January 2022 – Troy Patterson

I keep track of the books that I read on this site. However, I rarely make an individual post. I should.

Focused on the development of air warfare, specifically bombers, this one tickled my love of history. I was fascinated by how the development of bombers was predicated on how things were “going to be” and not how they were.

Mr. Gladwell bases the story on two generals, Gen. Hansell & Gen. LeMay. General Hansell was a believer in precision bombing with the idea of saving civilians’ lives while quickly and effectively winning a war. General LeMay was a pragmatist who ends up using Napalm on 67 cities in Japan (with devastating results).

There are no easy answers here. What is “right” when it comes to war?

I end up comparing things to education and did so again with this. Is Technology just not quite ready yet? Will technology in education eventually become highly targeted in the future? And will that bring additional challenges?

This was designed as an audiobook first and then converted to a convention book. Get the audiobook on this one.”

I came across an article on every teacher being a reading teacher (by Releah Lent) that argues reading skills need to be taught not universally across all subjects, but rather as disciplinary literacy. That is, different subject areas should teach not just reading, but specific reading strategies that align with that discipline. For example, in history, students should be taught to read (i.e. think) like a historian. That is different than reading in math, or science.

This struck me as a much more nuanced and effective perspective than “every teacher needs to teach reading” (or the “every teacher is a reading teacher” line).

The article points out that we’ve done tons of professional development around teaching reading strategies. Teachers remarked on the amount of professional development focused on strategies:

Utilizing K-W-L charts? Been to that inservice so many times, I could teach it. Close reading strategies? I can do that one too.

The article goes on to argue that reading needs to be taught as a discplinary skill, not a general one. The argument is that different disciplines require different reading skills. Through focusing on reading skills need by a discipline, the skill becomes authentic and useful.

I got to thinking about how this relates to technology. For many teachers, technology remains a separate curriculum, done by someone else. Or, technology has institutionalized via a similar “everyone is a technology teacher” pitch that doesn’t have real meaning. This has led to us being in a situation where technology coaches are frustrated because they are asked by teachers to come into classes and teach the kids technology. Since the teachers don’t really learn the skill (or even more importantly the “WHY” of the skill), no substantive change happens. Technology does not become embedded and lead to change possibilities but continues to be an outside/extra thing.

It’s time to make technology part of our expected skill set. Maybe focusing on the technology per specific discipline can help speed up that process.