I am tried. Exhausted. Spent and empty. For some inexplicable reason, however, writing/blogging whatever you want to call it, seems to be the only activity that restores my energy. Let’s see where this train leads.
After four days of working as a Technology Facilitator, I jokingly asked my principal if I could go back to being a classroom teacher. He grinned, “No way man. You can’t go back once you have jumped into the rabbit hole.” Fair enough, so let me vent a bit. Things that are bugging me about my new job:
There is always something wrong. Every second. All day. Everyday. There are issues. And while it may be self-induced, I feel I need to solve them all. Right now. In addition to my own anxiety about the glitch in Gmail contact creation, people stop me in the halls to ask how to add a tab in their browser, or pull me over because their keynote isn’t working. The false mantle of expertise is heavy and often gets in the way of what is important– planning my units for my Grade 10 English class that starts next week. I am quite certain, this balancing act will be more manageable with time. I am excited to watch myself learning how to be patient and kind and open. I often find myself wanting to belittle how little some people know, it is shocking, but then I imagine them as if they were a kindergartner, or my daughter, and remind myself that I am still a teacher. The difference is that I have a whole new batch of students. Yes, they are grown college-educated adults, but they still need differentiation. They still need to be told they are doing a good job. That they will get it. That it is normal to be nervous about learning. This understanding makes the job worth it. Teaching adults is more complex than teaching kids in many ways. This complexity is helping me be the best educator I can be. It is reconfirming my understanding that teaching is a social experience, and it is about building and maintaining relationships first and foremost. Teaching is always an act of love and trust.
Having said that, I am tired of feeling as if I am the sole defender of all things digital. I sometimes feel that people are projecting their fear, frustration, and resentment with technology towards me. As if I am somehow responsible for their inability to navigate this changing world, or worse that I blindly believe that we are headed in the right direction, simply because I have chosen to explore what the digital world means to my life, my family, my students. Just because I enjoy investigating the digital age, does not make me blind to the necessity and wonder of the world beyond screens. I don’t like the assumption that I prefer to chat on a phone rather than a face-to-face conversation, or that I enjoy the anxiety that comes from being over connected. That I have somehow forgotten what it feels like to close my eyes and enjoy a passing breeze or the warm sunshine on my neck. Watching the giant bees penetrate the flowers on campus. As if technology could ever surpass the subtle beauty of a string of words on a page. I feel that when people see me, they only see a screen. Cold and metallic. I find it hard to express the breathing, stinking organic mess that operates the device they see.
I am sure, as always, I am over thinking and being too sensitive, but this is why I write– to sift through emotions and find clarity. Reflection should show us something right? It is still early days, but I feel like I am being pulled in many directions, not necessarily places I want to go. After a day of putting out a series of fires, I spent an hour in my classroom: moving furniture, blasting the Strokes, and putting up posters and quotes to populate and give birth to my new space. Tomorrow, I will find some plants; I am pricing a cheap guitar for the room , and next week I will spend time with some young adults who don’t expect much from me. We will laugh, get to know each other and begin to explore.
Interesting thoughts, but know that you’re not alone in these concerns. It may get easier, but you’ll never be an expert in everything tech. You can’t be expected to know everything. I’ve learned over the years to do my best, to strive to seek solutions to people’s problems, but to also help them teach themselves. Also, you gotta take time to disconnect so you don’t burn out. You seem to be getting into photography for example – use that passion and interest as a channel to re-focus. Indonesia is at your doorstep.
I’ve now moved from full time tech integration into being I.T. Coordinator for the HS but will still do tech integration. It’s not easy for sure, but it’s quite rewarding when you see teachers and students begin to “get it” and carry the skills they learn into new areas of growth they may not have previously dared to approach.
Relaaax! Mate, give yourself some time to settle in!
Here’s the thing: this job is not really a technology job – it’s a people job. And you know people. You will be fine. Cultivate relationships. Ask about people’s kids. Their holidays. Care.
Choose the open-minded ones to pilot things with, and wait ’til they spread by word-of-mouth. Pick your battles. You don’t have to win every one, but you do want to win the war.
I put up cartoons about tech frustrations so people realised I had them too. Share what the school is doing well – with everyone! Highlight the good stuff already going on.
Breathe. All is good in the world.
I know I’m certainly looking forward to my involvement! You also have to remember that teachers make the worst students. We’re up for the challenge though. You will do a fabulous job in your teaching role and in your all tech pro job too. 🙂 Good luck! If you need to vent, come by my office/classroom, I promise to make it worse 🙂
Fantastic post as I gear up for another year, and one that captures some of my own daily frustrations. But you got such a fantastic piece of advice above: it’s really a people job. Folks will always be more amenable to things that go wrong — and, as frustrating as it is, it just happens — when they feel that it’s your problem, too.
I am experiencing all the same emotions, fears and anxiety as my new role as tech facilitator this year. I never thought I would see the day when I would step out of the classroom; and yet, I haven’t. My students have changed. Over the past three years, I have found my passion switching from English literature to anything and everything digital. If I don’t follow my passion, I am failing every student that I convinced to follow a dream.
The problem with being involved in the world of tech is two fold: 1) we are librarians and 2) we are new parents. Let me explain: as a librarian, you have your favorite novels. You know the classics and many new titles, but there is no way you have read every novel in the library. We cannot know every tool available to teachers and new ones come out every day. I know my classics and my hot new novels, but there is still so much in between. And as new parents (my colleague Gary came up wit this analogy), we are given this beautiful new baby with no instruction manual. Our jobs don’t have a clear definition. We are writing what it should look like day by day and it is frickin’ scary at times. I know I can’t be an expert at all things. But with parenting, I have to constantly try my best and hope everything ends up ok in the end.
Jabiz, I believe we are in the right place. We are scared/anxious because it is uncharted territory every single day, but if we wanted monotony, we would have never followed our hearts into the world of education.
“They call me the fireman, that’s my name. Making my rounds all over town putting out old flames.” George Strait.
I have been on the same crazy train as you since my school started getting computers. I spend most of my planning periods solving other people’s tech problems. I get really frustrated when I am called into a room to “set up” their computer. (That happens every time I walk in the school doors now.) I have a difficult time understanding why they can’t see that the power cable only fits in one spot on the back of the CPU!
What keeps me from flipping out is the fact that I know these teachers won’t use tech in their classrooms if they don’t feel like they can get help. Although the process takes time, I have seen teachers go from not being able to figure out how to use the remote control on their television sets (I am not kidding about this) to showing Discovery Streaming videos to their students with great effect. That includes logging on to the site, finding the appropriate video, downloading it, finding where it downloaded, and then playing it through their projector.
BTW I bought a beater ukulele for my students to play with this year. #greatminds
I think everybody in this tech integration/facilitation/coaching game feels exactly as you do at various points throughout the school year. It’s particularly difficult when a) you are new to the position and b) the position is new to the school. I have spent the first two years defining and re-defining what it means to be a tech facilitator and yet I’m still not really sure how to explain my position to the 40 newly hired teachers at school this year!
Keri-Lee and Dana are both spot on, in my opinion. It’s a job about people, relationships and trust. I would also say that this job is more (should be more!) about curriculum than cables. It’s about helping to create a student-centered environment where young people have the opportunity to be inquirers and risk takers (IB Learner Profile, anyone?) and where technology affords otherwise impossible experiences.
I have never ever seen the “cold, screen-like” person in you – on the contrary. I read your blogs not for your tech advice or expertise ( and of boy, there are many flooding the internet) but because of your deeply humane and sensitive approach to life, people, challenges.
Keep calm…and write on.
Tenang … Calm … Count to ten silently … so you have joined the ‘club’. Remember my melt down about this last academic year? That’s why I fought so hard to teach a class this year. I need it for my own sanity. I like the Tech Coaching but it gets hard when people blame you for 1. Tech stuff that they can’t get to work, 2. When you can’t solve their problems within the first 5 minutes, 3. Not getting to do what they want with Tech (because they don’t like some decisions that have been made by the school) … the list goes on. Some people get really angry about it. I used to say ‘Look try this way … see it’s easy.’ Not anymore!! What I find easy (and the fastest way) might not be so for others. I’m talking about the simple stuff here!!
Here’s a classic one: T: Can you help me I can’t open a Publisher file on my Mac? Me: You need Windows to do that. T: But I looked on my Mac and I can’t find the program called Windows anywhere. I swear that is a true story!!
I am also trying not to use technical words either … I’ve had complaints about that!! Technical words include browser, tweet, desktop … Mind you what else do you call those things? Remember we are the human face of this all. Perhaps us Tech Coaches need to meet once a week for moral support? I’m so happy to have more people on board … I used to do this for the whole school all by myself!! Please hang in there Jabiz 🙂
You guys rock! All of you thank you. Fear not I am all good and ready to rock this year. At least till the next breakdown.
Teaching is always an act of love and trust.
It’s funny, but as adults we are so much more invested in what we “know”. It’s so much easier to build a persona, an identity, a self, around the things we know and understand about our world. As kids, we’re stuck with sifting through the pile of existence to begin to collect these “knows” so we can build ourselves. It is only when we forget who we are that we can be all we can become.
You’re taking these folks into a new world where they can begin to collect those knows… while it’s terrifying (I remember how scared I was to meet you all at Learning 2.010), it’s a chance to build new and exciting personas.
Keep heart.. such things never happen in an instant.