Yesterday NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft showed us Pluto like we’ve never seen it before. It was truly a breakthrough of science and human imagination.
My very first lesson as a 6th-grade student teacher was on the subject of Pluto. It was 2006 and the International Astronomical Union (seriously, great name for a band cc: Nashville) just held a vote that redefined what it means to be a planet. Pluto was out. It was a Language Arts lesson using a Science topic: I was going for the high degree of difficulty content integration lesson right out of the gate. Great teachers do this every day at every grade level and my goal was to be a great teacher someday. I presented the facts to the students verbally, visually, and in writing, and it was their job to critique, ask questions, and take a position on the issue. It was a killer lesson on a timely topic.
But the 11-year-olds were not prepared for this news. They sat stunned. The entire premise of Pluto not being a planet any more offended their background knowledge and all the Very Excellent Mothers who Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. It was the most clear example I’ve seen of cognitive dissonance before or since. Yet we salvaged a great discussion. As I recall, some were motivated to write the IAU to stop-the-insanity while others were dreaming up new mnemonic devices for M-V-E-M-J-S-U-N. (No more Pizza.).
Fast forward 10 years later. These students are graduating from college next year and are on their way into the world. Some of them will be moving back to our community to start their careers and families. The same kids who were once my classroom audience are soon to be parents in my district. Am I ready to handle any more cognitive dissonance in my new School PR role? I’d better be. From where I sit, school finance, standardized testing, and legislative advocacy for the value of public schools are all more complex issues than dwarf planets. They aren’t just rocket science.
As I think about those kids, I wonder how their learning world has changed since they were my students. (Actually, they will *always* be my students. It’s a teacher thing.) In just eight years as an educator, I went from transparencies, overheads, and chalkboards to whiteboards to SMARTboards, to an iPad, to a classroom full of iPads, to 1:1 iPads and robust learning management systems. A total digital transformation of teaching and learning took place in a fraction of a generation, and it’s still happening in our district. Imagine the scope and depth of the change from those students’ perspective. What are their expectations from a school district now that they are a different sort of consumer?
One of my favorite frames of reference is the Beloit College Mindset List, an encapsulation of cultural change during the lifetimes of students. It highlights facts and touchpoints that a graduates of any given year might “always” or “never” have known to be true. These students were born around 1995 and they graduated high school in 2013. Few, if any, of them had the chicken pox. Java does not mean a cup of coffee to them. And they have always been able to plug something into a USB port. Always.
This is my new audience. Their children will be our students. Much has changed since our year together in 6th grade almost 10 years ago, but at least one things remains the same: Pluto is still not a planet.
My very first lesson as a 6th-grade student teacher was on the subject of Pluto. It was 2006 and the International Astronomical Union (seriously, great name for a band cc: Nashville) just held a vote that redefined what it means to be a planet. Pluto was out. It was a Language Arts lesson using a Science topic: I was going for the high degree of difficulty content integration lesson right out of the gate. Great teachers do this every day at every grade level and my goal was to be a great teacher someday. I presented the facts to the students verbally, visually, and in writing, and it was their job to critique, ask questions, and take a position on the issue. It was a killer lesson on a timely topic.
But the 11-year-olds were not prepared for this news. They sat stunned. The entire premise of Pluto not being a planet any more offended their background knowledge and all the Very Excellent Mothers who Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. It was the most clear example I’ve seen of cognitive dissonance before or since. Yet we salvaged a great discussion. As I recall, some were motivated to write the IAU to stop-the-insanity while others were dreaming up new mnemonic devices for M-V-E-M-J-S-U-N. (No more Pizza.).
Fast forward 10 years later. These students are graduating from college next year and are on their way into the world. Some of them will be moving back to our community to start their careers and families. The same kids who were once my classroom audience are soon to be parents in my district. Am I ready to handle any more cognitive dissonance in my new School PR role? I’d better be. From where I sit, school finance, standardized testing, and legislative advocacy for the value of public schools are all more complex issues than dwarf planets. They aren’t just rocket science.
As I think about those kids, I wonder how their learning world has changed since they were my students. (Actually, they will *always* be my students. It’s a teacher thing.) In just eight years as an educator, I went from transparencies, overheads, and chalkboards to whiteboards to SMARTboards, to an iPad, to a classroom full of iPads, to 1:1 iPads and robust learning management systems. A total digital transformation of teaching and learning took place in a fraction of a generation, and it’s still happening in our district. Imagine the scope and depth of the change from those students’ perspective. What are their expectations from a school district now that they are a different sort of consumer?
One of my favorite frames of reference is the Beloit College Mindset List, an encapsulation of cultural change during the lifetimes of students. It highlights facts and touchpoints that a graduates of any given year might “always” or “never” have known to be true. These students were born around 1995 and they graduated high school in 2013. Few, if any, of them had the chicken pox. Java does not mean a cup of coffee to them. And they have always been able to plug something into a USB port. Always.
This is my new audience. Their children will be our students. Much has changed since our year together in 6th grade almost 10 years ago, but at least one things remains the same: Pluto is still not a planet.