Teacher-Centered Learning a Bad Thing? Maybe Not!

I was looking over the ISTE Standards this evening, and all of a sudden I realized something I hadn't really thought of before--there are a whole set of ISTE Standards for educators. The key words in that phrase are for educators. We talk all the time about student, rather than teacher, centered learning. But what if we flipped that model around?

One thing I noticed immediately about these standards is that each one (Analyst, Learner, Leader, Citizen, Collaborator, Designer, and Facilitator) are all things we eventually want our students to become when they graduate. Many of these things we want from our students now. Yet all these things are on the ISTE Standards for Educators. I think this is important, because so often we think of standards as guidelines for teachers to follow in preparing lessons and things for students to be in real life. What if, instead, we as teachers are the conduit for students applying the standards by being the standards?

As teachers, we are supposed to lifelong learners. We are supposed to continue to learn so we can never lose the joy of learning, because if we don't have it, why should our students? By partnering with our students in becoming the standards we teach, we as educators can connect with them and they can begin to see us as companions on a journey instead of the captain of a ship where they are only deckhands.

We talk about teachers modelling learning for their students, but what if, instead, we are the learners. If we expect our students to become all the things on the ISTE list, shouldn't we be also? Shouldn't we be first? Do you collaborate with your fellow teachers? If not, how can you expect your students to collaborate with their peers? Are you a valuable part of the global community? If not, why would you ever assume your students would be? This struck me, because I had never thought of standards in this way. As teachers, let's take a slightly different approach to standards: don't follow the standard, be the standard!

Check out the ISTE Standards at https://www.iste.org/standards/for-educators.