To encourage dialogue and reflection about skills we need and the steps we can take to be prepared, our question for this week is: What skills do we need to be prepared for the future? Building Bridges for the Future (Week of 1/8/23) (This is an anonymous Google Form)
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The most important attitude that can be formed is that of desire to go on learning. - John Dewey
You cannot teach today the same way you did yesterday to prepare students for tomorrow. - John Dewey
I hope that this update finds everyone doing well and rested after our first stretch of school in the new year - it was nice to have the four days to ease back into the routine and flow last week! Maggie turned 19 this past weekend and we enjoyed celebrating her as a family.
With the new year and a time full of reflection, goals, intentions, and resolutions, I have been thinking about the steps and the path towards these ideas and hopes we have for ourselves. ‘Speaking from the I’, I feel that the naming of the goal but the actual realization or ‘map’ towards the goal feels more challenging. At our faculty meeting this week, it was invigorating to read the sharing of successes and hopes that were shared (more to come in the future - trying to think about how to mirror these for all), and I found them helpful to think about my own hopes for this coming year. Thinking about our continued work with Nathaniel Brown to enhance our systems of feedback, a connection became clear - wanting to help provide the ‘next step’ for students to bridge and assist the learning process.
The recent discussions that have been taking place about artificial intelligence and intellectual augmentation, with the implications for education and learning, have also furthered these thoughts. ChatGPT has, in many ways, taken over the educational landscape of discussions, blogs, and podcasts over the last month - pushing all of us to truly pause and simultaneously think about the immediate impact on our day-to-day work along with the landscape of learning and school in the future. More connections come to mind - what is the bridge between the day-to-day present needs for our students and the needs for their future experiences? What steps do we need to take? What does that look like? These are conversations that are complicated, nuanced, necessary, and pertinent - and, trying to find the time to have them is challenging, to say the least.
With these ideas circling about inside my head (and maybe the heads of others - does this resonate?), I find myself thinking about the steps that can be taken along the path towards progress - naming the hope/intention and then articulating one step at a time. The two posts below are helping me with this process of reflection as they provide a structure/framework for ‘futures thinking’(Gorbis’s post) and the agency and empowerment that inherently happens with the steps we take (Mielke’s post).
Five Principles for Thinking Like a Futurist
by Marina Gorbis in Educause
Thinking about the future allows us to imagine what kind of future we want to live in and how we can get there.
…we still believe—even more strongly than before—that systematic thinking about the future is absolutely essential for helping people make better choices today, whether you are an individual or a member of an educational institution or government organization. We view short-termism as the greatest threat not only to organizations but to society as a whole.
In my twenty years at the Institute, I've developed five core principles for futures thinking:
- Forget about predictions.
- Focus on signals.
- Look back to see forward.
- Uncover patterns.
- Create a community.
At its best, futures thinking is not about predicting the future; rather, it is about engaging people in thinking deeply about complex issues, imagining new possibilities, connecting signals into larger patterns, connecting the past with the present and the future, and making better choices today. Futures thinking skills are essential for everyone to learn in order to better navigate their own lives and to make better decisions in the face of so many transformations in our basic technologies and organizational structures. The more you practice futures thinking, the better you get.
Compounding Influence
by Chase Mielke in ASCD
If we feel empathy too deeply, we can become powerless to act (Levy, Howard, & Aronczyk, 2018). In these moments—when we feel impaired by the magnitude of making the world a better place—we need to downsize our ambitions. Like my students with their index cards, we need to focus on making one moment a better moment.
A small moment of altruism or activism is an investment that yields compounding interest…Frame these as starting points, not ending points. We know we aren't changing the world with these actions—we are changing moments. And every massive change starts with moments compounded over time.
The work you do matters. The actions you take, no matter how small, have influence. Compound your influence, and I promise: It will get better.
As I read through some of the responses from last week’s question about hopes for 2023, this ‘bridging’ (for lack of a better term) is a skill I hope we can foster for our students - providing the foundation to articulate and then bring into action the ‘next step’ towards the realization of hopes…
Sampling of Responses from Last Week’s ‘Question of the Week’: Please complete this statement: This year (2023) I hope to…
- Become a better person.
- Strive to be my best self as much as possible
- Keep my grades up and have a great year
- Get into the Zullo art gallery in Medfield
- This year I hope to not fail my classes and learn how to spell
- Have a good year.
- I hope to be a better person.
- Drink more water
- Read
- This year (2023) I hope to be a good student.
- Get better at cooking
- Offer different ways for students to show/share their learning creatively to play on their strengths.
- Improve in math
- Improve my free-throw percentage
- IMPROVE! And do my best
- Read all my books
- Create opportunities for more time in nature, yoga and just being. Slow down and take the good with the bad as it presents itself and acknowledge and express gratitude more.
- Become better at baseball
- Start and end the day with gratitude.
- Make a profit of photography
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Take care.
Nat