A teacher who stagnates is one who is no longer looking for ideas and has no desire to improve their craft.
Not only do their students suffer for it, they suffer as well as they’re locked into a moment of time. The operative term here is cultural stagnation.
It’s the term used for people who immigrate to another country, bringing their traditions with them and never changing them. Even when these same traditions evolve (or are abandoned) from the countries they brought them from, there is a refusal to change.
The people will even lambast their culture for changing so much while reminiscing how perfect things were when they left. This has more to do with a refusal to change.
I point to teachers specifically in this post because our world culture has changed. Immensely.
Many teachers are riding the wave and pressing into the future with new and innovative ideas to meet this change, while still retaining some of the ideas that are evergreen. This has nothing to do with actual pedagogy.
I’ve been in classrooms where teachers lecture all class, but they’re so captivating you want them to continue.
I’ve seen classrooms where teachers use frequent quizzes to recap information, which is a method backed by neuroscience as a solid way of retaining ideas.
Some are tough, some are easy… students like (and hate) classes for various reasons.
What we know for sure is this new world presents new challenges.
Some are asking the question, “What do we do?”
Others are complaining we should hark back to the “golden era” of education (the one in their head that didn’t actually exist).
The first group will figure it out while the second group will forever be stuck in a moment in time.
The same goes for the people in our world right now. We’ve been accelerating towards a future none of us are prepared for because it’s completely uncertain.
We need to ask what we can do to meet the challenges ahead.
Otherwise, we’ll be stuck in a world that has moved on without us while we fearfully fight against something that can’t change.