Preparing Our Teaching for the Robot Takeover

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:

1. 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?


2. 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.


3. 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.