I was told that I am a good teacher, so I should get back up and teach every now and then in my 1:1 classroom for the period. They tried to convince me by saying my students used to learn when I was up in front, too, and they need to feel like they're being taught. They can't always sit in front of a computer, right? Plus, I can't make it look like I'm not teaching them, and they can't feel like they have to teach it to themselves.
I feel like I'm trapped in the cogs of the educational public relations machine. And I'm mad as hell about it. (I'm just waiting to hear how I should use the textbook more often, too.)
Those statements upset me after all I've worked towards this year. I have taken on a new role in my teaching, one that maximizes students doing the work of learning, and minimizes me doing the work of learning for them. I feel it is my job to set up learning experiences for them, collaborative and individualized, differentiating according to need and ability, and then guide them through those activities with questions and advice, not the answers.
I set these learning experiences up using available technology, but not all of it is computer-based. I start each day with 5-10 minutes of me in front of the class reviewing my daily question, which was generated from their exit slips the day before. There have been days when my students just weren't getting major concepts, and we would stop and draw. Or we would do a quick-write on paper. Or I wanted to do a formative assessment, so I had them do what I call a four-square summary on 11 x 17 paper to see if they were making connections I needed them to make. Sometimes learning doesn't happen in a desk in front of a computer; sometimes it happens huddled around a big sheet of butcher paper on the floor.
That's how I define blended learning (and there are many definitions)--using technology to enhance instruction, but not using it when the technology just doesn't fit the learning you want students to do. Instead, use other proven techniques and activities that don't involve technology, but are student-centered. The way I don't define it is, "Have the teacher get up and talk for an entire period every once in a while."
I'm not teaching them; I am helping them learn. I am also trying to help them learn how to learn. What I got the most from students when I stood in the front of my room and taught was a lot of my own words parroted back to me on a test or quiz. I would even receive writing assignments specifically designed so that the students could show off their creativity that sounded like it was I who had written them all. I hated every single one of my own words staring back at me. But, God bless them, that's what my students had been taught learning was.
'If we always do what we've always done, we will get what we've always got.' This saying rings so true for education today. We've always taught students, and it's time we stopped. If we are serious about changing education, we need to stop teaching and foster learning instead--and fostering true learning looks radically different from the teaching we've been doing since school was invented.
Therefore, no matter the demand for the Mrs. E show to return, it's not coming back. I won't be a part of something that is designed for appeasement and not for education.
I refuse to teach my students anymore.