Reflection on Week 1

First of all, I learned a lot about my own perspective.  I'm finding it really hard to separate my identity as a teacher when looking at the idea of "virtual schooling is a positive innovation."  My thoughts about motivation, use of resources are all linked to my identity as a high school teacher in an under-served neighborhood.  In some ways I think this gives me a good perspective but I need to try in future weeks to also try and take more objective view on the research.  Or, I should try and look at the perspective of someone who works in a very different kind of neighborhood.

Overall I learned a lot that I did not know before - all I previously knew about online schools were graduate school classes! In fact, all this information about K-12 online courses got me so excited that I brought some of the ideas to my instructional leader at school to see if we can start offering some classes online next year.


Further, the idea of disruptive innovation was completely eye opening as far as how the school system has been forced to morph over the years.  Lately in NYC there has been a push to treat the DOE like a business, from how charters schools are run to choosing a business woman to be the new chancellor.  However, this article shows that schools and school systems are NOT businesses and should not be treated like one.  Which leads me to the question of ....why does the government insist on treating schools like a business?


My biggest question so far is probably how can I implement some of these ideas into my school? How can NYC sustainably implement ways for online learning to be widespread and meaningful?