IT Folks Working in School

If you are like most people, you have distinct memories of each phase of your education from elementary through middle and high school, and perhaps into trade school, college, or employer-based training. It is likely you were somewhat successful in school, otherwise you would be unlikely to be considering or working in a school. I also, assume some readers have experience as a parent of children who were in school.  

When humans have important experience, such as we have in school (either as a youngster or a parent), those will bias our beliefs about the experience for others. We assume everyone’s experience was like ours. (Your experience was even the same as yours for your classmates who were in the same classrooms at the same time.) In addition, we assume that everyone should learn what we learned and how we learned it. (The surprising reality for many who first start working in school is that curriculum is defined by educators and there is nothing natural about what comprises curriculum.)   

One of the most important things to remember as you consider a position working in a school is that your education deserves no special consideration. While IT professionals may not exert direct control over teaching and school management decisions, their priorities contribute to the decisions they make regarding what gets attention and when it gets is, and the choices that are made when configuring and deploying hardware and software. All these decisions affect what teaching and learning can happen.