The Traditional "Eight-Hours in a Classroom" Day Comes To an End

Schooling Trends are Changing. 

The biggest decision a parent can make is deciding how and where their child will grow up. Traveling the nation with a RV full of kids, teaching them along the way, is a most acceptable way to raise a family. Hauling kids to swim practice at seven in the morning and not seeing them all day long until they are done with their tutor at 5pm is also an acceptable way. Every person has some type of an educational background, and we all have different skill sets to show for it. 

Education is inherently one of the most important aspects to take into consideration, options abound. From a teacher and mother’s perspective, homeschooling is wholesome and natural, a family-like setting in which the parent has much control. Public school uses standardized methods with tons of social diversity. It is no secret that a benefit of public school is that the communal social aspect is nonpareil. 

It seems as though the future of education is heading towards a direction of combining both the holistic wellness of homeschooling with the competent elements of public education. Educational Technology is making leaps in the area of individualized training while also helping to assess deficiencies in student learning. Artificial Intelligence is here to stay, opening new doors for teachers and students alike.

However, in the midst of all this grandeur, lest we not forget about the traditional schoolhouse method of pencil and textbook? Or how about the beauty of the Dewey Decimal system and stumbling upon unexpected book titles on library shelves, while researching for a project? There are old ways that are proficient for a reason, so we must not go entirely without. Moderation is key. 

Here are some examples of widely-accepted learning environments which are gaining global popularity:

1. Hybrid learning - Where some students attend class in-person, while others join the class remotely.

2. Blended learning - Where all students receive a mixture of in-person and virtual/ remote instruction.

3. Flipped classroom - Where students learn knowledge (e.g. reading, videos) at home and work on live problem-solving during class (a form of blended learning). 

4. Hyflex learning - Where students are given choice in how they participate in hybrid or blended learning modes.

After reading through Google’s Future of Education proposition, three elements stood out the most: Making learning personal, redesigning the learning space, and elevating the teacher. 

Here are some key quotes from the essay: 

Quote 1: “Let’s give students opportunities to not just learn inside of the classroom, but make the world their learning platform — classrooms without borders. By having the opportunity to learn outside, we can explore the idea of what learning in urban spaces can look like and embed things that are culturally relevant to them to help make students both interested in their environment and their studies at the same time.”

Outdoor school or recreational education is absolutely imperative to understand the world around us. Many rural area schools go on daily hikes, do lessons outside, or have extra daily recesses when the weather is nice so that children can enjoy the nature and fresh air. Balancing this time away from concrete buildings can be calming and focusing for students. 

Quote 2: “Education should be personal … learning is a social process. The face-to-face learning space needs to be reinvented to enable the optimal use of time together, to collaborate in the fullest possible sense.”

Face-to-face learning is essential to thrive. The synopsis here is that instead of having a standard class setting with a lecture involved, that students work on project-based learning and collaboration instead, leaving the data and information to be read outside of school.

Quote 3: “As the educational landscape changes, teachers shift from being ‘gatekeepers of knowledge’ to ‘choreographers of learning.’ The biggest game changer would be to actually allow teachers and students to choose what kind of information, what kind of solutions, what kind of edtech they want to use, based on what motivates them. I think that could help generate renewed enthusiasm around education.”

This idea is great for those educators who would truly implement it. However, some teachers would be absolutely lost without some form of direction in curriculum execution, especially novices. Every school, private or not, has some type of communal method that is used in pedagogy in part because children love routine, and they find comfort in knowing what to expect. Nonetheless, teachers are good at planning and implementation overall, and no one teacher will ever teach a curriculum the exact same as another. Like the famous Forrest Gump saying goes, “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get” - Well, the same can be said for teachers.

Quote 4: “The power of technology in education [is a major force shaping it], changing learning experiences, changing the role and nature of educators - your work in knowledge transmission is no longer that relevant. You have to instead become a great coach, a great mentor, a social worker, and career advisor.”

The higher the grade level the student is at, the more independent and capable he is of grasping a concept and doing work independently. Sitting back and coaching a second grader is not going to work so well. As a teacher, we are already great coaches, mentors, social workers, advisors, therapists, byproxy parents, counselor, you name it. However, the one thing we are proud of is the fact that we “transmit knowledge.” Transmitting knowledge from human to human is the most ancient and innate act we can do. Without this skill, we wouldn’t have survived this long. Yes, technology is a great supplemental for “giving teachers more time.” However, cutting out educators entirely in the transmission of knowledge defeats the entire purpose of teaching. 

                                   Hannah French, Outdoor Learning Hero

Reference:

https://edu.google.com/intl/ALL_us/future-of-education/