Do One Thing Well
Although I’m yet to treat myself to a pair of the best jeans in the world, Hiut Denim’s mantra and core values live with me every day: Do One Thing Well. They make exceedingly good jeans, but through their newsletter and blog they also share all the stuff that goes into making exceedingly good jeans: the creative process, the design work, the thinking.
Teachers in 2020 were able to do one thing well. That’s the resounding opportunity popping out of 500 data points gathered in preparation for the Live Curious festival. Just for starters:
“The pandemic has allowed everyone to be more flexible with their curriculum. The pacing has slowed down to a comfortable stride.”
“It’s given the opportunity to focus on what is important, defining the most powerful content that students need to succeed (and leaving out the rest).”
“The accessibility to online resources has made education more dynamic. In the regular class, everything changes, and there is too much to be done. Instead, now, I’m able to make focussed videos that the students watch in their own time.”
“We’ve created such a stronger connection with parents in their role as parent-teachers.”
“It has forced schools to think deeply about what’s truly worth learning.”
“But when we start heading ‘back to normal’, I am afraid that I will forget to focus on what is most important, and the pressure to revamp curriculum will be lost. I am afraid that the autonomy, independence, organisation and responsibility skills that kids have acquired could be lost.”
How might we ensure that a return to school buildings doesn’t mark a return to all the problems schooling brought with it years ago? The data we’ve gathered shows us some of the problems or challenges faced in the past year, too. But how many of these stem from issues in traditional schooling that we might tackle alongside the introduction of some of those silver linings?
- Does student disengagement come from being “sat in from of Zoom all day” or disengagement from monotonous same-y tasks, one after the other? Does it come from not having control of their time at all?
- Do students really not know how to use Zoom, and speak one at a time, or are they bored and showing it in the subtle ways they always have done, amplified by the ultra close-up pixilation of every move?
- Do we feel the need to run a timetable of online learning because we don’t trust students to take ownership of meaningful projects, or because we’ve not even prepared them with sufficient skills to manage that?
- Do we feel a lack of connection to students over a Zoom session because technology is still largely used to transmit Googleable thinking, from teacher to student or student to teacher?
Unless we seize the silver lining opportunities with which this year presents us, while also testing the assumptions behind the problems and angst this year has brought to the boil, we’re at risk of both antagonising those who have never worked so hard for their students while also failing to make any significant change in the way school is done to young people.
Ewan McIntosh leads Silver Linings from Our Toughest Year at the free Live Curious festival, February, 2021.
