Leaving one’s “comfort zone” is not always easy, but doing so lies squarely at the heart of learning. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the notion of comfort zone can be defined as “1. the temperature range within which one is comfortable; 2. the level at which one functions with ease and familiarity.” Here are two examples: “he pushes the players to perform beyond their comfort zone” and “I need to expand my comfort zone and start new things.”
Why evoke this concept? A number of educators and administrators at our school, including me, had the opportunity this past week to hear about a vision for teaching and learning in the 21st Century which confirmed much of what we already deem to be essential priorities for the future, but also called on us to ask ourselves whether we might be committed to some of our principles, practices and programs because they truly are the best imaginable for our students or because they happen to fall within our collective comfort zone.
“Today’s students want to learn differently”
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Marc Prensky.
The occasion was a series of professional development workshops conducted at the Lycée Français de New York last Monday by Marc Prensky, one of the leading US experts on technology-enriched education and inventor of the terms “digital native” and “digital immigrant.” Our purpose in inviting Mr. Prensky to work with the LFNY has been twofold: to understand better the possibilities and challenges of education in what he prefers to call “the new millennium” and to develop methods like personalized learning and project-based instruction which will equip students for a world in transformation.
Marc Prensky’s main arguments were compelling, validating much of what our educational team believes our students require. To borrow words from one of his numerous books, echoing the message he conveyed in person, Mr. Prensky affirms that “increasingly, we’re failing to deliver what students need in the ways that they need it…” For him, “Today’s students want to learn differently than in the past. They want ways of learning that are meaningful to them…ways that make good use of the technology they know is their birthright” (Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering for Real Learning (Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press, 2010), pp. 2-3).
A “partnering pedagogy”
Moreover, he continues, schools nowadays often provide their faculties with “training…about using technology. But…there is a paradox, because to be the most successful at using technology in their classrooms, teachers do not need to learn it to use it themselves (although they can if they want to). What teachers do need to know is just how technology can and should be used by students to enhance their own learning.” The pedagogy, therefore, for which Prensky advocates, and we at the LFNY would agree, is that of “partnering.” He explains, “in a partnering pedagogy, using technology is the students’ job. The teachers’ job is to coach and guide the use of technology for effective learning. To do this, teachers need to focus on, and become even more expert at, things that are already a part of their job, including asking good questions, providing context, ensuring rigor, and evaluating the quality of students’ work” (Teaching Digital Natives, pp. 2-3).
Yet Mr. Prensky also posed some difficult queries, difficult in the sense that they sometimes challenged convictions which excellent schools have long held. For instance, given that students now have an extraordinary wealth of information at their fingertips through the internet, he inquired, should we still bother to teach as much history, geography or for that matter any knowledge-intensive and consequently searchable subject as we currently do? Or in the same vein, should schools still ask their students to memorize verse by La Fontaine, Elliot, Rimbaud and Williams when that poetry and much more can be accessed in just a few clicks?
What should we be doing with our limited class time?
Or considering the relatively scarce moments teachers have with their students, combined with the phenomenal power of scientific calculators today, should we still be teaching students to remember formulas and to practice their computational skills in mathematics class? Or in light of the fact that everyone needs to master typing in our day and age, should we still be expending precious curricular time on the teaching of handwriting? And the list of such interrogations, all of which are inspired by the changes technology is generating and enabling in our lives today and will only accentuate in our lives tomorrow, went on.
In the midst of this discussion with Marc Prensky, I recall having two main thoughts. First, an increasingly incontestable point: the innovations which technological tools are bringing to teaching and learning are extraordinarily positive, allowing us to enhance our students’ education in ways which would otherwise be inconceivable. The second took the form of a question: are we reluctant to embrace all of his points, like the ones I have mentioned above, because we know our current practices to be optimal or because changing them would involve leaving our “comfort zones”? If you have any ideas on this topic which you would be willing to share, kindly do not hesitate to contact me. Please also note in your calendars the evening of January 22 when our Cultural Center will be hosting a fascinating 21st Century Citizenship Panel Discussion on the integration of technology and education.
About the Author :
Sean Lynch was Head of School at the Lycée Français de New York from 2011 to 2018, after having spent 15 years at another French bilingual school outside of Paris: the Lycée International de St. Germain-en-Laye. Holding both French and American nationalities, educated in France (Sciences Po Paris) and the United States (Yale), and as the proud husband of a French-American spouse and father of two French-American daughters, Sean Lynch has spent his entire professional and personal life at the junction between the languages, cultures and educational systems of France and the United States. In addition to being passionate about education, he loves everything related to the mountains, particularly the Parc National du Mercantour.