No Teacher Required? WRONG!

From time to time, I hear people jokingly suggest that a teacher isn't really needed in a customized classroom. Often that odd claim is made in a conversation about a teacher being absent.  No sub needed, right? That's way off target! In the customized classroom the teacher is an even more critical component than in the traditional classroom.

One of the benefits of a customized classroom is the opportunity for constant communication between teacher and student. In my classroom, this sometimes takes the form of an oral conversation. However, more frequently, indeed scores of times during any class, the conversations are electronic. This shouldn't be too much of a surprise. After all, that form of communication is a major part of students' lives today. Something has to replace this communication during a teacher's absence. Even a substitute is unlikely to be able to fully provide that key ingredient.

True, where appropriate, fully independent learning activities should take place, activities that require no intervention from the teacher at all. Yet, the reason to provide those truly independent activities isn't to put teachers out of work. Rather, the purpose of that strategy is to liberate teachers from unnecessary instructional tasks, making them available for instructional tasks that actually do require their direct or electronic involvement. It takes a real person to do this.

It also takes the actual classroom teacher to do this as most substitutes simply don't have the skills, knowledge, and/or access to accomplish the task. At best, a substitute in the customized classroom is holding the place, keeping the ship afloat (thank goodness!), until the captain returns...and the sooner the better! Substitutes do great work, but there really is no substitute for the classroom teacher in a customized classroom. At a minimum, a substitute is required, and even then, things will likely not go as smoothly with a different leader at the helm. Teachers are just that important, even more so in a customized classroom.

In short, the misguided notion that customized classrooms are fully independent, teacher free zones is simply incorrect.