I saw a video the other day, and one of the statements kind of irked me. It stated that every student should be able to __________ by the time that they are finished school. I would let your imagination wander in what that thing was, but it got me thinking about how often we talk in absolutes. Often, those absolutes are based on our own interests or passions as educators, not necessarily what is essential for our students. Sometimes they are connected, but sometimes it is what we are passionate about. There are things that I did in school that I use in no way in my life now, and there are things that I learned that I still use daily.
The responses were not all necessarily serious (you can read the majority of them under the original tweet), but many of them were. They didn’t have the words “coding” or “social media” in the time of writing this post, yet those words are often thrown around in the circle of absolutes.
I think a great activity that could be done with your staff or community is to ask this very question, and then discuss the answers, and how are you (or aren’t) making them come to reality.
What are you education absolutes? What would your students say? What are you doing to get there?
