Educators as Students

I participated in a Leadership Symposium at the National Educational Computing Conference. Aside from four people in the room, who were students or recently students, all the participants were educators--teachers, administrators, etc. During this session from 8:00am to 12:00pm, I felt like I was back in middle school. Teachers/educators are very much like students.

There was continuous discussion among the group--friends trying to catch up, meeting new people--during the presentations and instructions. When told to follow instructions, my table of six people had a terrible time staying on task and instead would discuss other topics and speak with those people who came by to our table to chat. The participants would often get up from their tables, during activities to go get more coffee, snacks and going to other tables to visit. The presenters had problems keeping the PowerPoint and technology working, even though they were supposed to be prepared experts. At the beginning of the symposium, I heard many negative comments about the activity before the teachers had even experiences it. (For the record, by the time we finish many people were impressed.) The presenters even had to raise their voices multiple times and threaten the audience to get the group to quiet down.

Wow, the struggles that teachers have are continuous... It was crazy to see and made me want to let the educators know how much they were like their students. Despite these things, I really enjoyed the activities and visiting with the teachers, etc.