Time to Teach

You have a limited amount of time.

You are a teacher.

You prepare for 5 hour long (or one 5 hour long) presentations every day. And each one has a potentially hostile audience.

You have a limited amount of time.

Technology can be such a massive help to this and for teachers we probably use two pieces of software more than anything else; PowerPoint and Excel. For someone teaching for longer than 10 years (approximately only half) the use of such tech may seem weird or unnecessary but today's tech savvy child expects nothing less and often a lot more to keep them engaged.

Tech is great and a great cog in the machine of progress but only when used appropriately.

So how is Excel used well by teachers? When a spreadsheet is used to record good quality informative and meaningful data about a child. Test results for tests created by teachers with that child in mind, data about how a child has completed useful work over time or just a record of what they have learnt over time.

So how is Excel used poorly by teachers? When they complete spreadsheets with data on children that isn't relevant to that child, isn't from appropriate tests chosen with that child in mind and certainly isn't meaningful. So why do that? Says the non-teacher? Because data is not to monitor this child or that child. It is used to monitor that teacher. So how do you do that when children in different classes learn at different rates? (Or even in different orders sometimes)?

Well you sort of make it up. If a child is learning a new topic every term but government says that they should progress over time you have to take a potentially wobbly flat line and turn it into an upward curve. Well you do two things. 

1) get rid of set levels so it is ill defined what progress is and it can 'change' termly
2) Give really broad ranges of success so they look like they're progressing over time when in reality the data is so imprecise nobody knows

So now we return to the PowerPoint. Teachers can use PowerPoint to great effect when planning interesting, engaging and inspiring lessons. The very act of doing this gives that teacher ownership and understanding of a topic like no other. They don't have to but they can. 

But.

They can only do this if they have the time.

You have a limited amount of time.

And this is were the dark side of the PowerPoint comes in. Teachers are forced by management to produce a 'house style' of PowerPoint so they all look the same. And then other teachers are asked to copy this. Before long the important aspect of planning has gone and the robotic and numb 'delivery service' of teaching is born.

Teachers never want to not plan, it is one aspect of their job that requires true craft. But craft is expensive. Craft takes time. So craft goes.

What is left data-managed teachers and bored, square peg children being rammed uncomfortably into round holes.

Tech is great when used to aid craft, look at cinematography. But if we're not careful and we don't invest time we're heading towards a B-movie nightmare.

Our students deserve time spent on them as am individual.

Teachers need time.

Bob is a Science teacher in the north.