“With knowledge doubling every year or so, ‘expertise’ now has a shelf life measured in days; everyone must be both learner and teacher; and the sheer challenge of learning can be managed only through a globe-girdling network that links all minds and all knowldege.”

Every once in awhile I like to revisit his thoughts of 15 years ago since he was on the mark for many of his predictive ideas!

If you are relatively new to the education ranks, check out this old book!

As I read your blog, I cannot help but think of the two terms that guide my personal growth as a teacher, rigor and relevance. As a teacher of the 21st century, I agree that we are at a crossroads within our profession. There will be those individuals who will look at the new technologies and recognize that these technologies will enhance their individual instruction with rigor and relevance; however, this enhancement forces the teacher (facilitator) to re-engineer thier individual role as a classroom leader.
In any environment, change will be lead by a small percentage (10 - 15%) of the population, trying to convince the middle percentage (40 - 60%), also known as fence sitters, of the value and validity of such change. There will alwyas be the naysayers, those (20 - 30%) of the population, whose work ethic, individual ego, or myopic view of their educational role, that will resist any true innovation, that holds them more accountable for greater rigor and relevance in the 21st century educational environment. These individuals will not factor into the equation of change what so ever! In my opinion, change will snow ball into an educational force that cannot be restrained by shorth-sighted, dogmatic instructional guardians of knowledge. I do believe that change can occur. When a group of teachers begin to re-engineer their role in the classroom and construct more rigor and relevance (i.e. blogs), the students will adapt their learning and force instructional change, either directly, or indirectly. Recently, I had a student in an Economics course reflect on the value of classroom blogs and wikis. This student commented on the value of educational blogs in understanding the content of economics, and elaborated that her intention was to continue using blogs and wikis in the upcoming school year, in a class that would not be using these tools. She simply bucked the instructional institution and plans on bringing these tools into an environment, where her instuctor, a very senior and experienced teacher, has no plans to implement these tools. In essence, the tail (students) will begin to wag the instructional dog, and teachers will have to modify and adjust their role, or lose their students. The key phrase in the role of a classroom teacher in the future is student engagement. Keep up the fight!
Your loyal disciple. Pat

This is a conversation we are having at our school. I know wonderful teachers who read the paper during pd, because years of boredom have “shut them down”.

If you spend years presenting pointless drivel and pawning it off as “professional development”, how do you get them to pay attention to anything?

Well one way is to only offer relevant, and inspiring pd.

It has been a frantic couple of weeks with a lot of traveling and I have been carrying around a wee sticky note with a lot of ideas for my blog for some time now. One things that has struck……

I’ve been using this distinction to balance my classes for decades.

In Hebrew the word scholar is Talmid Chacham. Talmid is translated as student and chacham is translated as wise. Together Talmid Chacham means “wise student.” A scholar is a wise student. Teachers should be wise students, as well.

Andrew Pass
http://www.Pass-Ed.com/blogger.html

Thanks

rick

But I have to say an expert IS a learner. An expert who stops learning soon stops being an expert. (Unless your course is “outdated biology”.) I’m a former Biology teacher– originally trained in the late 70’s! Only the very core of what I was taught is still taught today. But I still use books, mags and the web to keep up with the field.

But students still need teachers who know their subject matter– even if knowledge isn’t scarce. Expertise turns data into insight, provides specifics, recognizes trivia and points out key concepts. Well studied teachers show learners the best sources, point out the cutting edge, the mainstream and the various schools of thought. A good guide knows the whole forest and can still see the trees.

All the Best

Rob

I head a school in a small town in India and what you say resonates with me. But I am, in a sense, going the other way and saying the reverse. I find that the teacher’s role in many schools should be ‘watered down’ and made more prescriptive.

Cut out the imagination in a bulk of the classes (not because th kids are not equipped ofr this, but because the teachers cant handle it), and focus on the basics.

Check it out on my lastest post.

Cheers
Vivek
indianedutalks.blogspot.com

Coming up with good professional development topics can be hard - I’m part of a committee for that in my district. We have to just keep at it and try to reach staffers with ideas that will encourage them.

Catch 22. Want to change the schools? Change the teacher prep program. Want to change the teacher prep program? Change the schools.

I had to be a downer, but I don’t think we’re going to see mass change until we get somebody in the state or federal government mandating the changes. Whether you agree with NCLB or not, there’s one thing that’s certain: Threaten to take away the money and changes will be made (of course, positive changes would have been nice).

It is one reason why I’m a fan of what Discovery is doing with the DEN. Regardless of whether I work there or not, they’re creating a community devoted to self-organized professional development. Obviously there are business reasons that they’re doing it, but the end result is something that is essentially a grass roots educational reform movement.

Otherwise, the only way that I see changes being made are the same way we’ve been doing it for the last few years. One glass of Kool Aid at a time.

At the same time, I recognize that most teachers don’t truly see themselves as needing to be learners. Some teachers think they know everything about their subject.

I once had a pre-service teacher education student of mine tell me that when he thought of California, and San Diego and Sacramento, he had no idea of the distance between the two cities. He went on to explain that he thought you could easily walk between the two cities an that there was no reason to actually know how far the two cities are from one another. This student also told me that as long as you knew when the Declaration of Independence was signed, within 100 years, it was fine. He expressed the idea that it was not important to know how to find the accurate information, either. This student obviously didn’t value knowledge or learning. (I messed up with this student; I should have found a way to help turn him onto knowledge instead of simply arguing with him.)

I wonder how many teachers feel this same way. (I’m assuming (hoping) not many.) But there are many teachers who are not eager to be learners.

Effective teachers know that we have to start where the students are, whether they be adults or children and enable them to pull themselves up to where they should be. As PD consultants it is our responsibility to determine how we can best work with teachers so that they want to learn and take the risk of trying new things. We have to model effective learning for them. (When I start a PD workshop I always say that I’m not the only expert in the room. Since I’m only in my mid-30s I acknowledge that there are participants in the room who have far more teaching experience than I have. I tell people that my greatest strength is facilitating conversation and learning, not teaching.) We can’t expect teachers to learn if we don’t model learning for them.

(Sorry about the length of this.)

Andre Pass
http://www.Pass-Ed.com/blogger.html