As a current high school educator, I can’t possibly be more
excited/nervous for the changing in the landscape of education. I've heard a particular joke at conferences
more than once. The joke involves a “Back
to the Future”-type scenario where a man is catapulted from the 1950s into the
future. Obviously, I can’t tell the joke
verbatim but the punch-line involves the man from the past finding refuge in
the local school because that’s the only thing that hasn't changed. The
premise of the joke suggests that in an ever-changing world, our school systems
have remained unbothered. Well, it looks
as though that is not going to be the case for very much longer.
I’m not quite sure that all schools are going to be able to
handle the changes, but after reading the documents on Michigan Online Learning
and Section 21F, it appears that the state is giving schools a heads-up and
allowing them time to grow with this adjustment. These changes will most definitely not occur
rapidly across the board. I’m sure the
districts with the most money and support will hit the ground running and the
lower-income schools will take more of a crawl-walk-run approach to the
inevitable change. Nonetheless, the
change will be for the better. Districts
have to worry about many issues at this point, but training and preparing their
staff should be a MUST at this point. So
far, my colleagues and I haven’t gotten any “official” word for what’s on deck
for the future.
I've had to do my own investigating these past few years by
pestering my administration with questions about the future of our school. Per usual, I got a lot of beating around the
bush, but I have heard buzzwords like blended learning, virtual study,
etc. More recently I sat down with my
principal to pick his brain about the upcoming years. He alluded to more concrete change in our
talk. Essentially, we will be
implementing a blended format. The school
week would consist of 4 days. Fridays
would only be for students that require various intervention. This would open up that weekday for
upperclassmen to do a variety of things that include but are not limited to
independent study, dual-enrollment, and co-op programs. Clearly, we aren’t ready yet. However, with the necessary infrastructure
updates and teacher/stakeholder buy-in, this change will be beneficial to the
students we teach and I am eager to welcome this transformation of our schools.
