I was at a workshop today with teachers from around the county who are learning how to use iPads and how to integrate them into their instruction. Part of our discussion was about how 21st-century education requires teachers to allow students to learn for themselves; teachers are not and cannot be the "holders and distributors of knowledge" any more. I've written about this previously, in my description of my address to our school board. While our current school system was designed in an age of information scarcity, we now live in an age of information glut. Students carry around powerful (and nearly-always connected) computers in their pockets and can look up almost any information. Our job as teachers must transform from "giving out knowledge" to "helping students learn what to do with the knowledge they get".
It struck me during the group conversation in the workshop this morning that elementary-level teachers are much more comfortable (or perhaps less uncomfortable) with this idea than are middle-school or high-school teachers. If you teach a particular subject in secondary school, you are accustomed to being the subject-matter expert. That's why you got hired in the first place, right? Primary teachers, on the other hand, have always had to teach a wide range of subjects, including some (or many) with which they are not very familiar. Combine that with a greater emphasis on students acquiring skills in elementary school (as opposed to in middle or high school), and it seems that elementary teachers have a smaller leap to make in adjusting to Common Core and 21st-century education.
To be clear: I am not for an instant denigrating elementary teachers, or suggesting that they are not subject-matter experts, or even dismissing the significant work they will have to do to implement the Common Core. I'm trying to work out in my own head why it seems that my conversations with high school teachers about 21st-century skills so often come to a grinding halt. All teachers are being asked to make major changes in the way they instruct students; I suspect this will be the most difficult for subject-specific teachers in middle and high schools.
