Creating a "New Story" of Education

What is the role of a teacher in today’s world? 

Everyone has their own opinion on how a teacher should manage their classroom to create an environment that encourages optimal learning. The variations within these perspectives are what make defining the goal of education so difficult, especially for students aspiring to be teachers one day like myself. 

Everyone goes through schooling and it is those personal experiences in the classroom, through various cultural lenses, that shape how people believe teaching should be done. Schools, for the most part, are still structured to fit the OLD STORY (or traditional model) of education. Teachers are seen as experts and students are expected to be passive learners. School is about accountability and preparing these students to deal with “the real world.”

But how can students learn what they need to be prepared for the future if they are unable to fully engage in classroom learning? 

These OLD STORY values in an ever-changing world are hard to maintain. NEW STORY principles that are beginning to come into the teaching scene should be integrated with OLD STORY practices. I believe that with this integration it is possible to hold schools and teachers to our society’s high level of accountability AND still be able to allow students to construct their own knowledge and understanding of what they believe they need to function in “the real world.”

Technology seems to be a great way that this can be achieved in the classroom. Everywhere you look, people are connected through technology. Whether they are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. people are sharing their lives and ideas through this technological connection.

If the world has become so connected because of technology, then why shouldn’t students use this connection to enhance their learning? 

Students today have grown up with access to technology that their teachers and parents never experienced while in school and use it every day. This everyday use of new age technology is exactly why it should be embedded within student learning. 

As a student coming into the teaching profession I can see how implementing technology into the classroom might be a daunting task. Although we have grown up with technology, we didn’t have it implemented into the classrooms to the same extent as it is today. We had our computer labs and sometimes our teachers would let us listen to our iPods while working. For the most part however, you could see that some teachers feared technology as being too distracting in a classroom setting, especially when you know you and your friends were on Facebook half of the time anyways.

When I did one of my placements in an elementary school with a 7/8 class, I was surprised to see that students had ready access to iPads in the classroom. That was not something that I had access to while in school and I found it amazing that items like iPads could be incorporated into everyday school life. Furthermore, students were connected to each other through twitter, tweeting reflections on their lessons and any local or world issues that they found interesting.

Since I did not use this type of technology while I was in school, it never occurred to me that technology could be used in a school setting in this way. It is because of this that I can see why implementing technology into classrooms might not be as readily embraced, especially since teachers might not know as much about technology as their students. 

The ability of the students I observed to use this technology responsibly and remain focused on their learning however, make it clear that there is a great amount of potential in the possibilities that NEW STORY practices can bring into a classroom to supplement the OLD STORY values that are still held today. 

Stories, whether they are educational or not, are always changing. As described in lecture, the present story is one that is part OLD STORY but also one that anticipates the future. With this anticipation of the future and the desire of educators to implement NEW STORY practices, it is clear that the “New Story” of education is already in the making and constantly being revised. This ever-changing nature of the educational story is what can inspire positive changes in engaging students today.

“Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.” – Plato