Is Our Future Worth the Time?

Photo by Emile Guillemot on Unsplash

We have just survived several horrific years.  We faced trials, frustrations, and agony.  Yet, despite despair and fear, we embraced creativity and innovation.  Scientists collaborated to create multiple vaccines within less than a year.  This kind of speed is extraordinary; most vaccines take years to develop and test.  

Imagine if educators began to collaborate and innovate on this level.  Imagine what we could create.  Imagine how education could transform.  Imagine where it would lead us.

Teaching, itself, can be a very lonely profession.  Unless you have collaboration time built into your schedule, finding time to connect with other educators is tricky.  Our faculty lounges become the hot spot for conversation, but it is often a place to unload frustration or decompress rather than connect and dream.  

Team and department meetings are often crammed with logistical decisions and details.  What resources should we use? How will we approach this divisive incident in society?  What is the budget?  We are rarely provided the opportunity to truly collaborate, create, or innovate together.  

Supporting teachers’ efforts to reimagine teaching should be schools’ number one priority right now.  Reflecting together and assessing the pandemic’s impact on our individual classrooms is key to what our next steps should be.  Offering professional days with no assigned tasks other than to collaborate and reimagine education would be extremely beneficial.  

What have we learned?  Clearly, we know in-person learning is crucial for some students.  Yet returning to “normal” is not effective after years of using multiple technology platforms and tools.

What are students’ needs now?  Students we teach currently are not the same students pre-pandemic.  Their brains are wired differently, and their experiences are incompatible with our system of learning.

Where do we go from here?  This is the ultimate question.  One that many educators are desperate to consider.  Building a framework centered around creativity, innovation, and collaboration seems to be the ideal plan.

In order to start the process, teachers need time. Time to honestly and openly question, wonder, and plan. Time to experiment. Time to collaborate. Time to innovate.

Allot the time. Isn’t our future worth it?