Why teachers and teaching will disappear?
Yesterday I was chilling out in a park.
There were kids roller skating, playing, people walking dogs. Just the usual!
My attention was captured by two teens. One of them was dancing, (and she was good, great movements, flowing choreography) the other one was filming her. The “camera girl” did also very well.
The girl with the camera was moving around, changing angels, while the dancer was moving graciously…they were broadcasting to the world and needed nothing that we a few years ago had to do to get the world’s attention.
Once we believed that dancers need to go to dancing schools and must earn the right to be on the stage and present their art. They were limited to see only the best artist who came to their town or they could watch celebrities on TV.
Today they can take masterclasses online, anytime, anywhere!
Not many years ago, you need to get a studio, filming crew to do all that what these girls did yesterday.
They just needed a phone and resources that are free on the internet.
Who teaches them how to do it?
They use RESOURCES!
They learn to do and then shared their knowledge with the world by pressing one button.
They just created a new resource! Another teen will watch, do and will be inspired to make their own dance, music, video or anything and will do the same by sharing with the world.
By watching them, confirmed again what we all knew: teachers are teaching the next generation that is now an outdated thing that we keep doing the same improvements that make no actual difference to the kids, instead of admitting: we are done!
So I continued observing them.
They recorded, then watch together, did it over again and again until they got the results they were looking for and left happy and smiling the park.
They looked accomplished, happy ready for the next thing to do!
Who taught them to do all these?
How to dance, film, upload, share and most of all how to make the choices?
They used the available resources that we all have in the palm of our hands.
They did use free and open source projects, to help create something that made them feel accomplished and happy.
I can hear you asking:
“Hey, are you saying we do not need teachers, schools anymore? We just have to buy a phone and unlimited internet access to our kids and let them learn by themselves?”
No, all I am saying is that we need to step back and observe the world. Observe our kids what they are capable to do, and to understand why they get bored and cannot engage with what we are teaching them.
So will teaching and teachers disappear?
Yes! They already are.
There is a high demand for teachers worldwide. It seems that no one wants to take this job anymore.
Why?
I am a member of many teachers group on the internet and most of these groups are not anymore about exchanging ideas and finding solutions on how to teach, but about asking for desperate help how to discipline, protect your self and mostly a place to rant about what just happened to you while you were trying to teach. Trust me, reading the posts you will be surprised and you will also ask yourself the question: is it worth it to be a teacher these days?
Well, there are teachers who say it is and there are the ones who quit.
There are teachers who show up every morning and start doing the same things that they always do, even though they know that results will not follow. They are following and respecting the system, they are heroes and end up going home most of the days frustrated, tired and in tears. They feel un-respected, rejected, underpaid.
There are teachers who are trying out new ways, introducing new structures. using technology, fighting the boredom until they get tired and if they do not find support in the educational system and from students and parents…sooner or later they give up and just go into survival mode, hoping that one day soon they can find a better job, a miracle will happen…they will be able to retire…
There are teachers who create new materials, there are teachers who blog and share their methods and other teachers seek their resources and they all together hope that they just discovered the magical tools that will engage the students and they will want to learn.
There are thousands of teachers working for companies that are developing the best next resource for teaching maths, computer science, reading, music and so on. And teachers buy into it, spending hundreds if not thousands of their currency. hoping that by implementing these new programs, magic will happen and students will engage and learning will happen.
Schools and schools districts buy into many of programs that are saying that they have the magic formula to increase student engagement and deliver measurable results in the students academic results.
There are times when all the talk is about “the must” of introducing technology in schools, and there are times when all the talk is about limiting the use of technology and going back to teaching techniques that in the past has been proven to be useful and will bring results.
Altogether, today the education process seems to be a struggle between frustrated and scared teachers, agonizing angry and bored students and companies that offer the next magical solution to fix all these above and disoriented parents!
Many of the teachers go and use online programs and games, trying to trick their students into learning and trying to engage them.
Parents are moving their kids from school to school, as they hope to find the best place to educate their kids. They pay for private tutoring on and offline, hoping to add some extra help that will give more knowledge to their kids.
In the middle of all this madness, kids feel ignored and they will do whatever it takes to get attention. Some of them will find their own resources, some of them will get lost in the process and become a problem for society.
Teachers and teaching already disappeared.
Teachers are not anymore the respected educators and teaching becomes a struggle on how to teach anything to students.
Nothing is like use to be, any more and no matter what, it will never be the same!
And that is good!
So what is next?
How can we change the way we teach, how can we train and support the millions of teachers to teach and get results and students to be engaged and reinstall the trust of parents that their kids get the best academic education and will be successful in their life?
The only way is to start observing how students want to learn and support the process.
Letting educators walk from the front of the classroom to the back of the classroom.
Letting educators stop telling and demonstrating and better asking and facilitating the process of learning.
Letting educators not making choices on how to teach what methods to use but allowing the responsibility of choosing to the students.
Asking educators to understand they are not anymore the only source to learn from, but they are the guides that have to secure the path for students into the future.
Letting educators become facilitators of the resources.
Asking educators that instead of pointing out what students need to learn and how to do it, become observers of what students want to learn and how they do it.
Why?
Because students of today are born into a world of information and knowledge. Most of them have access to all the resources no matter what they want to know about!
Most of the toddlers are educating themselves on YouTube every day!
They search, watch what they are interested in, and if they are done they just flip over to the next one.
They have their own resources. They only have to make decisions and choices.
The future education is about resources and how to find the best and most effective resources to achieve their individual results.
Educators have to become RESOURCE FACILITATORS, guiding the learning supporting the student's choices, focusing on the results and not on the process.
Engage and support students to use resources and most of all to create resources.
Successful companies today are successful because they are open source.
See Baidu’s Projects and what they achieved by being an open source company in the last years!
So what is open source?
Open source development is the only way for education, where students can develop further a world of knowledge and solution, based on available resources and not learning things that make no sense for them developed by people born in the agricultural or industrial era when resources were limited to teachers and books in the library, and what your parents shared with you.
Will this work for education?
Well, what we are doing today is obviously not. So what do we have to lose?
Just imagine if yesterday I would stand up and walk over the girls and tell them that it is all wrong as there is no teacher around and they should not do this by themselves and try to explain how it use to be in “my days”!
Because when we try teaching them anything today, we actually are just telling them how it was “back in our days”!
Instead of stepping in just step back, and observe, guide and learn.
We are not anymore the only source, but we are the one responsible for the sources that our kids and students use. We are responsible to FACILITATE THE PROCESS and not to CREATE THE PROCESS!
Let me know your thoughts!
Wanna have access to more helpful guides?
Join our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/uUUHsUA
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ZeduHow
Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh1mq_ZF1AQqwPDfCGH5BKw?view_as=subscriber
Support ZeduHow on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ZeduHow
