I have often said to parents that our Lower School girls will experience school in a very different paradigm than previous generations.  We now have the knowledge of how the brain works and incredible tools to allow students to reach far beyond the classroom , a set of textbooks, a teacher who has ‘the set of knowledge’ and a roomful of students waiting to ‘be filled’ with all they need.  We still need skills and knowledge, but they scaffold conceptual understanding.  It is the understanding that is key and that is developed through multiple experiences, conversations, wrestling with ideas, accessing information and data, puzzling, questioning, persisting and learning to think ‘beyond the knowledge box’.  We still need excellent teachers, but their approach to teaching/learning is changing.

Foundation skills of literacy and numeracy (number sense, algorithms, whole number operations) will always be important. They are the tools to access information, evaluate, interpret, problem solve and express.  However, classrooms will be movable, changeable spaces.  Work areas and work stations (for different purposes) will be available and work will be more collaborative, more conversations, more hands-on experiences.  These are not such big changes in Lower School, but huge for Middle and Upper School.

Along with these changes will come a continued emphasis on interpersonal skills, building community, learning to be a connected and participating citizen of the world.  Empathy, the ability to reach out to others, to see a need and address it, to develop a voice around issues that concern you, will be extremely important.  Collaboration, though invaluable when solving a problem and creating a new, innovative tool, can be problematic.  Learners will have to learn to work with others, to express viewpoints constructively and to work toward a common goal. 

It is a wonderful time to be an educator!  I marvel daily at the observations, risk taking and connections our Lower School girls make (even our youngest).  When you change the paradigm and making connections, looking for new ways to solve problems, using tools in novel ways, and extending thinking is the norm, it is very exciting!