Juggling All Those Roles

Juggling All Those Roles

           When I first began to teach young people interested in being teachers, I became painfully aware of how so many of them were juggling so many different roles as they embarked on their program of studies.  They often had part-time jobs which they had every intention of keeping while going to school. Some of them were parents and had little children they had to attend to. Some of them were caregivers to elderly relatives. Some of them were newlyweds and learning what that meant while also going to school. The sad fact is that they seldom lost any of those older roles when they began to teach.  Those other roles just added to their stress level when they went to school and often times, it meant not doing as well as they ought to have when they were studying to become teachers. 

 

           I remember so well when I was newly enrolled as a member at Brock University’s Physical Education Complex and swimming several times a week or working out, that I would see some of the same people I had taught in the Teacher Education program at the gym by 4:30 working out and enjoying themselves.  They were obviously not staying long at school and yet, when I was a new teacher, I was at school for hours after the day was done preparing for the next day.  Too many kids today just don’t know how to prioritize and have been raised to believe that the most important thing was to be looking after themselves. They are all part of the big ME generation and that just doesn’t go well with teaching.

 

           That ethos is now dripping down into the High Schoolers who have to work on line because their schools are closed thanks to the pandemic. They have to study online and then they also have to try and make some spare cash and they also have to find time to just be kids.  That’s the biggest problem.  Today’s teachers and teachers-in-training have no time to just be young adults and they don’t know how to juggle all the roles thrust upon them.  In the end, what suffers is school which is the same part.

 

           As administrators, we spent more time trying to  help students learn how to adjust to the demands of being professionals and how to balance the various aspects of their lives. This is becoming increasingly difficult. All you have to do is look at how the kids have been behaving during spring break in Florida this year to realize that they really don’t know what it means to be responsible and to shoulder all the different roles they must play. We have a long way to go before we’ll have newly graduated teachers who wil have the sense of responsibility so many of us had when we began. There’s the real problem with schooling today and sadly, until we solve that problem, we’ll never get anywhere.

Who Knows Where The Changes Will Stop?

                 

Who Knows Where The Changes Will Stop?

There has been so much written lately about the permanent changes to education that will continue beyond the end of the pandemic.  These writings bring to mind a book I read about the unintended consequences of technological innovation over the ages.  Every invention man has made has met a need and created other needs as a result of those it satisfied.  The printing press enabled the diary of Marco Polo’s trips to China to be published, which in turn stimulated the interest in exploration, which in turn led to the exploration of the world beyond the Mediterranean and the search for a shorter way by sea to China.  Similarly, the use of wireless technology and Zoom to communicate with students online is going to lead to huge changes in education whether online or in a classroom.

 

            I have long ago written about how I have always known that technology would mean inevitably to changes in classroom culture, design, behaviours and so forth.  When we first put computers into elementary classrooms we had to worry about where we would put them so that they had access to wiring for both electricity and connectivity. That meant changing the arrangement of the classroom.  The next thing we had to worry about was where to put new electrical outlets and then how to manage the control of student movement so that everyone had access and without interruptions. Wireless technology meant that desktops plugged in were no longer necessary and movement became more possible.  I remember when we paid for outlets to the On-Ramp to the World Wide Web and now we can be anywhere and anytime to access information. Just think about how different school becomes when you no longer have to manage who goes to the library when and what books to order and so forth.  

 

         Then there is how we are going to communicate with students and when.  Wireless technology means students no longer have to be in front of us.  Now we have to focus on what it means to communicate with students PERIOD.   It is no longer one way…. I tell you what to do and you do it.  I have to negotiate with you and meet your needs.  Students and their parents will no longer be satisfied with teachers who only give orders and don’t work with their kids.  We have to learn how to actually talk to students and engage with them. I have also long advocated for teachers no longer being the sage on the stage but the guide on the side. So that means we have to give up power to our students and enable them to work WITH US to agree on what will be done and how.  

 

            Budgets can change at the school level. We spent so much money on textbooks that were out of date before we even got used to them and now, we don’t need textbooks at all. That means everyone can be on their own page, not on the same page in a textbook.  Just imagine how that changes the dynamics of the classroom.  Wireless allows us to seek for resources online whether we are in a classroom or in the library.  

 

            The whole way in which we organize schools and classrooms will change as a result of not just the pandemic and its aftermath, but how we have come to see technology and the role it plays in our teaching and learning styles.  It was predicted 30 years ago that technology would require us to completely rethink how we did business and now, thanks to the pandemic, that’s exactly what we are doing. 

Just How To Use Virtual Trips To Enrich Your Teaching

              

Just How To Use Virtual Trips To Enrich Your Teaching

              As I begin this post, I find myself wondering if I have any readers at all.  I have, in good faith, tried to address issues that others might find informative but that is an assumption about having an audience.  So, I am going to write this post as if someone is actually reading.  I made a second assumption too often that only a few sentences were enough to make some points for parents who were looking for advice or for teachers who were reading and searching for ideas to implement in the classroom.  Then just recently I remembered that I was told far too long ago that I make assumptions about how much detail is necessary for the average person because I learn so quickly.  So today………in this column so very specific examples about one of my favorite strategies for technology integration.  

 

             Let’s begin with the idea of a virtual trip which is the idea of going to a website and viewing videos or a webcam in place of an actual visit.  When life was much simpler, at least once a year, teachers could arrange to take their students on trips to other places. I remember taking my students to the Royal Ontario Museum to see the special exhibit at the time on Tutankhamun and the life in Ancient Egypt at the time. Junior students always studied Ancient Egypt in those days as a way of learning about ancient history and technological change.  But when we went on buses, there was a considerable cost involved in the charting the buses and arranging for a meal and ensuring a teacher had at least one adult for every ten students.  It was a lot of work, but it was sound educational pedagogy.

 

             But now, one can go onto the website for the Royal Ontario Museum and search through all the education programs and aids they have. You can look at artifacts on display in the museum and listen at the same time to narration concerning what the students are looking at.  Or you can watch a video about the life of bats to go with the Bat exhibit which students always love to visit. Or imagine if you did a search on virtual trips concerning dinosaurs because your students were interested in them or you had to include them as a unit in specific grade and you can across links to videos about dinosaurs which accompanying narration and you could stop and start the videos at any time. All you need in order to accomplish this in a class, any class, is having a cart with an LCD projector that you can hook up a laptop to and maybe speakers attached, and you are away to races by just pulling down an old-fashioned screen or projecting on a white board or even a nice long sheet of fabric or paper.  

 

             Now, instead of reading and doing research and listening to the teacher talking and showing some pictures, you can immerse them in paleolithic times and see the size and the other flora and fauna around living dinosaurs and write down all the questions the students come up with.  Instead of the lesson being teacher directed, the students have the floor and pick up on the details that THEY are interested in.  It is almost like a choose your own adventure, with the students in the lead, which means following their noses for things that impress them or challenge them or raise questions to ponder.  That is when students do their best learning.  It’s called deep learning.  

 

           When I cross paths with former students, they invariably refer back to the fun things we did as a class, but they were always things that they were involved in and with and left deep impressions in their minds.  That is the ultimate compliment. I am only jealous now that I didn’t have access to these things twenty years ago.  How much more fun I would have and how much better my lessons would have been all the time.

 

One of the Unintended Consequences of the Pandemic

 One of the Unintended Consequences of the Pandemic

 

             I spent some time this morning on a Zoom call called SongSwap.  It has become a monthly feature presented by the Cantors’ Assembly, a constituent member of the Conservative movement in American Judaism.  I was originally interested in the program because of our own local Israeli Café, by which the members of Congregation B’nai Israel submit favorite Israeli, Yiddish, Ladino, of Jewish songs from anywhere. We had our first event way back at the beginning of the pandemic shutdowns and it has successfully continued monthly since then. We have consistently attracted quite a few participants.  So, when I saw this SongSwap, I was wondering how much alike or different it was from our program.

 

             I was amazed at what it actually ended up being.  Instead of submitting videos or songs or both like ours is, this was live presentations of music written by any number of cantors or rabbis or Jewish educators themselves and they presented their work themselves.  So, really what it is and has been, obviously, is a group of musicians sharing their work, the one with the other, except this was over 125 others, mostly young, mostly American, but I am sure from other places as well.  They were presenting musical variations on prayers that are an essential part of our services.  For example, today, the two hosts were talking about a Lech Dodi challenge, whereby they were inviting 49 variations on the traditional Kabbalat Shabbat prayer.  

 

                What struck me first was how far we have come from the days of Debbie Freedman and Shlomo Carlebach, whose compositions have become part of the standard repertoire in synagogues or all stripes and varieties.  But then I went on to imagine what might have been if they had had a medium to share their compositions more widely. Their prayer melodies have become standard because they spread through the summer camp programs.  Young people, after all, are not married to tradition the way their elders are and so the catchy tunes to familiar prayers soon replaced the staid old cantorial favorites and rightly so.  

 

             But Zoom technology which has rapidly overtaken synchronous video and oral communications online has blossomed and improved so quickly that now it is used to connect communities of like – minded people all over the globe.  That in turn has resulted in multiple new ways not just communicating but creating as well.  No matter what field of endeavour, we are constantly being bombarded by articles expounding on new ways of overcoming formidable barriers to networking.  Doctors using Artificial Intelligence and Zoom to help surgeons-in-training perfect their skills regardless of location. Educators writing about ways to use Zoom for just-in-time professional development on any variety of topics. Teachers using Zoom to connect learners in any two locations to collaborate online in any number of ways.  

 

           It has become de rigeur to advocate for opportunities to collaborate and create with students we teach because that is how they best learn and how we can hope that they will benefit society in the future.  Often, it takes an obstacle to prompt ways to overcome and enhance what has been done for any length of time.  I remember reading a book about the unintended consequences of technology in which the author looked at inventions or creations that were seminal at the time and that have profoundly affected how we saw the world or interacted ever after. Who would have thought that the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in the United States would lead to the Industrial Revolution in England or the identification of the double helix structure of d. n. a. by Watson and Crick to the medical marvel that are the new vaccines to combat Covid-19?  The unintended consequences of Zoom have led to a flowering of creativity which has further solidified the global community and hopefully to the bringing of mankind closer together, never to rent asunder again.