{"id":4,"date":"2013-10-30T15:51:20","date_gmt":"2013-10-30T15:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/?p=4"},"modified":"2013-11-23T16:17:42","modified_gmt":"2013-11-23T16:17:42","slug":"shiftingfocus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/2013\/10\/30\/shiftingfocus\/","title":{"rendered":"Shifting Focus"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spotted a line in an article on education careers today that expressed my struggle in teaching since I became a mom. From a HuffPost Education article:<\/a> \u201cYou will have early days and you will need to be present. There is little flexibility in your schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n

That lack of flexibility has been one of my largest hurdles to overcome as a teacher. I love teaching, I chose the career after working in software for a few years, because I wanted my work to matter. I wanted the personal connections with students, I wanted to prepare them to be productive adults in our society. For the first few years of teaching, I did all the Things. I taught, planned, marked, decorated the classroom, coached the teams, led the clubs, attended the plays concerts celebrations assemblies. I was Present. The fact that the salary didn\u2019t reflect the hours never mattered to me because my work mattered.<\/p>\n

And then I became a mother and found that my focus shifted. My children became my focus, and all the things that comprise the periphery of teaching suddenly were just peripheral noise. They still mattered, but I had to learn to prioritize. One fact of parenthood is that you can\u2019t do all the Things. You pick the important things and let some other things go (like reading every single tweet, as Carolyn recently learned<\/a>).<\/p>\n

I still love teaching, love having a job that matters, I crave the lightbulb moments, enjoy designing opportunities to learn and then watching my plan unfold in student understanding. My goal is to find the sweet spot that allows me to excel in this role as teacher while not detracting from my role as a parent. I need tools that help students become more responsible and independent, tools like Blackboard where they can find materials and resources. I need tools that help students with their understanding when they can\u2019t find me in person – tools like the Khan Academy. And I need tools that solve that problem of flexibility – so that I can still teach, still deliver meaningful lessons, even when I can\u2019t be Present.<\/p>\n

Cohort21 is my opportunity to explore my options for using technology to find that balance. In this age of working from home, mobile offices, and google hangouts, can we not also upgrade the classroom experience? Is a mixed model of synchronous and asynchronous learning possible? Would more students be able to take Higher Level Math if they could \u201cattend\u201d lessons despite being away for extracurricular activities? Can I extend such a model to a larger classroom? These are the avenues of innovation that I want to explore – not just new tools and new technology for the sake of \u201cdigitizing\u201d everything, but tools and technology that change the way we approach teaching and learning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spotted a line in an article on education careers today that expressed my struggle in teaching since I became a mom. From a HuffPost Education article: \u201cYou will have Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,5,2,3],"class_list":["post-4","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-asynchronous-learning","tag-edtech","tag-innovation","tag-synchronous-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/rutheichholtz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}