Today, in 2016, some twenty-two years later, I am not the same teacher I was when I first walked into a classroom. Still, I had never heard of "differentiation" or something called "the Internet," so no matter how hard I tried to interst my students in lessons, engaging students in the lessons continued to be challenging. I heard terms like "System's Thinking" and "Individualized instruction" for the first time, and I modified my methods to better serve my students. Looking back at the teacher I was then, I sometimes wonder whether my first students actually learned anything worthwhile.Ī few years into my career, I started attending training sessions that were meant to help improve my instruction.
Those were the only technology-oriented tools available to me. Sure, I tried to incorporate more projects into my lessons and even tried to have my students work in groups, but the most technology I ever used was an overhead projector or a television. When I became a teacher in the early 1990s, I taught classes in the same manner that my teachers had taught me. Instruction was teacher-centered, and students' learning styles and interests were often ignored. Their students were expected to simply "sit and get" the information disseminated by the teachers, and most of the time that involved simply taking notes.
The relied on the use of worksheets, the textbook, a chalkboard and the occasional "poster project" to teach the material they wanted to teach. When I was a student, the vast majority of my teachers lectured almost every day. The look and feel of the "average classroom" when I was in high school in the 1980s was completely different than the look and feel of many of the classrooms of today.