Introduction

Teachers are the arbitrators of knowledge and culture. Knowledge and culture are each
dynamic, endlessly crashing and churning. This makes teaching significantly important and difficult
work and can leave teaching—as a craft—wide-eyed in response. Worse, those outside the bubble
of education can understandably struggle to understand the problem. What are they teaching in
those schools anyway? How is it any different from when I was in school?  Well, as it turns out, much
of it is different from even five years ago.

1. Students choose their own adventures

Gone are the days when an equally bored teacher would deliver the same old lesson to an
audience of yawning students; the future is giving students a more active role through inquiry- and
project-based learning. Real life doesn't just hand us the answers or the questions, so teachers don't
either. Instead, they are triggering curiosity by presenting students with problems and scenarios that
they then have to solve. "Inquiry-based learning is the best thing to happen to education," says Spiro
Gouras, a third-grade teacher in New York. "Our curriculum puts the access of knowledge in the
hands of the student. The teacher does not simply deliver; rather, she focuses on the essential
questions. The movement within a unit of work is guided by the students' questions and learning
style. It works wonders". Project-based learning takes this concept even further, with students
working for extended periods of time to solve real-world problems and challenges. Best of all, their
theses can take just about any form. "For example, I am teaching a Shakespearean play," says
Chelsea Fricker, a sixth-year English teacher in Virginia. "A music-loving student can make a
soundtrack based off of the main character to demonstrate his conceptual knowledge of the
curriculum. It will also give him the skills and knowledge to adapt, which is arguably one of the most
important lessons someone can learn."

2. Technology in the classroom

Today's teachers utilize a full menu of tech resources in the classroom, including data tools to
keep track of students' progress. With them, however, comes a new set of teaching responsibilities,
from equipping students with the ability to tell fact from fiction on the internet, and how to learn in a
world where the answers are one click away, to understanding when it's time to step away from the
computer screen. Teachers are becoming increasingly intentional about when to use technology—
and when the more valuable lesson is in powering down. "We are backing away from having
technology in the classroom just to say that we have technology in the classroom," says Spiro. "I'm
seeing more parents be impressed if I mention how many hours their children will not be in front of a
screen. We are moving toward using technology where it is applicable, as in when we're learning
how to code or learning how to use an app to make a dictionary resource."