I'll be the first to admit that teaching other teachers can be a frustrating process. In my second and third year of teaching I presented sessions at our provincial English teachers conferences. In my short 7 year career (this is year 8 for me), I've presented to well over 800 teachers in two different provinces on a variety of topics. Some of those topics have included technology, others have included literacy. I do not say this to brag, just to provide context to my point that I understand and sympathize with those who teach teachers either for a living or as a hobby (that's a thing, trust me)! One session I conducted early in my career (and likely one of the biggest sessions) was on outcome-based assessment, where I relayed what our school was doing and what I was doing in my classroom. To condense what I talked about: there are 54 outcomes in Manitoba's English curriculum. There was no way I was going to singularly assess each outcome every single assignment in my high school classes. The principal at my school had us choose around 16 outcomes for each class (you can see in the photo below I had 23), and since I taught multiple grades over the years, I chose outcomes we could build on and streamlined the English curriculum. By the end of the 3 years, I had my students addressing each of the outcomes, but I was not assessing more than 5 outcomes each time, or at least was trying not to. That discussion did not go over well with a number of veteran teachers in the audience. However, it's the way Manitoba's curriculum was/is headed, and there were a number of other schools who were about to go down the same path. I was scoffed at - because what does a teacher (in the first 5 years of their career) know about what outcomes are important in the curriculum? Surely I did not know what I was talking about. What the audience members did not know is the disaster my house was, because I had provincial exams mapped out over the last 10 years taped to my walls, I had mapped the curriculum, found trends, and happened to have the data to support just how often other teachers, courses offered through correspondence or BlackBoard Learn were addressing each of the outcomes. And how often each was assessed. I had done my own research to back that up. But hey - I was just a teacher in a small rural community who just so happened to sit on the provincial exam test development committee. I think that teaching teachers is tough. But so is being a Kindergarten teacher who has to teach and remind about nosepicking behaviour. It's just a different kind of tough. Source: https://me.me/i/stop-picking-your-nose-noses-4-price-www-bliayteans-com-%3Cp%3Ebut-there-rsquo-s-22542374 I am eternally thankful that I have such a supportive staff at my school and my heart breaks every time I think about me leaving at the end of this year. Given that I will be leaving, I have to leave my mark on them, quite literally, because they will be on their own for managing their technology and technology PD. I have been trying to pass along all of the information that I can for doing all of the little things I do on a daily basis. I know that no one is going to remember, so I have started a Google Drive Folder for all of what I do to be stored and held. This includes setting up Google Classrooms, resetting student passwords, using Microsoft HUP, and accessing the volume portal for Microsoft. All issues I have addressed in the last two weeks. Yesterday, in the hallway, after spending an hour in her classroom, I shouted down to our grade 3 teacher that I will not answer her phone calls when I am in Victoria as she is asking me to reset her password. Not that I wouldn't want to help her, mind you, but I couldn't because my school account would be inactive. I have been doing my best in my school to get teachers using Google Classroom, set up and roll over Raz Reading accounts and Prodigy accounts. I think it's fairly easy now to justify to teachers that using technology and equipping our students with ICT skills is necessary. I also think that a number of teachers who are not "technologically advanced" do not know what ICT skills look like, sound like, or can even be in their classrooms or content areas. To those teachers, I present... the Manitoba Literacy with ICT framework (link opens in a new window)! I am sure the other provinces have a similar framework, but I am really fond of Manitoba's. Source: https://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/tech/lict/teachers/index.html The big ideas in the curriculum are always what I start with when I discuss this curriculum with teachers.
Teachers typically sigh a lot after I go over what the curriculum states. Not out of frustration, but out of relief. What the ICT curriculum asks teachers to do is no different than what they have been doing - except it just looks different (using technology), and it might feel different (uncomfortable) if they aren't familiar with using technology themselves. I believe I was in a discussion group in another class (sorry if it was someone else's post in this group!) and my colleague stated that she felt a lot of pressure to teach coding to her students. She ended up learning the basic language and letting her students go with it. I think that for those uncomfortable with using the technology themselves, being open to learning about it, and letting the kids kind of figure it out, and putting their trust in the kids is perfectly acceptable. We can't all be the best at everything (a pill I personally have found hard to swallow lately). The best part starts around 1:30: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPjYj0Tpwjo Overall, I think there are some things that TL's can do to support teachers in their journey with learning about and using ICT in their classrooms:
References [Stop picking your nose]. (n.d.). Retrieved October 16, 2018, from https://me.me/i/stop-picking-your-nose-noses-4-price-www-bliayteans-com-but-there-rsquo-s-22542374
[Teacher2Teacher]. (2016, September, 7)., Kid President's Pep Talk on Teacher Togetherness [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPjYj0Tpwjo Manitoba Education. Literacy with ICT for Teachers. (n.d.). Retrieved October 16, 2018, from https://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/tech/lict/teachers/index.html Mardis, M. A., & Bishop, K. (2016). The collection program in schools: Concepts and practices. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, An imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC.
6 Comments
Rachel
10/17/2018 04:06:00 am
Hi Krista,
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Krista
10/17/2018 02:42:58 pm
Rachel, I couldn’t agree with you more! One of our PD sessions last year was being Hunter Ed certified so we could teach Archery (there’s a small connection there). With Archery, we were in the classroom for maybe an hour watching videos and talking about things. The rest of the time it was us shooting and learning how to teach the kids how to shoot. I so appreciated that!
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Gillian
10/19/2018 04:26:10 pm
Krista,
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Krista Belanger
10/20/2018 10:48:56 am
Gillian, what is Place Based Education? I have never heard of that before! I'm now going to head over to your blog to see if you posted about it!
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Gilian
10/20/2018 04:34:50 pm
Hey Krista,
Aaron Mueller
10/22/2018 06:18:54 am
Very well done post on this topic that captures many of the challenges, resistance and assumptions that many of our colleagues take towards ProD! You've done an excellent job at sharing your experiences, workshops, plans, ideas and examples for supporting not only your colleagues at your school, but others from a distance and many in our LIBE 477 class. Your list of examples was extensive and your important reminders about enabling others to succeed even when you are not there! Great post.
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