How Well Are You Modeling What You Expect?

As teachers, we are usually proud to say we are lifelong learners, but is that a true statement? Life-long learners means that we are constantly trying new things and learning better ways and constantly learning, but I do not think this is the case for most teachers. As educators, it is important that we “appear” to be constantly learning and encouraging others to learn. Afterall, we are educators. All it takes is a walk down the hallway to see that teachers are not as into learning as one would think. Classrooms look a lot like they did when I was in school (which has been a while back). There’s still rows of desks and writing all over the dry erase boards. Papers are stacked on a shelf in the front of the rooms so students can grab one as they walk through the door. All of this is despite the fact that we are a 1:1 school with laptops.  If educators are lifelong learners, why are things still being done the same way year after year, decade after decade? How can we promote lifelong learning in our classrooms if we refuse to be lifelong learners?

Teachers are the authority figure in the classroom. Students look to the teacher for guidance and instruction. As people, we do not want others to see us fail. As teachers, we are the ones who are supposed to have all the answers. No one wants to be in front of others and fail miserably. This is the human side of us. However, I think it is important for our students to see our failures. More importantly, I think it is important for our students to see us work through our failures and make them success stories. We make mistakes all the time, but hopefully we learn from these mistakes. By allowing our students to see us fail, try, and try again, we are letting them see us learn as well. Teachers who afraid to try new things do not send the right message to their students. We must expect of ourselves what we expect of our students.

I have maintained websites for years, but, until recently, I had never created one of my own from scratch. I do not think of myself as creative, and it is much easier to maintain a website than to create one. I had some ideas I wanted to put into a class website, but I decided to do it all myself. Now, I know some of you are thinking how easy that is, but for me, it was challenging. I am one of the technology people on our school campus, but I had never designed and created my own website from nothing before.

To create my website, I had to google a lot! I had to watch a bunch of YouTube videos and research a lot as well. I told my students what I was doing and they became my biggest cheerleaders. I was surprised how involved they became. I put my screen on the projector while they independently worked, and they watched me struggle through and learn how to do various things to our class website. They saw me get frustrated and walk away for a little while only to return to the computer and try a different approach. They offered suggestions on clicking other places to find an answer to a question. They saw all of my failures. While watching their teacher fail over and over again and keep trying, they saw me persevere. They saw me learn. They saw me succeed.