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The Evolving Role of the 21st-Century Teacher

Depending on which futurist you ask, we stand to lose between 38%-50% of today’s jobs to automation over the next 20 years. The jobs predicted to fall to automation include those which are repetitive, predictable, and routine. The jobs predicted to continue to be relevant and to multiply are those which require genuine creativity, focus on building complex relationships, and respond to the unpredictable. With today’s students heading into such a highly unpredictable job market, we need to immediately shift the focus from teaching content in traditional subjects to all students to teaching 21st Century skills of agency, collaboration, creativity, communication, and problem-solving in a personalized manner. In other words, the time for personalized learning is now and the need is imminent!

But personalized learning is not about the automation of teaching through technology. I want to state that a different way for emphasis and clarity as the phrase “personalized learning” has been vastly misunderstood, misrepresented, and subsequently maligned. Personalized learning is not about what technology is being used in the class, and it is certainly not about technology replacing teachers. Anyone who has had the experience of feeling inspired by and connected with a teacher (which hopefully is everyone) can attest to the truth that software alone can do neither. The best use of technology brings teachers and students closer together and provides tools through which students can build agency and creative problem-solving skills. In other words, personalized learning is about each person. Any effort to bypass the valuable human-to-human connection in learning will inevitably fail.

Having said this, it is essential to note that we as educators must evolve in our roles. We must recognize those practices which are routine, repetitive, and predictable. These components of teaching can be relegated in part to video instruction and adaptive technologies. To remain relevant, and more importantly, to truly maximize our impact on student learning, we must transform the core focus of our efforts to creativity, connectivity, and responsiveness to student needs within our classes. So what does this focus look like in a 21C classroom empowered by technology?

Teacher as Creator and Conductor of Creativity

Teacher as Connector to Self and Others

Teacher as Early Responder and Mentor

When we get it right, the role of the 21st Century teacher will most closely resemble a mashup of guidance counselor, coach, and teacher. As I shared a few years ago in a post about teacher style, every teacher will continue to bring that special element to the experience that makes their unique connection with students the strongest. For some, it will continue to be an impassioned lecture, but perhaps in a flipped delivery with more time spent engaged with students in the relevant application of that information. For others, it will be the combination of humor and sincerity they bring to their teacher-student interactions, perhaps sometimes shared in discussion forums. Whatever way we as educators continue to put the teacher in teaching, it will have to be in ways that enable technology to do what technology can do best while we continue to do what only humans can do best...create, connect, and inspire our students.

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