We’re All In This Together
I somewhat cringed as I wrote this post title today because, even with the best intentions, this phrase has become somewhat triggering through the pandemic (and I’m on record saying this phrase multiple times). I decided to keep it, however, because it so often accompanies discussions between “leaders” and their team members.
One thing that I hear often in the world of ed tech can be generalized as,
“I just don’t have time to learn something new right now”, or,
“I’m too old to add that in”.
What!?
I don’t recall hearing any teacher tell their students, “Now that you’ve joined the baseball team you should stop learning science as you no longer have time”, or, “Now that you’ve in Grade X you are too old to try this.”
If we wouldn’t do this to your students, why do you do it to yourself?
On the flip-side, we shouldn’t be asking our students to do something that we are not able/willing to model ourselves. A prominent example that comes to mind are those who assign public speaking/presentation tasks to their students but then will NEVER sign up to share with their colleagues because, “I am just not comfortable public speaking”.
This happens all the time in ed tech; especially social media use. I’ve seen plenty of examples of teaching staff who ban social media use in their class/school because, “students do not use it responsibly”, but then go home and do at least one of the following:
- forward a spam message indicating they do not give Facebook the right to use/delete/share their photos
- comment on a private group post, “how come I can’t share this”
- share media posts without authenticating the information
- comment on an article without reading it
As cliché as it sounds, we are truly all in this together. If there is a task, practice, skill that we are asking those on our team to do, we need to be actively participating as well; whether that is a teacher assigning a task in their classroom or an administrator implementing a practice for their staff. This does not mean that you have to know everything, but you do need to be willing to learn alongside those on your team.