Like everyone, I’ve been wondering about the future of school and what a new normal could look like. I’d like to think that the period following the pandemic will be an innovative time for schools and I’m hopeful for this. I do believe the world beyond school, out of necessity, will be characterized by a rapid acceleration of creativity and innovation, especially as it relates to technology. I wonder if the gap between what happens in school and what occurs beyond school will widen.
So, here’s what I have been thinking about, captured by a series of provocations:
Provocation 1: Upon reopening post-pandemic, much of the work of the typical school will be to re-establish a sense of normalcy. I think that’s a good thing and it’s necessary for all involved. But what is beyond this new normal is a question for consideration. I also think that “returning to normal” does not necessarily mean there can’t be an emergence of innovative thought and practice that enables schools to create a flexible and agile meaning to what normal represents.
Provocation 2: Coming out of the pandemic, hard choices will eventually be made about the future of learning, school, and that includes the role that technology and online learning will have. However, it’s probably safe to say that for the near future, school will be based on a face-to-face model. It’s my belief that online learning will have a questionable future, mostly based on the general failure of the remote learning experience. In fact, I think that there will be significant pushback on the use of technology to support learning. It seems that everyone has had their fill and I can’t blame them.
Provocation 3: I’m guessing that returning to a normal condition also means returning to the primary focus of most schools - workplace readiness. I’m not anticipating any big shifts in the expectations of what school can and should be - that might be going too far too soon. And while school can be many things, I can’t think of a high school that I have worked with in the past decade that didn’t have a focus on college and career readiness. I’ll admit that I believe that “college and career readiness” is positioned as a more palatable way to frame preparing students for work and careers. I get it - kids need jobs and careers. But personally, I like to think school should and can mean more than working to prepare to become an accountant (with my apologies to accountants).
Provocation 4: At the same time, the work environment will mostly go hybrid. There are a lot of reasons for that beyond the pandemic, especially the cost of an in-person five-day workweek, the realization that worker productivity has gone up, and that people just don’t need to be in the same place at the same time to get things done.
So, my perception is that while schools will move back to a face-to-face model, the work world will move forward to a distributed hybrid condition where the remote and online experience is expected and valued.
The upshot: if your goal as a school is to prepare students to be competitive in the workplace, and if you don’t offer a comprehensive online experience, then there will be a disconnect between what your students can do and what the expectations of the workplace require.
I ran across this Twitter thread about hybrid work which was really interesting and it’s worth reading through. Here is the one idea that just jumped out at me.
“Rather than hiring the best person in a 30-mile radius of the office, they can hire the best person in the world for every role.”
That idea should be a very big wake-up call for every school.
It is imperative that schools find a way to make online learning successful and part of the daily educational lives of students. That’s not a small challenge. And given the general failure of remote learning, and the distaste that educators, students, and parents have about learning online, it is in fact a considerable challenge.
I understand it’s easier for adults to work online more successfully compared to young students trying to learn online. But what a great design challenge to create the environments and pedagogy that make online learning a viable and successful experience for kids. Developing new, more capable, and more human virtual learning systems could be the innovative opportunity that education desperately needs.
The world isn’t going back to the office, and our future world will rely more and more on distributed work environments and lifestyles. There is no doubt about that. It’s time for schools to get serious about blended and online learning so that the new normal means that education leads how people learn, interact, and create in a hybrid world.
Banner image courtesy of anne nygard via Unsplash