Is This Teaching?

In my role as Director of Instruction for K¹² High School programs, I often hear teachers say “This doesn’t feel like teaching.”  What they mean is that they miss the act of creating daily lesson plans (all of our courses use a pre-designed and delivered set of lessons for students to complete). 

What I challenge our teachers to consider is that they are still teachers and they are still teaching, but the art of teaching is changing.  It’s kinda like hot dogs.

I don’t make hot dogs – I wouldn’t even know where to start.  But my family still eats them, even my three- and five-year old toddlers.  I still have to heat them up, cut them in half (for the three-year old), make them palatable for Tyler (ketchup, mustard and relish, please), serve them, and then convince the boys to eat them.  I’m still feeding my kids – I just don’t need to grind up…well…whatever it is they put in hot dogs.

The job of an online teacher moderating a pre-designed course is just the same.  You have to:

• heat them up (set up your online classroom environment)
• cut them up (provide a schedule that breaks the course into bite-sized pieces)
• make them palatable (differentiate the instruction as needed to meet the needs of the individual)
• convince them to eat (identify students who are disengaged and encourage them to log in and work)

This is the new art of the teacher: customizing high-quality content to meet the needs of the individual.  Not making the same old dogs for mass consumption.