On social media, I see a lot of comparisons between the teaching profession and others.
Like... WOULD U EXPECT A MUSICIAN TO WRITE THEIR OWN MATERIAL?! Actually ya. The musicians we respect most in fact do write their own music. MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS DON'T JUST IGNORE RESEARCH Actually, research on menopause & standard care treatment has been largely ignored for decades? It's an issue largely talked about and ignored. But teaching and learning isn't like any other profession. Truly. I think the closest analogy we can get to is health and nutrition. It is a lot like that in some ways. We know, and have always known, more or less what we need to do to achieve our own optimal health. Eat a balanced, whole food diet. Exercise regularly. Sounds simple enough? And yet the health and fitness industry is a multi-billion dollar industry with advise swinging wildly from one extreme to another. Eat a strict vegan diet some might say. No no! Its all about Keto! No Paleo! No no... 80% veggies 20% meat and absolutely no sugar. Its all about the Mediterranean Diet girl. What should you do in regards to exercise? Oh that is simple. Walk 10k steps a day. Definitely increase cardio. Decrease cardio and lift heavy! Run. A lot. Don't run a lot but do at least 5 days of HIIT workouts. Do not do HIIT, just lift heavy weights but like... sometimes also cardio. The contradictory advise is enough to make your head spin. And it's not far from what teachers hear constantly. We know what kids need. In 2001, what kids need was put together in this now once again incredibly popular concept known as Scarborough's Rope.
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I have been lucky to have been surrounded by incredible talent throughout my two decade career as a teacher. The teachers I know have a skill level worthy of awards. The work they do every day in their classroom is incredible and truly changes lives. Despite this truth, one thing that continues to strike me as odd is the persistent presence in educators of what some might call Imposter Syndrome, the internal belief that despite evidence of success, one maybe really isn't truly successful. It is defined as the persistent inability to believe that one's success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one's own efforts or skills. This false belief runs rampant in educations and is a symptom of a society that demands expertise in the field but refuses to treat the professionals as the experts.
No matter how successful, knowledgeable or acclaimed a teacher is, society continues to paint the opposite picture. If it isn't being done blatantly in the press, even implicitly painting teachers as lesser than, not capable of the intellectual prowess needed to make the right type of decisions to ensure student success is damaging to the entire system. Teachers constantly are painted as being weak minded. The trust in decision making is taken away from them and more often than not, the media and journalists suggest important decisions should be "left in the hands of experts." Are teachers somehow not the experts? There are a lot of mixed feelings in education in regards to the use of AI. But its time for the conversation to move beyond "kids use it to cheat," and "it might replace teachers!" We need to move on towards discussing and finding ways to best implement it. Love it or hate it, AI is here and it's here to stay.
From the Teacher Lens Approach with Caution The Cons - AI is still in its beginning stages and it is flawed. From the perspective of using it as a professional and through the lens of allowing students access to it considering the following.
The Pros-Overall, AI can be used as a tool to save time on tasks that can be automated to then move focus to student engagement, interaction, and building lessons that are both authentic and engaging to student learning. Align to the Science of Reading For many teaching professionals, the Science of Reading has created a strong shift in their teaching. A shift that requires materials that sometimes, at least in upper grades, are not engaging, not relevant, or simply non existence. AI provides teachers with a tool to quickly provide resources to use in the classroom. Need a list of words that match the morpheme you are teaching? Done. |
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July 2024
"The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don't tell you what to see." - Alexandra K. Trenfor |