I love science fiction. I’m a bit of a gadget junkie. So when I watch a sci-fi movie and I see virtual computers or hovercrafts, I get very excited. Case in point: Cloud Atlas. Great movie and, so far, equally great book.
I get even more excited about ideas. So when I put all these seemingly disparate thoughts together, I love the possibility of positive innovation in education in which technology plays a large role.
In keeping with this, a thought occurred to me just the other day. Many of the “kids” who are starting their teaching careers this year were born anywhere between 1987 and 1990 depending on whether they fast-tracked or meandered. By most liberal estimates, digital natives were born in 1980. By more conservative estimates, you could argue that our digital natives were born in the late 80’s.
By the time this generation was “reading”, the commercial World Wide Web had already been born. By the time these same young people were 10-yrs-old, we had Google, Wikipedia and MySpace (remember that?). By the time they were into their early to mid-teens, we had Facebook and YouTube. All this is to give some context to the thought that occurred to me regarding those who are now starting their teaching careers. These folks are our first generation of teachers who are digital natives.
In her article “Generation Y”, Sally Kane argues that Millennials are the fastest growing segment of the working population. She describes them as family-centric, achievement-oriented, team-oriented, attention-craving and tech-savvy. What does this mean for the teaching profession and the future of our education system?
Let’s start with the obvious given the nature of this post: Tech-savvy. The strength here is that – unlike us digital immigrants – technologies will be naturally integrated into the classroom. They won’t be add-ons. There won’t be, for example, the debating, arguing, cajoling and convincing that kids should be allowed to use cell phones in the classroom. It’ll be as obvious as blackboards and gestetner machines were to those of us who started teaching in the 1980’s.
Next. Let’s look at one of the seemingly negative descriptors: Attention-craving. Kane describes this as follows:
“Generation Y craves attention in the forms of feedback and guidance. They appreciate being kept in the loop and seek frequent praise and reassurance. Generation Y may benefit greatly from mentors who can help guide and develop their young careers.”
How good is that? Where do I even begin to unravel all the great stuff here? Here’s what I envision for classrooms and professional development for which these individuals will be responsible. Assessment for and as learning will be as natural as grading papers were for us pedagogical veterans. Frequent feedback and mentoring relationships will be the norms.
Let’s look at family-centric and achievement-oriented together. I think the polemic almost speaks for itself. It reminds me of industry leading, progressive companies who get the whole employee wellness piece to the point of having their own exercise facilities and time built into their schedules for non-work related activity. The irony is that these companies understand that by looking after their employees holistically, they’ll get more productivity out of them. It’s also an issue of trust – the anti-Big Brother factor.
Our educational policy documents talk about the gradual release of responsibility of learning to students. The documents are too nice to talk about the other half of the equation: many teachers feel that they need to keep control. This is well intentioned and I certainly don’t want to downplay teacher as expert, but given all the learning about how generation Y learns, we need to move toward teacher as facilitator and co-learner and away from Socratic teacher, font of all wisdom and knowledge at the front of the class.
And, in case I’m not being clear, Generation Y will be our principals, consultants, superintendents and directors of education in the years to come. So their work and learning fluencies will become their teaching and leading fluencies.
Finally: team-oriented. Arguably the singular most damaging criticism against the teaching profession from all the current research is the lack of collaboration. All the learning around coaching, professional learning communities and professional development can be summed up as follows: Top-down directives don’t work. The “top” should be facilitating, supporting and co-learning. Lasting, deep change, however, happens a) in the context of team and b) when the change is owned and driven at the ground level.
There are a plethora of other studies on Generation Y and, to be fair, it’s not all good. They – like all generations before them and like generations who are yet to come – will have their challenges. But when I look at the strengths above, along with a slew of others I haven’t mentioned (creativity, flexibility and adaptability but to name a few more) I’m very excited to imagine the schools of 2027. Schools plural being intentional. I’m imagining schools that are structured to fit the learning needs of the students, which means there won’t be a one-size fits all school.
I’ll leave you with these links of some very innovative, forward-thinking schools where the environment fits the students as opposed to our traditional 20th century schools which arguably haven’t changed much in the past 100+ years.
Future Forums, Waterloo Canada: an inquiry-based, cross-curricular, project-based approach in which students from several schools do their work online. Their motto is learn anywhere, anytime, anyplace from anyone.
The Independent Learning Project, Massachusetts, USA: “A powerful example of students taking ownership in their education, students at a public high school in Massachusetts designed and ran a school-within-a-school for a year with support and guidance from the administration and teachers at the school.”
“Academy C60 [Toronto, Canada] is an alternative, independent, ministry-inspected high school located at Avenue Road and Lawrence in midtown Toronto [who empower[s] [their] students to take charge of their destiny. [Their] students achieve Ontario curriculum expectations, guided by their own passions, interests, and strengths. Along with gaining their credits, they also acquire invaluable study habits, leadership skills, and the power to take responsibility for their future.”
"Remind101 provides a safe way for teachers to text message students and stay in touch with parents. It is 100% free and is used by over 200,000 teachers, students and parents to send millions of messages every month." 
