I am about to begin an exciting journey as a Personal Learning Facilitator in 4 middle schools in the Charleston County School District. My role or job will be to help/facilitate/coach any teacher in any facet of Personalized Learning.
The Personal Trainer
My hope for teachers is that understand they are no longer teachers, but Personal Mind Trainers. When you get a personal trainer for your body, they tailor the workouts to your goals, expertise, condition and what resources are available. The same goes for teachers nowadays. The personal trainer at the gym has a set of resources (weights, cardio machines, etc) but uses them in different manners for different clients and then marks their progress and makes adjustments, as need be. This is what teaching needs to be. Your library, computers, desks are your equipment, but you must tailor them to your students to make sure each one makes the most progress they can.
My Hopes
My hope is that teachers embrace the change and run with it. Gone are the days of 25 students staring back at a teacher for 7 hours a day. With social media, technology, and today's society students are no longer sponges waiting to gain facts and information. Students now have every piece of information at their fingertips, they now need to know how to access that information, use it to get their point across and become productive members of an every changing society.
My Fears
My fear is that teachers will be afraid to take risks. Does anybody know when that happened? We tell our students every day to take risks and just try it, but we don't live that ourselves as educators. I am taking a risk writing a blog, something I know nothing about, but I will learn. Here is why I think teachers are afraid to take risks:
1- The Test
2- Fear of getting reprimanded
3- Set in their ways
One of my personal goals this year is to learn how to get teachers past these fears and do what is best for their students, which if they do should clear up any fears they may have.
Join Me
I ask that you join me in this journey and help me. I want to see what amazing things teachers are doing out there with personalized learning. Let's get real discussions going about how best to improve teaching for our students. I will come to you with questions and I want real, honest feedback on how to tackle a problem and improve.
