Interactivity #5

I interviewed a 6^th to 8^th grade ESL teacher working in the North Arlington public schools in Bergen County, New Jersey.  Early on, it was very clear that NETS hadn’t been unpacked in detail to her.  The term ‘NETS’ actually didn’t initially ring any bells, but she did recognize it once shown the actual standards lists.  Since the interview was conducted over her school’s spring break, she was limited to the paperwork she had at home with her, and could not find anything in her files that referenced NETS specifically, nor could she recall any specific training on these standards.  However, upon reading the list she was able to give me a lot of insight into what her district has been doing to meet the standards.

Their superintendent is very pro-technology, and their classrooms are very generously equipped.  Given her small class size, her room is one of the few which doesn’t have a SmartBoard. She has received several laptops and an iPad along with workshop training and constant software upgrades to fully utilize all her technological resources.  Their grading and lesson planning systems are all online and completely paperless. Workshop days with free choices of topics always include abundant opportunities to master technology utilization – recent mandatory workshops covered topics like cyber safety and cyber bullying, supporting the Digital Citizenship standards.

She found the North Arlington 3 year technology plan (2010-2013), which does not specifically reference NETS. It does have ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Literacy standards, which are expected to be incorporated and explained in the lesson plans. The layout for this is similar to how we are assembling our lesson plan spreadsheet for Interactivities 4 and 5 – in addition to the strategies aligned with the standards, usage of technology must be noted and explained.

Again, it’s difficult to tell whether or not the school’s current policies are adopting and implementing the NETS specifically or if they’re just under a larger umbrella of technology integration. My interviewee was confident that even though she wasn’t aware of these specific standards, she was certain that her superintendent would get all required standards met well before deadlines.

Judging from my classmates’ posts about their own interviews, I’m not too surprised that it was so difficult to figure out why NETS seemed to be missing from the school’s technology plan. I was, however, pleasantly surprised to see how readily she was able to explain the other implementations that have become their day to day standard.

In my future as a teacher, I’ll have to make sure I keep myself up to date with the state expectations independently of my district. While keeping on top of the school’s plans to meet standards is an administrative responsibility, knowing the standards and being ahead of the game myself will save me a lot of work down the road. It may even potentially give me an opportunity to shine when I can show my colleagues how I’ve gone about integrating the new standards. 

Link to updated lesson plan analysis with NETS-S and NETS-T standards.