YARMOUTH — Each week, we seem to hear from teachers, professors and philosophers about new models for effective learning.

These studies have led to healthy debates about homework, parent involvement in students’ education, how we train teachers, the optimal size of classes and, of course, the knowledge base and skill set that the current generation of students needs to flourish and compete in our global society.

While these studies often point in different directions for education reform, there is little doubt that our world is changing quickly, and schools as well as the curricula they implement need to adapt to meet those needs.

While there are good reasons for heightening the discussion about education reform today, healthy debate about what we teach and how we teach it is not new.

In 1955, Rudolf Flesch published “Why Johnny Can’t Read: And What You Can Do About It.” The answer he provided was that Johnny was not being taught in the right way.

The book sparked waves of concern and reform in both teaching methods and content, some of which remain important for educators to consider today. This concern also reinvigorated an emphasis on the three R’s – reading, writing and arithmetic – and a call toward developing a uniform set of fundamentals in school curricula.

For students to be successful now, they need to be able to innovate well past the three R’s to readily access available information and to reason, analyze and solve problems.

Schools now need to teach students how to think in an entirely new environment with an almost entirely new set of problems. At this juncture, what might help our students most is Version 2.0 of the three R’s: relationships, respect and resilience.

When you think back on teachers who helped you most, chances are you remember individuals who took the time to get to know you, formed trusting relationships and, over time, inspired you to learn.

In fact, the subjects they taught may not have been as significant as how they taught them. Through an emphasis on the first of the three R’s 2.0 – relationship – talented teachers inspire learning as well as cultivate a positive relationship to learning itself. In these relationships, students’ curiosity is piqued, engagement in the material is deepened and imagination is sparked, no matter what subject is being taught.

This leads, quite naturally, to the second R: respect.

In “The Finland Phenomenon,” filmmaker Bob Compton documents Harvard professor Tony Wagner’s exploration of the Finnish school system.

Finland has consistently been rated the top educational system in the world. Finnish schools have achieved this accomplishment not through greater amounts of homework, longer school days or more stringent evaluations of material covered in the classroom.

Instead, the school day is structured to provide highly qualified and motivated educators with time to work with students as individual learners and earn their respect. In turn, students develop greater responsibility for their education and trust that what they are learning matters.

The third R is a natural outcome of cultivating stronger relationships and deeper respect: resilience.

Of the three, this is the one that tends to set students apart. With resilience, or what others, such as University of Pennsylvania researcher Angela Duckworth, have called “grit,” students are able to cultivate determination and develop greater initiative, even when projects, semesters or experiences don’t go as planned.

Studies by Duckworth and others point to resilience as a key indicator of success in achieving long-term goals. In fact, as most teachers will tell you, it is often the sustained and focused application of talent over time that leads to successful outcomes. Greater resilience also fosters adaptability and agility, key components for a student’s achievement beyond the classroom.

These three R’s, like the old ones, can’t encompass all the qualities students will need in order to thrive. This is the very reason it is an exciting time to be an educator, and also the reason it is so challenging.

Still, this fresh set of R’s can help us enormously as we adapt to our fast-changing world. If we take the time to get to know students, develop trust and foster the confidence to take risks, fail at times and develop the drive to try again, we are, at the very least, providing students with a powerful foundation from which to engage in meaningful, productive lives.

As an educator, I believe we owe our students nothing less.

 

– Special to The Press Herald

 

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