Are other educators getting as tired of this buzz word as I am?  Don’t get me wrong I think that our education system needs some serious revamping and I’m happy to dive in.  I’m sure most COETAIL students are willing to embrace change otherwise we wouldn’t be here blogging in the first place. I was 100% on board when David Price, author of “OPEN” came to our in service day last week. He talked about how digital culture is transforming how we think and learn. I easily identified with everything he had to say and found it encouraging to hear.  Although I find Marc Prensky’s artical in edutopia “Shaping Tech for the Classroom” to be a bit oversimplified on a few points I still very much agree with the overall message he is trying to convey.  Yes! Change is here and we need to adopt and adapt in order to move forward, let’s broaden our lens though of who is going to help get that done.

I‘m becoming exhausted by how much I hear about teachers that are resistant to change.  Really? Sure, I know there is complaining and worry that takes place, I’m probably guilty myself but how much choice do the teachers really have in these all mighty changes that should be coming down the pipe?  Shouldn’t we be looking a little past the teacher?  Is it really the teacher that is resisting the change or is it the way the educational system is set up? Does our current system really support the teacher in the changes they are willing and being told to make?  Dana Watts gave a perfect example of this in our class this past week when she asked the question “Is there a disconnect between our assessment practices and our methods of instruction using technology?” The answer to me seemed to be a resounding yes, but it isn’t necessarily the teachers that are making the assessment practices.

Closer to my point is that I am often hearing about the teacher as the problem and the one that is resistant to change.  Teachers are often the scapegoat when I believe if we really want to place blame  we should be casting a wider net. This commercial for the suface2 helps illustrates my point perfectly. This teacher admits he was resistant to “change” until all of his kids got a new surface.  A decision that, if this was reality, he most likely had nothing to do with.  He even says that he loved his chalk and blackboard.  Really? Do any classrooms in the states still use chalkboards?  I don’t think it is teachers who love their chalkboards that are holding us back. I was frustrated by this commercial because it continues to drive this idea into the ground that it’s the teachers that are holding us back from making changes to our education system.  I wish that we would stop painting pictures of teachers like this as the common public perception. As if he’s the one guy that was willing to make a change and the rest of us should get with the program.  The big problem is we’re not the ones always making the program, the teacher tends to have much less authority than the public is giving us credit for.