I was talking with a group of teachers recently and we were discussing (bemoaning?) how much teaching has changed and how much more pressure there is now than in the past.

One of the teachers in the group was a three-year veteran and her response to the conversation was “What’s changed? It seems the same to me!”

Well, this got me thinking…

Teaching has changed – there is more transparency, more accountability, more press coverage, more curriculum and more testing.

Parents are more savvy about their children’s education, students are more savvy about their own education and there are many experts publicly telling the insiders in education how to get the job done. So where does this leave us?

It leaves us with the “new teaching normal”.

The new normal includes more observations in our classrooms, public discussion of our success in the classroom, parents asking probing questions about the nitty gritty of our teaching, experts weighing in on our performance and how to improve it.

We progress monitor, diagnose, differentiate, collaborate, write and rewrite lessons, figure out how to engage our students from moment to moment….and the list goes on.

We are living proof of what the teaching profession will be now and in the future: this is it! We can look back at the “good ol’ days”, but that is only causing us to bemoan the present and pine for the past…and that doesn’t get us anywhere!

Here’s the good news about the new normal:

• We know more about our students and their performance
• We know more about their instructional history
• We know more about interventions that work
• We know more about research
• We know more about what happens in the classroom next door

All of these things equal KNOWINGNESS!  We know without a shadow of a doubt what works.  And that’s POWER. 

Can I get an amen??!?!?!?!!?

I am proud to be a part of an evolving profession – we can no longer just do “business as usual” when we have so much information to support past practices and new opportunities. A major professional responsibility is to evolve with the profession, not against it.

So, let’s keep the “good ol’ days” the “good ol’ days”. Let’s focus on what an exciting opportunity we have to be daily practitioners of the evolving teaching profession. It’s exciting!

Weigh in on this: What’s the biggest leap for you to “the new normal”?  www.facebook.com/jacksonconsulting