Hide your laptops!
Budget slashers are on the loose, and technology is an easy scapegoat.
The 21st Century is snickering behind our backs, skipping on ahead of us out of sight while schools are hunkering down more stubbornly into their resting place in the 19th Century. The kids just roll their eyes and slump further in their seats.
After a couple of decades of encouraging change, we just haven’t been able to rise from the desks-in-rows and chalk-on-the-blackboard mentality of old-fashioned teaching to embrace the progressive era of digital technology and 21st Century skills. Now the chopping block of budget cuts has made avoiding change that much easier. Facing budget cuts of enormous porportions, stalling seems justifiable.
As the new kid on the block, technology is too easy to brush aside. It hasn’t earned its rightful place in traditional education — and in fact, it threatens the status quo and scares many traditional educators — so now, it’s one of the first things to go in an effort to save the teachers from being laid off.
Historically, the teaching profession is recession-proof, but this year’s merciless financial slashfest has changed the rules. Even teachers are getting laid off.
To preserve the front lines (the teachers) and save them from being cut, the sacrificial layer of victims being laid off by school systems includes the “non-instructional” staff in the schools — teachers’ aides, clerical staff, custodians, etc. This is a sad day for education, because all of these positions are essential to running schools.
I’m not suggesting that none of these positions should be eliminated in the final analysis, but the ax is coming down without aim and without mercy at first chop. Can fat be trimmed? Absolutely! But study the needs first!
Educational reform and reorganization lay in the fetal position crying out for help, but they are getting executed instead.
It frosts me further that instructional technology integrators are counted among these non-instructional personnel, lumped with support staff and not as teachers. I’m not saying this just because I’m losing my job. Something isn’t sitting right here. We are teachers above all. Our use of technology in the classroom is not simply a game of entertainment or a systematic routine of data maintenance. We focus primarily on instruction, on promoting the objectives of the curriculum.
All of us were required to hold a teaching degree when hired for this position. We were chosen from a large pool of applicants based on proven reputations for best practices in teaching and professional recognition in the field of teaching. Most of us have had further training beyond that of teachers, earning additional credentials in instructional technology, yet we are grouped with the non-instructional staff.
It seems that the word “technology” stamps and brands us, smacking a “kick me” target on our foreheads.
Facing a $52 million deficit, my school system’s superintendent recently released a budget plan that suggests eliminating 525 positions. Some of those are vacant positions, some are part time and hourly instructional aides, some clerical, a few administrative.
Of the 525 positions, he claims only 111 are full time teaching positions, but his number, I believe is understated. I don’t believe the superintendent outright lied, but I do believe he dressed the numbers up and took them out in costume.
Perhaps his motive was to quell the volume of public outcry at the number of teaching positions slashed, but for whatever reason, our superintendent did not include instructional technology integrators with the teaching positions — ostensibly because we were hired by and are “owned” by the Technology Department.
We are a red-headed stepchild with two daddies.
On the one hand, the Technology Department claims us because the original integrators began as computer support personnel. Within the past decade, however, the job description has changed as 21st Century skills and tools were introduced and assimilated into instructional practices. Now our positions require applicants to be certified teachers. We hold continuing teacher contracts, so our other daddy is the Instructional Department.
So are we considered “instructional” or “non-instructional”?
Semantics wouldn’t matter to me except that the method by which our layoffs are decided depends upon the distinction. It also matters because the public and the school board — who make the final decisions about the cuts — may be misled if we are grouped with the non-instructional personnel.
And talk about wasting money… My friend, Kobus van Wyck, an educator in South Africa who promotes the use of technology there, describes the travesty of allowing technology in the schools to be relegated to the disgrace of white elephant status. Consider this: We have hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars invested in technology to be used in instruction, but these tools often sit unused in storage closets within our schools. With the newest round of budget cuts, this wasteful nonuse of equipment may grow even worse.
One of our duties as instructional technology integrators is conducting workshops and training teachers in the use of technology. Additionally, we support them in the classroom when they try out the techniques with their students. Many teachers are able to accomplish the use of classroom technology without our help, but many more don’t know how to use the tools to supplement their instruction or do not truly understand the pedagogy that supports it. Without formal training, will they avoid trying new approaches and fall back on old methods?
My fear is that without the support of instructional technology integrators who consult with the teachers, help plan the lessons, and come into the classrooms to model techniques, teachers will be overwhelmed when trying to use technology for complex instructional projects. As a result, they may abandon the idea and revert to their “old ways,” missing the advantage of using innovative tools and techniques to engage and challenge their students.
The bottom line, of course, is that no matter who is tapped or slashed in all the budget cuts, the students will be the ones to suffer. Their education — their future — is reduced to a negotiable numbers-crunching game at a time in global history when progressive education should be squarely supported and funded.
In our attempt to cut the budget, we’re hiding the white elephants and sending the scapegoats out for slaughter. We think we’ve cleared the problem, but we’ve really just cowered in the crawlspace to escape the storm — and when we emerge from it to see the wreckage, the winds of change that we weren’t prepared for will have blown us back in time even further.
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Posted on February 2nd, 2009 by Sharon Elin
Filed under: Uncategorized
You can not hide a white elephant - the white elephants in the classrooms and computer rooms will be clear evidence of the folly of the decision-makers. It is time that those in positions of authority stop hunting for scape goats - they have enough holy cows to lead to the slaughter.