How do schools balance tradition and innovation?
Before Indonesia, my initial guiding question focused on literacy. This was the obvious choice because I'm a reading teacher back home. Showing students the joy that comes from reading and writing is a passion of mine yet my time in Indonesia - especially Bangkinang - showed me that other ideas were just as important to our future.
There is something to be said for the way that Indonesians value their culture and traditions. Not only do they celebrate their culture, they want to share it with you. The most important thing to the Indonesians I met is their community. Our time in Bangkinang in the Riau Province was simply lovely. Joe and I became part of the community. Everyone we met insisted that we learn about the old ways, the people, and (lucky for us) the food! Even though we were there just a week, it felt like home. Students' faces became familiar, new voices became comforting, and the prayers from the mosque across the street (that at first woke me up in the middle of the night) became part of a normal day.
I started to wonder if there was a "cost" to keeping your traditions alive. In Indonesian schools, students can study different styles of Indonesian dance, martial arts, traditional music, and learn how to make Indonesian crafts.
All of these traditions were beautiful to experience first-hand. But I started to think if schools were giving up anything in the process. As part of our preparation for the international field experience, our cohort learned about global education and 21st Century learning. When I hear the words "21st Century Learning", I immediately think of technology and innovation. I think of digital books, paperless assignments, problem solving, and connecting students from different parts of the world using electronic devices.
It wasn't until my field experience in Indonesia that I realized that 21st Century learning is not just about the future. 21st Century learning is about preserving the past. 21st Century learning is about telling your story. Whether they knew it or not, every person we met in Indonesia became an ambassador for their country, for their religion, and for their community. That is what the 21st century is really about - learning how to navigate different borders, different religions, and different cultures in a curious yet respectful way. This is what we must show our students and each other.
When I returned home to Texas, my guiding question was still on my mind. Was I doing enough to keep my own students' traditions alive? Will my own culture survive modernization and change in the 21st century? And, after all of this thought, who is actually writing the story of my students' traditions? What voices are telling our story?
This is something that I try to reflect on, when we are choosing what piece of literature to use in class, what articles we will dissect and discuss, what stories we tell each other, or what ideas I share with our admin. My job as an educator is to make sure my students can and do tell their own stories. Technology and social media are tools that will keep our stories alive. I want my students to be ambassadors for their own traditions. The biggest lesson I took from my time in Indonesia was that we need to preserve the past. Otherwise, what kind of future will our students have?
There is something to be said for the way that Indonesians value their culture and traditions. Not only do they celebrate their culture, they want to share it with you. The most important thing to the Indonesians I met is their community. Our time in Bangkinang in the Riau Province was simply lovely. Joe and I became part of the community. Everyone we met insisted that we learn about the old ways, the people, and (lucky for us) the food! Even though we were there just a week, it felt like home. Students' faces became familiar, new voices became comforting, and the prayers from the mosque across the street (that at first woke me up in the middle of the night) became part of a normal day.
I started to wonder if there was a "cost" to keeping your traditions alive. In Indonesian schools, students can study different styles of Indonesian dance, martial arts, traditional music, and learn how to make Indonesian crafts.
All of these traditions were beautiful to experience first-hand. But I started to think if schools were giving up anything in the process. As part of our preparation for the international field experience, our cohort learned about global education and 21st Century learning. When I hear the words "21st Century Learning", I immediately think of technology and innovation. I think of digital books, paperless assignments, problem solving, and connecting students from different parts of the world using electronic devices.
It wasn't until my field experience in Indonesia that I realized that 21st Century learning is not just about the future. 21st Century learning is about preserving the past. 21st Century learning is about telling your story. Whether they knew it or not, every person we met in Indonesia became an ambassador for their country, for their religion, and for their community. That is what the 21st century is really about - learning how to navigate different borders, different religions, and different cultures in a curious yet respectful way. This is what we must show our students and each other.
When I returned home to Texas, my guiding question was still on my mind. Was I doing enough to keep my own students' traditions alive? Will my own culture survive modernization and change in the 21st century? And, after all of this thought, who is actually writing the story of my students' traditions? What voices are telling our story?
This is something that I try to reflect on, when we are choosing what piece of literature to use in class, what articles we will dissect and discuss, what stories we tell each other, or what ideas I share with our admin. My job as an educator is to make sure my students can and do tell their own stories. Technology and social media are tools that will keep our stories alive. I want my students to be ambassadors for their own traditions. The biggest lesson I took from my time in Indonesia was that we need to preserve the past. Otherwise, what kind of future will our students have?