Teachers have never been more important

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Teachers are important

Decades ago, I remember hearing criticism of a new All Black coach when the team wasn’t going well. He apparently bemoaned the fact that, although they were All Blacks, he was having to teach them the basics of passing the ball before he could otherwise improve their performance.

Let’s assume the rumour was true, and let’s fast forward to now, and assume that all rugby players are taught the basics of passing. Maybe their first coach or a parent taught them. Maybe they learnt by watching a video on the Web. Let’s go further afield and assume that all athletes and performing artists and all students of anything are taught the basics pertaining to their endeavours. When you think about it, teachers and coaches—and parents for that matter—naturally tend to start with the basics because they are the building blocks for on-going learning. Sounds easy.

The problem of the long tail

So what’s the problem? In New Zealand, despite our high fliers, we have a well-documented “long tail” in our schools where too many kids do not have the basics of reading, writing, and numeracy. How can we get everyone up to at least “average”? There are always inherent difficulties once you move beyond one-to-one instruction to teaching 25-30 students, because, even in a streamed situation everyone is at a different level in some way.

After decades, if the problem of “the long tail” were easy to fix, now that we are well into the 21st century, wouldn’t you like to think that every Kiwi kid would be literate and numerate? Is it too much to ask that all students know their next-step learning, and so do their parents? As the kids say “Are we there yet?” No we are not, so it’s not a giant leap to say that the problem is hard to fix.

In your 21st century classroom, if all your class don’t have the basics — if half can’t read, half can’t write, and the other half can’t add up (grin), where does that leave you as a teacher, and where does it leave your students and their parents?

If our kids are all to have the opportunity to grow into healthy and successful adults, then there are important roles to play for many interconnected people such as teachers, whānau, principals, middle managers, politicians, economists, and students themselves.

The importance of teachers today

I would argue that teachers have never been more important. Teachers are often at the interface between the many parts of our society, and between all the parts of the education system and its people. They motivate and teach our children, they give feedback to parents, they and their spouses and children live in our communities, and they make sense of the curriculum. Teachers have responsibilities for the intellectual, social, mental, and physical health of our children. Having said that, like all teachers, the best teachers need to operate in an effective and relevant system where they can make a difference; in schools with clear governance and collegial support, with appropriate infrastructure and facilities, and that are well resourced in areas like technology.

Someone once said that, “Any teacher who could be replaced by a machine, should be.” Because of the complexity of teaching and the fundamentally human nature of the job, I don’t think that there is a single teacher out there who could be replaced by a machine. However, I think modern teachers should have access to and be able to use all the technologies they need to enhance teaching and learning.

Increasing specialisation

Like other professions, teaching has become increasingly specialised with its own lexicon, its own culture, and its own way of using ICT. I think this is a good thing, as increasing specialisation and the use of modern tools in our civilisation raises the level of expertise in that area and ultimately leads to better outcomes.

In my previous blog post I wrote about Universal Design for Learning or UDL. Frameworks such as UDL are underpinned by large body of pedagogical research, and reflect an increasingly sophisticated education sector.

Likewise, when I reflect on teaching and look through evaluations that teachers provide about our LEARNZ programme, there is clear evidence in their comments that there are many excellent teachers out there who are springboarding off the “heavy lifting” that we do for them in a LEARNZ field trip. It’s heartening to see some top practitioners who add value to the LEARNZ experience for their students in creative ways that we never dreamed of, and who are not fazed by the use of ICT.

More sophisticated tools, but the rewards are satisfying

If we go back to the sports analogy, technology has added a vast array of tools to assist coaches. Video analysis alone has been transformative; yet, instead of one All Black coach we now have three — plus a vastly enhanced team of medical people, managers, psychologists, and physical trainers. Although a cynic may say this is bloat, in the high-stakes professional era, it takes a lot to get the last 1% of performance that makes the difference between winning and losing.

These days, I’ll bet the All Blacks’ coach does not have to teach his players how to pass, and I’ll also bet that he’s glad he doesn’t have to, because working at a higher level is so much more challenging and rewarding. Although the players have access to the latest ways to improve their individual performance, the coach is still essential. In schools, I think teachers will continue to be essential for the same reasons. I’ll also bet that teaching students who have good literacy and numeracy skills is ultimately more rewarding and intellectually stimulating for most teachers.

An opportunity to win!

Unlike a single sporting contest, education is a win-or-lose game in the broadest sense, because, if we raise achievement, we give our high-fliers the chance to fly and we rid ourselves of our “long tail” tag. That way, all of New Zealand wins.

Lastly, here are my three suggestions for teachers to keep motivated and affirmed:

  1. Listen to a visiting speaker at a CORE Breakfast in your area. You will find what they have to say relevant and stimulating.
  2. Add a weekly item to your calendar to do a web search on “why teachers are important in our life”? You will find a host of good and great stories.
  3. Reflect on the top 10 for your best teaching moments.
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Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and teaching

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Have you heard of Universal Design for Learning (UDL)? In this post, I’ll start with a quick definition, then describe why we need UDL for improving learning outcomes in 21st century classrooms. I’ll outline where LEARNZ is on its UDL journey. Then I’ll suggest teachers do three things; firstly, adopt a more inclusiveness UDL mindset, secondly, train their students to help themselves, and thirdly, use e-learning sites like LEARNZ to save time and improve learning outcomes. Lastly, I’m going to give my opinion on why teachers have never been more important.

LEARNZ website and UDL

What is Universal Design for Learning?

In a nutshell, UDL is a framework for inclusiveness whereby a teacher:

  1. taps into their students’ interests to challenge and motivate them
  2. provides various ways for students to learn
  3. provides options for students to demonstrate their learning.

Message 1: Yesterday’s classroom practice is not enough

I can still remember classroom lessons from the 20th century, some where I was a student and some where I was the teacher! A few went like this: everybody copy the written notes, then turn to page 66 and do exercises 1 to a million, then swot it all up and do the written test – no pictures allowed!

Without going into why teaching was sometimes like that in the past, this type of classroom practice hasn’t been acceptable for some time, and things have improved significantly. For instance, there has been a lot of work done over the last two decades on:

  • making learning resources more visually appealing
  • teamwork and problem-solving
  • using real-world examples to make learning more relevant
  • individualising assessment.

All the same, despite parts of our education system being world class and our high fliers experiencing international success, we still have a persistently “long tail” with too many New Zealand kids not engaged and “left behind”.

Message 2: Inclusive learning is a valid goal – UDL is a valid framework for achieving it.

If learners are excluded from learning because of language or cultural differences, because they are vision or hearing impaired, because they have limited reading or writing or numeracy skills, or because of dyslexia or dyspraxia issues, then learning outcomes are not going to be good for them. Inclusiveness has to lead to better engagement and better learning outcomes.

There is a wealth of research evidence to support UDL as an inclusiveness framework. The 3 Principles and 9 Guidelines and 31 Checkpoints of UDL have come from world-wide reviews of 10 years of research and over 1,000 articles. This evidence has driven a huge number of articles about how to implement UDL, numerous learning tools for UDL, and repositories like a British Columbia website for schools, dedicated to UDL that New Zealand schools may find useful. Some may say that the effectiveness of UDL is self-evident and, indeed, that UDL is something best-practice teachers have always inherently followed, albeit under less wide-ranging frameworks, under other names, or in a more fragmented way.

Although it would be ideal if everyone in the state or private system had one-to-one tutoring from a trained teacher, it just isn’t practical. However, a one-size-fits-all, teach-to-the-middle, factory-like system doesn’t cut it either. Is there some sort of middle ground where teachers don’t have to do all the heavy lifting?

Message 3: LEARNZ uses UDL to help learners and save teachers’ time.

Starting in 2013, the LEARNZ Team at CORE have been looking to UDL, as part of our continual improvement programme, as another way to enhance the learning and teaching experience on LEARNZ field trips. We have taken many small steps, some of which include:

  1. Tapping into students’ interests to challenge and motivate them. Children are naturally curious about the world around them. LEARNZ uses the online medium to provide an experience that is real, that frames and contextualises global and local issues. The LEARNZ teachers and the field trip experts regularly challenge students to question their thinking; whether it’s in an audioconference or on our Ask an Expert web board, or when they “look students in the eye” down the lens in a video clip.
  2. Providing various ways for students to learn. One new initiative for all our virtual field trips, is that all the background pages have a headphones icon at the top so that students can click on it to have the page read to them by the LEARNZ teacher, not by some robot voice. Teachers and students love having this option! See page reading in action for Memorial Park.
  3. Providing options for students to demonstrate their learning. Throughout each field trip, in context, are different suggestions for students to build on their learning, or reconstitute it. Indeed, the Creative Commons Share licence on LEARNZ encourages students and teachers to repurpose our content with their own.

Message 4: Three easy ways for overloaded teachers to use UDL

Implementing UDL with classes might look like a lot of extra work, and it would be if teachers took it on themselves to develop all material for students in text, picture, sound, and kinaesthetic formats. I suggest, though, that teachers primarily took on UDL more as a shift in thinking, or as an attitude or aspiration, and tried the following:

  1. Think like a learner. Whenever you are planning for your class, through your new UDL lens, think what it might be like for students with hearing or vision limitations, or students who read or write poorly. How about you ask them for suggestions? For example, many students struggle to present live to an audience. You may suggest they make a video, which enables multiple takes and reviews, and the facility to replay and re-publish.
  2. Train your learners. Learners can help themselves. Students with smartphones can use free apps to help with reading and writing, or consult an online dictionary or thesaurus. It’s not tricky or difficult. Your Internet Use Policy should provide some certainty that students stay on task and use such devices appropriately.
  3. Use an e-learning site like LEARNZ. Try one of our field virtual trips to see how much heavy lifting you can save yourself, and how well you can help students to engage.

Message 5. Teachers have never been more important

This is another story, but for now, all I’m going to say is that we live in an increasingly complex world with increasingly complex jobs, using more and more specialised tools and language to solve increasingly complex problems. Teaching is no exception. I’ll expand on these ideas in my next post.

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