It is evident that some things have not changed within the public school system. I remember growing up and multiplication and division were pure memorization...either you knew it or you didn't. When I began teaching initially that was my thought process. You need to just learn the facts, and there is a percentage of me that still believes that. However, I do understand why we break down the concepts of regrouping and multiplication, place value, etc. so that students understand "how" and "why" we are learning this concept. which leads me to why we haven't seen a significant change in education.
I believe that there is a constant battle between teachers who have been in education for 20+ years and are set in their old ways of teaching versus new-age teachers who are coming into teaching with all of the technology advances and opportunities to incorporate in a classroom. This is where you see a huge difference between teachers with fixed mindsets and teachers with growth mindsets. Many people are going to go with "if it ain't broke don't fix it". But, what many don't see is there are a lot of things about education that need "fixing". We must be willing to foresee change and embrace change. We must be more open to the integration of technology within classrooms, but there also needs to be clearer implementation processes that make it easier for teachers to integrate technology in their classroom and fully understand how to use it because there was proper training given prior to suggesting each new technological integration opportunity for a classroom. Suggestion? More professional learning opportunities on technology integration and the result is teachers walking away from the professional learning CLEARLY knowing how to integrate each new technology feature/program in their classrooms.
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