By John Norton
It’s often been said by impatient, technology-minded school reformers that a teacher from the 1940s (or 1840s, for that matter) would find little changed if he or she entered the classroom today. But of course that isn’t true.
Even if we agree to overlook the interactive whiteboards and performance data charts, kids themselves have changed in profound ways. They’re “growing up digital,” as author Don Tapscott first put it back in 1997. In fact, as Tapscott’s latest book suggests, our youngest adults have now “Grown Up Digital,” with no memory of the pre-Internet world. And the dizzying advances in social networking tools and wireless mobile technologies have some futurists predicting the rise of “micro-generations” – children born over a very short span of years whose experiences will be quite different from those who came just before them.
What hasn’t changed so much is the work of teachers themselves. At least that’s the contention of a recent monograph from the NC-based Center for Teaching Quality.
“The Teachers of 2030,” written by CTQ president Barnett Berry, considers what the teaching profession might – and should – look like two decades from now. The big ideas that Berry presents are heavily influenced by a dozen accomplished teachers from across the U.S. who are collaborating with him on a book to be published by Teachers College Press in the coming year. Two of the 12 collaborators are native Alabamians: Emily Vickery, a long-time teacher in Montgomery who now works as a school-based technology teacher in Pensacola; and Jennifer Barnett, who is a teacher leader in Talladega County’s initiative to transform all schools into project-driven, technology-infused learning environments.
The TeacherSolutions 2030 project—supported by the MetLife Foundation, which also sponsors the annual MetLife Survey of the American Teacher—wants to provoke a national discussion about how we can best prepare teachers and schools to thrive in the transformational learning climate already visible on education’s horizon.
I’ve had the opportunity to serve as editor for this ambitious project, and as we wrap up the book manuscript, its core arguments are much on my mind. One big idea is especially pertinent to school leaders and policymakers of today as they think about the large pool of new teachers we will need over the next 5-10 years. The idea springs from the well-documented fact that young teachers now entering the classroom for the first time have different ideas about careers than most older colleagues who began teaching in the last decades of the 20th century.
Many of these young people have no real experience of America’s industrial age, when it was quite common to pursue a course of study in college that one expected would lead to a lifelong career. Certainly that was the case in my own family, and for many teachers who entered training in the 1960s, 1970s and even the 1980s. In those days teaching was also known to be a “flat career.” Unless you left the classroom at some point and entered administration, your teaching responsibilities on the last day of your job would be essentially the same as they were on the first.
In “The Teachers of 2030” monograph, Berry contends that young adults today and in the future will not be satisfied to stay in a career that doesn’t offer much possibility of advancement. As they become proficient in the classroom, they will be impatient for greater challenges, anxious for opportunities to earn more though high performance, and eager to exercise leadership.
Some school reformers who agree with this analysis see it as an argument in favor of teaching as a “first career” profession, populated primarily by bright and committed young people who get just enough training to perform in a service role, much as we see in programs like the Peace Corps. Berry disagrees, arguing that the processes of teaching and learning will become even more complex over the next 20 years, as technology advances and brain research gives teaching a more scientific basis. School will not be a place to be led by novices.
Already today, Berry says, teaching has become a multi-layered profession that includes much more than the direct delivery of skills and knowledge. As most educators know, to do it well, teaching also requires a deep understanding of child development, the ability to use assessments and teacher insights to tailor instructional strategies to the unique needs of each learner, and a willingness (nay, eagerness) to pool skills and knowledge in a collaboration that produces a great school.
While Berry addresses many issues – including better recruitment, reforms in teacher education, smarter induction, year-long residencies, and special training for teachers who work in high needs schools – one of his most potent ideas (germinated in partnership with his teacher collaborators) is the hybrid teaching role. In essence, hybrid roles allow teachers to both continue to teach children on a regular basis and also assume leadership roles that strengthen public schools.
Berry argues that hybrid roles would create an upward career trajectory in the minds of young people who are eager to become effective teachers but also want jobs that will grow in complexity (and compensation) over time. He is convinced that America must establish such a leadership cadre in the schools of tomorrow – that a teaching corps of 4 million transient educators will not secure the high quality learning systems our nation will need to prosper in the challenging times ahead.
Berry and his teacher co-authors imagine that by the year 2030:
About 15 percent of the nation’s teachers — over 500,000 — have been prepared in customized residency programs designed to fully train them in the cognitive science of teaching and to also equip them for new leadership roles. Most are now serving in hybrid positions where they teach students part of the day or week, and also have dedicated time to lead as student support specialists, teacher educators, community organizers, and virtual mentors in teacher networks….
These expert teacher leaders, thanks in part to viral networking, have become well known to growing numbers of parents, business and community leaders, and policymakers. They are honored for their ability to use a wide array of instructional tools, built on brain research and neurological advances, to design personalized, learner-centered experiences and environments for the diverse students who still populate America’s public schools.
These specially trained hybrid teachers are groomed for a long career in teaching. As the leaders of their profession, they are expected to support and develop a wide array of short-term recruits as well as content experts, online mentors, and teaching assistants who, with the right supervision, contribute significantly to the teaching and learning enterprise that extends beyond the official school day. The once-vexing struggle to secure qualified and effective teachers for all of America’s 65 million students has been resolved.
Alabama is already moving on teaching’s future
The ideas in “The Teachers of 2030” are daring and provocative – as writing about the future tends to be. But what is most interesting about the monograph—from an Alabama perspective—is that your state has already laid the groundwork for hybrid teaching roles similar to those described in Berry’s forward-looking work.
In its landmark 2008 report, “Innovations in Teaching: Creating Professional Pathways for Alabama Teachers,” (PDF) Governor Riley’s Commission on Quality Teaching described a visionary plan to create a multi-path profession that would include five stages of career development: Apprentice Teacher, Classroom Teacher, Professional Teacher, Master Teacher and Learning Designer. The final 2 pathways encompass many of the hybrid roles imagined by Berry and his teacher-leader collaborators (which is not entirely surprising, as Berry was one of the Commission’s expert consultants).
In describing their vision, the Commission members wrote that while they expected the vast majority of teachers to choose the Classroom Teacher or Professional Teacher role “for the greater part of their careers,” the framework they proposed “provides alternatives to those teachers who seek broader challenges.”
“This visionary redesign of the teaching profession at its core is likely to retain a significant number of accomplished veterans,” the Commission wrote, “and by creating new career paths and incentives, it will attract and retain new teachers with a wide range of 21st century skills, competencies, and backgrounds that are necessary to meet the needs of today’s students, and that might otherwise be lost to the profession.”
While the Commission members didn’t imagine future jobs quite as exotic as some referenced in “The Teachers of 2030” report (e.g., Gaming Expert or Connected Learning Incubator), many of the belief statements in the two documents are very much in sync. Berry, for example, describes hybrid teachers as leaders who are “in the business of spreading teaching expertise.” The Commission states unequivocably that “Quality teaching is a team sport…Every school needs good teachers, but they don’t become great places to learn until those individuals join forces to draw on a wide range of competencies, expertise and experience they need to create learning environments that improve student achievement beyond what any of them can accomplish on their own.”
I would encourage you to not only peruse “The Teachers of 2030” monograph but also revisit Alabama’s own groundbreaking “Pathways” report. Each will challenge your thinking about the future. Most importantly, they share the same urgent message: We must transform teaching to meet the needs of students in a transformed world.
John Norton is an education writer, editor and virtual communities consultant for the A+ Best Practices Center and the NC-based Center for Teaching Quality. He is a former vice president of the Southern Regional Education Board and lives in Little Switzerland, NC.
