After the lockdown: "Get up, time to study!"

There are talks everywhere about quarantine and self-isolation recently. And the most common rhetoric I’m facing is “to hold out somehow, wait until all this will ends up, so that we’ll return to normal life again.” And if “normal” is negotiable, it should be clear that the “return” is impossible at all. The world will not be the same. It’s not easy to realize. It requires courage. And the ability to think. And it seems to me that a rethinking of many things has already begun to take place - the meanings themselves are changing. And seriously changing. Education, too, will not be "as before." And what will it be? Let's imagine:

1. Not a massive and standardized by national templates. And not knowledge-only with unified "suitability" tests  at the output. But customized and individualized. With the focus “I will know / be able to do this, because I want / I am interested / I need ...” instead of “students should master this at that point (because it is written in the national educational standards)”.

2. A bright and exciting process. Life-long learning - a necessary requirement for survival in the future - is possible only when a person knows how learn to and wants to learn. This skill, as well as the attitude to the learning process itself, is formed in childhood - at school mainly. Therefore, it is important not how much knowledge has been put in into the concrete head of a child, but what a positive attitude towards the learning process itself and a steady learning skill are formed.

3. Human, emotional, soulful. It’s already more effective to acquire knowledge through a bright and dynamic short video (which will become more and more colorful every day) than by listening to a teacher’s monologue at a boring board. But the video will not give feedback and will not ask for feedback - it does care. But the teacher cares. The teacher will select the right material, direct the students towards it, put emphasis and pay attention to those things that will be in the blind zone of the students, ask a question so that students would want to deliberate, organize the process of exchanging thoughts and ideas, help to find a solution that is not obvious, support when the student comes to a dead end and help him/her find the aha!-moment... Teacher-designer, teacher-coach, teacher-mentor – these are the actual roles of the teacher in the new reality.

3. Gamificated with many fields. In the sense that at the beginning of the process (course, class, topic, etc.) the rules of the game are set: what is the goal, what are the rules for achieving it, what can and cannot be done by players, what are the levels and bonuses, what are the timelines and deadlines of the game move, etc. And there can be many “games” in parallel. And it’s possible to reset to zero, to start over - it’s easier and faster to go thorough, when you already know what the path consists of - then you don’t need to explain why to learn the rules adjectives - the student already knows that it will be necessary in a certain moment to get “energy” and go to the next level. And if a particular game “doesn’t go” – the one can switch to another “game” - with another teacher, on different materials, with different game rules. Thus complete the mission and get the icon of the "conqueror of biology Y-level."

5. Time-effective. With the permanent exponential increase in the amount of information (in which the one needs to have time to navigate) and a huge number of interesting activities and tasks a person wants and needs to do, time becomes a real value. And speeds only increase. Therefore, in the educational process, it is no longer acceptably to waste time on mechanical operations (roll-calls, checking homeworks in turn, etc.) and waiting “until everyone completes the task”. Every second should work for the student now. At an individual pace. So that each student can give a conscious answer the question "what are you doing now?", naming his/her benefit and interest in the every moment.

6. Partnership-based, trustful and synergistic. Choosing a school is a free choice. Once the one has chosen the school him/herself, he/she believes it’s the best choice. So the trust is granted. On the other side, the school has a desire to be chosen, thus grateful for the perfect choice. The intersection point is the overlap of the selection criteria (of parents) and the proposal (of the school). To this we add awareness of the student’s goals - of course, with the alignment with the parents and the school. This is how the goal becomes a common one and the parents’ focus shifts from controlling of how their child does the homework and if the school teaches properly (the oversight and service approach) to reinforcing each other's actions to achieve the COMMON goal (partnership approach).

I also wanted to add here “developing thinking in all its glory and versatility (creative, critical, independent)”. But suddenly paused by the other thought: does everyone really request it? Maybe it’s just my mindset, and other people will have a request for convenient behavior, template thinking, the ability to rapidly reproduce tons of information and rapidly do mind calculations ...? After all, this also takes place, and there should be the environment where such a demand would be met. Thus, we’re returning to paragraph 1.