Unwilling to Make the Effort to Learn
Nothing makes me sadder than a student who is turned off by learning. Nothing makes me madder than a capable person who is “wasting” their mind on drugs. And nothing irritates me more than a teacher who makes no effort in continuing to learn.
I understand that everyone has strengths and weaknesses in different areas. One person cannot continue to learn in ALL areas. One has to pick, choose and specialize. As an adult with a college degree, we have the liberty of the choice to never having to look at Calculus or Biology again if we chose to. I am talking about the attitude and unwillingness of some to simply refuse or not making a minimal effort to learn anything new. Even in their area of “specialty” that they chose and are teaching.
I came across Karl Fish’s blog post “Is it ok to be a technology illiterate teacher?”
If a teacher today is not technologically literate – and is unwilling to make the effort to learn more – it’s equivalent to a teacher 30 years ago who didn’t know how to read and write.
I understand that change is hard for many people. The irony is though that there are actually teachers who are willing to put in a lot of effort and work in avoiding any change? To answer Karl Fish’s question of Is it ok to be a technology illiterate teacher?
NO, no, no, no, no. OF course it is not ok.
In order to continue learning in our age and world, you have to be able to access, evaluate, communicate, collaborate… We have to model for our students life long learning, along with the flexibility of un-learning and re-learning coupled with re-mixing by connecting our knowledge to each other (our own previous knowledge and collective global knowledge).
I am stunend when I see/feel/witness the blatant unwillingness of making an effort to learn from a TEACHER!!! A professional, who is in the business of learning and teaching others, should not be allowed to exhibit such trait.
Andrea Hernandez on EdTechWorkshop recently wrote:
Can you imagine going to a doctor or dentist who advertised themselves proudly as “doing things the same way I’ve done them for 30 years. I don’t need to use any of that state of the art equipment, no sir!” Who would go to this person? It is only in the field of education that people use this crazy line of reasoning.
Very well said, Silvia. There are disengaged learners in every classroom. One of the most prevalent reasons for this is that so many learners don’t have strong aptitude in the traditional academic skills of listening, reading, writing, and test-taking.
I believe there is great potential to engage a significant percentage of these learners by employing some of the tech tools now available to teachers. It is perhaps even more important to offer our disengaged learners alternative ways of representing their learning.
The range of available tech tools is growing exponentially, and the majority of these tools are completely free of monetary cost. Thanks again for this thought provoking post. –Paul
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