My student teachers are now, officially, my colleagues–and very deserving of that title, if I do say so myself! They bring a tremendous amount of creativity to the profession, as this parody about their internship experience based on the One Semester of Spanish Love Song will attest!They are also filled with initiative and enthusiasm, as evidenced by the fact that after learning about (and living) True Colors throughout the year, they had these shirts made!

For those of you who don’t know about True Colors, take the True Colors Survey. (It is only 5 questions long. Wait for all the flashing to quit, then drag the numbers into the circles.) When you have finished, mouse over the bar graph that will appear at the end in order to see a very basic interpretation of the results. If you want more details, take a few minutes to read through Jennifer Niskanen’s True Colors Pages. For additional information, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the color(s) that apply to you.

I like to use True Colors because I find that it offers useful perspectives on why relationships in the classroom sometimes break down. It also provides simple, telegraphic language that can be used to address those breakdowns and to sketch out potential solutions.

(This is a visual representation of some of the key characteristics of the various colors.)

Consequently, it was incredibly amusing to me when my colleagues appeared on the last day of class wearing these shirts, and then presented me with one of my own. It captures our journey together very poignantly!

(Team Advanced Low refers to the fact that student teachers are now required to demonstrate that they have achieved Advanced Low Proficiency in the language they intended to teach in order to be certified.)

And I guarantee that although golds may drive their teachers crazy, they make GREAT colleagues. So if you know of a school that needs a creative, enthusiastic, and very responsible language teacher, be sure to add it to our wiki: Job Postings & Job Search Tools!

Although mobile devices can certainly be a tremendous disruption (and one that many young teachers are ill-prepared to address), I should also say that from my perspective, the problem has less to do with cell phones/mobile devices and more to do with unquestioned assumptions about what it means to be educated, to teach, and to learn. The increasing availability and ubiquity of mobile technologies like cell phones foregrounds problems that have always existed in education, and makes much more visible the ineffectiveness of longstanding pedagogies that common assumptions about education have reinforced.

For me, school policies against cell phones and other mobile devices are a physical manifestation of beliefs about teaching, learning, and literacy that are not particularly congruent with the rapidly changing society in which we live. They reinforce all sorts of problematic notions such as:

• the idea that learning only happens when it comes through established channels at prescribed times

• the unspoken assumption that teachers are the primary, most authoritative, and best source of information

• the belief that students can only learn (or do) one thing at a time

• the presumption that teachers are most qualified to decide what students learn, and

• the perspective that teachers can and should control learning

They also fail to take into account the fact the writing spaces and tools that “literate” people use are also changing. As people become more adept at working in these spaces, and as the mobile web becomes more functional, it is likely that mobile computing will play an increasingly central role in business, education, entertainment, and industry.

I’m not saying that students don’t need teachers, or that parents and teachers shouldn’t be concerned with the digital dangers (and their physical manifestations) of emerging technologies, or even that technology is a panacea for educational or societal problems. I do think, however, that the world has changed dramatically in the last 50 years, highlighting a desperate need for shifts in the way we think about education.

Instead of reactively seeking ways to eliminate the distraction of cell phones, it would be more useful for schools to think proactively about what makes cell phones so compelling to students, how and why students are using them, and how the concept of “mobile learning” might be used to take all that is good about our present system and make it even better by increasing access to content, to community, and to learning tools/opportunities.

Part of the problem is that most educators aren’t really aware of what cell phones can (or will soon be able to) do. Part of the problem is that unlike many other web 2.0 technologies, cell phones aren’t quite there yet. The larger issue, though, is pedagogy. If your image of what a teacher is and does revolves around images of lecturing, maintaining classroom control, distributing assignments, and grading, it will be hard for you to see the myriad of educational possibilities inherent in social technologies and web 2.0 applications. If your idea of learning involves hands-on, project-based, student-centered activities, then the leap to these same technologies as gateways to educational opportunities and exciting possibilities for engaging what is INSIDE students in the learning process isn’t such a big one. Students are clearly willing to communicate, but are we listening?

There is no question that cell phones are a disruptive technology. They are delivering a wake-up call that is long overdue. We can ignore the beeping alarms that remind us it is time to stop abdicating our responsibility to teach students how to use all new technologies ethically and responsibly, or we can ban them in hopes that the challenges they present to our authority, our effectiveness, our relevance, and our pedagogy will also disappear.

Postscript: I appreciated the opportunity to think about the issue more deeply, but was disappointed by the stance the article in the NY Times took on it:

The poor schoolmarm or master, required to provide a certain amount of value for your child’s entertainment dollar, now must compete with texting, instant-messaging, Facebook, eBay, YouTube, Addcaictinggames.com and other poxes on pedagogy.

One of the many issues at stake here is what counts as pedagogy. If a lecture is the best we can do, then “poxes on pedagogy” that spread widely and rapidly may be our only hope for survival! Of course, we could always try an engagement filter .

On a practical level, those thoughts have changed the questions I ask. Instead of saying to myself, “What am I going to teach today?” I’ve moved to asking, “What are students going to do today?” That moved me much more toward the idea of student-centered instruction. However, since that time, I’ve started thinking more about the importance of experience in learning. That has transformed my question to, “Why should it matter to students?”

Yesterday, I realized that I might be on the verge of still another shift . . . . what if instead of focusing on knowledge, we focused on needs? Teaching to their needs is very different than teaching a set curriculum . . . which, if the goal is that the curriculum reflect the field, shouldn’t ever be all that set anyhow because the field is always shifting and changing.

So now it becomes a question of integrating the students into the experience and the experiences into the students. And THAT leads me to ask why we spend so much time “creating” experiences when there is a whole world out there just waiting for us?!

On the other hand, the connotations of each of those three words (teaching, learning, and living) also imply that I have undergone a powerful transformation–one that has helped me to reframe my role as a teacher, students’ roles as learners, and the purposes of the time that we spend together each day.

I think about Deloria & Wildcat’s Power and Place and their insistence that we should consider every action through the lens of the impact it will have seven generations after it is initiated. I think of Tom Barone’s book, Touching Eternity, and the impact that the teacher whose career it chronicles had on the adult lives of his students. Then I think about the people and ideas that have most influenced who I am, what I value, and where I’m going. How do I actively invest my time in building relationships with ideas, people, and things of eternal consequence? How do I use my personal influence to purposefully design places and set aside times and spaces that will catalyze, nurture, and sustain such work? What would happen to my students if I could accomplish that in ways that riveted our mutual attention on the joy of living instead of on the task of learning or the responsibilities of teaching?

The trick is developing a sense of discernment sharp enough to distinguish what matters and what does not. Saying is different from seeing, and seeing is different from doing. Saying that things of eternal consequence matter is a far different endeavor than seeing which things those are, and identifying things of eternal consequence is far different from knowing what to do about them once they have been named.

For me, I suppose there is a simple pleasure in recognizing that the words I chose represent at least the beginnings of an enduring personal transformation!