You don’t have time to learn??

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This is for all the teachers out there that have been made to feel guilty by people telling them “You don’t have time to learn?”

Dear Teacher,

If you have spent some time reading blogs and joining networks like twitter, I am sure you have read about how it is necessary to continue to develop and contribute to your PLN (personal learning network) and that by doing so you will become a superstar teacher. There have been posts and tweets written that will make you feel that it is necessary to spend time on your computer reading other people’s ideas, and if you are really learning, you will start your own blog or start tweeting! I am sure that you have read how people mock you for saying “but I don’t have the time to tweet or blog.” Come on! As they say, we all find time for the important things! I think that we need to examine your schedule:

5:00 am wake-up
6:00 am at school
7:40 students arrive
7:40-3:00pm classes
4:00 pm arrive home (if there are no meetings or if your kids don’t have any activities, or if you don’t have a second job)
5:30 pm let’s be a bit more realistic…this is when you arrive home
6:00 pm eat dinner
7:00 pm talk/spend time with family
8:00 pm do school work
9:00 pm plop down on couch and watch tv with wife
9:45 pm get ready for bed
10:00 pm go to sleep

Alright, first, thank you to the teacher who sent me this schedule…
Now let’s examine the morning. You can wake up at 4:30 am, you don’t really need 8 hours of sleep. You were only getting 7 anyway, so 6 hours won’t kill you. You can write your blog post from 4:30-5am. After that get on twitter and check out the links that have been tweeted and make sure you contribute some original thoughts, do that until about 5:30 am and then leave for school. Don’t worry about showering, walking the dog, or eating breakfast…those are for the weak. When you arrive at school, just make-up something for the paper work on the PPTs, no one really reads it anyway, and then don’t set-up things and plan for the day, just let it spontaneously happen. Take that extra time and work on your Linkdin connections! Ok, so it is 7:40 am and the kids are coming in, you always wanted to make the leap to a child centered classroom—now is the time! Let them go—project based learning is so easy. You end up with oddles of extra time, and the class manages itself. You should use that extra time during classes to skype with colleagues around the world to discuss how you are going to set-up a 63 class collaborative project on the historical significance of orangutans. All right now school is over. Yes, you want to eat lunch because you met with kids during your own 20 minute lunch period, but just have a bigger dinner instead. Make sure you teach your own kid how to ride a bike and have them cycle home from drama rehearsal so you won’t have to pick them up. You will then have extra time for setting up a glogster and be saving the environment. Since it will take your kid an extra hour to get home, you will have time to also add your comments to a voice thread from Istanbul, leave comments on your favorite blogs, and read the ten links that you favorited from twitter. Now your kid is home and you are ready to eat. Don’t believe all that stuff you have read about home cooked meals and eating together as a family. Repeat after me—“Frozen Pizzas.” Put them into the oven and fling them around the house. There are no dishes to do! So what is it, like 7:30 pm? Take 30 minutes and play a game with the kids…or better yet, maybe the family can sit down and all contribute to a goggle doc on what type of toppings they would like to see on the pizzas. From 8-9 pm you really should sit down and get some grading done…wait, grades are evil and you will be destroying your kids. Stop doing grades and blog about your transition from a teacher who gave grades, to a standards based teacher, to one who assigns flower names to final products and makes the kids find the symbolism in the flower species and uses that to grow into a kind voting citizen. So your spouse is now calling you. It’s 9 pm and you have a tv date. First sign up for Netflix, a sitcom can be watched in 22 minutes without commercials, or a drama in 44. Use the saved time to scan Netflix for a good documentary to show in class tomorrow, and set-up a coverit live blog so that you can have a back channel conversation going on during the movie. Also, set-up a second coverit live blog so that you can back channel with your spouse while reviewing the documentary, and remember as moderator to approve all of her comments.

Ok, it is around 9:45pm and look at all the free time that you actually had to learn learn learn! I know you might be tired, but you should stay up and take part in the live webinar about setting up wikis in your classroom, and then take part in #ededchat. It is more intense than just #edchat, it’s double the information in half the time! Before bed, remember to email your reflection on #ededchat to your tumblr, or did you open a posterous? O that’s right, you didn’t have time to set one up. Just ask your friends on your subject specific ning where people can send you the resources needed to show you how to set one up! O that’s right, didn’t have time to join today—maybe it is because you just don’t care about growing to be a superstar 21^st Century educator. What’s that? You just don’t want to be part of a community that shares your interests and will help you become a better teacher? Maybe you just don’t have the time to learn and show you what it means to be successful? Maybe you don’t care and would rather not receive helpful resources? Oh, okay. Good for you, maybe next year.

Next week’s post:
“I stayed off twitter and the computer yesterday, and here is what I did not miss:”

10 Responses to “You don’t have time to learn??”

Crystal wrote::

Thanks for the validation.

I always feel that way when I watch movies like Freedom Writers. Maybe there are teachers who are willing to sacrifice all parts of their lives to be the best in their field, but, frankly, I have a great marriage and would like to keep it that way. And I wonder how many people realize that people who dedicate everything they have to the field experience a much higher rate of burn out. So, in the end, does that make them more effective?

Hm. I realize I probably just repeated a lot of things to you that you already realize. I must’ve needed to get it off my chest.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 11:42 pm # Reply
Jabiz Raisdana (Intrepid Teacher) wrote::

Clap. Clap. Clap. This is a very important post, and a funny one to boot. I think it would be a great example to start a teacher PD discussion with having teachers read Scott McLods what you missed on Twitter and then your post, and then see where the conversation goes.

I agree with both of you. There has to be way to find ways to make connections not to become a star teacher, but to explore new ideas. But you are right that, it can seem condescending to assume it is the right model for everyone.

I feel like a broken record, but all this talk about tech and PLNs is about balancing and finding a model that works for you. There is not fix all. Your PLN will not change your teaching, your students, your school, the world.

What it does for you, if anything, is up to you. I could wax poetic some more, but it is 6:23 pm, gotta put my oldest to bed, finish going through my RSS feed, Tweet this post, work on presentation that is due on Monday, watch some TV, (Treme), read from my book (What is Wrong With Kansas) and pass out.

Thanks Paul, for always helping us keep it real.

Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 7:29 am # Reply
- Paul Bogush wrote::
  
  I do have a “I stayed off twitter and the computer yesterday, and here is what I did not miss:” ready to be posted in a couple of days. I think I should state that I have no problem with people telling others that they should be doing all of this stuff, I just have a problem with people judging those of us who don’t.
  
  Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 7:34 am # Reply
Mary Worrell wrote::

I’m online all the time right now, but that’s because I’m not teaching. I know when the fall comes and I start a new job teaching in a new country and teaching English + a new subject I’ve never taught before (technology), I’ll be logging on occasionally just to scream into the ether for help now and again.

I’m all for promoting people developing their own PLNs and reaching beyond the walls of their classroom for ongoing professional development. But I feel like what’s lacking in a lot of those “you should be doing this!” conversations and posts is the “how” for a lot of people. Much of the system I’ve developed for managing content and learning from that content came from trial and error and experimenting with various time shifting tools like RSS and Instapaper and hashtag searches. For me those are advanced skills that many newcomers aren’t ready to dive into yet – or at least the ones I’ve come across. I really need to think about all these things as I’m planning mini-PD sessions on technology for our new school.

I think if people modeled their “how” more than their “why,” this whole thing might seem more realistic. I’m sure if I wrote a blog post about the tools I use and my schedule for digesting all this content, it might help a few people, but YMMV. It is all about finding a system that works for you, but some feel like the time needed to invest in figuring out that system is too much and too frustrating.

Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 7:45 am # Reply
Scott McLeod wrote::

The easy answer, of course, is that there are countless educators who are finding ways to tap into the connective and learning power of social media while simultaneously having healthy, balanced personal and professional lives. In other words, you do not have to be superhuman to do this stuff. We find time for what we think is important…

There’s a deeper consideration as well, I think, and I’ll blog about it after I see your follow-up post. The idea has been rattling around in my head for a few days now. My post will incorporate not just your posts and mine of a few days ago (http://bigthink.com/ideas/38698) but also recent incidents related to Jay Mathews (Washington Post) and Jonathan Alter (Bloomberg). Can’t wait to see your follow-up post!

Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 7:52 am # Reply
- Paul Bogush wrote::
  
  Thanks for the comment Scott…I was actually going to email you before posting the “What I did when I wasn’t on twitter” to let you know that I was going to play around with your post. In an internet world where presenting another side can be seen as an attack, I want you to know that I started writing it as a joke to myself, but then saw another serious side to it and switched the tone of it. The problem is, I am trying to change the words so it doesn’t come across as Scott was wrong and I am right…but I did want to present the extreme opposite side of the conversation.
  
  I think we do forget (me me me included especially when I present at conferences) what it is like to just be starting to develop our international “over-the-fence” conversations and incorporate different tech tools into our lives. I have been reading your stuff for a long time, so I know that for someone like you and I we might have picked up blogging, then twitter came out, then skype, then RSS, then wikis, then google docs, then PLN nings…(I know, not the right order) and we were able to explore each individually for a bit before the next came out. We were able to somewhat slowly pick and choose what worked for us and what didn’t–as Mary said above, we learned by trial and error. I can’t imagine trying to dive in now with everything available all at once!
  
  Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 8:22 am # Reply
  - Mary Worrell wrote::
    
    I’m having to think about this A LOT right now as I’m developing a tech wiki for our new school. We’re starting 1:1 with MacBooks and many teachers are looking for resources and ideas and tutorials for different things. I asked them for ideas about what they wanted to learned and was told “treat us like Kindergartners that have never seen a computer.” Trying to bring yourself back to that place when you had no experience with any of these tools is really hard. Every time I brainstorm a plan I end up going deeper and deeper into each area wondering how deep is too deep for beginners. Lots to consider.
    
    Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 9:42 am # Reply
    - Paul Bogush wrote::
      
      The Curse of Knowledge.
      Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what was like not to know it. As teachers, our knowledge is sometimes our biggest curse.
      
      Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 10:53 am # Reply
  - Scott McLeod wrote::
    
    Yeah, I guess it would be different to hit everything at once now. We had our own ‘everything at once’ though, too. Just not quite as much. But we’ve all had the ‘overwhelmed by social media’ feeling. Gotta fight through it to get to the good stuff…
    
    Don’t worry about hurting my feelings. I blog (and went to law school). I’ve got a thick skin!
    
    Saturday, June 11, 2011 at 1:36 am # Reply
Jenny wrote::

Thanks for the smiles tonight. With just over a week left in the school year I needed it.

I will admit to addictions to the blogosphere and twitter, but I hope I recognize it’s not for everyone.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how judgmental we are as a society. Not just about this but in general. I’m guilty of it. It’s something I’m working on.

Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 8:31 pm # Reply