York Times Columnist Thomas L. Friedman devoted his Sunday column to one of the critical challenges facing America today: Our need to continue innovating our way to the future.
His column, Do You Want the Good News First, focused on the gap between available jobs and qualified applicants in Seattle. As Friedman observed, “Never have individuals been more empowered, and we’re just at the start of this trend.”
We need to equip our students today with the skills they will need to participate in this revolution. Yet, we still don’t have a consensus on what’s right with public education and where we want it to go as a nation. The single most urgent questions facing American public schools today are: What do we need our children to learn? How are we going to make sure they all have an opportunity to learn that? And how do we know how much they accomplish?
As Friedman points out, getting an answer to that question is going to be one of the biggest challenges we face in this century. Except that we don’t have a century, or even a couple of decades, to get it right. We’re inventing a whole new class of skills and jobs in America at a breathless pace.
So how do we get to the finish line faster? By engaging classroom teachers in the conversation.
If we need to innovate our way to our economic future, then we need to innovate our way to higher quality, more effective public education today. That means allowing teachers the freedom they need to be innovative in their own classrooms. And it means letting them tell us what they—and their students—need to succeed.
As one teacher from Massachusetts commented as part of an Idea Exchange: Parents are always asking her opinion about what their children need to succeed. Why don’t education policy makers have the same faith in her professional expertise?
Elizabeth,
I couldn’t agree with you more! We must strive to have technology in the classroom, show students how to use it to solve problems, collaborate and engage. I am about to finish my 24th year of teaching (and I still love it by the way) and I believe engagement is an important key. We must engage parents as partners, the community as philanthropists and policy makers as tools to ensure success and implementation. Our voices are beginning to be heard. More now, than ever before, teachers and parents have an opportunity to listen, participate and make their voices heard. You hit the nail on the head Elizabeth, when you said that ” this means allowing teachers the freedom they need to be innovative in their own classrooms.” Letting teachers advocate for our students, ourselves and giving us a voice into the changes that we believe must happen, is the piece to this puzzle that is a game changer. Yes, there is so much to be done, but there are people willing, able and excited to do it.
Glad VIVA is there for us.
Dina Rock