Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach is a global thought leader on 21st century reform, teacher and educational leadership, community building, and educational issues impacting marginalized populations such as the homeless. She and her co-author Lani Rotter Hall’s book, The Connect Educator. Learning and Leading in a Digital Age (2012) made the case for creating a connected learning community through social media and rediscovering the power of being a learner first. Their widely read work was foundational in many educators breaking out of their silo classrooms to build virtual professional learning communities not limited by physical location. Their work had a profound impact on me as well.
Recently Sheryl reached out to me and shared she is working on a sequel to her previous work entitled: The Connect Educator Playbook: Embracing AI, Entangled Pedagogy and Resilience in a World of Uncertainty. She poised two questions. These are my responses...
How would you describe professional learning (PD) for educators in a post pandemic world? Has it changed? How so?
@johnccarver I have said for quite some time that we were living in a “printing press moment” in the history of mankind. Pre COVID change moved forward powerfully with the speed of a glacier, constant, slow, and incremental. The COVID pandemic was the global event of the glacier reaching the ocean, breaking off, and becoming an iceberg. The core of the glacier and the iceberg are both ice, but both are in different, dynamic environments. World history could now be defined as before the break and after the break.
Learning and teaching prior to the break was in a glacier-like geopolitical environment and now is in a new iceberg geopolitical environment. As with the smallest part of an iceberg viewed above the waterline, the part of learning and teaching now viewed by the public is that part above the “waterline”.
There is a vast body of research and practice available on how to learn and teach, the challenge in the post pandemic world is there is not a clear consensus on the why? It is the part of the iceberg below the waterline that must be defined.
“Weak Signals' ' are emerging new ideas, innovations, and discoveries that are not yet trends, but have the potential to make an impact on society. These are the things below the waterline that need be given consideration. Charter schools, vouchers, home schooling, Artificial Intelligence, robotics, on demand interest-based Master Classes taught by expert practitioners, BABBEL, Rosetta Stone, KHAN Academy, and immersive learning with virtual augmented reality are but a few of the emerging weak signals reshaping when, where and how learning happens.
Funding, digital infrastructure, hardware and program accessibility, reframing community, responsibilities, accountabilities, addressing human growth and development, transmitting societal norms all are contributing conditions to be addressed.
It is my belief that a new post pandemic continuum of learning and teaching is emerging. It will
Connect Educator: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age (2012) did a great job of making the case for teachers, through professional learning communities (PLCs) personal learning networks (PLNs) and communities of practice (CoP) to build capacity so as to contribute to “creative ways to meet the needs of 21st century learners... devise strategies to motivate schools to transform learning environments, thus ensuring their own sustainability by becoming highly relevant in students’ lives.” (p.28). The question is not “being relevant in students’ lives” in a 20th century industrial model of learning but being relevant and employable in an emerging 21st century digital, informational age model of learning.
Teaching and learning today is not a people problem, but a system problem.
It's one thing to be proficient in the “dance.”
It’s another to be empowered to create music that links to emotions, inspiration, and action.
Do you believe the power and importance of connection still exists in a post pandemic digital age? Is there a relevance of connected learning in today's educational context?
@johnccarver Connection in the post pandemic digital age is crucial! Only through the sharing of thinking, observations, perspectives, and experiences can emerging 21st century norms and realties be processed and understood. Like traveling in a car on the Interstate at a high rate of speed, with four other people, each looking out a different window sharing what they see, giving those in that car a limited 360* perspective. Though this is good, imagine the perspective of that car, connecting and sharing with passengers in other cars locally, nationally, or globally? That sharing and perspective would be powerful to define meaning and understanding of emerging realities and new norms.
It is my observation and belief that pre-pandemic educators were limited by application of 20th century industrial, assembly line, system design thinking. Business management norms, structures and protocols were applied to design the physical plant and internal working of schools. Learning was equated to work, students as products and teachers as grade level “line” workers.
Learning was equated to age, time on task, and mastery of content via memorization. Standardized, multiple choice, fill in the blank tests were used to measure academic achievement. Feedback through grading established on the percent of test questions answered correctly: 90% A, 80% B, 70% C, 60% D and anything less than 50%, described student learning outcomes. The focus being on conformity, finding the correct answer and not on educating the whole child or empowering them to think creatively.
The learning and teaching landscape in the post pandemic landscape is transforming. Weak signals of change reflect a deep community dissatisfaction and a re engagement of parents in their child’s education. Reflected as we move through the 2024 presidential election cycle, discourse and the inability of constructive civil public debate is amplifying anxiety and fear. There are many who believe the United States is in the mist of cultural war. It seems the country has polarized into political lines with Republicans and Democrats each claiming to be the “voice of America.” They speak disparagingly of each other’s perspectives and positions.
The political rhetoric, derogatory comments, name calling, and disrespect of elected officials’ model, amplified by 24-hour cable news outlets, is moving citizens into silos of anxiety and fear. It seems that progressives and liberals, evangelicals, and conservatives, have lost the ability to listen, have empathy, respectfully debate, and reach consensus. Caught in the middle of all this are traditional norms, practices, and legacy institutions, specifically public education, and schools.
Teachers and educators, caught in the crosshairs, have had the illusion that they could make a difference within their classroom and facilitate systemic change. The fact of the matter is they have been operating in a national, state and locally top down driven, collective bargained system where students (and teachers) are expected to adjust to the system, not the system to the learners. Schools are owned by the taxpayers, governed by an elected school board, and they have the power, not administrators or teachers, for change. I am concerned this model may not be sustainable.
I believe we are at the beginning of the beginning of an emerging new 21st century system of learning. This will be as dynamically different as the transition from the one room schoolhouse to the large, consolidated school system. Positioning connected educators in the field, not only sharing instructional strategies, but also how learning could transform and what the structures could be designed to support it, empower educators to be the pathfinders. If teachers fail to step up, somebody else will.
