Leadership is just that: Leadership. It is the school's leadership, in particular those
who manage academic personnel, who must lead. Whatever the obstacles be: teachers, board
members, deans, and other school administrators, the leadership must embrace, use and
insist that the teaching professionals utilize the tools of the 21st century. Leadership
must turn faculty culture from the ways of the nineteenth century to one that embraces
the dramatically different 21st Century.
With a thoughtful technology plan (perhaps similar, perhaps different from the one Fred
described) and a comprehensive professional development plan we can accomplish this. But
only with many of our teachers. The ones who will not or cannot adapt cannot continue to
drain classroom resources - instruction time with students. We need to let them go.
To those who say this is cruel - to cast off revered members of a distant philosophy - I
say this: I admire the stone cutters and stone masons of gothic cathedrals, but there is
little need for them today. If I could train stone masons to use those skills in brick
laying or cement foundation work; well, then, they could be employable in a new trade
similar to the one they had been accustomed to. In the education of the 21st Century
there is little need for some of the teaching styles we have relied upon for centuries.
Likewise, I can see the need for a Socratic style (occasionally), but the reliance on a
didactic style has little relevance. Moving towards a media rich, collaborative,
experiential model requires good teachers who are willing to embrace this change. That
means we have to invest in teachers who are willing and good at their vocations:
continuous technology professional development.
We can help those willing to be helped. What are we going to do with those who won't be
"helped"?
That is Leadership.
That is the unanswered question.
That is the struggle.
jonathanemartin@gmail.com writes:
>But here is where I counter David a bit, and instead embrace Ezra's point: I
>think there are already many school administrators ready and eager to
>embrace digital tools for authentic problem-solving education. I'd even
>suggest that the average school administrator is ahead of the average school
>teacher on this front. But that is where the problem lies. Neither boards
>nor students are posing obstacles to the swift advance in this direction--
>but too many of our teachers are. I think faculty culture, in some places,
>is still too set in its ways, too reliant on its longstanding norms and
>routines. Of course I am not talking about all teachers-- and maybe I am
>only identifying a minority of them. But it can be a powerful minority,
>these teaching veterans with strong connections to alumni and parents and
>board members, whom Heads or administrators can sometimes cross only at
>their peril.
>
>I think we need as a school leaders need to keep being loud and clear: the
>21st century is a dramatically different era, and hence teaching and
>learning need to change, and change swifly, not because the previous ways
>were faulty or poor, but because they are no longer congruent with their
>age. By helping our teachers recognize this, we then have an improved
>conceptual framework for them to then understand why they need to do things
>so differently from before.
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