“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”

Elon Musk

In the 12 years that I have been in the classroom, I have seen a lot of change. It is something educators do on a daily basis. We make thousands of decisions as we go through a lesson or activity with our learners. We also seem to try in many ways to reinvent the wheel after each school year. Reflection is also something that educators are always doing. This comes with new strategies for formative assessment, the latest SEL practices, and finding the newest educational software innovations. These are all important to look at and reevaluate. But sometimes those changes don’t even get a chance to make an impact because we are again moving on to the “latest and greatest” trend in the education world.

I have seen the rollout of a lot of technology. My first experience was in 2017 when my district provided a class set of Chromebooks to every teacher. I can remember thinking about how I was going to figure out how to use this on a weekly (even better yet, daily) basis? I was offered hours of PD and gave up a lot of planning and personal time figuring out the best use of this awesome tool. As good as my intentions were, I struggled and often I found myself using it to get a break from the “sit and get” that really wears me out. Disruptive change was not what was happening in this situation.

Fast-forward to January of this year. I am now in another district at another high school. This time, I am awarded a class set of Chromebooks that have been purchased with ESSR funds. I embraced the technology and dove in. With my experiences of distance learning and getting more Google savvy, I found a passion for creating learning menus and hyperdocs for my Geometry classes. The feedback from my classes was positive. However, I found myself with 2 fairly significant problems. I work with 2 teams of teachers due to having 2 preps. One of those teams did not have the technology in their classrooms. I was often utilizing the technology when they could not. I am hoping this will not be an issue next year with the rumors of more technology coming! The second issue was (and is) the most difficult and daunting. Student apathy and truancy has spread like a plague among our learners. I spent a lot of time reflecting about what I could do to “fix it.” This is when I realized that it was me that had to make the first big change. I cannot change anyone but myself. I applied to graduate school.

As I read Blended (Horn & Staker, 2015), I feel inspired and a bit overwhelmed. I am eager to bring about disruptive change on my campus (and hopefully in my district). The last 2 years have been so challenging for teachers with having to use technology as the only means of lesson and assessment delivery. We need to go back to the drawing board and look at best practices. Technology is not the quick fix that many thought it would be. It is not that easy. With all the technology we all have at our disposal at any time, we have to encourage learners to see the benefit of technology at the very beginning. It does not have to be the only way to learn. I am left with wondering how best to narrow my project’s focus and how I am going to accomplish my goal. I can’t do it all, as much as I want to try.