Things Influencing this Post:
Karl Fisch — Is It O.k. To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher?
David Warlick: Teachers and Technology – A Rant
The Responsibility For Effective Staff Development
A Whole Bunch of Other Posts Out There…

"..someone told me they didn’t want to learn one more new thing, they didn’t like new things.."

There’s a lot of writing going on about how teachers don’t have the right to be technologically illiterate today, that they can’t, won’t shaltn’t… And, and I don’t mean to be picking on David or Karl, two voices I deeply, deeply respect, there seems to be a sense that, if it weren’t for those darned teachers who won’t learn, we’d have the schools we need.

I don’t doubt that there are those teachers who refuse to learn. I powerfully, powerfully doubt that those teachers are our biggest problem.

Our problem is that there is little about our current educational system that encourages innovation.

(Here’s where I admit my bias. I’m talking about urban education here. I am sure there is a lot about what I’m going to say here that is comparable to suburban schools, but my experience is in urban schools.)

So here are some things I think we want to consider when we question why teachers don’t embrace new literacy wholeheartedly:

• 50% of teachers leave the profession within five years. Something is wrong with our system.
• The average urban superintendent stays in the job 2.8 years, which — having lived through times of change in NYC and Philadelphia — means incredible instability in schools, even in the best of transitions.
• In NYC, class size tops out at 34. In Philadelphia, class size tops out at 33.
• This means that teachers often have over 150 kids on their roster — how do you authentically grade 150 essays in a timely fashion, let alone find the time to innovate?
• Most urban schools still do not have dedicated techies / systems administrators in their buildings to ensure trouble-shooting, just-in-time service and frequent care. Expecting that one teacher to teach a full-day and then fix the computers doesn’t work.
• To my knowledge, there is not one state NCLB-compliant test that requires digital/new/contemporary literacy, therefore, no matter how much rhetoric is spent on "21st Century Skills," while we live under a system that punishes schools for their scores on tests, it is wholly unrealistic to expect the public school system to evolve in a direction that runs counter to the "accountability" structures currently in place.

Let’s ask the next questions…

When will administrators create systems in their schools to encourage innovation, technological and otherwise? We give up a lot at SLA so that we can prioritize making the teaching life as livable as possible. We don’t have Assistant Principals. We don’t have a full-time nurse. We don’t have after-school security, we don’t have any non-teaching assistants, we have one secretary, but everyone teaches four classes (or its equivalent,) not five.

When will we reform NCLB so that we do not encourage teaching 1950s tools?

With the move toward more and more corporate, store-bought curriculum, what is the incentive to view teaching as a creative process?

How many hours a week is enough? Is it fair to ask our teachers to work 50 hours a week? 60 hours a week? 70 hours a week? When is it too much?

Robert Pirsig wrote, "If you put a good person in a corrupt system, the system will win every time." We must create school systems that embrace a sense of play… that give teachers and students the time and space to pursue the streams of thought that aren’t tested… we must make our schools humane places so that people feel safe to explore and take risks and, yes, learn.

My biggest worry with SLA is sustainability. I know how much I ask of my teachers, but I try to balance that with doing everything I can to make the teaching life at SLA more than just livable, but life-affirming. I don’t think I succeed every day. We know there’s a stretch in Nov-Dec that is beyond brutal. (Think Open House, Parent-Advisor conferences, and 1,000 interviews all in a six week stretch.) But I also make sure people leave at normal hours, and I try to respect people’s time, and I try to keep our the care of our shared humanity — students, teachers, parents… (even the principal) — the most important part of my job.

But I also know that whenever Marcie and I think about introducing a new technological tool or idea to the faculty, we ask ourselves, "Is it fair for us to introduce this? Will this put people on overload? Can people take one more thing?" And yes, this is with an incredibly savvy staff that blogs and journals and podcasts, etc… but even with amazing, dedicated, digitally aware teachers in a system that — hopefully — encourages innovation, we have to ask ourselves how to manage all this without shutting teachers down.

So my challenge for all of us is this… let’s make sure that, in our frustrated moments, we remember to look at the structures that prevent innovation rather than allowing ourselves to get frustrated by the good people in our schools who are working as well as they can within a very flawed system.