The Future Teacher

I think a lot about the role of the teacher and how it really doesn't match up well to the needs of students or the structure of the ideal school. Teachers are asked to do so many different things with such diverse skill requirements that every teacher is weak in at least one critical area, even if he or she is amazing in other areas.

Think about it---if a teacher is a great lecturer, we expect her to also be great at data tracking. If he's great at lesson plan writing, he also has be great at one-to-one tutoring. If she's amazing with building fair and accurate assessments, she also has to be great at talking to parents.

Is this really realistic, let alone ideal?

With technology, regulations and school practices changing, I see the role of the teacher shifting. For this change to benefit teacher and students, we, as teachers, need to know what we want our profession to look like. What should a teacher's job be? I would argue that in the future school a teacher has 3 primary responsibilities:

·      Learning resource curator

·      Class captain

·      Student (and parent) advisor

I arrive here by asking the question: what can the teacher, and only the teacher, do?

Answer: The teacher is the interface between students and their learning objectives.

Not the answer: build resources from scratch, hands on skill building or information delivery, write and grade assessments or design and manage data trackers.

Why?

Because books, videos, adaptive learning software, experts and classmates can all be the source of information.

Because only the student himself can do practice required to increase skills.

Because professional designers, scientists, developers, and writers can create lesson plans, games, assessments and curricula that are standards-aligned and proven to improve educational outcomes.

However:

ONLY the teacher can modify, curate and adapt resources to the unique needs of her specific school environment, especially on the fly.

ONLY the teacher can communicate to a class the importance of a learning objective and can coordinate a group's efforts to all achieve that objective.

Finally, ONLY the teacher can reliably intervene and support a student who is struggling emotionally when the adaptive software fails.

If my predictions are true, then the most important skills of the future educator will be the ability to curate and utilize a variety of learning resources, manage a class of self-paced learners, and personalize coaching to the individual student.

The teacher will never be obsolete, because these are the critical, human functions that only a teacher can provide, and a trained, professional teacher will always do it better than any other person.

Do you agree with my assessment? If you are a teacher, how much does your current role resemble that of my "future teacher"? Are you advocating for the necessary support and resources so that you can do these 3 jobs of the future teacher as well as possible? 

Fundraising and Budget Control

Essential school programs should not need to fundraise to meet core costs, and budgeting needs to be decentralized from the main administrative office.

Ok, some background: I spent over 10 hours last weekend (following 10-20 hours of planning) running two fundraisers to help get my students to Spain in February. We netted less than $800. While I'm confident we will eventually raise the $25,000 we need to substantially reduce costs for our travelers, the burden on me as the group leader is grueling, and attending to my teaching duties as well as our travel management agenda makes the phrase "work-life balance" sound like a sick joke. We have two students who are especially struggling to make payments. A firmer commitment from my school at the outset would make our fundraising stakes less dramatic and would signal a willingness to build the program for the benefit of future student travel. However, this type of commitment would place our school in an over-extended financial position, and since we depend on undependable state government and foundation grants, the launching of innovative programs require a sisyphean effort.

In the 21st century and our globalized world, international travel programming is a fundamental need, yet schools seldom treat this aspect of education as anything other than a teacher's pet project, approved of by the administration but not underwritten financially. Whether it is travel, athletics, arts or engineering, "extra-curricular" activities are frequently the glue that bind kids to school and the inspiration that leads kids to their careers, yet they are treated as peripheral window-dressing by bureaucrats and administrators.

In order to improve our schools, departments and programs need to have independent budgets much like departments within local, state and federal government. Staff should be held accountable for how that money is spent as they exercise this unusual autonomy. School administrators are often overwhelmed with approval requests for purchasing everything from class sets of books to dry erase markers and projector light bulbs. This is inefficient for management and employees, as teacher and program leaders wait needlessly for supplies and management drowns in emails and paperwork.

The move to bring business leaders into education has not shown clear evidence of improved student achievement; however, there is no doubt that some expertise in organizational and financial management is sorely needed. Our kids need cleats, costumes and plane tickets; and school leaders need better ways to focus on strategy as opposed to micro-management.