Gratitude Journal Day 46 - Crab Mentality, 21st Century Skills and Progressive Education

Today, I am grateful to be reminded how immovable, rigid, our education system is and how educators benefit and find joy in this.

There are some educators that want to maintain a rigid, inflexible, anti-learning, adult supremacy environment at school to create some sort of machine that does "their time" and "follows the rules."

Super frustrating when all of what I value and appreciate as an educator are at the opposite end of those 19th-20th century mindsets.

No matter what people say you have to look at their actions and who or what they allow around them. 

I am reminded of the crab mentality today. The crab mentality goes like this. You place one crab in a bucket and it will not try to escape. You place two or more crabs in a bucket and the others WILL NOT LET any crabs climb out. Everyone gets dragged down. No one can try anything that could possibly create the question that someone might need to question what they are doing and might need to adjust their mindset so that others can thrive. If this is still confusing to you, watch this video.

Being a teacher is hard.

I strive to be my best by reading, thinking, asking questions, growing. 

I abhor the mindset of making sure others cannot do something for the fear of making me look like I am not doing my job. I cannot get into the mindset of people who think they have to tear down or prevent someone from doing something because they themselves are unwilling to try that. 

Our students are not robots. They are compassionate. They are empathetic. They are curious. They are goofy. They are full of life experiences. They have different likes and passions. They have insecurities and quirks. They have perspectives that cannot be taught. 

I believe in providing opportunities for students to engage in 21st century skills. 

• Critical thinking
• Communication skills
• Creativity
• Problem solving
• Perseverance
• Collaboration
• Information literacy
• Technology skills and digital literacy

Doing these lessons may require flexible learning spaces at different times for different students. ​

​Progressive Education is about freedom for students to be curious, to create, to have space to do things they enjoy with how they want to complete it. Human Restoration Project has a whole bunch of resources if you want to explore this more. Reading thinkers and authors like bell hooks, Alfie Kohn, Monte Syrie, Paulo Friere and Howard Zinn has greatly expanded my thinking about education and how we treat learning and young people. This has taken me years to learn and apply and adapt. 

I am going to keep learning so that I can create opportunties for all my students to experience freedom, joy, curiousity and be in relationship with their classmates.