Digital Re-Immersion. Going Back to the Future

'If You're Not Prepared To Be Bad At Something, You'll Never Be Good At It.'

While leading my team through the next level of our journey as digital immersion teachers, I'm constantly reminded of my own path to where I am today. Particularly the small attitude shift that kicked open the door for me.

I remember teaching a digital immersion classroom for the first time. My head was trying to make sense of, then, make the transition from 'traditional teaching' to using digital devices where students are self managing learners. For a while my pedagogy followed suit. I was confused, struggling, I hated it, felt this forced change was making me look bad as a teacher.

The most important step I took was to take my ego and emotional aspects out of it, forget that I was struggling with the transition as a whole and just focus on mastering the task I was completing. One at a time. Once I did that, I found that understanding and change came quickly. I had enough of a basic understanding to attempt to create Digital Learning Objects. It took A LOT OF TIME, but creating became fun instead of struggle. I became open to learning from the students, and added that knowledge to my toolkit. It didn't matter where I got the information from. As long as I got it from somewhere, I could reflect on it's effectiveness and play around to make changes if necessary.

I'm still no digital genius. I know what I know. But I'm also learning that the more I know, the more I don't know. I've been in this role, in this school, and have learned as much about new apps and teaching tools from my colleagues as I did in the previous two years. I'm not afraid to fail and learn.

My approach has progressed from 'I don't understand/know so I don't want to do it' to 'I don't know, so show me.'

I'm five years into my digital teaching journey, and I'm just getting started.

Learning When to Say, "When".

Having worked in education for a number of years, I've been privileged to work in a number of environments. Some, highly structured. Some, at the creative and autonomous end of the scale. Others were a combination of the two. I was able to survive in all of the environments. I can honestly say I've learned something beneficial about teaching at every school I've taught at.

Our profession is people based. In recent years, the Ministry appears to be employing both the carrot AND the stick approach to 'encourage schools to become accountable' for the decisions they make.
The stick is the incessant use of the term accountability which accompanies initiatives, while the carrot is the 5 year ERO review which tells everyone what an amazing job your school is doing.

This used to be the role of the 3 Year review cycle. But, 5 does sound much better.

Inadvertently, Boards and Principals are forced to make decisions which impact their own workloads, and those of their staff. In the effort to meet accountability expectations, educators are invariably burning the candle at both ends. Increasing fatigue, stress and illness, which impacts energy, enthusiasm and empathy when in front of the students.

A concern is the increasing 'badge of honour' type mentality of teachers working themselves into the ground having to assess, analyse, plan, teach, motivate, inspire, counsel and nurture students, meet school and Ministry targets, complete paperwork around assessing, analysing, planning, teaching... ahhh... I think you know the rest.

Some schools are beginning to take stock and aim for a balance of healthy, enthusiastic staff and effective teaching and learning programmes. It's an ongoing balancing act. One that is achievable if we, as a profession adopt the following approach.