Lead by Example

I am anticipating doing more and more training with our teachers as the school year begins and gets into full swing.  I always say that I feel like I walk into a hostile audience when I go to talk with teachers.  For example, I recently did a session where a teacher who introduced himself to me as an acquaintance of my husband.  As our conversation ended, he said,”Nice meeting you, now maybe you can get us outta here early!”  Isn’t that always the case with teachers.  We feel like any kind of professional training is wasting our time.  Well, unfortunately that is because we have all had our share of pointless sessions that we left wishing we had that portion of our life back.  Here is the bad thing.  We should be seeking sessions that are important to us and that will strengthen our craft.

The sad thing is that I was just watching television and noticed a manager at HHGregg, a local electronics superstore, being interviewed about the digital switch scheduled for February 2009.  He made this statement, “Our salespeople are very knowledgeable.  All of them attended at least 200 hours of training just last year.  Lots of that was dedicated to the topic of the switch.”

What if our school principals had to do an interview with a local station about how we are handling the major switch going on today with our students?  How would they answer the question, “Are your teachers prepared and knowledgeable of how to handle these digital natives?  Are they ready for the 21st Century Learner?”  I would dare say that the HHGregg employees are better trained than our teachers are. Many teachers have barely had 20 hours much less 200 hours of training in anything since they left college.

How can we expect students to be lifelong learners if we as teachers dread any type of training and wish we could just get back to our life?

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