Think Like a Teacher

As I head off to EduBloggerCon and ISTE this weekend, I keep thinking about the teachers who won’t be there — who will never have a chance to even imagine anything like it.  I “meet” a few of the more adventurous ones in OK2Ask sessions. I know that many of them relish the weekly Updates and use TeachersFirst regularly. They are the teachers whose schools never provide them time or opportunity to learn about using technology as a tool for learning.  A few of them will step off the cliff and join an OK2Ask session to learn on their own. Tens or hundreds of thousands more remain on desert islands without the nourishment of professional growth.   They never have a chance to propose individual professional development goals; they never have a chance to learn about the power of learning leveraged by even the simplest technologies. They may have a new grant-funded gadget dropped into their classrooms, but no one ever sits down to talk with them about how it might fit into (or CHANGE) the ways their students learn. Even worse, no one even makes sure it works or fixes it when it doesn’t. These are the teachers on desert islands, and there are far more of them than there are of us, the fortunate few who greet each other at ISTE as if the rest of the teaching world should be following our lead.

I know there are plenty of teachers who have closed the door and secretly thank heaven that they don’t “have to” learn about using technology. But there are far more who simply do not have the professional development or support network. We can’t expect teachers to do it all on their own, but what choice do they have? And what are we doing to find them and help them? Yes, legislation for EETT– including professional development — is a great way to manage top-down, but what are we doing bottom-up to visit the desert islands? We expect them to come to our online communities and learn. We expect them to find those communities. We expect them to figure out how to repair things. We expect them to keep trying to swim off the desert island, but we don’t make an effort to find them and provide the encouragement they need to even try.

The state-of-technology-in-our-schools surveys are too generic to reveal the number of teachers on desert islands. These surveys are filled out by administrators eager to make their schools look good.  The way the questions are asked does not reveal the reality of one projector for a school of 30 classrooms (and a missing power cord)  or one very unreliable computer with a shaky Internet connection per classroom. It does not tell the tale of non-existent funding for professional development or tech support. When I talk to these teachers about why they should use tech, they laugh the laugh of a homeless person watching HGTV.

What are those of us lucky enough to attend ISTE doing to get the word — and some personal encouragement– out to the hundreds of thousands of our peers who will never see a conference, never have a tech integration specialist drop by, never know more about technology than what they see in a broadcast news 15-second filler? Yes, desert island teachers have a responsibility to learn and grow, but we have a responsibility to find them and help them. Would you volunteer to join something like “Habitech for Teaching” a la Habitat for Humanity where we go in and build it together with them so they can live in it and pass it on? What could that look like? How could we at least let them hear an actual human voice of support? I am guessing telling them to call in on Skype isn’t gunna happen.

I think I’ll mull this one over as I complete my ISTE conference planner. Surely there is a way all these creative, energized folks at ISTE can share with those on desert islands.