Heraclitus the Greek philosopher said, “The only thing that is constant is change”.  In fairness, I heard it first when Bon Jovi said “The more things change the more they stay the same”. However the one place that stays the same and even resists change seems to be school. When I say school I don’t mean education.

Being educated and getting an education has changed. Our needs have changed as learners. Our way of learning has changed. Society’s expectation for learners has changed. Teachers are no longer the holders of all information because kids of every age can Google every fact they want to know. Teachers have needed to reinvent themselves and their role in learning.

On top of all that, this isn’t the information age. It’s the misinformation age. There is a lot of garbage on the internet – that place we can Google our facts. Learners (all of us) need to learn how to first find and then evaluate the desired information. Learners need to critically think and question their world. We all need to learn how to problem solve, work with others, communicate and learn from our mistakes.

I was at a conference this weekend called DisruptEd – coming together to talk about how to do school differently. The keynote speaker, David Helfland from Quest University in Squamish said, “A university education today is excellent preparation for a job in the 19^th century”. He also said, “The purpose of teaching is not to transfer content but to teach the habits of the mind.” This university is rethinking what “school” looks like in order to provide the best education for students in the 21 Century.

At this conference many of us presented about pockets of innovation in the province – ways we are doing school differently. However, by and large, school looks the same now as it did 100 years ago. Individual classrooms, filled with students of the same age being presented with the same curriculum. Almost everything else in society has changed in the last 100 years due to technology…except school. Technology really hasn’t changed schools. Smart boards have largely replaced blackboards, and there are computer labs but those tools are mostly used to do the same thing as textbooks and encyclopedias.

One presenter said the reason the school system has not changed is that there is a social contract. Society expects school to look this way and it’s our job to keep our end of the contract. I’m not so sure that is our job.

Here’s the thing…

I think parents are smarter than they are given credit for. For the past 6 years as a teacher I did school differently and the parents of those kids are some of my biggest supporters and advocates. They didn’t necessarily start out as fans, but our social contract included trust and respect. The parents of my students trusted that I have spent a great deal of time researching and thinking about teaching and learning, and I respected them enough to explain my thinking.  I explained the “why” behind the choices I made in my classroom, they were able to understand and even embrace the different way we did things. They could see their children being engaged in and excited about learning. Their kids were also told the reasons behind everything we did in our class and those kids felt empowered. They had choice, they were free to challenge and question and own their learning.

I appreciate that change can be scary – I mean these are our children we are talking about. I think not changing is scarier. Change is a universal constant according to Heraclitus and Bon Jovi, so if everything but “school” is changing, where does that leave us? There has never been a more exciting time to be in education. I’m excited about the possibilities.

Stacy