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WEEK 2 Quote: From Compliance to Commitment

I loved this article! It was very difficult to pick one, quote, but the one I liked the best was " Though the teachers admitted being engaged by and having learned with technology, many saw no connection between their own learning experiences and those of their students". (Burns, p 296 ). The idea that pretty much everyone (including teachers) learns best by being interactive and engaged with whatever they are learning is nothing new. The fact that the teachers didn't connect it with the way their students learn is discerning. This reminds me of another quote I have heard, "Teachers make the worst students". Have you ever gone to a staff development or a faculty meeting and looked around at what other teachers are doing? They are grading papers, or having a whispering conversation with someone sitting next to them, or checking their phones...They are bored and are sort of halfway listening to what is being presented. I was at a staff development just a couple of weeks ago on how to use a particular SIMS strategy in the classroom. There were four of us at the table. They asked us to create a product using the strategy they just taught us. I was ready to get going, yet two of the teachers sitting at my table were like," Nah--I'm not going to do that". It's like a student not doing his homework. Then, they expect their students to behave differently when **they** are in front of the class speaking and teaching. We expect to get great hands-on and engaging staff-development so that we actually remember how to use it in the classroom, why shouldn't we do the same for our students?

Works Cited: Burns, Mary (2002, December). From Compliance to Commitment: Technology as a Catalyst For Communities of Learning. //PHI DELTA KAPPAN//, p 296