Week 22 – POTCERT

Sharing:

I was really excited to watch the video about sharing and how we are morally obligated to do it as professionals!!  I couldn’t agree more!  As a new teacher, I started teaching in a low income high school.  I had only an emergency teaching credential and basically didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing!  Not a single teacher shared anything with me!  I was literally left to fend for myself.  I took my teacher credential classes at night and did my student teaching in my own classroom.  I had no master teacher and not a single administrator observed me.  I could have been teaching Chinese basket weaving for all they knew and/or cared.  How sad!!  I didn’t know any better at the time and just assumed that was how the teaching world worked.

Four years later, I transferred to a much more affluent high school… welcome to a new world.  I sat with language teachers at lunch and shared ideas, discussed pedagogies and bounced ideas off of each other.  Everyday there was a new lesson idea in my mailbox ready for me to try in my classroom.  Once a month an administrator  was in my class observing me and giving me genuine feedback.  Had  I died and gone to heaven??  This is the way it should be!!

I then started teaching as an adjunct at various community colleges…. back to my lonely world of autonomy.  Everybody was so busy hustling from one campus to another, who had time to share ideas and discuss pedagogy?

Fast forward fourteen years and I am a full timer….  back to heaven!  I’m discussing pedagogical practices and trying out new ideas almost weekly.  I love it!

But we are in a new world now…  the information super highway is at our finger tips.  Does anybody even call it that anymore??  😉  We can share with each other in so many different ways, we no longer need to be face to face.  From all of my past experiences, I do believe it is our moral obligation to our profession to share what we know so that all teachers and students can benefit.  It takes a village!!

I loved Alec Couros’s video.  He’s a very charismatic and dynamic presenter! This particularly caught my eye:

Stephen Downes wrote for Huffington Post, should move beyond the idea of education as being something provided for us, and toward something we create for ourselves. Schools are valuable, but schools need to make the transition or will be only one node of possibilities instead of the primary node for learning. We are on the cusp of a revolution and can contribute to that.

Student centered!  Isn’t that what we are striving for?  Students must create for themselves…  not have everything spoon fed to them.  I am so excited to be part of the revolution!

Gardner Campbell’s video put me to sleep.  Did anyone else feel that way?

There’s one other thing I want to blog about this week and that has to do with a discussion I had with my colleagues regarding the proper training for online teachers.  There is a push for all community college teachers to be certified to teach online.  I do agree with this; in fact, that  is why I am taking this course.  However; many people drop out of the courses, as we can see here in our own course.  Why?

According to the colleagues I spoke with, they believe that instructors should take these courses in order to be able to teach online.  However, there is no financial incentive to do so.  My point being that the instructor is not receiving any credits in order to be able to advance on the pay scale.  Why not?  This course is rigorous and those taking it are advancing themselves professionally. Why shouldn’t they be compensated for this extra training?

My colleagues argued that the incentive for an adjunct professor is that he/she does not have to drive around the county and can teach from home in his/her pajamas.  Really?  You spend an entire year taking a course and the way you are rewarded is by staying home and teaching in your pajamas?  To me that is like saying, you have earned a master’s degree and now you get to teach at the community college level instead of high school, but you will not be paid anymore.  It just doesn’t seem right to me.  Education is education and this online teaching degree is no different from a teaching credential, for example.  By not receiving credits for this degree/certificate some how devalues it and sends the message that “this is not a real program”  and “online teaching certificates are not that important.”  I couldn’t disagree more!!

I didn’t want to make waves with my new colleagues, so I left it at that.  But I truly believe that an online teaching degree is just as valuable as any other degree.  Instructors should be able to use the units to advance on their pay scales.  Especially adjunct professors who work just as hard as full time professors.

Done ranting…  see you next week 🙂