I came into teaching at a pretty
exciting time. The century had just turned, we were comfortably into a full
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Teachers were
seeing that the kids already knew as much or more than they did, and many were resisting
all of this “technology”—the term we still use for anything that, y’know, beeps
and boops and crashes and freezes and we aren’t quite sure we fully understand
and threatens EVERY ASPECT OF DECENT HUMAN EXISTENCE!
At
the time, us fresh-faced educators were being strongly encouraged to embrace
these new tools, to learn them because they had awesome potential. The kids
were adapting anyway, so may as well stay ahead of the curve. Most of us did.
By the late 90s, being tech-savvy was a sure-fire way to get hired in
everything from garbage collection to piano tuning.
Flash
forward a bit more than a decade and I’m an educator in the age of smartphones
and tablets. High speed this, miniature that. Apps that unlock your car and set
the seat warmer to “I just want to have a bottle of wine and cry.” The devices
are small and powerful, they stun us with how quickly—daily it feels—the rules
change, and there’s no longer a little paperclip to tell you how to do what it
looks like you’re doing. Just a cold, greedy, soulless once-bitten apple, and a
robot who looks scarily like a psychopathic extra from The Black Hole.
We
the teachers are still being encouraged to embrace, and we try. We are shown
methods of bringing every form of device and application into the learning process.
Much of this is wonderful and often useful rather than just trendy. Learning
and its delivery are changing. I can text my students a reminder of their
homework, I can create a website or blog of my lessons, I can chat in online rooms
that are dedicated to me communicating with my kids and their parents all day
and all night and all week and all year.
We
do it, we do it. We’re such great teachers because we’re teaching on the kids’
terms.
BUT.
There
are cameras everywhere. In the locker-rooms, in the hallways. Kids are Snapchatting
every time I turn my back to refresh my Activeboard. Altercations between staff
and students are filmed and posted, out of context and out of control. Two kids
can bait a teacher into losing her cool in class and a third can film, edit,
and post the ensuing rant to the delight of millions. Zoiks! I didn’t sign up
for this. How do we monitor every way we can be viewed and assessed and
especially judged?
Worse,
the teachers who are the least savvy of social networks tend to suffer its
backlash the most.
I
try to stay current. I Facebook, I Instagram, I blog. I’ve got like three
clouds going, two sets of online documents, and a good half-dozen online
personas. I don’t Snapchat, I don’t Vine, I don’t tweet. A student told me
recently that she was tweeting about my classes—she sort of overblew how much
it was all “trending”—and even though she meant it as a compliment to my
teaching, I got a little uneasy. When you put it out there, it’s out there, and
open to the world. One of the biggest
generational differences is how we view the Internet. I see it as the ocean: huge,
sprawling, endlessly flowing. Awesome but potentially dangerous. The kids see
it as a glass of water: sure there’s more out there, but I’m only worried about
this little bit I have here.
We
have entered an age where Millennials are now teachers. They are pretty darn
good at keeping up with the kids, but they also appear to have the greatest
issues with seeing the lines of the public and the personal. That’s the
double-edged sword. The person who uses all these advancements in how we can
interact with our learners appears to be the most susceptible to having issues
removing the public from the private.
Take
Facebook. Let us just for a moment ignore the fact that this website has the most
porous security system in the world, subject to retroactive and inane changes
at the drop of a hat. Most teachers I know have a Facebook identity. Some of
them are friends with students: former, current or both. Perhaps you can see
the issues.
-Make
friends with a kid, you are communicating with a minor on a website where that
kid will post and say anything, no matter how inappropriate. Even if you’re not
being inappropriate, you’re still linked to that.
-If
you have a policy of only adding kids as friends once they’re adults, they are
friends with minors still, and you’re connected to those minors via that
newly-minted adult.
-You
don’t add any kids or their parents or their family dog as friends, but then a
friend of yours takes a photo of you sucking the hose from a keg, tags you, and
because you are—forgivably—unaware of the latest change of Facebook’s infamous
opt-out security re-do (the one from five minutes ago), everyone with a pair of
fingers and a search engine can see that friendship-ending Instagram share.
Many
teachers avoid Facebook, and then are told by tech-loving administration that
it’s good to keep up with the kids. Others (guilty) create two Facebook
profiles: public and private, but that doesn’t allow you to break the law, nor
does it give you complete anonymity. Especially if you have the same friend on
both.
Point:
we, your kids’ educators, are trying really hard to keep up with the world
Steve Jobs put in fast forward. Our bosses and professional counsellors
encourage us to learn about the newest website or networking site or whatever
that sounds like it’s been named by a two year old. I’m really keen on it.
BUT
#2. A teacher has to be extremely careful about keeping private and public
separate. This is difficult when you are “out there” in so many
rapidly-changing ways. It’s worse when you’re being drawn, blinking and scared,
from your deep, dark cave in which you have sworn you will remain forever
oblivious, forever lost in a time when Christian Slater was a bankable actor.
Who
we are and what we do are becoming one, and there are few professions where
that may have as resounding an effect.
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