Recently Elissa Miller and I exchanged some tweets about how it is easy to ask for help and exchange ideas online, but not face-to-face with our staff. We decided to both write a post on the topic and publish simultaneously—a blogosphere first? So after you read this post from a 19 year veteran, head on over to Elissa’s blog and check out the view from a 1 year veteran.
Why don’t I ask for help with the people I work with?
I have been putting off this answer for over a week. Have re-written the post three times. Considered telling Elissa that maybe we should change the question. FIrst I thought maybe it was fear. Then I went with I don’t want to feel like an outcast because of my very un-traditional beliefs. But the real answer…I can’t figure out how to write the real answer without seeming like the most egotistical conceited big headed person in the world…the real answer to why I don’t ask people for help is because I don’t want it. I hated school growing up. I really don’t remember anything interesting I did from k-12. So I knew popping out of college that I did not want to reproduce the traditional model in my classroom. I quickly learned that the typical “classroom management plan” was not the way I wanted to go. I should say that I did all the traditional things in the beginning. I had the big list of rules on the board, gave detentions, and even had tests that lasted two days. I taught in the “toughest” school in the state for ten years before moving to the ‘burbs. My current schools “worst” kids would have been the honor roll students at my first school. While I hesitate to say I was successful, I did survive a decade there. And as everyone in the school told me when I was hired, “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.” What that experience ingrained in me is that there had to be another way to teach kids beside coming up with tricks to make them be quiet and listen to me. There had to be a way to engage them and empower them. A way to “manage” them without disrespecting them and without treating them like they were peons. I didn’t know what I wanted to do but I knew that everyone around me wasn’t doing it. I didn’t need to ask folks how to manage class with coercive rules or make kids study for a test. That is not what I wanted to know so I never asked anyone for help.
At my new school, which seems to be on a different planet from my first, has the same type of teachers. Mostly traditional who can be a bit more creative because of a more subdue student body. So I am in the same situation. I know I don’t want to do “that.” I hope that doesn’t seem insulting. But I simply desire a different way of doing things. I am searching for a way to create the ultimate classroom, the one that I never experienced as a kid. One that does not exist in my school. I simply don’t know anyone doing a project based classroom, with authentic learning, in a constructivist child-centered classroom. I have made it to that place nearly on my own, and am still traveling without a navigator. I wish so much that I could find someone in my school who would like to hop in and take that trip with me. One or two are close, but I still think our opinions differ to much to make us traveling companions.
So why don’t I ask people in my school for help? Because right now I am on a different path. I have already been on their path. I have seen where it leads. I want to travel on a path less traveled, and I don’t know anyone who wishes to join me, or know anyone who has walked down it. That is why I reach out and spend so much time online. I have been able to find people who kick-butt with project based learning. I have found people who amaze me with the authentic learning that their kids do. I am still searching for people and to communicate about the way I think I want to interact with students in a classroom. Probably because it is the hardest thing to get across in writing–they are out there and I have met many, but the mushy emotional stuff doesn’t get the re-tweets and pingbacks the way a good “Top Ten Tech Tools” for teachers post does. I think because it is that last one that is the hardest to find, it is the area that I tend to keep coming back to in my posts.
I engage with folks online because they believe in what I am trying to do. You have to realize that most…almost all people I know f2f would think that almost every post on this blog is ridiculous. This week I decided to share with my staff and the entire system the podcast that my kids do that I think is pretty darn awesome. I thought they would express some extra interest in it since it included an interview with our incoming superintendent. I can’t even write here how few clicked on the link in the email to checkout the website or how many fewer bothered to check out the podcast. I hear the rumors that come back that say my project based class is just me sitting around and letting the kids go crazy, all the tech integration is just kids playing on computers, and my “classroom management” will never teach the kids discipline. They don’t believe in what I am trying to do. My online “friends” and I share a common belief. A common vision. A common dream. Online people push me to travel further down my path. They warn me about the dangers ahead. They support me when I fall. But most importantly, they never, ever, tell me to turn back. They push, pull, and cheer me onward. The inspire me with their words, actions, and comments. They are the ones I want to be like. I have 100’s of online role models and consider myself very lucky to be in their company.
11 responses so far ↓
Paul, I totally feel for you as I been in the same place and this is where I apologize for a really long comment.
Part of my role in my College for a couple of years was to get others engaged in the use of technology. But people within my section weren’t ready to hear or be involved in it. To maintain my sanity I had to become two separate people. 1) The fish farming lecturing on my campus (who rarely talked about technology with other colleagues) and 2) the person that helped others with technology on other campuses in our College and people online.
Maybe it was a cop out? I know others that have managed. But it can lead to insanity if you are excited by what you are doing but the people who you work alongside don’t understand why. I’ve even had a work colleague blame me for the entire inability of the modern student to read, write and use maths.
What you are doing is really important. I use you all the time as an example of some one who is doing amazing stuff and who totally inspires his students in unimaginable ways.
It’s not uncommon for the teachers not to understand what you doing or trying to achieve. Effectively you are asking them to change and most people will always fight change because they like things to stay the same. Those that might make negative comments aren’t so much directing it at you but to justify why they don’t have to change.
Very few of the people I work with as a fish farming lecturer have ever taken the time to check out, be inspired by the work I do or get involved themselves. But by sharing the work I do online I know that I’ve been able to inspire others globally, who are ready for the message, and each of those people in turn inspires others and slowly the change happens.
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Paul,
I can totally agree with what you’ve said. How can I start my classroom like yours without doing the boring way first?
Problem based learning is hard for me to understand- how do they know how to solve the problem without me teaching them? How does this work for the lower skilled students?
What could a school become if it was full of teachers who did feel the same as you do?
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Paul, thank you for your candor and for telling parts of my story, too. The phrase, “Don’t cast your pearls before swine.” pops into my mind when we discuss these issues. A little snarky, but true.
I agree with you about making my classroom so engaging that kids want to pay attention. I want it to be about shared power and choice rather than me trying to control everything. Guidance and support win over railroading and punishment every single time. Alas, I have a long way to go before I reach my ideals.
Regarding the technology use and PBL, I was “alone” in my school and district for several years so I, too, made my community online. I’m not as active as you are and I still fear looking stupid, but I try to contribute when I can. Nowadays there are about 10 folks in my District trying to do what I’m trying to do and maybe 2 in my building. Thanks again, for articulating how isolated we feel sometimes. How many of us feel/felt we were the only ones? I stepped into this online community to slake the thirst for growth, change, innovation, and hope that wasn’t getting filled anywhere offline at the time.
I still consider my online edgeeks the most important, up-to-date, research-based, helpful, and professional PLN a teacher could hope for. And it only gets better when I stick my head out of my shell and participate more.
I’m betting that at the very least, your passion makes you a better teacher than many. I believe it probably makes you better than most. Your students and (virtual) colleagues are lucky!
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Hi Paul,
I have enjoyed the websites, jokes, etc. that you have posted on twitter. I enjoyed this and your fellow teacher’s co-blog, (could only think of that for now).
Many fellow teachers generally ignore anything and everything, not just technology, but most everything that goes on in school. Apathy is our biggest problem. After trying for 17 years, this is the first year I have had some success getting teachers to use technology in their class.
Unfortunately, their process trainer had to mandate it, but they were very happy when they found out how easy it was to manage their classes by blending them with Moodle.
The most important thing to realize is that change will happen, there is nothing that they, the other teachers, can do to stop it. “Change is the only constant in life.” Heraclitus
Also, see if you can find others near you that you can f2f with that feel the way you do about school and connect with them. I did, and we continue our conversations online in between f2f meetings. Keep pushing, if you don’t nothing will budge and the school will be left behind.
Carl, aka weemooseus on twitter
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“Why don’t I ask for help with the people I work with?”
Because they refer me to worksheets, or books full of worksheets, or ideas they got from books of worksheets.
When I ask for help I want something that when you think about it you say, “You can’t do that in a classroom, can you?”
My students and I were discussing WWII paratroupers, they asked if we could build models of parachutes, trying to balance speed and safety…that day I asked a building level administrator if I could take students on the roof, she replied, “I don’t think so, well…no one has ever asked, let me check.”
And that was the kids.
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I’m thankful for the online community myself, but part of me still wants the flesh & blood connection with others. I am saddened when so few others nearby really “get” me.
I’m still thinking of the “summer camp for teachers” idea. The idea of getting teachers together to discuss ideas that work where it’s ok to express the emotion & passion in what we are doing for a week during the off season. It really should happen.
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I was criticized for not keeping tight enough control of the classroom even when every kids was on task. They were just excited and noisy about the project they were working on. This was just student teaching.
This post was a little discouraging but I have relied on online communities for other aspects of my life and will do so in this area too.
Thanks for the blog. You are inspiration to many!
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Carl Reply:
June 15th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
The sound of a busy occupied classroom is one of the greatest noises in the world, IMHO.
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I haven’t been teaching as long as you and a bit longer than Elissa – just finishing my 11th year. I’ve been following you on Twitter and reading your blog with interest for several months, now.
I’m not sure that you and I would see eye-to-eye on a lot of issues, but I’m constantly challenged and inspired by the passion you bring to your teaching and the writing you do about it.
I think that’s the key – your passion. I have met some really spectacular teachers who use tons of textbooks and worksheets and some who use none at all. I’ve seen committed, driven teachers who are parts of teams and ones who are alone in the wilderness. The one common factor in really good teachers is their passion. If you care enough and are driven enough, that will get through to your students and real learning will happen.
If you are still alone at your school doing what you do long enough, you will become an institution. Word will trickle out. Burned-out teachers will retire and new ones will see what you do. Sometimes, news of what you’re doing has to filter its way back into the school from outside.
Change happens slowly, which is bad news for individual kids, but comforting in the larger scheme of things.
Keep your chin up.
- John
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[...] In Courageous Online But Still Cowardly Lion in my School from Blogush, Paul Bogush states, “So why don’t I ask people in my school for help? Because [...]
I have felt the same things to different degrees at each of the four schools I’ve been at in the last 21 years. That’s part of the reason I’m seriously considering going to Asia to teach in an International school. To be in a PLN f2f would be a dream! I’m just getting my feet wet tech wise but I’ve been marching to a different beat my whole career, at the risk of alienating those who just don’t get it. Sadly some never will…
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