From a teacher’s perspective, the future could be a very exhilarating place and time in which our work is bound by neither of those factors..
Poor rural and urban students would no longer have to receive their education locked (literally) inside unhealthy, unappealing, outdated buildings. They could access me and I could reach them from anywhere. We could turn a marketplace, library, park, backyard, or rooftop into a learning site. I could virtually engage them in conversations that mattered with people, including experts, from around the globe. Using her school ID card as a projector, Makiaya could watch a 3-D image of her virtual classmate, Tyrone, reading aloud his latest piece of writing on the side of the refrigerator while fixing dinner for her siblings whom she keeps until her mother gets home from work. Tia could record what would become the draft of her next piece as she’s riding home from her job on the night shift at the restaurant. I could do an individual writing conference with Jason from his cell at the state-of-the-art juvenile detention center while simultaneously at my portable teacher center noting the progress of several students whose name and progress charts are coming up on my lesson management pad.
Some things don’t change. “The poor you will have with you always….”
I once saw a picture in a 1955 Life Magazine of an African teacher and her students huddled under a single tree, writing in the dust with sticks. That image has stayed with me like a compass point. Marva Collins once said all she needed [to be able] to teach is room full of children and two sturdy legs” Black teachers in the segregated South taught children to respect themselves and fight for freedom with what the white schools had thrown away. I watched my Delta Mississippi students blossom intellectually during a year-long online exchange with a class of peers in South Africa in 1994 when all I had was one computer in the classroom. (I had to email their writings from home, print out the responses then tape them on my classroom wall for the students to read). It’s not the technology that matters; it’s the TEACHnology.
Some things shouldn’t change.
Caring, equity, responsibility.
I don’t mean to be cynical; I’m actually very excited about the promises of the future…but experience has made me wary of how those advances could be used against the poor and the powerless—unless, those of us with integrity stand up and speak for them.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Renee,
I hear you. Maybe it’s because I’m a southerner as well, maybe it’s because I’ve seen the need for more caring, equity, and responsibility, or maybe it’s because I feel the burden that in a society that seems so incredibly connected, many of our students seem to be even more disconnected than before.
I love that the Life Magazine picture provided a compass point for you. I can almost see you as you stumbled upon an image that sharpened your vision for the future. My “compass point” has always been the slogan on a little button I discovered in a tourist shop in Portland, Maine in 1988. “Think Globally, Act Locally” it said. Simple, but powerful. I had no idea at that time how I might act on my hopes for a better world, but I always knew that I had to be the kind of person to take action. I believe that our nation’s passionate people are being summoned to act on their concerns. Like you, I am deeply concerned about issues of equity and opportunity in education. I need to speak out more about these issues and search for more avenues for action.
Some things don’t change. You are right. But we can’t let that be our excuse for not passionately pushing ahead. Good is always the enemy of great.
In Iowa, online education began as a response to rural needs where the schools did not have the resources to provide a teacher in physics, chemistry and higher levels of math. That solves the problem of school day/year access as the kids can get online at school.. but does not help in the long term with broadband access. If broadband high speed access is the new portal to education then it should be available to all. Kids who do not have access at home do not have the same opportunities to learn as those who do. Legislators seem to have forgotten that a simple $30 a month internet fee is a deal breaker for lots of families trying to figure out how to heat their homes this winter. As we move towards the exciting opportunities online learning presents for students (like the opportunity to learn from someone like Renee) I hope we all are keeping our eye on those who often get pushed aside and forgotten in the excitement of innovation. I say let’s solve the problem of access. The innovation will roll along just fine without advocates…the kids need us to guard their opportunities to learn. Cable companies are making millions from these lucrative internet provider fees. I think we should advocate for them to help fund some of the access innovations for those who cannot fully participate because of income. The idea of network vs cable is a similar access issue. Everyone has access to basic news and information through broadcast network stations. Should we not provide the same with the web? In the digital television transition people would have marched on Washington if they would have made everyone move to cable and pay for it. I believe that basic broadband access is network TV and that everyone should have access.
I too am wary. The promise of technology is too great to ignore and too important to not involve everyone. It is time to stand up and make sure the poor and the powerless voices are not ignored.
Shannon
We need people to constantly be on the lookout for the ignored. If we aren’t their biggest advocates, who will be?