At first, this ideas sounded intriguing. We would get together in random chats, organizing our thoughts and sharing resources according to shared categories that grow organically. I’d have the permission to speak and to listen, engaging strangers at times and somehow making close friendships in the process. When things got too loud, I could move into a one-on-one mode, sharing small direct, personal messages back and forth. There would be space for deep, conflict-ridden discussions and light-hearted humor.
And then:
I really enjoy Twitter, but I grow professionally from a pint or a cup of coffee or a long hike or a game of catch or a favorite novel or a perplexing historical monograph.
These are interesting thoughts, but I am struck by the fact that as much as teachers complain about politicians making top-down administrations, still we are quick to decide what school should be like.
If we were hold ourselves to same standard that we hold administrators to, we wouldn’t make grand statements about how we learn because honestly it doesn’t matter how we as teachers learn, it matters how students learn.
We have to come to the point where we, as teachers, as adults, stop telling students how to learn or how we learn and start listening to what our students are saying about how they learn. We have to come to the understanding that students may just learn differently than we do or did.
If we can’t get to that point, then we are just going to recreate the schooling experience that worked for us and if we do this, then we are preparing students for a world that doesn’t exist anymore.
It doesn’t matter how successful we were. If doesn’t matter what worked for us because public schooling can’t be about us anymore. It has to be student-centered if we have any hope of public schooling surviving for the next five years.