Just Who Is the Teacher Here?

Technology is the one subject being taught in school where the students have the possibility of knowing more than their teachers.

And that scares us.

Can you imagine being a history teacher and suddenly a student puts up their hand, "Mr. Flick, I think that you have your facts wrong about the Civil War."? And if it did happen you would start to re-think your career choice. In all other school subjects there are very defined roles as who is the teacher and who is the student -- something that doesn't exist in teaching the world of school technology.

I get corrected by my students all the time, and thanks to years of therapy, I am finally able to accept it.

As a tech teacher you must always be ready to let one of your student take over and become the teacher, which means you become the student. We can learn so much from our students if we just learn to work with it and not against it.

Case in point: the other day I had to ask a group of 4th grade students; "The Flip video camera is stuck and won't turn off, what's the deal?" Sure enough a student who personally owns one tells me that I unplugged it too soon from my computer and I need to take out the batteries to reset it. Problem solved.

So check your pride at the door and start team teaching with your students -- trust me, you'll like it.