“I never teach my
pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn” ~
Albert Einstein
They are my true heroes;
the blackboard-cleaning, chalk bathing; men and women who
devoted standing hours explaining—and sometimes angrily shouting—theories and
concepts into my skull that eventually added up in making me who I am today.
I love my teachers. I
love teachers and the teaching profession because, it is a noble profession
dedicated to moulding the future of people and the future of the world. It is
also a profession that needs a lot of patience and passion, and when you talk
about passion for teaching, only a few teachers on planet earth have the kind of burning
passion my guest has
Mrs. Vicki Davis is a
teacher that loves students deeply. Apart from teaching students, she also
makes out time to blog on Cool Cat Teacher; her award winning blog where she communicates
with other teachers around the world, and cross pollinates ideas on how to move
the teaching profession forward. She’s also a mom, public speaker, and the co-founder
of the Flat classroom project.
She told me about her
passion for the teaching profession, her different projects, and what she
thinks about challenges affecting education globally. Here’s my stroll with Mrs.
Vicki; you know what they say, ‘when a teacher is talking, you listen.’ So I suggest
you listen attentively.
Ebenezar: Thank you so
much for being my guest on the stroll, Mrs. Davis.
Vicki: I feel greatly honoured
speaking for all teachers around the world on this great day, thank you
Ebenezar.
Ebenezar: So it's World
Teachers Day; a day set aside to honour our true heroes and acknowledge
their contribution to the development of our planet. What inspired you to
take up a teaching job? Did it come by chance or it was a career you
dreamt off right from childhood?
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| (Image Credit: UNESCO) |
Vicki:
As a child I remember actually writing lesson plans and manuals.
I always knew I would write something but being a teacher didn't cross my mind.
I was the oldest of three girls and my Dad is a farmer. I wanted to go to
Georgia Tech and be a management major just like him and run my own business,
so I did for many years. I was in the cell phone business as a general manager
for 13 counties in South Georgia and started having children and realized that
I wanted to be part of their lives daily - so after being a stay at home Mom,
some local schools starting hiring me to teach their teachers how to use technology
in the classroom. I also did some adult education classes and grants for some
local colleges. When the curriculum director at Westwood called, she made the
plea that my school needed me because we needed to move ahead into the 21st
century and my children needed me at the school. I said I'd teach for one year
and try it out and that was 12 years a go. I love teaching. It is the hardest
job I've ever had and also the one that pays the least money and yet, it is my
calling.
Ebenezar: Wow, that’s
awesome...the global slogan for marking this year's world teachers day is,
'a call for teachers', do you think we need more teachers in the
world today?
Vicki: When visiting
South Africa a few years back, I saw one teacher having several hundred
students in a class. She smiled and said that she pretty much ended up working
with the willing. As the children go, so goes our future. Civilization is
either improving or declining. An easy way to promote decline is to decide not
to educate children and a dramatic increase in class size is a decision not to
educate. There are limits for the effectiveness of teachers, so yes, we need
more teachers. But we also need countries to start investing in the long term
future of their people by educating children in safe environments with loving,
nurturing, knowledgeable professionals.
Ebenezar: Teaching is a
very demanding profession and the pressure that comes with it sometimes
can be very overwhelming, so how do you manage to always stay motivated?
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| (Image Credit:UNESCO) |
Vicki: The truth is that
I don't always stay motivated...
Ebenezar: (haha) Wow,
that is honest.
Vicki: yeah, but I have
learned to listen to my own cues. Teaching is a profession of EXPECTATIONS more
than any other profession. It has been proven time and again that if a teacher
EXPECTS greatness out of a class that she gets it. It is hard to have that
expectation if you let yourself get down, exhausted, or too upset. So, you have
to guard your thoughts and notice when you're getting too tired or too
emotionally engaged in a student issue. (Sometimes when a student loses a parent
or something upsetting happens, it is easy to let yourself be so empathetic
that it impacts you almost too deeply.)
When I see I'm getting
exhausted, then I choose to take time that night to get myself reset by having
time with my family, reading, and going to sleep early - but many teachers
don't have this as an option. There are times, I have to say, that even though
I may be behind on grading that I put it down and get some rest.
Teaching is a rubber
band profession. The more time you give it, the more it stretches until you
reach some invisible limit of how much time you can put in and you snap. You
have to pay attention to yourself before you reach the snap point. This is
something administrators should be sensitive to as well.
Ebenezar:
I really agree with you on that one, very true. What can Governments
and School boards do to keep teachers motivated? In my country—Nigeria—teachers
and lecturers go on
strike regularly because of paychecks, Do you think teachers around the
world need to be paid more money?
Vicki: Motivation and
money are not really in the same sentence. Read Dan Pink's book
"Drive" and watch his TED Talk on motivation to see what I mean. Are
teachers paid enough? Absolutely not; however, morale is more often the result
of working conditions combined with poor pay.
While teachers can be
self motivated, if they are in an environment where they are continually
berated, not supported by administration, and they are under constant threat
from students (Not saying that teachers in Nigeria are, but I know teachers in
all countries that feel this way) -- if they have these conditions I just
named, then you can't pay them enough. That is a fact.
You can't pay a teacher
enough to go to work and be afraid of being harmed or to be trash talked and
upset. You can't pay a teacher enough to be yelled at for not getting results
while not purchasing new textbooks and putting way too many students per class.
You can't pay a teacher enough for expecting the teacher to be scripted and
told what to say even when the teacher knows that students will disengage.
Don't take away the power of the teacher to adapt, to deal with discipline
issues, and to feel safe. When you do that, you can't pay a teacher enough.
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| (Image Credit: The Christian science monitor) |
Ebenezar: Wow... even if
you give them all the money in the World Bank? (haha)
Vicki: (haha) that’s not
possible, but the fact is you can’t pay them enough.
Ebenezar: (haha) I
completely understand you Ma... don’t mind me, you're right the sacrifice they put in is just priceless...
Vicki: What many
teachers in this world experience on a daily basis doesn't just make them
heroes, sadly, it makes them more like martyrs. From the US and the almost hundreds
of countries where I know teachers—I know teachers who are afraid to go to work—not
afraid to teach but afraid to just walk into the building. And that should
stop.
The US capitol shut down
yesterday because of a gunman and went on lock-down. Everyone was breathlessly
afraid. There are schools across the world that go into lock-down not once every
few years but monthly or more. The safety of our schools should be a top
priority. They should be as safe as people who are in the capitols of the
nations around the world. People who are afraid are impacted by that experience
for life - fear often leads to hate for the perceived cause of that fear. And
hate passes along the world's problems because so few people are willing to
forgive in this world.
Ebenezar: Now you talked
about the Capitol shooting yesterday, let’s talk about 'Security in schools’,
as this is another pressing problem in the world today. The Sand Hook
killing in the US, Suicide bombers attacking schools in Pakistan, the
Boko Haram attacking dormitories in Nigeria... have claimed the lives of
innocent students around the world. What do you think can be done about
this?
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| (Image Credit: Nick Carbone) |
Vicki: I'm reading a
great book called "Take the Risk" by Ben Carson where he points out
that the elimination of risk is not possible. Everyone born in the 1800's is
dead now. We all die and that will happen. However, it should not be a risk to
go to school, ever.
People who are afraid
aren't going to care about calculus or physics or programming a computer. They
are likely not even going to care about history or reading or math. They are
going to care about surviving. The same goes with being hungry. A hungry child
is listening to the alarm bells in their stomach and can't tune into the
teacher.
Hunger, violence, and
oppression are rampant throughout the world. But when it becomes safe at home
is when people in the local area say "not in my neighborhood - the kids
will be safe here." We are each responsible to ensure the safety of
children in our area and to speak out and take action when there are problems.
While we can care about kids around the world - making schools a safer place
always requires local action and buy in and always will. I don't care if you
have children or not, we are each responsible for all of the schools in our
area to see that children are safe, cared for and fed.
We must
"glocalize" as Thomas Friedman says - think global and act local.
Ebenezar: Okay. I'm a big
Malala fan and I usually don't hide my admiration for her boldness and
perseverance in pursuing her vision of global girl child education. What
do you think about the ideology of educating only male children? It's
funny that it's still popular in some parts of world.
Vicki: I'm the daughter
of a farmer who had only girls. As we were moving a battery to jump off an
irrigation system when I was about 8, I dropped my end of the heavy battery in
disgust and said "I can't do this, I'm just a girl." Dad dropped his
end and came around the battery and kindly but firmly looked in my eyes and
said "Vicki, I never want to hear that again - You are worth as much as
any boy could ever be to me. Tackle any problem that comes your way and never
ever let me hear you say that." For a farmer in rural Georgia in the
1970's - he was admittedly progressive. I went on to a male dominated school,
Georgia Tech, and graduated first in my management class because I was not
limited. Some of the greatest liberators of women throughout history have been
their loving fathers.
So,
I believe that every girl should be educated, but yes, it is sad that girls are
basically seen as a liability and like property in many parts of the world.
This is an incredibly hard, cultural thing to overcome. If you read the book
"The Influencer: The Power to Change Anything" by Kerry Patterson, et
al, you'll see their research into changing hard things like the Guinea worm blight
in many countries. Change didn't happen with "outside consultants"
coming in and telling the villages what to do to eradicate the parasite from
villagers. No, the Carter center found that it required training local shamans
and village leaders on why this needed to be done and how to do it - that was
the focal point that helped the dramatic
decline happen in the painful infestation. Local ownership and buy in makes the
difference.
I live in a small town.
When someone comes down and tells us "this is how we do it in
Atlanta" we roll our eyes and tune them out. Change happens from the
inside out. We must educate leaders in all areas of the world of the benefits
(both economic and socially in terms of the decline of poverty and more
children being born into poverty) and show them how to do it. The statistics
are there and they are striking of what happens when people are educated.
But in many places it
isn't about education. If you look at black slaves in the south before and during
the United States Civil War, it was illegal to teach a slave to read. Why?
Because owners knew that once slaves could read that they would open their eyes
and see the truth of the world. They knew that power was going to be hard to
hold onto. The white slave owners feared the power that slaves would wield once
they were educated. In many parts of the world, the facts of the improvement of
society when women are educated are not enough because there are those who wish
to continue to treat women as property. Slaves of ignorance are easier to
control because educated slaves see oppression for what it is.
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| Malala speaking at the UN |
I applaud you for using your
platform to recognize women like Malala.
Ebenezar: Thank you very
much ma, I applaud greatness wherever I see it.
Vicki: You’re welcome,
the thing is we need men and women around the world to take a stand that women
are not property and should be treated with respect. This one thing - educating
girls - can do more to diminish poverty and improve the quality of life than
just about anything else we can do. It takes brave people within cultures who
are willing to speak out and do something. When I traveled to the UN this
past December, I was impressed with how this issue is being addressed and hope
that local people around the world take notice.
People of all cultures
should start waking up and realizing that these problems even exist. This is
one big reason that we should connect our classrooms with the world like I
discuss in my book Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds. Most people in the US
probably don't even know that the education of girls is a problem in many parts
of the world - but there are many countries who don't realize it is a problem,
not just mine.
In our interconnected
world, social media and the PR outrage it incites has far more impact than many
political leaders wish to admit. A global society who is fed up and takes an
issue to the world -- causing hashtags to trend and blog posts to be written in
fury - those issues start getting addressed by mainstream media and politicians
because they have to.
It is more important
than ever for the common global citizen to be aware of the injustices of this
world and speak out about them. (I empower my students to be brave social media
authors.)
It is also scarier than
ever for some who are afraid of being "unfriended" or
"unfollowed" in social media. But the important issues of our world
and our times are never popular - until the brave souls are
able to shift the tide of public opinion and it becomes, well, popular.
We need more courageous
people willing to speak out about human rights issues like this in social media
and we need more brave people within all cultures willing to take action. For
me, this includes speaking out about the human trafficking travesty that
plagues the city of Atlanta. If it is on your back door - it is your problem -
we should all have that attitude -- and this problem of not educating girls is
in most neighborhoods - whether it is caused by human trafficking or a house of
cards educational institution that only pretends to educate or a complete
denial of any education at all-- it is there and it is important to women and
men everywhere who care about moving society forward.
Ebenezar: Let's talk
about the 21st century classroom. The 2013 TED Prize Winner; Prof. Sugata
Mitra believes the current educational pattern we are practicing is
outdated. He believes we should change the structure of our classrooms to
fit more into our century, and that we need more of mentors than
teachers... What do you think about this?
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Vicki: Every Friday in my classroom is genius hour. The
students pursue technology-related personal interest projects and I coach them
to move forward. I think good teachers have always coached. There are times and
places for lecture but it isn't all the time. There might even be a place for a
worksheet - but I doubt it and I doubt it is best done on paper - if it has to
be used, it should be done in a way that gives immediate feedback on right and
wrong so you can learn - not wait a week to see how you did. So, yes, I do
agree that we need to move education forward.
Ebenezar: Okay?
Vicki: There are those
who criticize the move to teachers as coaches because, for example, when
someone wants to evaluate me, it is hard to evaluate my "lesson plan"
when the students are working on projects and I'm coaching. They'll often wait
until I'm 'teaching' which usually means a teacher-guided discussion. In my
classroom those are rare - I might lead a discussion but it is rarely just me
talking.
Good leaders facilitate,
they don't dominate.
But
I think that almost everything about education and how we view it is designed
to keep the status quo. From the research silos that require me to have a
subscription to read current research on classroom techniques to how teachers
are evaluated and the world wide mania to test students relentlessly - these
are things that stand in direct opposition to taking
risk and change. Change is always risky and it isn't going to happen when we
make people afraid to change and experiment. Taking a risk means that you can
easily fail. Sadly, the world doesn't see that our biggest risk is staying
entrenched in a status quo that clearly isn't working for today's students.
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| (Image Credit: The Flat Classroom) |
Ebenezar: Can you tell us a bit about your books
that will be published next year? And what is the Flat classroom project
all about?
Vicki: My second book is
Reinventing Writing: the 9 tools that are changing writing, learning and living
forever and how to teach with them. This book is written for any teacher using
or trying cloud documents with students. The book is written for the
non-technical type teacher and teaches them how to select the write tool for
teaching, how to set it up quickly, and how to prevent common mistakes. I
also work to convince teachers that it has never been easier, more convenient
(and often free), and more important than right now. There is no reason for
paper for 70% of the tasks in the classroom if you have the technology to
support the move to ePaper, for example, but most teachers (for the reasons I
named in the previous answer) don't know how.
In 2006, a fellow
teacher, Julie Lindsay (then in Bangladesh) and I started the Flat Classroom
project to study Thomas Friedman's book The World is Flat. It won ISTE's online
learning award that year and has been widely recognized as a best practice to
create globally aware citizens and inspired our book Flattening Classrooms,
Engaging Minds. The projects have grown rapidly to include Kindergarten through
college students involved in some way.
While I'm personally
having to step back from day to day management of the projects in order to stay
in the classroom, the principles of flattening your classroom are something any
teacher can apply. Don't talk about the world, talk with it.
Ebenezar: (hmmmm) Nice, I
like that.
Vicki: We are building
the bridges today that the society of tomorrow will walk across. By participating in
such projects, students can educate themselves on the people of the world
without having the stereotypes of history perpetuated via text and lack of
firsthand knowledge to the otherwise. Massive global projects are imperative
for our future and should be part of any school where the administrators wish
to claim that students are well educated. We must support poorer schools with the
Internet connections and technology to help them be part of this growing,
vibrant, interconnection of schools. Connecting classrooms is vitally important
and something I'm passionate about supporting wherever it happens.
Ebenezar: That is really
great ma. Thank you so much for talking with me, I really had fun and learnt a
lot in course of this stroll. I wish you success in all your projects, God
bless you
Vicki: The pleasure was
mine Ebenezar, thank you and God bless you too.
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For more about
Vicki(@coolcatteacher), visit her blog here
William Arthur ward
said; “the mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior
teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” The world needs a lot of
great teachers to inspire kids; people who are passionate; and are ready to be
models to kids. Not people who stumble into the profession because they’ve got
no other job to take up.
I really want to salute these
true heroes of mankind; the men and women who are often overlooked because; the
world has failed to realize how important they are in the society. I salute you
all... God bless you all.
To people who call
themselves terrorists who go about shooting kids in their dormitories while
they are asleep or while they are returning home in the school bus, aren’t you
guys ashamed? I think you guys need basic education so you can be able to
clearly understand what vulnerability and stupidity means. Turn from your evil
ways. In the words of Malala; “one child, one teacher, one book, and one pen
can change the world.” Let’s give education a chance.
Till my next stroll;
remain teachable, Jesus Loves you.
Ebenezar Wikina
(@EbenezarWikina)
THE STROLL
WORLD TEACHERS DAY
OCTOBER 2013
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