The final bell rang Thursday and my students raced joyfully through the halls, out the exit doors and onward to their five day weekend. My colleagues and I, on the other hand, drew a deep breath and trudged slowly homeward, knowing we'd be back bright and early for a day of being inserviced. Please understand that I am not opposed to learning; I love to learn new things. I'm a teacher-geek; it's what I do. However, each February we march in early on a Friday to sit through hours of being talked to while we try to concentrate. It's difficult not to be distracted by the piles of papers that need to be graded, the files that need to be sorted and organized, the grades that need to be entered into Powerschool. Hard too, not to think about the students who would normally be here with us, sleeping in today instead, enjoying the warming temperatures and having mid-winter vacations.
Returning Friday morning we grab doughnuts and coffee and march to the computer lab. This year's inservice emerges as a pleasant surprise; not another run-through of using powerpoint, but actual time to work on current technology, to discover new things, to find lesson materials that will be meaningful to our students and enrich our own professional careers. Today's inservice, like the spring breezes blowing outside, is a breath of fresh air compared to the years and years of blood-borne pathogens training we've had to sit through.
This is what today's teachers need...time to think, time to explore, time to discover what's new and available to us. The load of teaching today is heavy. Being a classroom teacher no longer involves simple paper and pencil tasks, quizzes and lectures. Today's teacher must integrate technology, not only to capture the interest of our students, but also to prepare them to be good citizens in a web-savvy world. Without time to think and discover, teacher's cannot possibly keep up with the rapidly expanding technology and knowledge base. We all know this, we all strive for this, but the list of tasks to be completed daily is enormous and often we're too exhausted by the time we get to the end of the day to discover anything.
So, here's my plea to educators everywhere...plan your inservice days in such a way that new ideas are presented to your staff, followed by time for them to question and discover at their own pace. On any given staff, the level of techonological savvy varies from expert to emerging, and time is needed to develop those skills and keep everyone learning.
So now, if you'll excuse me, I'll finish my blog assignment and move on to my own discovery process. I'd bet I'm having as much fun today as my students; but that's just the teacher-geek in me!
