So much has changed in the past couple of years since the pandemic first shut down schools in March of 2020. Traditional schooling as we know it was halted overnight and a new way of delivering curricula was introduced. For most kids, remote learning included a combination of online meetings with their teacher and classmates, and individual work at home. Universities and colleges also turned to online learning. Most can agree that it was a struggle for all involved; teachers, students, and parents all felt the pressure to try to keep up with schoolwork while blindly trying to navigate a new way of learning/teaching that had been thrust upon them.
Since students and teachers have returned to the classrooms, learning and teaching have and will forever remain changed. Some parents have chosen to continue with their children’s online learning as they wait-out the pandemic. Many parents have turned to homeschooling their children as an alternative to sending them to school where they could potentially contract the Covid-19 virus, or to avoid the many restrictions set out by government and school divisions.
Any way you look at it, school has changed. The pandemic has laid bare several factors that have and have not been working in academics. It is now time for educators and policy makers to take what we have learned and apply it to how we want education to look like in the future.
One of the factors that mosts need to (and has already begun to) change is the skills needed to be successful in the areas of teaching and learning. In their report Future Work Skills 2020, the Institute for the Future for the University of Phoenix Research Institute names some of these skills including cross-cultural competency, new media literacy, and computational thinking. Cross-cultural competency refers to the “ability to operate in different cultural settings” (p.9). This skill is imperative as students are making online connections across the globe and need to have the abilities to not only communicate with people in other countries, but the knowledge and understanding to do so in a respectful and successful manner. Teachers too need to possess these skills as they welcome an increasingly more diverse student population to their schools. New media literacy means the “ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication” (p.10). Media is changing in the blink of an eye. Both educators and students alike need to have the capacity to navigate these new media and use them to their advantage. Computational thinking includes the “ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning” (p.10). Such a skill will be top of the list for future employers looking for job candidates. Honestly, I have a hard time understanding this concept myself – a skill that I must work on if I am to help harness it within my students.
Since the pandemic began, we’ve done a lot of looking back, yearning for a time when things were “normal”. It is now time to look ahead and get excited about where we will be going and start defining a new normal.
Hi Leah, sometimes I forget where we started a few years back, pre- covid. You’re so right, our teaching and education has changed and it is time as you say to continue moving forward. I enjoy the visual lay out on page 4 of the article you shared, Future Work Skill 2020. I enjoyed reading the point, (2020) “to “superstruct” means to create structures that go beyond the basic forms and processes with which we are familiar” (p.9). It’s always healthy to grow into new areas as well as maintain tools that personally ground us as educators. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Leah! I enjoyed your enthusiam as we move forward in 2022.
Great writing Leah, I agree many teachers have really been forced to change and embrace / accept technology as an important part of learning. This is exciting but I worry about the equity of access to technology for many families, but schooling has always struggled with equality of opportunity for all socioeconomic groups. I just hope this gap does not grow larger.
The pandemic has changed us all as humans, and especially our teaching practices. It wasn’t a gradual change, but a quick, sharp, challenging change that has been tricky to navigate at times. Teachers have been asked to literally change everything they’ve ever done (for the most part) at the drop of a dime, flip everything, and deliver the same instruction via online formats with little to no professional development. Not only was it tricky for teachers and families, but it was also the teacher’s job to find ways for students to gain access to technology. As a teacher, we already wear a lot of hats, but we added a few more shelves of hats since. Great read. A lot of good reminders.
Thanks for sharing your perspective Leah. I agree that as much as students need guidance and instruction for success in the future, educators cannot be lost in that shuffle as the deliverers. Last time I checked, the blind leading the blind makes for a pretty difficult trip. For all of the professional development that is made available, it seems that this area is not as well promoted, or at least it is secondary to reading, writing, and math. I like your perspective for the future!