Erasures

Konrad Glogowski begins his session sitting behind a teacher's desk in front of a freshly erased chalkboard. The significance of his choice of setting unfolds as the audience listens while he describes a novel approach to teacher development.


Viewing "Self-driven and Classroom-based: Professional Development in the 21st Century" brings about a bit of a shock. Wouldn't you be surprised if a keynote speaker at an online technology conference started off by telling you that teachers should be reflective practitioners and not allow themselves to be affected by online trends and buzz words? About the time I was wondering if I had lost my focus and missed a key sentence, he stated that PLNs (Personal Learning Networks) might be a bit too top-down and that we should first build a strong understanding of our own context of our daily work and experiences before we use technology to help us set up PLNs around the world.

Glogowski suggests that building this strong understanding will help us to determine who we are and what we need. He urges us to reflect within our own classroom and to make sure that we connect with a few key people to learn with--not to learn from. He feels that we need to listen to our classrooms first so that we will be able to focus on what's needed most for our students. This learning will in turn require that we focus on who we are and force us to reflect on our practice. Glogowski recommends that we build this knowledge with two or three colleagues.

Guy Claxton is quoted as having said that the key responsibility of the educator is to help students become confident and competent designers of their own tools as they go along, and that we need to engage students as critical thinkers, navigators and inquirers. Our practice should be reflective so that we focus on who we are and what we do when we're in our classroom. He feels that classrooms must become sites of inquiry where teachers engage in practice that is perpetually experimental because that is what the 21st century demands.

Claxton continues to weave in and out of Glogowski's musings. "Schools should become communities of practice where...the 'elders' of the community are themselves exemplary learners." The speaker believes that classrooms are a vital part of our professional identity and that they should be sites of professional development where we assess and reflect on our practice. These reflections and conversations will connect with our colleagues' reflections and conversations and their classrooms.

It is stated that classrooms are where we grow as professionals and as human beings. They're where teachers are the ones doing a lot of learning. We reflect, build knowledge, address problems, evaluate possibilities and learn. Conversations that grow out of our classrooms will help us focus on learning. We should build on relationships with students through conversations about teaching and learning. We need to involve students in classroom development of curriculum and learning and to realize that it will lead to meaningful action where we begin to observe and ask critical questions. Past practice taken for granted may need to change.

After reflecting and questioning the root of why we do what we do, Glogowski suggests that we reconstruct the areas of our professional practice that need changing. I feel that he is suggesting that we ERASE what it is that we do that is not working and live up to Claxton's suggestion that schools should become communities of practice where the predominate practice is "learning" and that classrooms are sites of inquiry where teachers themselves are lifelong learners.