Tom Vander Ark & Carri Schneider
As the nation celebrates National Teacher Appreciation Week, we couldn’t think of a better way to honor National Teacher Day than with a paper that highlights the positive impacts that blended learning
is having on the teaching profession.
Today Digital Learning Now! (DLN), a national campaign supported by ExcelinEd, released the seventh white
paper in the DLN Smart Series -- “Improving Conditions & Careers: How Blended Learning
Can Improve the Teaching Profession.”
The paper brings together Smart Series authors from DLN and Getting Smart with co-authors Bryan and Emily Hassel of Public Impact. Their work on leveraging great teaching with technology and creating an Opportunity Culture in schools has accelerated and improved the development of new school models over the last
thirty months.
Blended learning environments allow teachers to work in teams, support new teachers, expand collaboration time, provide personalized professional
development, and expanded leadership opportunities.
The goal with the paper is to inform educators, leaders, stakeholders and policymakers about the potential of blended learning to offer better teaching
conditions and enable better career opportunities, while confronting current misconceptions about teaching and technology.
In what couldn’t be better timing, this week the NEA released a Policy Statement on Digital Learning that
shows alignment with the paper’s goals:
NEA believes that the increasing use of technology in the classroom will transform the role of educators allowing the educational process to become ever more student centered. This latest transformation is not novel, but part of the continuing evolution of our education system. Educators, as professionals working in the best interests of their students, will continue to adjust and adapt their instructional practice and use of digital technology/tools to meet the needs and enhance the learning of their students."
It’s exciting to see the NEA formally recognize what so many teachers in the field are already experiencing about the positive impact blended learning can
have on the profession.
With teacher satisfaction at its lowest point in 25 years according to the most recent MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, and increased demands
on teachers from the implementation of college and career readiness standards and online assessments, there has never been a better time to explore ways to
improve the lives of teachers.
The paper makes the case that the shift to personalized, blended learning will yield extended time with students, more team-teaching and collaboration, new
options to teach at home, a greater focus on deeper learning, individualized professional development plans, better student data to inform instruction, and
more earning power.
“If blended learning lets great teachers help more students, develop peers, and earn far more, they will show us the way to make digital learning
outstanding,” said Bryan C. Hassel, Co-Director of Public Impact. “Even very small amounts of digital learning make job-embedded development, expanded
impact, and much higher pay possible.”
The paper features an overview of the teaching profession in transition, including the current demands on teachers and the redefined teacher roles that the
shift to personalized learning necessitates. In a discussion of the improved teaching conditions that blended learning affords, we detail differentiated
staffing and improved opportunities for collaboration and professional development. The section on improved career opportunities and pay builds on the work
of Public Impact and DLN to review the opportunities to earn more within current budgets and the creation of policies to support better opportunities for
teachers.
For more information, check out the full paper “Improving Conditions & Careers: How Blended Learning Can Improve the Teaching Profession” and the
accompanying infographic " Blended Learning & The Teaching Profession.”