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Blog Post #1

The most frustrating change initiative that I have seen was an attempt at 1:1 integration at a public high school that I worked for in the States. Staff were given iPads and told to see what they could do with the devices. The next year, all students in the high school were given iPads as well. Textbooks were removed. Teachers were told that iPad use in their classroom was optional, but were scolded for not using the expensive tool. Very little training was provided, and the school ended up losing several good teachers who just became frustrated and left at the end of that year.

Personally, I was thrilled to have the iPads in the classroom. I had been wanted to tried a flipped approach to my Algebra II course but found that the Khan Academy videos weren’t exactly what I wanted for my students. I recorded all my own micro-lessons using my iPad, and my students would watch these lessons for homework each night. Then, during class, we were able to spend time really getting into the conceptual understanding instead of so much focus on skills.


I loved this approach, but some parents did not. The admin sided with the parents, and, even though I had seen better engagement and higher test scores, I was told to stop teaching this way. Talk about frustrating! The leadership in the school was pushing for teachers to use the iPads, not offering any training, and then restricting the ways we could use them. It was actually these frustrations that lead me to start looking for a new school—which landed me in Vietnam and in the international teaching community.

Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 24, 2017 at 12:46 PM

    The lack of PD to support such a change is a very common error in education. "See what you can do with it" does not help much. There needs to be a concerted effort a year in advance of the change, with ongoing support for those who are expected to implement the change. The silver lining is the the life you currently have, at what i presume is a school with much better funding.

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