Tag Archives: Changing Kids

Call This Progress

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We say we have a new kind of student, but we want them to be like we were, share our values and find what we find important, important. Then we say we want to change and be more like them. We are all growing and changing and learning, but then we discredit what they do,  what they like, who they are becoming. They are distracted and can’t read a book! Gasp! We want to teach them new things, what they want to learn in new ways, but really we just teach them what we want them to learn in the ways we were taught, with new tools and call this progress.

We say we want to be inquiry driven and constructivist, but we get through curriculum we design, assess by our standards and bore them to death. Just exactly where does student inquiry fit into teacher planned curriculum? We say computers are good. We say they are bad. Connected, disconnected. We teach writing and reading, but can’t say why and most of teachers seldom do either.

Do as I say not as I do is still the backbone of most school environments.

Irrelevance is the Distraction

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Really? Am I writing this post, my third one in a week, (News Alert Humans Like to Socialize and Shackled By Fear) about how computers and the Internet are ruining our children’s lives? More importantly are you reading it? Are we not past this topic yet? News flash! The use of technology, whatever that nebulous term even means, is changing the world and nowhere is this shift more apparent than in our schools. Why? Because most schools are based on antiquated models of what learning used to look like. We can bemoan the fact that students no longer want to sit dopey eyed in rows and hear us ramble on and on about whatever we feel is the most important thing in the world, but really wouldn’t it be better if we started to learn how to bridge our two worlds?

We’ve all heard it before; I am not saying anything new, which begs the question why am I writing this post? Why are you reading? Why can’t we seem to move forward? Why do we need a six-page New York Times article telling us that teenagers are distracted and Facebooking instead of reading novels?

My main gripe and perhaps the impetus of my new crusade is that I refuse to be polarized by the Ed-tech evangelists and the paranoid chalk and talk dinosaurs. I refuse to be forced to make a choice between the book and the computer, between the organic and the digital, between a walk in the woods and a flight through second life, between “real” and virtual life. I refuse to believe that there is only one way to reach young people today. I want to be able to reach them on their level by helping them understand identity creation and digital footprints, but I also want to reach them on their level by taking trips into nature where we write poetry about what we see. There is a middle ground between kids watching Brain Pop videos and creating Power Point videos no one will ever see and calling it integrated technology, and doing worksheets; it is called teaching. It is not the technology that is distracting kids, it is the irrelevance of what we are teaching them and our inability to make it meaningful. You can teach under a tree with a piece of chalk if the kids are buying what you are selling. How do you do that, you may ask? Well that is the million-dollar question isn’t it? I am still learning. That’s the beauty of teaching.

This latest article epitomizes this polarity. Offering examples of exasperated teachers who can’t get their students to read a book versus the cool guy teacher, who is teaching them how to use Pro-Tools, doesn’t help our understanding. We simply cannot make students, teachers, and parents choose between being connected and “tech savvy” and “Old School.” There has to be a middle ground. Where are the stories about teachers who have infused technology to make it ubiquitous like air, (Love that Chris Lehmann quote) so that students can use their talents and newly found knowledge to change the world? Where are the stories about teachers who with passion and love of literature have convinced seventh graders that the pages in a novel can be just as excited or more so that a Facebook feed. I mean really, do we have such little faith in literature that we think a text message is competing with John Steinbeck? If you believe in what you teach and you make it relevant for your students there is nothing they won’t stop doing to follow where you lead.

It is still possible to connect to students without bells and whistles and show them the beauty of well-written prose or the magic of science. I am tired of both sides thinking that students will only learn and stay engaged if the teacher offers a technological carrot. I can no longer, with a straight face say, “It is about the learning and not the tools.” I cannot say that teachers need to create and build meaningful relationships with their students based on trust and honesty if they want them to read on their own.

I could go on and on, but you have heard it all before, and unfortunately most people who will read this post already agree with me, so maybe this connected technology is not as great as it appears. Besides, I have a movie to start editing and I am feeling a bit distracted after reading a six-page article. Maybe, if I can get my work done in time I can actually curl up with a good book. It is really a collection of online columns. Does that count?