Monday, May 1, 2017

An Unknown Future

We’ve all heard the line about how educators are tasked with, “preparing students for jobs that don't exist”. Maybe you’ve seen this video, or one like it. Well, I did a little google search on the topic and was hit with over 2.9 million results in 0.40 seconds. I had no idea there was so much content out there. I spent ten minutes consuming as much information as I possibly could.

Why does this matter? What are the implications for math teachers? I’d like to share my takeaways...

  1. Change: “The system”, whether you’re looking at K-12 or higher education, must change in order to serve its customers. “That’s the way we’ve always done things” floats the line between irrelevance and injustice. It just doesn’t work. We need to shift our focus from ‘teaching’ to ‘learning’. We must embrace our role as facilitators of learning and create opportunities to let students get messy with content. As facilitators, we need to engage in reflective practices so that we don’t get stuck repeating practices that are outdated, ineffective, or unnecessary.
  1. Critical Thinking:  The answer isn’t so important anymore. I can google it. Or there’s an app to do the work for me. Our students have access to more information than they can fathom. Take heart...access to information doesn’t make the teacher replaceable! Rather, students need teachers to act as guides, creating context for information and asking questions.

In the math classroom, this means we need to make more noise. Are students discussing how they got a solution and why it’s valid? Are they communicating about trends or patterns? Are students asking the questions in order to process and connect new information with prior knowledge? We’ll know students are “doing the work” when there’s evidence of critical thinking.


  1. Collaboration: The ability to engage, communicate, and produce new things with others are essential skills for all learners. What opportunities are we providing for students to read, write, speak, and listen in the math classroom? Students need to engage in tasks that take them beyond checking to see if group members all got the same solution and into a place of collaboration and creativity.

Speaking about organizational leadership, author Andy Stanley made the comment that, “circles are better than rows.” His words are especially applicable for educators. How we physically organize our classrooms can facilitate or limit collaboration. We all know that collaboration goes far beyond any desk arrangement, but getting physically organized will set the stage for collaboration. Maybe we can make a small adjustment this week...

  1. Celebrations: All of this change opens the door to redefine success as a culture. And the culture that we each have the most influence upon is our classroom. “When you see something that exemplifies the culture you are trying to create, recognize it.” Recognition can come in the form of tangible rewards, verbal praise, high fives or fist bumps. What gets recognized gets repeated.


We may not know what jobs our students will be doing or what problems they’ll be tasked with solving, but we are faced with a great opportunity. We can ensure that our students are prepared for whatever they may encounter by facilitating their development as learners who think critically and collaboratively.

2 comments:

  1. Thank you for the insight. This helps to answer the question "When am I ever going to use this?" In today's hyper changing society, who knows what the jobs will look like in 15-20 years; but if we can teach students to think, communicate, and problem solve, they will be prepared.

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