20 Questions:
- Is teaching a professional job?
- Do teachers have professional responsibilities beyond their teaching contract?
- What are professionals responsible for?
- Why do you do what you do?
- Do professionals have a responsibility to keep up-to-date on what is current in their respective fields of study?
- Would you expect your doctor or dentist to be aware of new medical developments, assuming you consider doctors or dentists professionals?
- Would you expect a detective to keep up with current trends in forensics?
- How is it that many teachers are unaware of sweeping trends in education?
- If you are a teacher, shouldn't you know what UBD is?
- If you are a teacher, shouldn't you know what web 2.0 is?
- If you are a teacher, shouldn't you be aware of the concept of disruptive innovation?
- If you are a teacher, shouldn't you know what is in NCLB?
- If you are a teacher, shouldn't you know what state education policy is? Or at least how to look it up?
- If you are a teacher, shouldn't you know what bills are being passed around the state legislature?
- If you are a teacher, shouldn't you know, understand, and be able to at lease paraphrase your state's academic standards in your content area?
- If our teacher contracts don't explicitly address #9-#15 do we have professional responsibilities to address these on our own?
- Should teacher contracts address these issues? Or is it our own professional responsibility to address these for ourselves?
- Wouldn't teacher unions have an easier time negotiating "professional" salaries for teachers if more teachers exhibited "professional" behavior in their own learning?
- Why is it that when a "professional" teacher takes great interest in all of these things they usually are asked to move into an administrative or leadership role?
- If you are a teacher, what motivates you to care about these issues?
