Centre stage papers – Days 3, 4 & 5: Extending the vision

How do we prepare educators for a new role in the 21st century?

 

This topic should be asked of all practising teachers. It encapsulates how they see their profession and suggests where they want it to go. With an aging profession, it also focuses on succession planning. The current members should influence the future.

I have to confess that, when I first looked at the topic, I thought it would be easy. Actually, not only is it important for all in the profession to consider this topic but it is very challenging and I suspect my contribution will be very simplistic.

I will argue that you prepare teachers for the 21st century by mentoring, by adopting the best from the past, from ongoing professional learning and by adopting an ICT model for schools.

In a previous series of iNet online conferences, one of the contributors talked of teachers creating student abilities. I want readers of this article to visualise everything I say in the context of creating teaching abilities, as it best fits my vision of a future school.

It might be odd to start with the 1960s but I have argued strongly on previous occasions that age is not an argument of merit. Recently I got into trouble with my brother when I suggested that his favourite teacher could not survive in the state schools of today. Back then, we mostly sat quietly and this teacher dictated or spoke or wrote on the board and we took detailed notes. Yet he had a passion for the language, a passion for his subject, an incisive mind, a ready collection of amusing anecdotes and a willingness to spend hours in extra-curricular activities. Many boys bullied my maths teacher. They were bigger than him, yet he often spent lunch times going over my struggling maths. An unpredictable bully taught me history. His depth of historical knowledge was unsurpassed and he had the knack of illuminating the past. Yet I had with him the most significant conversation I had as an adolescent with an adult male. His thesis of that night that ‘things are not what they seem’ has illuminated my adult life. Finally, one teacher had the patience and the tolerance to turn the other cheek over my gross lapse of good manners and tact. 

All these teachers were guided by an ethos that was student-centred and aimed at production of an educated youngster. They possessed all the attributes of brilliant teachers for today. They knew their subject and were passionate about it, and about teaching. They gave their time and emotional resources. They were, in the end, student-centred and adaptable and forgiving of adolescent insensitivity. They were prepared to share something of themselves.

These qualities are universal qualities of teachers everywhere, and at every time. It is this ethos that can be constructed like other abilities by mentoring.

I now risk exposing myself to guffaws when I confess that it is this ethos, and these abilities, that I strive to achieve and wish that teachers of the future possess. Whether I have lived up to my ideal is up to others to determine. It is these qualities, however, that I would want to pass on to the next generation of teachers and to do so really requires serious mentoring. 

For a previous conference, I wrote about my vision of a school in 2050. The ethos that I have suggested above is relevant for staff at such a school:

‘My vision of a school in 2050 is of a school staffed by teachers who are as keen to learn as their students should be, the teachers will be adaptable but will rely on support staff to maintain their technological edge’.

As I was mentored by my teachers, and have adapted with the years, so would I mentor a student teacher. Take the best I have to offer, add it to their own abilities and deliver teachers who are keen and dynamic learners. They have to be. Human knowledge is doubling every five or seven years. A practical example will be ample to demonstrate the need for this ongoing learning.  We have recommenced teaching History after many years and I have discovered that the Dark Ages are no longer Dark, the Roman Empire did not collapse in an all-consuming fire, the Angles and Saxons were not an overwhelming invasion and the Celts were possibly more of a cultural invasion than a physical one.

I wrote earlier:

‘Students may be dispersed around the world but local students will have some attendance requirements’.

Here is one dramatic change over the lifetime of my teaching career. This is challenging material and is best seen where it is practised – in a working school, sitting beside a working teacher.  I design and run my own website, where I advise parents and students on learning issues and post my worksheets.  I have done all the graphics. It is very much powered by the idea that ICT is one area where you not do as I say, which sums up mentoring. My work is there for all students to see. Their critical eye is an incentive to do better. Mentoring a student teacher would enable this two-way flow of information – they would see my attempts, they would pass on to me their experiences and ideas.

Continuing my vision for a school in 2050, I said:

‘The hints to the future are in evidence today. I argue that my own experiences as a classroom teacher indicate the way teachers will work in the year 2050.  Some of my practices will survive to 2050, others will be replaced by advanced technology but the ongoing need to be collegiate will be important, as will the need to adapt and change to make students’ learning more effective’. 

From this you can see that I am unapologetic in my salute to the teachers (many now dead) who ‘mentored’ me as a student. It is not nostalgia but firm acknowledgment of a debt.

Finally I wrote that what I have learned over the years ‘is my contribution to shaping the future. I have greatly changed my teaching practice and it allows me to contribute to shaping this future’

This is a world that needs to be introduced by mentoring. The current discussion about teacher training in Australia has focused on the student teachers’ lack of school experience. Much of the future can only be seen in working classrooms because they are student-centred. How does ICT work with real students?  How do rubrics work?  How do practising teachers juggle their commitments in a tightening week?

Unfortunately, I have little chance to mentor student teachers, despite this lack of places.  I teach in a small isolated country school, fours hours from Melbourne. Accommodation is a major inhibitor but there is also a faint prejudice against rural placements. It is all happening in big cities!

To illustrate the power of mentoring I was privileged two years ago to spend a day observing a large city boys’ school, looking at how they use technology to engage their students. This school was using bulletin boards to construct student responses to assignment questions. Each question had a board and there was a board established for casual gossip. The class teacher invited me to speak to the boys and they told me that they liked this system as they felt they were hearing from the quiet students for the first time. Even more interesting was my discovery of a group the students called the ‘ratbags’. These were the boys who thought ‘outside the square’ and were different.  Their contributions were respected as they challenged conventions.  This use of bulletin boards allowed for group work, promoted time management, provided access to a wide range of ideas and I believe that if I had not seen it, I would not want to emulate it so strongly. I saw a powerful educational tool that was student-centred. Classic mentoring.

I have already alluded to the two-way function of mentoring but there is the mentoring the youngsters provide staff and that can only be felt in a school situation. Our young people know so much and they generously share their knowledge.

To conclude, let me remind you of how we should train teachers of the 21st century.  We must keep the best of the past in establishing a student-centred ethos. We should provide well-equipped schools where teachers are valued and where they can demonstrate their knowledge and continue to learn themselves. Mentoring provides the best means by which we can contribute to succession planning and it promotes a two-way exchange of knowledge.  Training institutions need to encourage more teachers to supervise students, and students themselves should explore the rural option. Finally, an ethos, even a vocation, does not mean that teachers are there to be exploited. Highly trained, highly motivated professionals do not come cheap!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mr Richard Opie has taught for over 35 years.  Over those years he has trained as a Careers Teacher and then picked up computer skills at night school. Mr Opie is currently teaching at Warracknabeal Secondary College, in rural Victoria, Australia. His teaching subjects are English, ICT and, for the first time in ages, History. He maintains a faculty website where parents and students can find work sheets and educational ideas. This is an attempt to bring the school closer to the 'wired' community.

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