ProfessorTOSA Blog

Currently I’m in Monterey, CA, at the CLMS conference.  Last year I was here with some colleagues and had a tremendous time.  At that point I understood the need to transform our educational system and I was invigorated by assisting others to come to similar conclusions.  Of course the social aspects of that trip were tremendous as compared to my current situation of solitude due to our economic downturn, but I would complain that not much has happened at CLMS since last year and, if anything, this conference has gotten smaller and taken it DOWN a notch since I was here last.  Not good.

And so, what do I expect from a conference promoting expensive teaching tools in our current economic environment?  And, how might any district afford to purchase technology and further this “idealistic” plan to prepare our kids for this 21st century, their college, their lives, and our countries future.  In short, I don’t care about current economic constraints.  I do very much care about education, our economic downturns and our districts throughout the country, but I care more for our students, my future, and paramount, my daughters’ futures.  It’s clear that our world has changed and is changing, but this is about priorities. In China, there are more “gifted” students than we have students. In India, Hungary, Mexico, Korea, and many other areas around the world, governments are building their Internet Infrastructure and developing educational systems that are, or will be, superior to ours in a short time.  Our country needs to put down the bubble sheets and teaching pedagogy from the 50’s and meet our future prepared to compete with the world.  We need to be confident that in order to help our kids to live lives similar to ours, if not better, we will need to change the way we do things.  We need to throw a bit of caution to the wind, have some tough conversations, and stop looking at the obvious reasons not to fully integrate technology and, instead, make some changes that will change our perilous future.

That being said, this means we need to disappoint some teachers, scare some administrators and thrill an entire generation of students.  Will I do this?  Not quickly, but as I’ve said many times, what my daughters deserve is what I describe.  It’s different, and scary, even to me, but this change reflects a global demand and I’m comfortable with that.  I don’t have a choice about that.  I know that if there was actually a reader to these words, they might be disturbed by this, but realize that I see a very different educational world coming, and the United States does not lead this change.  Rather, we’re going to struggle to compete with the world and our kids will suffer for our pride and hesitations.