One thing is for certain; some schools were prepared for online and blended learning and others were not, but if I had my own school, would I have been prepared?
The honest answer for me is no. Since I mentioned honesty, it is quite easy to get stuck in the 20th century teaching role. To paraphrase Drew Barrymore’s character in Fever Pitch, “it is safe, and I know what I am doing here.”
Learning something new gives you an opportunity to face weak areas. One of my areas is Assessment embedded in instruction.
Sometimes I felt that my job was done after the instruction (minus the grading of course), but it would have been great to have easy, immediate feedback so that I can differentiate my instruction if needed.
This is just one example of how online and blended learning models can benefit the teachers and students.
So as a teacher, I was not teachable, but now I am. We need to ignore the idea that our prior teaching was weak or ineffective (although mine was and we each must be our own worst critic), and instead embrace the idea that teaching could be improved and more dynamic.
