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By Jeff Pierce, 31 August 2009 03:41

When I read articles like this one, “despair” is too weak of a word to describe how I feel about the teaching “profession”. Granted, I work in a school context vastly different from NYC, but I still hold the same title as the people described in this article.

The sentence that stopped me in my tracks:

…Mohammed’s case [a tenured teacher in NYC charged by her administration as professionally incompetent] will probably have cost the city and the state (which pays the arbitrator) about four hundred thousand dollars.

Nor is it by any means certain that, as a result of that investment, New York taxpayers will have to stop paying Mohammed’s salary, eighty-five thousand dollars a year.

There’s a part of me that just wants out out out of teaching when I read about this.

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By Jeff Pierce, 26 August 2009 15:50

After having over one hundred students home sick for the past three days (out of around 600 total), the government stepped in and said, “take a break for a bit, guys!”

So. Tomorrow we’re goin virtual for a week. No kids on campus, but plenty of online systems and support to keep some learning going on at home.

*Note – there have been very few confirmed cases of H1N1 in the student body. But there’s enough sick kids going around to have significant cause for alarm. Official school release here.

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By Jeff Pierce, 25 August 2009 14:48

Here’s an attempt to try to define this blog and what I’m doing here. I would love to give you my word that  nothing communist will appear on this blog, but after some of the topics that were covered in my module on Multiculturalism, I don’t think I could make good on that promise.

I digress. The definition fits: “a public declaration of intentions”.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/61683005@N00/565924862

In this first iteration of my attempt to define online professionalism I will simply expand on what I wrote earlier.

There were two guidelines I operated under:

1. Don’t use real names
2. Don’t post anything I wouldn’t want sent as an all-users email

I can see clearly how they stifled my last blog: they are “donts”, negative rules.

Let’s try this again:

1. Don’t use real names. Share my blog with people that I work with. Not that I expect to use this in any capacity related to my job, but because I don’t want to feel like I’m hiding anything from anyone.
2. Don’t post anything I wouldn’t want sent as an all-users email. I need to be excited about the fact that all-users can see what I write rather than cowed. When I post something onto this blog, I’m saying that it’s an idea worth sharing. If I post it here, I’m standing behind it (until someone comes along to show me, duh, why I’m wrong).

…is this enough? It doesn’t feel like it. I don’t like how open-ended and messy this sounds. But I can’t seem to find anything better anywhere else, yet.

I’ll have to come back to it. For now, thanks to all the blogs I’ve read, and in particular thanks to Karl Fisch and Konrad Glogowski, whose words seem to most match what I feel is appropriate.

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By Jeff Pierce, 18 August 2009 14:49

Well, we started classes yesterday. And let me share with you one of my tools for better teaching this year:

my secret weapon

I don’t see any way that this post won’t come across as vain and elitist. However, if you knew me well, you’re probably rolling on the floor right now as you realize that JEFF is writing about FASHION. When I mentioned to my mother that I bought more cufflinks over the summer, she laughed. “Do you even have the shirts to go with them?”

But I believe that this is an improvement over the standard business casual. For me, it’s my uniform, and like everything else in my teaching I want my clothes to be a notch above. When I’ve got on a tie and cufflinks, I take myself more seriously. My students can tell that I look like I mean business. And lastly, I feel that it’s one part of my response to all those critiques of teaching as an “easy job”. It’s easier to say that I deserve to be treated like a respected professional when I look like it.

Of course I’m not saying this replaces lesson prep, or pedagogy, or that it applies the same in all school contexts. Appearance isn’t everything. But it does count for something.

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Tangent Number One, aka “Best Laid Plans”:

I started off my first day well-prepared…except that I left my work laptop at home. A bit of a flustered start.

Tangent Number Two:

A more valid criticism of this is that I’m playing to, and reinforcing, class stereotypes. I work at one of the oldest private schools in Hong Kong, and also one of the most expensive. Class and race are knotted up in Hong Kong, always lurking below the surface. They are much bigger issues that I don’t even know how to start untangling. For now, all I can do is to stay aware of their presence.

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By Jeff Pierce, 12 August 2009 16:21

I really do want to move on from this meta-discussion on “what’s in a blog” and start writing up thoughts that more directly relate to education. But what did I find in my feed reader but a brilliant 30+ minute video that describes my initial hesitations with starting up a blog, in a very specific way, yet also encompasses the underlying philosophical issues of authentic identity and self.

If you maintain an online presence in any way – I am including facebook in that – watch 17:22 – 21:18. Four minutes, that’s all. This section introduces and defines “context collapse”, my big takeaway, the phenomenon which is the cause of all my stops and starts venturing online. (see end note for more)

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“Context Collapse”

On this blog, I am not writing to anyone in particular, yet I am also writing to everyone in the whole world. And thus I have no context in which to set this text. Comparing blogs to emails is illustrative. Both are means of communication in which the authors of the ideas are clearly identified. But an email is highly contextualized since it is limited to a specific group of people, while a blog that is posted publicly on the internet is in a sense addressed to the whole world and therefore lacks a defined context.

For example, let’s look at my last post. Instead of putting my concerns online, I could have sent it to my school’s director of technology, Justin Hardman. Here’s what the email would look like:

Emailing Justin

But by putting it onto my blog, here is who I am addressing it to:

Blogging the Whole World

And it’s not like a normal “bcc” – in email, the people who are blind are the ones who actually receive the email, as they don’t know who else might be a recipient. But on a blog, I’m the one who is blind. I have absolutely no clue who is choosing to point their browser this way.

That’s the part that has me messed up. I am worried both about who specifically will come to view the blog – the wrong member of my school’s board, or the wrong overreacting parent. But I am also concerned with remaining authentic to whoever else in the world might come to view these ideas.

Not so worried that I won’t blog. But I find I can’t stop (over) thinking it.

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End Note: But I recommed the whole video. You can split it up into two manageable chunks – up until 14:00, the focus is on the philosophical ramifications of new digital media and how it is changing conceptions of self and identity. From 14:00 til the end, it summarizes Welsh’s ethnographic research into Youtube. Well worth the time!

Comments (5)

By Jeff Pierce, 6 August 2009 15:12

Thanks a bunch for those who have dropped by recently. For anyone with a blog of their own, please know that I will try my best to follow you if you post comments here. I am looking forward to making more connections and to receiving (and giving) feedback on ideas.

Just a short post here, to try to clarify what I meant by the word “professionalism”, because Kate wasn’t the only person to be unsure of what I meant.

I am deeply (overly?) concerned with what it means for an individual with a relationship to an institution to be blogging about their experiences. By choosing to state my real name on this website, I am acting as an unofficial representative of my school. My words here reflect back on my employer.

And I want to be professional about this relationship, but I also want to be authentic.

So – the question is, what does that mean? What does it look like? How do I remain authentic and honest and “jeff” and yet also not do anything to reflect badly on my employer in the eyes of anyone who has access to the internet?

In looking for a discussion on that issue, I’ve come up pretty much empty. I do have some ideas of an answer, but if anyone would like to take a stab at answering my question above, that would be fabulous.