What Is and What Should Never Be

So, I've been on paternity leave for last few weeks which is a luxury that many of my American father friends don't have. This leaves me with an inability to complain, I've spent the last month at home with my son and I've thoroughly enjoyed it, but I have a confession to make - I missed work. I swear I'm not addicted, though I suppose that's exactly what an addict would say! I just have a very specific reason to be so enraptured with work this year - a group of students I started with is graduating. I have graduated other classes and of course cared deeply for them as well, but...there's something different about this one.

This has led me to thinking about what it is I ultimately wanted to impart on this specific group of students before they leave my sphere of influence in June. Last night's class was somewhat inspirational for me to change my mental track. My students are incredibly enveloped in the tech world, but it's rare that they have the command over it that would be a C1 or even a B2 on the DigCompEdu scale. I, of course, want my students to walk away with content knowledge from the classes I teach, but maybe it's time we focus a bit more of our attention on the practical skills as well. What are students actually capable of producing when they walk out of our doors? Because, let's be honest, in the business world employers are far more interested in what our students can produce as opposed to what they remember about the War of 1812 (no disrespect to the War of 1812 by the way, it's a fascinating look at how new nations find themselves on the geopolitical stage). While I am, as you know by now, relatively structure and authority averse I do find things like the DigCompEdu document useful. We do need structures, ideas, and scales that help us measure skills as opposed to just content knowledge and that's something I'm going to try and implement more frequently this school year.

I am also under the impression that the vast majority of "academic" learning that my Seniors will have in the non-collegiate setting is done. In fact, it's not an impression, it's a statistical truth. This ties into what I said in the previous paragraph - now more than ever it's time that our students have practical experiences and discussions. Some of that comes down to very simplistic things like - what does it mean to be out on your own? One of the most difficult, but crucially important things we can teach our students is to own their mistakes and grow from them. I can't help, but think this is an integral part of grit. We have become so adverse to mentioning fault, mistake, etc. in our modern society that many of our students leave secondary school still believing everything else is someone else's fault. I am a firm believer that we can help students see their mistakes for what they are - opportunities for growth. It certainly won't be enjoyable in the beginning, but you will come out better for it on the other side. I promise to not come back to this in every blog, but this is exactly what Growth Mindset and Grit really come back to I think - not the strange perversion of them you see in some educational circles. Perhaps it's time we stop handing out fish and start teaching students to bait the hook.

Why the Led Zeppelin quote for the title? Well, for one, it's an excellent song. More importantly however, we as educators can get stuck into the trap of "what is" - if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But what if sticking to "what is" leads us to "what never should be". There are so many things our students need to learn that we don't teach them, I've mentioned only two categories here (one practical and one social emotional). I personally want to take on the challenge that when I return to the classroom in a couple of weeks to push for more from myself and my students - to not simply settle for "what is".