Teachers, transparency and technology
Monday, August 22, 2011 at 06:00AM 
I've addressed the need and advantages of transparency for budget makers (here and here) and school librarians in past posts. Now it's the classroom teacher's turn.
In far too many classrooms, the student who is the best mind reader is the most successful*. Unfortunately this leaves a great many students who are poor at guessing what the teacher wants at risk.
I've always appreciated "transparent" teachers as both a student and as a parent. With a transparent teacher, you know where you stand. You know exactly what needs to be done and what you've already accomplished. There's no mind reading involved and there are higher levels of accountability for all parties involved.
I sincerely appreciate teachers who clearly state:
- Expectations of classroom behaviors, in-class technology use, and work completion - hopefully created collaboratively with the class.
- Clear statements of learning expectations at the course, unit and assignment level.
- Grading criteria for terms, units, tests, and quizzes.
- Clear guidelines and authentic assessment tools (rubrics, checklists, etc.) for projects. (See Getting What You Ask For)
- Individual student progress, work completion, and potential problems on a regular basis.
- Special events and activities for students and calls for parent volunteers.
Most teachers do these things at the beginning of the year. The photocopied lists, report cards, mid-term reports, assignment sheets and newsletters get stuffed in the backpack to be carried home via sneaker-net where they are quickly lost and forgotten.
The missing component to becoming truly transparent is making this information readily accessible to students and parents throughout the school year.
Thankfully technology is providing classroom teachers the means to be transparent. Webpages are easier to build than ever. Using GoogleApps for Education, teachers can quickly create websites, shared calendars, and mailing groups. Our student information system has portals to its data for both students and parents so work completion, grades and attendance can be checked in real time. Facebook fan pages are simple ways to update classroom happenings.
The irony here is that short, but steep learning curves and medieval mind-sets** keep too many teachers from adopting these effective and ultimately time-saving communication tools and methods.
Yet society is expecting all sectors, including education at the classroom level, to be transparent. If you know of another way of achieving this that DOESN'T involve technology, I'd like to know what it is.
*Come to think of it, that probably applies to husbands as well.
** "As a teacher I love making you guess what I expect you to know," seemed to be the philosophy of many of my college professors for some reason.
Tables below are from Teacher Webpages That Build Parent Partnerships.
