Changing Perspectives

The Corkscrew Roller Coaster at  Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio was one of my favorite roller coaster rides growing up.  Its hills, high speeds and inversions inspired excitement and exhilaration not to mention a sense of panic as well as butterflies in the stomach in the initial hill climb after realizing you are in it for the duration of the 120 second ride. My story as an educator this past year took a series of twists and turns that remind me vividly of the Corkscrew of my childhood.  

In late spring of 2013, the staff at the middle school where I have spent the majority of my education career, made a collaborative decision to initiate a 1:1 Bring Your Own Device Learning Initiative for the 2013 - 2014 school year.  Although many staff members were unsure of what to expect as we embarked into very new territory, we had a fairly strong support system in place within our school walls to help both staff and students with this transition including myself, our teacher librarian, our principal and 1-2 additional classroom teachers.  Due to a series of unforeseen circumstances however, we found ourselves without a teacher librarian just days before the school year began.  My principal was unable to find another teacher librarian with the unique skillset of experience and knowledge to support our staff and students in the inaugural year of our 1:1 BYOD Learning Initiative.  As a last resort, she came to me several days before the start of the school year and asked if I would be willing to step into the role of teacher librarian for the school year.  

Now, let me be clear, I am a science teacher.  My passion has always been science and I became an educator with the hope of passing on my love of science, including asking questions and pursuing answers, to kids.  My passion for technology integration in education began several years ago but teacher librarian was never something that was on my “future” radar.  I had never received any training or professional development in this field of education. My initial reaction was to politely decline due to my lack of knowledge and experience but after “sleeping” on it, I began to reconsider.  Maybe, I thought, this position would provide an opportunity for me to model and expose the powerful potential of technology integration in the classroom to other staff members in my building.  I struggled with the decision but eventually decided to take a year long hiatus from the science classroom (although I did keep one science class because I couldn’t bring myself to give it up entirely, even for just one year).  I gave my principal one stipulation, I asked to be called the Instructional Technology Coach therefore trying to make it clear that my role was to provide support and guidance for teachers and students as they explored how to effectively harness the power of technology as a learning tool.  

This may have been the most difficult year of my teaching career.  I missed being in the science classroom full time and I quickly learned that working primarily with adults is very different than working with kids.  Although I decided to return full time to the science classroom this August, I walked away from my experience last year with several major “ah-ha’s”:

1. Educator’s work really hard!  Of course, I already knew this being a teacher myself, but given my new perspective this year, I saw evidence of this hard, hard work over and over again.
2. It’s a really interesting time to be involved in education.  I frequently hear teachers say the pendulum is just swinging back to the other side.  I disagree, we are working with a completely different pendulum now.     
3. In many classrooms and schools we are “stuck”.  Our students are changing and what it means to be educated is changing but our schools and our education system aren't responding to these changes like they need to.   
4. Technology too often becomes a $500.00 pencil.  It is simply not acceptable to give our students the same old tasks with a more expensive tool.
5. There is a lot of talk about working on changing practice so that our students obtain “21st century skills”.  This seems a bit tardy to me given that we are already 14 years into the 21st century.  
   

So, as I embark on a new school year in the next few weeks, the anticipatory climbs, the scary hills and the mind-boggling inversions of my “corkscrew” year have inspired me to change things up dramatically, to reinvent my science class and to redefine what it means to be an educator and a learner.  

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Vlastula via photopin cc
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