Technolandy

Day 42 (of SOL 2025) Dear @shanesafir & @sjeducate 10/10 “spoilers” of edutoxins in Pedagogy of Voice : ego

Dear Shane and Sawsan… in Pedagogies of Voice, you bring up “10 Toxins” carried in the form of signature practices and dscourses – here is a thought on:

10. Ego

Looks Like

• Gatekeeping content/choosing texts (or “real-world” tasks) based on teacher interests
• Defensiveness to student feedback

Sounds Like

• “When you’ve put in the work like me to get a degree and a job, you get to be the one to make decisions.”
• “This is the way I learned it, and kids need to know about it!” 
• “There are some things kids just need to know because they don’t know better.” 
• “I already passed __ grade. You need this content, not me.”

Can feel like

A challenge to self importance…. For a long time, and to a certain validity still, the teacher is ‘the’ expert in the classroom… the shift has been instead of a content expert, they need to be the expert in shaping schema and pedagogy to create engaged learners in differentiated ways because we have so much more understanding and knowledge of neurology than ever before! 

It can be a challenging student that can make things even more uncomfortable (amazing share by Sawsan about being declared a terrorist by a family at home) and not focusing on admin consequences, but setting ego aside and delving deeper into a ‘teachable/learnable moment’ that helped bring forth a bigger learning lesson than the dayplan first intended… 

Gotta remember that we are teachers to: serve students. The number one job (I remind new VPs) is to have students in the classroom (or on their online dashboard in my case…) learning. And this profession challenges the ego… we can feel like the greatest teacher one moment and then feel that perhaps we should be trying a different career altogether… minutes apart. Gotta have an ego to be an educator, standing in front of 20/22/30 students can be intimidating (wondering if the dayplan will go according to plan, or what to do if one of a million other things derail the best laid plans…)