The SHIFT Blog

A few weeks ago, six teachers at our school volunteered to become students for a day.  Each of us was given our own timetable, we were banned from our regular offices, and we were expected to eat lunch in the cafeteria.  After a day of learning, we made some initial observations which you can read about here .  Last Thursday we all (finally!) found ourselves in the same room for a more in-depth debrief.  So what did we learn from our collective time pretending to be students in our own school? TECHNOLOGY Bryn, true to the student experience, waited in line in our library the morning of to sign out a Chromebook for the day.  This sounded hilarious to us.  It also impressed us that Bryn would go that extra mile for the student experience.  However, it reflected something important in our student community (and we are willing to bet the majority of student communities) and that is that students rely on technology a great deal.  It’s important ...

In March, staff learning at our school looks a little different.  Rather than having one full school staff meeting, various teachers offer up afternoon drop in sessions for learning.  Each week there are different options for teachers to choose from, with the expectation that every teacher attends one session.  We call it “March Madness”. One of the topics I sat in on was a presentation and discussion on the “Responsible use of Technology in Classrooms”.  With the use of technology fiercely debated in the news , this is a bit of a “hot button” issue.  Some believe that cell phones in class is simply a vehicle for “Note Passing 2.0”, making it easier to get distracted from the lesson.  They aren’t wrong about this either, you only need to look around any staff meeting, university class or even city street intersection , to realize this is sometimes the case, and not just for teenagers.   To give a bit of context, I am in a school that ful...