A Matter of Perspective: Progressive Education

It seems that with each passing day, the call for educational transformation intensifies. Educators, administrators, teacher-celebrities, politicians, parents, and students continually voice their desire for improvement from the micro to the macro-levels of instruction and classroom experience. It is easy to identify the hurdles that prevent the rapid refashioning of education (which can make it even more difficult to choose to see the positive transformations that are currently taking place right in front of us).

Go with what you know.

One of the reasons we have not seen a more significant change in education is the risk of taking on the "unknown." For almost two decades, an individual who enters the field of education has had the practice of teaching modeled and delivered in a relatively specific way. In other words, our current teachers are simply replicating how they were taught. New disruptive, innovative teaching practices have not been modeled nor demonstrated to the level that our teachers have experienced traditional methods. These newer methods have been merely spoken about to the majority of the teaching workforce, therefore they remain unfamiliar.

The best teacher I ever had was my ninth grade geometry teacher, Ms. Cox. She had extremely high expectations, gave lots of homework, and didn't put up with my nonsense. She was also a typical traditional teacher with desks in rows, we worked from the textbook, and she gave her learners a very teacher-centered experience. So naturally, when I was a first-year teacher, I reverted to some of those practices even though I had been trained at length on the importance of 21st-century learning.

Time: Always the Enemy

Another reason education falls behind when it comes to change is that teaching is an extremely challenging job. The expectations and demands of the job have significantly changed over the years. A vast number of responsibilities slowly eat away a teacher's capacity that often times, leaves very little for that teacher to truly invest in changing instructional practices. It is not outlandish to say that if teachers could focus solely on teaching and the development of those skills, education would see a significant boost in its implementation of innovative teaching practices. Executing the types of transformations we all want to see in education will take vast amounts of strategic planning and hard work. At the beginning of the school year, many are ready for that challenge. But around October, after those first benchmark results come back, that ambition is quickly abandoned and we are right back to our same habitual practices.

A Matter of Perspective

One last reason that education seems to stay the same is that we simply refuse to see that it is not: education is indeed progressing. Educators are idealists; we all have visions of what we think the perfect classroom should be. We are also easily discouraged. For example, your test scores are never high enough, or your evaluation had too many "proficients" and not enough "advanced." It is easy to be preoccupied with what is not and completely miss what is. Also, educators are always moving on to the next unit, the next school year, the next district initiative and we have got to stop and reflect from time to time.

Our desire for innovative classroom utopia often hinders us from seeing the positive: education is indeed progressing.

The reality is that students are doing incredible things in today's classrooms.

Incredible.

Fifth graders can produce multimedia documentaries using green screen. Elementary classes are Skyping with other students in Japan. High schoolers are communicating with nonprofits and contributing to their efforts to supply sustainable clean water sources to villages in Malawi. There are also insanely innovative STEM programs like Destination Imagination and First LEGO League where students apply their learning in revolutionary ways. Students are now communicating their learned knowledge in ways never before seen in the classroom. Furthermore, they are able to connect with and apply their learning in authentic, impactful ways. When our everyday experiences do not fully align with our idealistic vision, it is easy to become discouraged and feel that we aren't doing enough. Could we be doing better? Yes. Do we need to continue to push for innovation? Yes. But despite the challenges that teachers are facing, education is indeed progressing.