Teaching to Prep Students for Their Future, Not Our Past

Christina

https://hbr.org/2020/11/our-work-from-anywhere-future plus video at: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/17/worst-work-model-of-the-future-its-not-all-office-or-fully-remote.html and article at: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/19/the-big-risks-in-return-to-office-harvard-remote-work-guru-.html

Hello fellow educators!

This is to highly recommend an intensively researched article at the Harvard Business Review which is totally worth being that 1 free article a month HBR grants everybody.

Raj Choudhury's "Our Work-from-Anywhere Future" explores the many reasons employers and individuals are likely to push for a WFA future post-pandemic. This means developing the ability to collaborate online in our students in our classes is an important benefit to layer into any course if we are serious about wanting to our students to thrive long after they leave our classrooms.

This week was my first of teaching with a majority of students actually IN the class in front of me (yeay!!!) and I was not sure how it would go with my Mural activities in that setting. What happened? They LOVED it! There they were, laughing and chattering like a treeful of squirrels, making real eye contact AND filling up the mural like nobody's business.

What also struck me is that they had NO idea what WFA was or that it could even be an option for them, and they were absolutely dumbfounded by the idea. It wasn't that I was trying to sell them on it; they just hadn't been aware that there could be a long-term alternative to what they have seen their parents do. It was interesting to see that while working professionals have definitely experienced a dramatic paradigm shift over the last 2 years in what is being called The Great Resignation in the US and Canada (see: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/working-flexibly-new-normal-poll/; https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackkelly/2021/06/24/the-war-for-talent-and-great-resignation-puts-human-resource-professionals-and-chief-remote-work-officers-in-high-demand/?sh=1d679e445fb9; https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/gen-z-millennials-playing-a-significant-part-in-the-great-resignation-trend-1.1628383), my university students in Europe are hearing about WFA for the first time in class.

If this is a future worth exploring for even some of our young people, online collaboration is a skill worth building, whether students are physically sharing a classroom space, or work from anywhere else.

Hope you enjoy the links, and let me know what you think - I'd love to hear other educators' experiences with hybrid so far!

[Deleted User]

Thanks for sharing @Christina - glad to hear your first week of in person teaching went well. Excited to learn more!