Why hire anyone but life-long learners?

This is a portion of a post from David Warlick's 2 cents blog about an article on hiring tech-saavy teachers.

2 Cents Worth » Hiring Tech-Savvy Teachers

Reading the article more thoroughly revealed a prevailing theme that the teaching part is of greater issue than the technology part when considering new hires. Can they Integrate Technology. Even Will Richardson is quoted saying, “From a hiring perspective, if you hire learners who can teach, the technology will take care of itself.” I disagree that the technology will take care of itself. But Will continues with the most important thing I found in the article. He says,

If you hire teachers who aren’t really lifelong, continual learners, then you’ll have problems, not just with technology.

This is a very powerful statement to me. While I am not the one doing the hiring, as a change agent I can see how it should be a part of all new educator hirings. If we hire teachers who are not life-long learners themselves, then how would we expect them to put that mentality into our students?

Consider this: After returning home from the NWP Conference, I spent my first day of my Thanksgiving break working in the ISD. We had some techs scheduled to come in from out of state to install wireless Internet clouds over each campus. I was volunteered to be in charge of the oversight since I am the only person at the moment prepared to use the new technology. No biggie to give up some of my vacation time.

So I was in the administration office waiting on the tech guys to figure out where they want each piece of their equipment. I noticed that my district's IT had several large poster-size Post Its hanging on the wall between his office and the curriculum director's. They were from the district level tech meeting I missed while in Nashville (and the only one we seem to have all year for technology). I noticed the following:

• less than half the committee members attended (admin, faculty, and community members included)
• the first Post It for :current issues" was filled with gripes about Deep Freeze (software used to refresh the hard drive each time it is turned off)
• the second Post It for "future needs" requests at least one new computer for each teacher at the elementary
• the third for "professional development" was blank
• the fourth for the "Long-Range Tech Plan" was blank

I am left to draw a few conclusions. One, less than half of the committee felt the need to be concerned with the technology in my district. Two, the teachers want more equipment. Three, they know exactly what they are going to do with the equipment once they get it. Four, they do not need professional development concerning technology. Five, we have everything we need to meet the future head on. Six, our long-range tech plan is dead-on already.

So what does this have to do with the article from David? Well, if we had hired staff with the thought that they all need to be life-long learners, then I would bet that the Post Its left blank would not be blank. They would be covered with questions about where we want to head. Instead, the only thing covering them was dust.

Don't think I spent my time there just looking at the blank space. I loaded it up. And, yes, my IT told me that I just voided much of our long-range tech plan because it was not prepared for my type of comments and requests. And, yes, he was smiling the whole time. My friend, the IT guy, you see, is a change agent as well.