lateral persuasion is the key to giving success in the 21st century - to India and China.
We fail to understand the real constituency - our students. As much as I care about my
colleagues, and I do - they are my friends - we must expect our colleagues to step onto
the bus or be left behind.
What are our responsibilities? To provide training - on and offline - to our front line
workers. They must (and I assert that to often they do not) expect to learn as much each
year as their students are expected to do. Too often our mission statements speak to
lifelong learners without expecting our classroom teachers to do the same. Teachers, by
their nature (per Neil Postman) are conservative. They want to teach what they know. And
content is what they know. It is safe (aka - conservative).
Teaching change is scary. It is the ability to facilitate process with some content. But
that is our task.
Readily acknowledging a failure
>In meetings the department heads would readily acknowledge that their students did not
>possess the information literacy skills needed
>to navigate the Web and e-databases effectively in an open-ended research activity and
>that these skills are crucial for college -- and increasingly important in the 21st
>century workforce
does not absolve us responsibility.
A culture of collaboration amongst tech and teach must be seen as a vowel change - not an
adversary relationship. I am reluctant suggest a business model of learn or gone, yet we
need to have as high execrations of our colleagues as we have of our students.
Without this expectation we are looking back and will succeed in making our competitors
leaders and we will become, if only until we re-assess, followers. We have very smart
students. We have the ability to do well. We have had a culture of solving problems. We
face planetary issues. We have human issues. We can lead in the solutions to all of these
issues.
Do we have the will to be leaders?
David F. Withrow
Director of Technology
Harford Day School
Bel Air, Maryland 21014
voice: 410 879 2350 ex 33
fax: 410 836 5918
http://www.harfordday.org
The test of the morality of a society is what it does for its children.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
- Yogi Berra
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