Teaching in an Online Environment--Reflecting on 10 Years

This school year I began my 10th year of teaching. Looking back at that first year, I remember admiring the skills and confidence of my co-workers, many of whom had been in the classroom around ten years. I ask myself daily, do I look the same way I perceived those teachers ten years ago? I am not sure. Yes, I do have ten years of experience. I am confident in front of a classroom of students and becoming more comfortable in front of a group of teachers. I am confident in my teaching style; however I still consider myself a novice in the craft. I am still learning my trade, still learning from those teachers that have been in the trade longer.

I work very hard to keep my curriculum current, changing it sometimes even quarterly when my students show me it is needed. This year I have made a drastic change to my curriculum, offering our core social studies classes as an online hybrid course. Students are completing their US History, Government and Economics classes sitting in my classroom, however they are doing it all online. There is no textbook. There is no lecture. There is collaboration, creation, relevance, and a world-wide audience. No, this is not what I learned in my education classes over ten years ago, but this is what I education has become. Students want real life skills, they do not want to memorize meaningless dates and names about a bunch of guys they do not know.

In an online environment, they are not only learning about history, they are also learning the collaboration and technical skills that will be needed in their adult life. Skills like creating accounts, to maintaining a blog that reflects on their learning and creating online presentations using various web 2.0 tools. As my students and I work through this new learning environment, I remind them constantly that I am learning from them. It is very empowering for them to have a teacher that is listening to their ideas and using them to change the curriculum. I am still learning and still growing as a teacher, even after ten years on the job.