True Teachers NEVER Stop Learning.... ISTE 2018

I am sitting among the throngs of ISTE attendees (about 18,000 from 83 different countries was the last count I heard). I have voraciously taken in perspectives, information and materials. I have energetically attended all sessions and speeches I could physically make it to and in my happy, exhaustion I am trying to make sense of everything I have heard, learned and felt over the last 4 days.

I feel alone a lot of the time in my perspective and my belief in where education should be headed (or that it should be headed in any direction at all). This conference made me feel buoyant with support from fellow teachers, administrators, school districts and companies that I am in fact onto something, that the future is in front of us everyday that we teach and tomorrow is too late to be thinking about how to prepare them. We need to be thinking and preparing NOW.

So many of us grew up in a time of technical explosion and I guarantee that we almost all have smart phones, connected home media systems and smarter and smarter cars. We know that the future holds technology and solutions to real, world affecting problems that we can't even imagine yet. How do we teach students to be ready for tackle those problems of use those products if we ourselves are not able to imagine what they are? The answer is not to hope for the best or to pass it off to the next higher ed institution. Its to shift our priority from learning fact-based information to learning problem solving strategies that naturally allow us to provide students with information.

I know, I know we all have tests to prepare our students for that are undoubtedly important to people but I 110% believe that many of the most important future qualities of student are not necessarily quantifiable and are definitely not captured by the results of a test (ability to innovate, persevere, fail, be creative, collaborate, communicate and critically think, to name a few). Whoa! I know thats an unpopular stance but we really need to start doing some soul searching about our service to those students in front of us. Are we really preparing them to tackle problems they might encounter in life or are we preparing them to test well? I know we have obligations as public school teachers and I am not suggesting a coup against our district or state education department but I AM suggesting that we start small- allow students to work on a passion project each year, set up lessons with design process as an outline, use a new technology (I have plenty I could help you with), challenge yourself to use another project to teach content and challenge yourself to "get out of the way" and allow the students to guide the learning. START SOMEWHERE. See how it feels, reflect, adjust and build on what you have learned from the experience.

No, I am not out of my mind. I know that students aren't going to be ready to use all the materials you give them or self-manage their own learning when you start but how do we expect students to ever be able to do these things if we don't provide them with the time and space to try and fail SAFELY? We are there to support them when they aren't ready and to cheer them on when they succeed. It won't always work but they need us to try. Education like every other field is every changing, we need to change with it. The world is changing at a break neck pace and if our goal as educators is to prepare students to be successful and productive members of society, then our preparation needs to follow along with that change to give them any kind of hope.

Going into my 3rd year of my STEAM/ MakerSpace program I feel like I have really gotten the hang of it. Instead of feeling like I can sit back and relax, I feel like how can I build on what I have started? How can add new products? Expose students to more technology? Get more teachers involved to collaborate with me? Take my space and its mindset/ approach to another school (or schools)? Get community members into the school to show the students what some possible careers they could have?

Its great that I have a model for myself, a curriculum written and materials collected but I fear more than anything the comfort zone that says, "great, I have it all figured out and now I don't have anything else I need to do." I want to always bring new ideas back to my kids, show them the newest tech and how it can used based on what they have already learned and meet people who can inspire and push my practice and my thinking forward even further... Educators are and should be credentialed students who never stop learning themselves.