Role of the Adult in the Classroom Today

Recently, a parent friend of mine whose child attends a fairly well established, well known, progressive school shared an uncomfortable parent/school encounter. Apparently, this person was endeavoring to understand better how said school approached a particular piece of the science curriculum. As this parent framed the questions, he said it felt as if the administrators listening to him sort of glazed over and then suggested that this parent simply did not seem to understand the aims of the program. My parent friend indicated that from the moment the conversation turned to the inquiry with this what are we trying to do here?, and, how do we measure that we have done it?, the possibility of real conversation ended.

I listened to this person as both a parent and an educator. I thought again about how tough it is for parents and schools to really weigh in on the learning stuff of schools effectively.  Moments like this just seem to separate rather than unite the adults in working together.

Interestingly, I came across a piece by Will Richardson that powerfully encapsulated what the heart of the matter is in talking about children’s leaning as adults.

‘What if instead of seeing the adult in the room as the point through which the curriculum ebbs and flows and as the ultimate arbiter or what’s been learned we saw that person as the chief instigator of discovery, or the person that continually asks questions that he or she doesn’t have the answers to, or the learning expert that constantly models passionate and discerning practice around “learning more?” ‘  Will Richardson educator and author

Seth Godin, writer and change agent, speaks to this when he says:

If there’s information that can be written down, widespread digital access now means that just about anyone can look it up. We don’t need a human being standing next to us to lecture us on how to find the square root of a number or sharpen an axe. (Worth stopping for a second and reconsidering the revolutionary nature of that last sentence.) What we do need is someone to persuade us that we want to learn those things, and someone to push us or encourage us or create a space where we want to learn to do them better.

Sometimes, parent feedback serves to push schools and teachers to learn how to do what they do better – ironic!