There was a wonderful thread on Twitter about the “EduCelebrities” that dominate the platform. These are educators who have exploded in popularity thanks to their ideas, methodology, or (if you really dig beneath the surface) marketing.
The gist of the thread is their online personas have elevated their egos, and therefore their insecurities, to jerkface jerk status. Not all, of course, but they create a precedent for others to be like them.
I have no doubt there is a genuine care for the craft of teaching and willingness to elevate the practice so that all may benefit, but some honesty is needed.
For instance, at a Math conference, one teacher did a workshop on going gradeless in his classroom. He started with all the benefits, but then pivoted to show the progression and the result: the performance of his students dipped for the first few years, but then returned to where it was prior.
This could be seen as a failure (why do all that work for the same results?), but he showed the caveat–the performance curve was the same, but with way more students in the classroom.
Well, the norm was over a dozen would drop the class and now they weren’t.
Where the EduCelebrities are concerned, there is a feeling (whether intentional or not) that if everyone adopted their way of thinking, we will have fixed education. Period.
Yet, we never hear of their struggles, their issues, their failures and heartbreaks. This is a concern to me, especially for those who follow them with blinders on.
It can give a teacher (especially young in their career) a sense that if they’re not perfect, with 100% buy-in from their students, they’re failures. It’s devastating and can lead to burnout quite easily.
It’s the responsibility of an educator to keep learning, keep growing and keep adapting… while always keeping in mind this is for the benefit of students and not other educators on social media.