching and then back to working on my own.
I have learned new math, old math, new science, old science, and then some. Many organizations have invested in my skills but the buck stops in a place where what I do could always be thwarted. I have learned physics, astrophysics, marine biology, geography, and social studies . But mostly what I learned is that it is not about me. Someone somewhere else can dictate what I teach without knowing much about students, teachers or the place in which we work , or the systems that control reform.
Charter schools, magnet schools, and online cooperation and collaboration happened and then was disallowed. It is like a dance. Before technology and before NCLB you could
wait for the reform and then not do it by simply shelving the things you didn't like it took that long for things to filter down. Now there is a different we have access to just about all policy.
An interesting thing was that technology gave us lots of more information but then
took out a lot the change process. Change was supposed to happen faster and we we didn't have to wait for a supervisor to tell us what the new things were in education we could find out on line. WIth NCLB in charge there has been more a view of teachers as customers and students as customers than as collaborators.
Then there is the school calendar. You might think I am against the changes in a school calendar, I am not . I am against the cramming in of more and more responsibilities .. let's face it , we all go just about year round in responsibility and there are the ubiquitous summer workshops and the learning that is planned for us whether we want to contribute our summers or not.
Time has always been a big problem. The school calendar is a national problem because their has been no change in a hundred years.
WIth the thinking on time for schools, that is a new day for learning or the old research I know that time is a problem. But the people who don't teach don't get it.Their is always addition to the work that teachers do, but there is the problem of having to pay for the extra time. The public doesn't want to do it.
Some of us helped to pave the information highway. Lots of the work we did has been unsupported , and experts who don't know teaching and learning make fun of teachers by saying that they don't know much of anything. But there are teachers who kow a lot. What difference does it make if what you can use is decided by non educators.
So spin comes in and the press and some pundits have a field day beating up on teachers. There is not a level playing field so you can usually not talk back.
The mechanisms like this, the blog, the listservs and other groups give us a little bit of a chance to talk back.. but not much.
Perhaps many of the innovators, agents of change and those who want to make a difference are muted by those who have political power in the nation. We do fine with our school boards , there you have a chance but to talk to the national leaders?( and be understood?)
Difficult.
Bonnie Bracey Sutton