How Does Education Look Now?

Take a nice long look at the picture above and pick out five things that you find intriguing. The five that I noticed were:

1. Every student is dressed up

2. Every student appears to be captivated by the instructor at the front of the room and is hanging on his every word.

3. Every student seems to be prepared because they have their books on their desks.

4. Even with a wall full of windows, you don't see anyone daydreaming and staring outside because they are all engaged in the lesson.

5. There is one student at the back of the room who appears to be looking right at the camera and is not engaged in the lesson.

Why is this image important? Well, for a lot of people outside of education, this is HOW school looks in their head. Regardless of when they went to school, this is the image that comes to mind when the topic of education comes up. Inevitably, the students and teachers will most likely change and take on the style of decade they were in school, but the same classroom setup will still be the same. The problem with this picture is that this is NOT how education should look. This is NOT how our students learn. This is NOT the way the world works today. This IS, however, what a lot of people think school is all about.

My friends and colleagues Sam Stecher and Mark Johnson, who run a consulting business called Mission Monday, recently published a podcast entitled What We Wish Parents Knew in which they shared what they wished the parents of their schools knew that would help their schools as well as their students be more successful in the 21st Century. Give it a listen.

After listening to this, these are the four things that I wish people would know about school and how we are trying to help students be successful in the 21st Century.

• The teacher is no longer at the center of the classroom and is no longer the keeper of information. Students can find information that was once only known by the teacher in a matter of seconds on the internet. Students can now defend or refute what a teacher is saying by seeking out more information in a virtual environment. The teacher in today's classroom is no longer the "sage on the stage" as the picture above indicates. In a student centered classroom, the teacher learns alongside the student and helps them make the information that is available to them applicable to the real world setting. This is no small task and requires a lot of thinking on the fly. Instead of planning 1 lesson for 25-30 students, a teacher must now plan lessons that will reach all individuals. This is tremendously time consuming.
• Parent and teacher partnerships and communication are CRITICAL if we want our students to be successful. Bad mouthing one another and blaming each other for why students aren't achieving at higher levels is creating a lose-lose situation for all parties. If the lines of communication are not open between parents and teachers, the students lose out. Let's face it, we all have our own educational experiences and our own personal knowledge of how school went for US. We need to let these experiences go and let our students develop their OWN unique school history instead of living out the history of others. This can happen by teachers and parents working collaboratively with one another.
• Human beings are social by nature. The world of work that our students have in front of them will require that they be able to collaborate with one another effectively. They will be judged on producing outcomes, not how well they can sit still for 50-90 and listen to someone talking. This type of education looks a lot different than what is presented in the picture above. This type of education involves classrooms where students talk to one another frequently, apply the knowledge they have learned in innovative ways, and work alongside teachers to determine how the knowledge they have gained is applicable to the real world.
• Schools are about college AND career readiness. The two are not mutually exclusive. The skills needed for students to be successful in a career are the same skills that will help them be successful in college. We are doing a disservice to our students if we are teaching them that the two require different skill sets. With that being said, ALL students can learn in a rigorous classroom environment.