We are not teaching our students to pursue passions, says guest blogger Tim Holt. Instead, we are teaching students to pursue predetermined pathways that they may or may not value. Too often, they leave their passions at the doorway of education and career, and maybe pick them back up when they leave the building. For the most part, they have to pursue our passions on their own time, outside the official learning paradigm.
So it’s summer, and I’m on my back porch thinking about my teaching over the past year and wondering what I did well and where I could improve. I can be quite philosophical about it in June. But come August, I want a sharp, logically designed, power-packed unit to start off the year. I want to set the bar high and give my students room to find out what they’re made of.
The interactions my students had with award-winning Lesotho educator Moliehi Sekese would not have been possible without my ability to connect through Facebook, Twitter, Skype and Blogs. All these social media tools combined give teachers the power to create personal learning networks on a global scale. And the benefits are not yours alone. Your students will soon learn to appreciate how open the world has become!
California high school teacher (English/ESL) and resources guru Larry Ferlazzo is famous for the “Best of…” lists at his home cyberturf: Websites of the Day. He has well over 600 of them, the last time we looked. Our idea for this interview is basically to pick Larry’s brain and garner some of his best of the best of the best — especially in areas we might loosely call “21st century learning.”
As schools around the country pink-slip librarians because of budget cuts, I began my own ninja quest to better understand the shift from library-as-sacred-institution to library-on-the-chopping-block. Who are the library change agents championing alternatives to the old school library model? I turned for answers to one of my favorite voices from the literacy revolution — The Daring Librarian — self-proclaimed goofball, geek, and “EdTech teaching ninja.”
And while school is almost over, my learning is not — because I’m connected. This summer for vacation, I don’t plan to vacate or take a course that in the end would probably leave me tired and weary. Instead, I plan to spend the summer in artful restoration, through passionate, fun, deep learning. I won’t be learning how to be a better teacher. Those days are over. In reality, it’s not what my students need.
Get your free digital copy of The Connected Teacher: Powering Up, plus you'll be subscribed to all the latest professional learning content from Powerful Learning Practice, notifications when we have a sale on our online courses, and more.