StockSnap / Pixabay
One of my most popular posts this week was a video I shared showing “What a classroom looks like in 27 countries around the world”
Today, on World Teachers Day (see THE BEST RESOURCES TO LEARN ABOUT WORLD TEACHERS DAY), Google unveiled a cool show on Google Earth called This Is School:
From London to the Himalayas, explore classrooms around the world in Street View.
Google made announced lots of neat new education projects today, and also unveiled a video.
The projects sound great but, I’ve got to say, I’m not a fan of their video. It shows lots of teachers doing great stuff, but they’re all “performing” (check it out and you’ll see what I mean). Lots of great teachers, including, I’m sure, those in the video, spend the majority of their time not doing any of the extraordinary acts pictures and, instead, doing the day-in-day-out job of engaging students in learning. That might not make for great video snippets. However, just like teachers in the movies, this kinds of clips provide a romanticized version of what teacher looks like, and creates unnecessary expectations for everybody.
Let me know if you think I’m over-reacting, though.
I see what you mean about the video. It is certainly entertaining but as a teacher it doesn’t represent what I’m doing in my classroom. and I feel that I am a good teacher even though I’m not a performer.
I’m also trying to convince some great people to come into the profession right now. And if they see that video they’ could feel that they don’t have what it takes.
I knew teachers that can do this kind of thing and I am in awe of them. I love that all of this celebrates the profession. Just like the students we all bring our gifts and we use whatever we can to engage the kids. So my hats off to the teachers in the video and all the teachers around at world!
Thanks, Carol, for leaving such a thoughtful comment (and I’m not just saying that because you agree with me 🙂 )
Larry