Educators are entering a moment of real reckoning, which by itself isn’t new.

Educators have reckoned with our nation’s warts and taught us their remedies since their
genesis. We have listened to them in doses as students always have. Educators have also
chosen which doses to hand out though, and how. Unfortunately, this often looks a lot
more like a red schoolhouse with paper and pencil than it does an active vessel of
learning in the modern internet age. During our time in the 21 century, our schools have
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by and large yet to make the 2000 switch. Offices, businesses, and professions
everywhere have digitized and integrated their models to grow in tandem with the
internet and other blossoming technologies. Meanwhile the schools have carried on in the
mud, and some have driven their sticks deeper into it.

In early March 2020, schools across the country raced home for a final week of rest
before the huge, yearly push to the finish line that is standardized state testing. Schools
from A to F make their money or lose it in a span of about six days in April or May. For
teachers, it’s an annual trip to an echo chamber of their own worst fears. For days they
stand and proctor, pacing rows and columns, counting minutes and questions remaining,
wondering how much of their lessons would ever truly matter, and if they’ve taught the
kinds of lessons that show up on a test. For the next few hours they wonder if lessons that
show up on a test are the lessons most worth teaching, and if others are not more
essential. They wonder what those other lessons are. Those other lessons are harder to
teach to a pack, and harder to test. How can you measure worth when everyone’s worth
operates on different terms? Some teachers will pack this dream away carefully and
revisit it. Others will shut the door to it and hope that keeps it out of their memory.

Those dog days never came this year though, supplanted by a pandemic. It would be
nice to say no one saw it coming. But communities watched as the inevitable unfolded.
This is not to say they did not reject its possibility until they could no longer do so.
Instead of planning and pivoting, they gossiped. The schools closed, first for a week then
for another then for a month and finally for the year. The world of 21 century learning
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was suddenly upon us whether schools and communities were prepared for it or not. A
horrible, fearfully overlooked truth of this period is that our schools, nationwide, were not
prepared for that world. Even more frightening, we discovered that many school systems
had never even fathomed it. In the face of quarantine, schools failed to accept these
newly visible core elements of society in a way that seemed to oppose those elements’
very existence.
 This too should come as no surprise. When it comes to the modern technological
world finding its way into the heart of learning, educators consistently remain behind the
curve of utilizing those new tools in innovative, pioneering ways. Schools,
administrations, and governments have been notoriously slow in implementing plans to
provide computer devices and internet connectivity to students and schools, the most
obvious first step in schools entering the modern technological age. Many districts have
such little funding that even their middle and high school students must share limited
access to computer and internet devices in school settings, and fewer still can access
those materials outside of school time. In a technology-saturated world, it is cruelly
inhumane to continue offering widespread modes of education that deprive student
bodies of the necessary access to and engagement with the technological and online
worlds of society and academic pursuit.

Indeed, even in school districts with the largest banks and the most enthusiastic
communities, that picture of learning is arguably lacking in the realm of what students
and communities need now and in the near and far future. Instead of imagining the role of
technology and the internet as a core piece of education’s engine, schools direct those
technologies toward bringing antiquated forms of school into the modern context. This
looks like lessons from 2005 still powering a teacher’s units, only in 2020 where they
exist on an online platform. The change is nominal and lateral. Paper and pencil has
evolved to a text box. The lesson remains the same. In this scenario and others like it,
educators reduce technology to the trivial role of updating lessons to more efficient and
quickly accessible forms. It doesn’t even begin to tap into the wellspring of innovation
that technology and internet connectivity can bring to the world of education. This
tendency to limit technology’s role and function in the classroom sends a message of
disdain toward new modes of learning and thinking, a feeling of resentment toward the
notion of changing times, a negative perception of new worlds eating up old ways which
demands action against that new world’s spread.

To this end, a teacher can’t help but remember their dreams in the echo chambers of
testing, of a new world of learning untethered from student standardization. Is it possible
instead to imagine a way of measuring schools’ effectiveness in meeting the 21 century
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needs of students and measure students’ progress and needs through that lens? First I
suppose we would need to define those 21 century needs and the numerous ways in
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which we can accommodate them. In this imagined form, schools, districts, states, and
the country take microscopic looks at educators and school faculties themselves in
tandem with the student data that school produces. Schools pay close attention to
practices that increase engagement with the modern technological world in varied ways,
and work hard to unlock students’ individual talents through the content of their teaching
area. Educators take on the role of project managers; students collaborate with each other,
themselves, and the educator to imagine new work that teaches content and standards
along the way and aims at creating something that wasn’t there before.

It is difficult to accept that our current modes of evaluating and grading schools and
districts adequately measure those schools and districts’ various efforts to modernize
their institutions and unlock students’ new world potential and that of their classrooms,
with documentation of how successful or unsuccessful those efforts have been. This data
collection process could be hugely beneficial in educators collectively working toward
modern solutions and directions for the world of education and what school means for
current and future students. Covid has taught us that our current forms are inadequate.
Even in the best of circumstances, participation decreased during quarantine orders, and
work substantially did too. This was true on the side of teachers and students; in the face
of dire circumstances, schools and communities consistently chose easy ways out and
refused to rear their heads toward the horizon. Instead of taking the opportunity to rewire
modern education and make the necessary jumps into the world of online learning,
schools systematically sought to recreate their old classrooms simply in an online space.
Now as schools seek to reopen, this is still the direction many are taking.

It’s ironic that this entry into the modern world as it pertains to education has been
such a difficult one to begin. Educators have a historical reputation of adaptability,
intuitiveness, and ingenuity. Underfunded from the beginning, teaching is a vocation for
many—they hurl themselves into the fold as a means of advancing others and the
communities around them, transforming themselves into civil servants in the process.
This vocational nature bears an accompanying drive among educators to challenge
themselves and others to improve their environments of learning and growing, to adapt to
their students’ needs on a daily basis. Teachers consistently solve problems no one else
can, and frequently maximize the output of their institution despite their scarce resources
and support. (examples?) Many extend this vocation beyond their employ, volunteering
at tutoring centers, participating in community work organizations, and catering to
families’ needs in ways few other professionals can.