There’s a great episode of How I Met Your Mother, where Marshall who always dreamed of being an environmental lawyer tells his wife that he actually likes his job as a corporate lawyer. They are attending an event in the Natural History Museum and she sees the College Marshall and sees that he is extinct.
It’s powerful to think about really in the midst of heated discussions about what teachers and schools of the future will look like.
If we observe the world that surrounds us, we see dogs that are shedding their fur for the coming summer months and we see birds making their nests, but we look inside our classrooms and we see very little evidence that the seasons are changing and time is moving forward.
I can’t tell you how many conversations about technology, I have had with teachers whose first response is, “But what about all the stuff that I have used for years?”
The first reaction is centered around stuff, not students. Now I do understand that change is hard and I understand that the more years of teaching you accumulate, the more you hope that it gets a little easier to manage and I respect so much the teachers that have given their lives to teaching, but when you give your life to something, you give it every day and that means changing.
So what will the teacher of the future look like?
Even though Robin was probably referring to me as an “annoying and hyperbolic” edtech evangelical, we both agree that “The best technological innovations really are transforming the way kids learn and the way schools are organized.” That’s the difference between edtech layered on top of how we’ve always done school and real blended learning.
For me, the teacher of the future will look like my seminary classes, eclectic in age, gender, race and experiences, but united in the belief that they can change the world.