Teach42

John Pederson posted some things that have really got me thinking in his article,
The Flattening of Teaching

What we fail to fully realize as “teachers” is that fact that we are in the “learning” business. Think about your own personal “learning”. The “who, what, when, where, how, and why” of our own learning is a very different thing than what happens in “teaching”. Who am I learning with and from? What am I learning? How am I learning? Why am I learning? When am I learning? Where am I learning?

The quicker we can unlearn that we are in the teaching business and realize that we are in the learning business, the better we will be at adapting to the changes that are happening around us. To stay focused on teaching is like the railroads striving to be the best in the rail business. To pull from Friedman’s “flattening” analogy, technology will flatten “teaching” in the education system just as it flattened “rail” in the transportation system. It won’t go away…it will just be very different.

I had an interview yesterday and this idea came up in a way. We were talking about teaching philosophy, and just how much technology has changed the classroom. In many ways schools are very different than they were twenty years ago. However in many other ways, they are exactly the same. It’s like the old time machine question. If a teacher from 100 years ago could hop in a time machine and go to a typical classroom in a school today, would they feel uncomfortable? Or would they be able to just step right in and be right at home? I get the feeling the latter is true. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

It’s pretty common to hear people say that technology doesn’t really change anything. Education is still education. While that may be true, technology has changed the world that these students are growing up in. And education does need to respond to these changes. Technology is not changing education, technology is changing the world community and education needs to reflect these changes.

We live in a world where there is an infinite amount of information at our fingertips. Within minutes, I can find instructions to accomplish nearly any task that a person could think of. It’s freely available. Experts are in abundance. Instead of relying on a single person for a complete answer, I can find 50 answers to my questions and pick and choose amongst them. 50 years ago, people did not have that luxury or that problem. The world is becoming fundamentally different.

Our students need to be prepared to be successful in that world (not just financially, Jeff, I know what you’re thinking!). I’m not just talking about in college, in high school, or even in middle school. As early as kindergarten, students need to be challenged, they need to learn to think. The emphasis needs to be on problem solving, on learning how to learn something, on working collaboratively.

I can’t wait to return to the classroom.

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