Editorial

Reading over my Twitter feed last week my eye was drawn to a book title ‘Why Don’t Students Like School? The basic premise of this book is ‘does the current model of schooling adequately prepare our students to deal with life in a fast-paced, unpredictable world?’ This question is addressed by a cognitive scientist who looks at how the mind works and what it means for the classroom.

Certainly, there can be no argument that change is now a constant feature of the world in which we live. Debating the merits of how schools are adapting in an ever-changing paradigm is healthy as long as the goal is to seek some form of consensus with which to move forward as opposed to simply selling one’s own political point of view.

From my perspective, schools are evolving to meet the challenges of the 21st century, never more so now given the past three years of unpredictability. Teaching is no longer about simply preserving the status quo, unless this is known to be working well. It is about possibility thinking, and being ready to explore new ways of doing things that might have better outcomes for students.

While I could write about how schools are changing to meet the challenges of 21st century learning, I thought I should instead concentrate on those key tenets of teaching that I hope will never change.

1) Great teachers will always share what they know, but understand that they are not the focus. The question is not, “what am I going to do today?” but “what are my students going to do today?” Our job as educators is not just to stand up in front of students and show them how smart we are. Rather, our job is to help students discover how smart they can become.

2) The difference between a good teacher and a great teacher isn’t their subject expertise, but their passions for teaching and learning. 3) Connection between student and teacher is essential to learning. Great teachers have a genuine interest in helping their students succeed.

4) Feedback is the breakfast of champions, teachers, and students. Great teachers find out what their students need to know and have a range of ways helping them learn it.

5) Great teachers expect every student can learn. They recognise that success is not fixed or pre-determined. It is vital we maintain the high expectation that every student can learn.

6) It is important that students see what they are learning as relevant. Wherever possible, we need to connect what the students are learning to the real world, and it helps them do that if we can explain why they need to know it. Effective teachers understand that learning is about exploring the unknown and building from what the student already knows and understands.

If teachers live by these basic tenets, we can be assured that there will be the requisite combination of clarity, consistency and concern in every classroom that cannot but help to better prepare our students to be more resourceful, reflective and resilient as we move deeper into the 21st century.