This is not a travel blog; I am at home, in Boise, a year after traveling in Europe, and I am in a job that I love. I teach as a adjunct Art History faculty member at several universities in the Treasure Valley. But traveling for me describes a transitory space, and I feel like I am in one right now though I am settled in one place for...who knows how long. Specifically, I am feeling like a paper person in a digital world. Even in settlement, there is much to glean from the passing of everyday experiences. So I offer this.
Today, as I am online in a web training for digital textbooks (thinking the entire time "seriously, it is sooooo much easier to take notes in a printed book"), I overheard a conversation between another teacher (a math teacher) and his student today. They were talking about her (the student's) previous experience with an online course, and I heard the teacher say something like, "online courses are fine for...you know...english courses or history courses where you are required to do extensive research. But for a course like math, face to face time is required. The computer simply cannot replace a math teacher." I smiled to myself because I wondered if the computer can replace ANY teacher in the classroom, regardless of subject. I teach Art History and I feel myself baffled by how Art History can be taught without face to face time (though that is my deficiency and not the subject's or other teachers' deficeincy). I smiled because I have often felt that my presense is indespensible to the learning process. I smiled because I have found myself thinking the same sentiment as this other teacher--"I am too important to be replaced by a computer." This is not arrogance; this comes from a generational history of face to face teaching, an academic career wherein I was quite intimate with my professors--as scholars and as friends--and so more engaged and invested in my field of study.
At first I was a bit chagrined that another teacher could downplay the role of another teacher, whatever subject he/she taught. When students complain about other teachers (as they are often wont to do to get in your good graces), my first response is to defend the teacher. Then I felt surprised that, as a teacher, he would find any other subject superficial enough to be taught by a computer. Biased words are of course my own.
After a period of slowing my roll down, I could hear the undertone of fear in his voice, the dire need to justify to an unsuspecting student the absolute necessity of his face to face presense as an educator in an online world. And I could hear the need of a teacher to justify his own presense in a competitive world of academia. I often hear students lambast other teachers and anticipate my joining in to edify their experience. "He/She was completely ignorant and so I was bored by the information...blah, blah, blah." Admittingly, I want to soothe my own ego and tell the student I am different, I am special, I am "in touch."
But in this transition to a digital platform, I am completely lost (though I am technically part of the digital generation), completely out of fashion. Where am I, as a verbal processor, to find my place in teaching when everything goes digital?! I am comfortable with my orange and yellow highlighters, bound in my leather pencil case, chalky so as not to bleed through the page. I am comfortable with my post-its quilting the pages I read. I am comfortable asking people who know more than I do questions that require a face to face discussion rather than an anonymous post in cyberspace. Further, I realize how outdated this blog is, how late to the game I am in embracing SOME elctronic platforms in the classroom.
And so today I was reminded that I have to shift gears; I have to modify my own framework to accommodate, efficiently and substantially, my teaching skills for a variety of student learning opportunities. Sadly, it is not altruistic on my part; I want to keep my teaching positions. I loooooove teaching. I want to, in whatever way I can, engage students in being cultured, critical thinkers in the world. So I have to catch up. Rather than assume that students cannot learn online as well as in the classroom, I want to work to make my online courses as energetic, as interactive, as culturally beneficial as my face to face courses can be. If I am to live in a Gattaca world, I have to find a way.
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