It is 11 PM. \u00a0I drove all day, had an online meeting, caught up on email and provided some feedback to my students. I turned off the laptop, turned on the news and then remembered my 30-day challenge: a blog entry every day! So, here I sit, laptop on lap, writing about how easy it is to not write and thinking that if I’m really going to make this change, it needs to be the first thing I do each day rather than the last.<\/p>\n
But I do have a quick comment before heading to bed. \u00a0My online meeting was with a group of teachers who are implementing a 1:1 iPad project. \u00a0They are leaders in their schools and trying to bring the rest of the faculty online after running a pilot program last year. \u00a0We spent some time talking about how they could encourage their colleagues to meet deadlines so they could move forward. \u00a0While they were a bit frustrated at experiencing reluctance, they also understood the problems: they had not had a salary increase for the past four years and yet they were being constantly asked to do more with less. Professional development often happens after work hours without any compensation and what little planning is included during the day is often taken up with administrivia.<\/p>\n
Then I saw one of those Exxon “let’s fix this” videos, the ones that point out how the US is lagging in international test scores and how we can fix it. \u00a0They emphasize having knowledgeable teachers in the classroom and breezily suggest we should support our teachers:<\/p>\n