Another lesson the COVID-19 shutdown helped us learn is that many students grapple with intense problems that extend far beyond academics. For many students, school may be the one place where they could escape from physical and/or emotional trauma. Those students no longer have that temporary sanctuary from their troubles outside of school. Furthermore, providing meals to socioeconomically disadvantaged students became an emergency with its own logistical challenges. For several years now, educators have tried to address the growing mental health issues that afflicted so many of our students, and the pandemic only served to accelerate the crisis. This has led many educators, policy makers, and other concerned constituents to realize that, in our drive to increase academic performance, we somehow lost sight of our single, most important responsibility: caring for the whole child.

Caring for the whole child includes changes in how we use technology to augment learning and increase equity. Pre-COVID, school districts typically tried to force twenty-first-century technology to conform to our twentieth-century schools. We have come to realize that this mindset was backward, as we have learned to use and depend on digital platforms to deliver instruction, and to collaborate and communicate with students and colleagues.

Technology should support all students
The crisis has helped us realize that we need to use data and technology to support all students in reaching their potential. This does not need to be something that we need to fear or feel victimized by. Rather, we should embrace advancing technology and strive to create a culture where teachers, students, and parents feel empowered by it. As technology gets smarter and more powerful, the opportunities it presents are almost limitless. Consider the smartphone, which is now one-thousand times smaller, one-thousand times less expensive, and one-million times more powerful than a supercomputer of the 1970s. But even the newest iPhone will be replaced by something far more powerful in the not too distant future … mind-reading computers, for example. Advancements in robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI) are trending today. If we as teachers do not stay current with technology, how can we possibly prepare our students adequately for a workplace that will require a 55 percent increase in technology skills by 2030?

The beneficiaries of these new jobs will be those who are able to use technology to augment their own skills in a way that elevates productivity, performance, and creativity. This transition is no different than the earlier transitions from an agrarian society to an industrial society, and from an industrial society to our current digital society. We must forever be aware of technological developments, changing demographics, and evolving job requirements. Once we acknowledge these trends, we can begin to frame what this wave of change means for students and for education.

The vast ripple effect of the pandemic has kept many education leaders struggling with how to respond to the mounting challenges they face. These challenges are deep, and the solutions are complex.

Our twentieth-century education system was not designed to do these things. Without a fundamental transformation, this century will not be effective either. That is why we must reimagine the system and ourselves. Technology is the key to help us do this. In fact, there are school districts across the country that have already embraced their future with technology. Each year, the International Center for Leadership in Education (ICLE), which is the organization I founded 30 years ago, organizes an Annual Model Schools Conference where the nation’s most technologically innovative and successful schools and districts are showcased. These model schools and districts all share a very important message: Culture Trumps Strategy! Despite accepting there is the need to undertake this major change initiative with technology; having the resources available to assist teachers with the process; and seeing examples of schools and districts that have experienced success by being innovative with technology, we have learned that failure is guaranteed until administration and faculty buy into the vision of where they need to go and why they need to get there.

It needs to be about the students’ future, not the eroded system of the past. We need to love our children more than the schools of our youth, and leverage our passion of caring for our students into creating a culture that embraces the new and emerging successful practices that are sprouting up across the nation. We need to bring the growing number of examples of success up to scale.

About the author
Dr. Bill Daggett is founder of the International Center for Leadership in Education and Successful Practices Network. Dr. Daggett and his leadership team are available to assist districts and schools that are interested in transforming into a system that is focused on preparing all students for their future and not for our past. Dr. Daggett can be reached at wdaggett@leadered.com.