Students - The Missing Puzzle Piece

Many teachers find themselves drowning in the inescapable waters of change. They struggle to keep afloat by attempting small bits of new innovation or re-packaging old bits of confident instruction. They scream out at change and technology as a harbinger of finality and morality to their teaching careers and lives. They sincerely need help and support.

The education industry is slowly finding itself. Its merits and morals are becoming more built on creativity, critical thought, and expressiveness. Those teachers and leaders that have taken on this new challenge are reaping the rewards of true 'student-centered' learning. Their classrooms are places for talk; places for questioning; places for discovery. Students don't sit in their chairs - they merely start in their chairs.

Training teachers to believe they are experts of knowledge is counter-productive. This inherently establishes a hierarchy between pupil and teacher. Even the most brilliant teachers are missing the one important piece of the educational puzzle until they enter the classroom....the students.

Let's compare this profession with that of doctors...

Any newly trained doctor has made it through the training and medical knowledge testing to have a solid starting point. However, how they use their knowledge and bedside manner is entirely dependent on the situation they face. All the knowledge in the world is useless, if you can't identify how it all fits together to find a solution.

Similarly, teachers start with curricular knowledge and the best intentions. But, until you walk into your classroom and meet your students - you should have no idea how to move forward in THEIR learning. It is helpful to have a path or purposeful planning, but if there is no chance that you will alter or modify it - it truly is meaningless.

We do teach STUDENTS - not curriculum. Our lasting effects on our students are not measured by CASI or monitored by report card marks. We cultivate the atmosphere we work in everyday through our choices and confidence. What that looks like and what you will do with it is up to you. But don't cower from change and progress - recognize its purpose and learn from it. Those around you will support you in your quest and those in need will grow from your journey (even if vicariously until the time is right).

The State of Teaching

First posted audio message

Watching my four-year-old son, Liam, sit at a computer and figure out how it works has opened my eyes to a whole new level of what digital natives really are. I was surprised by how quickly he learned commands to navigate programs just simply by clicking things and then trying to remember where those things went to last time.

He seems very comfortable with the mouse and using the buttons is certainly helped by his hand-eye coordination. Right now he's playing I Spy games on the computer and he finds it very interesting. The use of these games has furthered his computer skills before he even enters kindergarten in the fall.

Our students live (and think) in a world that acts and feels alien to the majority of us. They expect interaction and socialization and are typically underwhelmed by what they find in our classrooms.

While some argue that learning in a traditional model is good for them - it will help them to function in the "real world." What if our antiquated notion of the world is finally catching up with us? Most of what we strive to keep familiar is constantly under fire from improvements and technological developments. You would have a difficult time identifying something that has not been impacted by technology in one way or another in the past 30 years.

The bottom line is that teaching needs to shift in ways that most teachers will cringe at.

Students need control over how they learn. The curriculum will serve as the framework: the teacher as the learning guide. Expert teachers no longer need to be subject specialists - they should be dynamic, empowering movers of student will.

Amazing teachers will be those who cast aside their preconceived notions of what teaching is and bravely move towards what it needs to be. If students could vote and rate their teachers with pay scale and placement implications - this conversation would be far more pressing to those who need it.

Future teachers may as well be trained in a classroom setting with students as their advisors - who better to make the training relevant and efficient than those digital natives fully living in the 21st century world.

Teachers need to navigate, supervise, counsel, question, facilitate, guide and learn themselves - that is what teaching is and should be.

Any questions about how to begin and where to start should be directed at those that matter - the students you "teach."

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Recorded on iPhone and posted with VR+ Lite.
http://vr.shapeservices.com

Rethinking the 3 Rs

Reading-Writing-Arithmetic. Three words that conceptualized the model of education in North America for some time. In many ways, we have outlasted and outpaced these primitive notions of an education.

All things considered, learning is really about two things: processing and communicating.

We access information and we make a decision about it.

We are faced with a decision and we take action on it.

We are critical of something and we reflect on it.

We are interested in something and we choose to learn about it.

Learning is not able to be contained within three boxes. Its box surrounds all the boxes we can fathom.

As a species bent on development and progress, we have an inherent need to learn. While much of that learning is difficult to isolate and identify - make no mistake that our learning shapes the people we are and the pathways we choose.

Our students are driven by self-motivated goals. Our imperative is to align their goals with those identified by our education system. Curriculum expectations supply the framework, teachers supply to vehicle decisions. Students will supply the energy and labour, but only if they find value in the product, the presenter or perhaps even the bigger picture.

Should we choose to follow the paths of the past - we may inspire students to mirror the actions of the past. In a society faced with the issues of today, we will need new perspectives and brave actions. These fundamental shifts in the future of our societal decision-making may even begin with one mind-blowing classroom lesson...will it be yours?