As I was reviewing my past week, I remembered an audio clip I had heard from
"The 10-Minute Teacher Podcast by Vicki Davis." Vicki referenced the book
Humility is the New Smart: Rethinking Human Excellence in the Smart Machine Age by Edward D. Hess and Katherine Ludwig.
This book discusses the importance of fostering critical thinking,
collaboration, creativity and innovation in an age where "smart
machines" will start to take over millions of jobs.
Full
disclosure: I have not read this book yet, but I am intrigued. Articles
about the rise of the robot workforce are becoming more mainstream and
less "sci-fi" as we see the progress of technologies like robot-driven
cars and home assistants like the Amazon Echo or Google Home. Check out
this article in
Fast Company about particular jobs that robots will replace in a few years, or a very similar article in
The Guardian.
Will we all be out of work?
Not necessarily. These articles and the book also assert that since
robots aren't very good at stuff like creativity, critical thinking,
innovation and collaboration, there will be plenty of work available for
people who excel in these areas. Of course, this means that the human
workforce of the future will need to develop these skills. Trouble is,
skills like creativity are often
overlooked in traditional school settings.
What does
this mean for teachers? How do we promote skills like creativity,
collaboration, problem-solving, and innovation in our own classroom when
these skills are so difficult to teach or we feel as though we don't
have time for them? I think every teacher knows that these skills are
important, yet most teacher also acknowledge that it's easier to teach a
lesson on multiplication facts than it is about multi-step word
problems.
I have
three ideas about how we can start to
shift our mindsets about fostering creativity and problem-solving in
our classrooms:
- Recognize that there is well-established technology out there
that will read text, solve equations, and do simple calculations, for
free. Yes, of course it is important to teach students to read and
do calculations. We also have to recognize how much of our time we are
spending teaching skills that students won't use much in their later lives, just
because those skills are what have been taught in schools in the past.
Some teachers might argue, "but doing long division by hand promotes
problem-solving skills." Okay. But are there other pursuits besides a
long division problem that will promote those skills and then some?
- Stop thinking about pursuits that promote creativity as educational "dessert." A
weird phenomenon happens at my school in the spring. Some teachers ask
for my assistance with technology during the last three weeks of the
school year when they were quiet during the fall and winter. I've
realized that they want to try more "fun" projects, like making movies
or recording podcasts when the academic pressure of the school year is
off their shoulders. This year, several teachers have asked if their
students can come into our Makerspace "as a reward class" for whatever
behavioral or academic objective they had reached. I am glad that
teachers are becoming interested in getting their classes involved in
these areas. I also want teachers to see more and more that creative
endeavors can be a mainstay in any curricula, not just cute projects to
do with students to mollify summer fever or give as rewards.
- Be critical of the "Grecian Urn" way of teaching by example. I
am totally the teacher who loves to make the perfect example of a
product/project and cross my fingers that the students will produce
something close to it. It had taken me a long time to shift my mindset
away from this way of teaching towards guiding students to use their own
abilities to create products that are truly theirs. I also realized
that I got a better idea of what my students did and did not understand
when they weren't just copying me. Of course, I have to think critically
about what I need to model and show examples of and what I leave up to
students' own interpretations. This is tough, but it's worth it.
What do you think about these ideas? Are there more you would add? Leave a comment below.
