Where Have All The Teachers Gone?

Pete Reilly posted about Teacher Dropouts a few days ago.  Please take 3 minutes to read his entire post, but I'll hit a couple highlights that stood out to me:

1. Former teachers claim better benefits and job security in teaching. 
   
2. Former teachers claim  greater autonomy, intellectual challenge, and prestige in other careers.

Why did these items stand out?  I am led to believe or confirm...

1. Teachers prefer stability and security over risk and opportunity.  Based on Myers-Briggs and other Personality Profile identifiers, it may be true that teachers are more likely to be averse to risk, in preference for status quo.
2. Pete finishes with a question: " Will integrating technology into this environment make a real difference or do we need to transform the environment?"  My response is that if my assumption is correct, that teachers who stay have a tendency toward the status quo, then technology integration will do nothing to transform the environment.  We will have to wait until the next generation of teachers appears, who have used technology as a way of life - their status quo, so to speak - and the environment changes.  But then it will still be behind where the future will be.

Back to the 6-word motto -- Bold Leadership For A Brighter Yesterday.

Now for my questions:

• What are former teachers doing now? 
  
• For what careers did teaching prepare them?
• Do former teachers like and/or enjoy their current position?

My favorite part was the quote by Laird, DeBell, and Chapman:

“..in comparison to the high school student dropout rate, the teacher turnover rate over an equivalent four-year period is greater than the student population dropout rate.” Laird, DeBell, and Chapman (2006)

In my mind, this is one of the greatest paradoxical ironies in the history of our country.

More $ For IT or Let Students Use Their Phones

Pete Reilly discusses a recent E-School News survey.

Nearly three out of four school leaders say they don’t have enough IT
staff to support their needs effectively, according to the survey.
Fifty-five percent of respondents said they can’t maintain their
network adequately, 63 percent said they can’t plan for new
technologies, and 76 percent said they have trouble implementing new
technologies.

Pete's continuing thoughts are correct, when operating on the assumption that we truly need school provided computers. 

I am becoming more and more convinced that the way schools might consider spending some of their tech dollars on providing students with free web/data access through the cell phone providers in the community.  It seems to me that a mobile provider could allow unlimited access to all students from the hours of 7:00 to 5:00 (or longer?).

Some benefits:

• Cell phone venders and mobile providers would be the IT department.  Phone breaks, they replace or repair.
• Families are providing phones to their kids at younger ages, and the phones many of them have are more powerful than the computers we provide in schools.
• No need for filters!  Mobile providers could include visited web sites for the parents.  Then the responsibility falls more on the student and parent when it comes to viewing inappropriate material.
• School finances could be spent on training teachers how to teach with phones.
• Students would have the advantage of thumb-typing over the teachers, so students would have confidence in the tools.

I use an iPhone.  It is my first phone with web access.  It is $20 a month for unlimited data.  If teachers/admins/schools are afraid students would use the phone in bad ways, then get the iPod Touch, with no phone access.  Google Docs, Zoho, and other online office suites will allow students the software.  To me it makes too much sense not to do.  But how much trouble would a teacher be in if the made a cell phone a requirement for their class, in place of a notebook, colored pencils, and backpack?

Cell Phone
Everywhere web
Use it to learn, I do
"We don't need no stinkin' 'puters"
Mobile

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The Wait May Soon Be Over!

I tweeted John Mayer's song, "Waiting on the World to Change" recently in a 140 character conversation about "where are the poets today." Well, John and his friends may not have to wait much longer...and hopefully we in education won't either.

TED released their 2008 topics of conversation. Interesting lineup for the humanist and fundamentalist in all of us.

• Who are we?
• What is our place in the universe?
  
• What is life?
• Is beauty truth?
• Will evil prevail?
• How can we change the world?
• How do we create?
• What's out there?
• What will tomorrow bring?
• What stirs us?
• How dare we be optimistic?
• And the point?
  

Perhaps we can figure out a way to create a way to change education by adapting the information gleaned from the great minds of our world.

@Miguel & Pete - If anyone mentions Diet Leadership here's the plan: Miguel you hit 'em low, Pete can hit 'em in the middle, and I hit 'em high. :-)