3 teacher types in transformation

For educators, the recent changes are enormous. While many companies and organizations had some remote working experiences, most schools and teachers are struggling extra hard to adapt to the new situation.

The adaptation needed to keep the education process alive is massive and likely to have a long lasting impact, including the transformation of three types of teacher profiles:

The Tech-Apathetic Teacher

He is the much respected, captivating teacher with a great reputation and a charming teaching style who never uses a PC in the classroom.

Maybe he has a desktop computer at home to check his emails and search for things, but he is not big on technology. He has taught his entire life using chalk, blackboards, books and pencils, and helped to develop successful people in that way, so why stop or change now what worked so well for so long.

He wants his students to handwrite and to read real, paper books. Technological trends pass him by with no effect, and while tolerating his students' TikTok and Instagram behaviors, he rarely cares to express an opinion on them. If parents need to reach him, he has a mobile phone but if not urgent he prefers them to use his fix office number.

He is rather passive and leans towards "not in favor" in the school technologization discussions that he is reluctantly pulled into. He knows deep inside that renewal and progress are needed, however he is not convinced that the limited budgets have to be spent on an arsenal of tablets and laptops and servers and some abstract software done by people who know much less about teaching than him.

And he is transforming right now.

With students sitting at home, his paper and pencil methods will appear all of a sudden unsustainable.

His burning love for teaching and deep desire to form responsible educated adults will kick down his apathy wall and a realistic, woken up teacher looking for practical ways to pass knowledge to his students will emerge instead.

He will google "distance teaching equipment", email his students to check how they cope with the lockdown, ask his son what a good laptop is nowadays and call his school's IT manager to ask how video chat works.

The Anti-Tech Teacher

To her, tablets, smart phones and laptops are a distraction and a possible health risk. She cannot understand parents who allow the kids to spend hours on them, and avoids using any tech devices or smart software in connection with her teaching.

She is a militating tech-skeptic who actively and vocally rejects technology. She has a mobile phone on which her nephew and his daughter sometimes install and adjust apps and settings for her, and which she uses for phone calls and maybe to check the weather from time to time.

She protests loudly against school management's attempts to increase the use of technology in the classroom. She finds excellent arguments about why the classroom should stay tech-free: the radiations, the security concerns, the lack of physical space, the cost, the unreliability, the electricity consumption, the addiction risk to students, the failure of last year's tech project.

Full of energy, she promotes at the maximum all possible examples where students achieved great results or gained valuable experiences without using computers or the Internet: it is possible without.

And she is transforming right now, because it is not that simple without tech anymore.

First, the shock of the lockdown. But after a few days of shock, the new her will emerge.

She will ask her nephew to order her a good laptop and a screen for home. To guide her by phone on how to connect her wi-fi router to use the Internet that she's had all along included with her TV subscription.

She will read about virtual classrooms and teleconferences and will mail a physical letter to her students and maybe their parents, announcing that she will provide soon details about continuing the courses virtually.

She will send detailed schedule proposals to the students, with balanced PC versus non-PC times and she will schedule her first ever Skype conference with them.

The Low-Tech Teacher

She respects technology. She appreciates the progress that was enabled by the invention of the Internet and the PC, and the possibilities opened up by the technological advances.

She sincerely admires the students that use the newest gadgets and platforms. She asks them for links and product names and tries to understand the features. What can you do with this version that you could not do with the previous one.

She teaches using Powerpoint slides.

But that's about her limit. She is very far from being a digital native. It took her a couple of years to master Powerpoint. Beyond that, good luck. She does not know what the specifications of a decent laptop or screen or phone should be, or how much they should cost. She gets painfully fooled by online offers for various software programs. Every time she buys a new laptop there is a days-long drama to install it and connect it. A printer purchase is a painful exercise. "I don't know, I need help" - she calls her daughters.

She pays attention in all school meetings when the topic is technology. She can recognize the buzzwords. Digitalization, collaboration, content management, security, ergonomy, device sustainability. She, like most other teachers in the room, has no precise understanding of what they mean, but feels that they are important, useful things.

She never set up a group video call or ran a digital grades catalog. She tries hard to educate herself by googling, reading, even paying for online courses - but the number of possibilities and devices and applications is just too huge. It's a jungle, too confusing. Resigned, she retreats into her Powerpoint.

And now she is transforming.

No more room for resignation, no more room to give up. A new her will emerge from the new reality. Who will try instead of reading. Will act instead of thinking.

On the first day, she will set up a Microsoft Teams classroom and test it herself using her old laptop and her actual one. Then she will call her students and maybe their parents to get all their email addresses. Then she will invite them to the Teams group call. She will send a wrong link for the first time. Angry parents will call about the wrong link. She will apologize and get mad at herself.

Then she will try next day with Zoom. Then with another platform. Students will send her assignments to her personal Email address instead of the school address because that's the one she used for the Zoom invitations, and she will miss them. She will send them reminders although they sit in her personal Email. Angry parents will call about it. She will apologize. From time to time she will read again the instructions - and she will understand them a little better. She will buy a good headset and a new mouse and start planning to upgrade her Internet to fiber optic.

Two weeks later, she will have a structure in place. She will know the goods and the bads of every important video conferencing platform. She will know all the main virtual education content sources, with their pluses and minuses. She will be in control of the drive where her students upload their assignments.

Two months later, she will have learned more about digital education than in her entire career, and she will have all her students with her, at the same level. Having shared the same journey of frustration, trial and error, joy and disappointment - but in the end emerging more knowledgeable. She will know that there are no shortcuts available, no magic recipes. But there are regular recipes and with the right effort and cooks they can be successful.

And when she calls into the next teacher virtual meeting, she will discover a whole new level of conversation about how schools can use technology.