Teacher 2.0

A lot of edubloggers are focusing on what School 2.0 should look like. I really like the idea of looking ahead (and hopefully planning ahead) for the inevitable progression of modern education. But the more that I think about what a technologically and pedagogically progressive school should look like, I am struck by the thought that my job as a teacher must change as a result. Now, I am not talking about the change from lecturer to co-learner, from “sage on stage” to “guide on the side.”. I think that I have already made that shift. The change I am talking about is in terms of job description. Whatever changes I may be making in my career, I’d like to think that I know what I want out of my vocation. So, I am going to attempt to write the ideal job description for teacher 2.o as well as the job description would feel trapped inside of and never be able to fulfill the obligations of.

Teacher 2.0:

Impassioned secondary teacher wanted to create high-level small-class learning environment in a diverse school dedicated to reflective pedagogy, thoughtful technology integration, and teacher leadership.

General Job Responsibilities for all teachers at our school:

• Collaborate with team, department, and greater teaching community via both synchronous (essential question directed in-person discussion, Google Documents-style collaborative lesson planning, real-time chatting) and asynchronous methods (wikis, non-mass e-mails, Personal Learning Network reading and linking).
• Maintain a reflective teaching blog, podcast, and/or wiki which is focused upon finding solutions for classroom problems, creating more student engagement or acheivement as shown through authentic assessements and teacher anecdotal evidence rather than state-wide assessement scores, or generating new ways to connect to students, teachers, or other members of the education community.
• Read and interact with a Personal Learning Network made up of a few administratively selected educators and a vast majority of personally selected teachers, authors, and students who challenge you to become a better teacher.
• Create your own professional development objectives for the year based upon your passions and your readership of your PLN. The majority of the professional development time throughout the year will be based upon your own objectives.
• Create curriculum that can be shared, edited, and reproduced through creative commons licenses.
• Use non-graded e-portfolios as the exclusive means of assessment and personal student reflection.

Specific Job Responsibilities for the English Language Arts position:

• Create and maintain a digital authentic writing community, in which students are responsible for reflecting upon their own work, linking and commenting on others’ work, and understanding and controlling the direction of their own writing progress/process.
• Conduct project-based learning that asks students to address real-life issues through authentic writing and media creation.
• Use inquiry-based lessons to teach the conceps of textual analysis, considering all types of text (visual, auditory, and performance.)
• Model the creation of touchstone-texts and resources that produce well-balanced viewpoints of our world, and help students to do the same.
• Ensure that each student can question the validity of statements made in writing or in speech by verifying sources constantly.
• Cultivate each student’s unique writer’s voice so that the intentions of their writing meet the impressions of the reader. This process must include constant feedback, grammatical and conventions mini-lessons, and constant question asking as to the purpose of the choices that the student author has made.
• Conduct in-depth digital and conventional discussions on the nature of read and writing, user-selected texts, and thematic issues related to other curriculum.
• Model higher-level thinking skills in writing and verbal remarks to the class and expect the same high-level thinking from students.

I know that I will be adding to both of these lists quite a bit as my thoughts keep coming, but I thought that I would start off with these. Please let me know what you think of they way things truly should be in schools. Oh, and if anyone knows of a job like this out there, please let me know. I would love to be a part of a school that is this perfect. (I know that this doesn’t exist yet, but I suppose I can dream.)