Week 27:         PRACTICE- The Broader Professional Context

            

“Global trends: The Paradox of Progress” I found this very interesting reading. Yes, it was a bit of doom and gloom thinking about the future. This made me think what it could be like for my own children. The trend that got my attention (Global Trends and Key Implications Through 2035) was "The rich are aging, the poor are not:"

We are seeing this with our school community being a low decile school. Many of our families are experiencing increasing economic, employment, urbanization, and welfare pressures and spurring migration. 

We have a high transient group of students who move for exactly these reasons, money, employment, housing and social pressures. This affects all of our school community, teaching staff, parents and students. Our roll is never stable which affects staffing and money (What a nightmare for our Principal!) Which then affects our students. This impact comes in a variety of ways such as resources, education outside of the classroom and student friendships are affected. Classroom numbers change and dynamics of the classroom. The effect on the students how are moving around is also not good for their education. We often have students who come back for a while then leave again due to housing or job opportunities. 

We are a Whanau and our students feel safe. We provide breakfast each day for our students and lunches are made each day for those students who are hungry. There is no stigma attached for our students who ask for food and fruit is ready available in each classroom throughout the day.  We also provide spare uniform sweatshirts on cold days. Happy, warm and well-feed students are students who can learn. As stated “The Paradox of Progress" people over the age of 60 are becoming the world's fastest growing age cohort. This can be seen in the teaching profession with not many young teachers staying in teaching. As staff rooms are aging like ours I can see this definitely happening.

We need we need to lure younger teachers to schools in towns and into teaching in general. Until the pay matches the hours teachers work this is going to be a problem. Housing needs to be addressed in many areas of New Zealand and job security. This is an age old problem and one that the education sector and Government must address. 

We need to equip students with being able to cope with these changes of the modern world. I loved the video on "Changing education paradigms"

 (Sir Ken Robinson )

It demonstrated where we are now and how the education system was driven by economics. The question Sir Ken Robinson asks " How do we educate our children to take their place in the economics of the 21st century ?"  This is one that many professionals need to think about. I think our education systems works for some but many students need to be taught in a different way. The  21st century is changing so quickly. Are we as educators changing too? Are we keeping up with the changes?  How best can we teach our students for the future when many are still teaching for the past!

References:

Karataş, S., et al. (2016). A Trend Analysis of Mobile Learning. In D. Parsons (Eds.), Mobile and Blended Learning Innovations for Improved Learning Outcomes (pp. 248-276). Hershey, PA: IGI Global.

The RSA.(2010, Oct 14). RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms.[video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U