It is the truth Ms. Lake!

I was a classroom teacher over a decade ago. Since then I’ve worked with hundreds of teachers in the hopes of empowering a new generation of knowledge cultivators.

Your post was fantastic. I especially related to this comment: “I don’t know if teacher programs in colleges are teaching these to new up-and-coming teachers, or if college grads these days know all of them already by the time they graduate, but the job description of a secondary classroom teacher is much longer now than it was in 1993.” As a professor working with teachers I can assure that yes, these things were taught in my class.

I still believe that the laundry list of to-do’s is longer not because of technology but because of the compulsive desire to measure and quantify data instead of using the qualitative data that teachers have always looked at to inform their instruction.

Always an optimist, or perhaps naive, I like to hope that the pendulum will again swing back to recognizing the expertise that teachers hold, the value of QUALITATIVE data that INFORMS instruction and that schools will receive adequate support to provide meaningful instruction for all of their children. And on a completely different note I’d like to think that the mile wide, inch deep curriculum of yesteryear will be replaced with deep units of inquiry that are interdisciplinary and student driven. But again, I’m a dreamer.

I’m sure you’ve read Diane Ravitch. Her book about the life and death of the American school system was extraordinary. Perhaps we could co-write a post about the most influential books about the future of education. Who would make your list?