“教书是最伟大的乐观行为”——一位印度教师写给未来教师的一封信
2024-09-16 22:51阅读：
亲爱的未来的老师们：
当我开始自己的教师之旅时，我的导师对我说了一些话，这些话一直伴随着我，并在我最绝望的日子里指引我——教书是最伟大的乐观行为。我认为，教师节(9月5日是印度的教师节)是一个很好的时机提醒自己，更重要的是，提醒所有即将开始塑造世界未来激动人心旅程的老师们，关于这个简单、不言而喻但经常被忽视的真理！
我希望你花点时间来理解这句话，而不是把它当做一封让你微笑一秒钟，但实际上却没有任何意义的贺卡式信件而一笑置之。
为什么教书是一种乐观的行为？
我认为，乐观需要对我们周围世界正在发生的所有奇妙变化感到兴奋。老实说，我无法为你在世界上的新角色想到更好的解释。我今天提起这件事的原因是，很快你们就会发现自己几乎被嘈杂的声音震聋，这会让你们疑惑：教书是一种乐观的行为，还是一件令人恐惧的事情？
因为恐惧会吸引眼球，容易上瘾。
用未来的不确定性来吓唬学生和家长，比激励他们期待未来并积极面对未来更容易引起他们的注意，这是你必须要面对的残酷现实和艰难抉择。我也可以告诉你，当你实现后者时，没有什么比这更有意义了。但这也需要努力。你不能让学生适应不确定性，除非你自己适应不确定性。你首先要接受这样一个事实：当今时代，教师的角色与过去不同了。
职业和专业世代相传的时代已经一去不复返了。如今，世界的改变可以只在数月之间。你如何让孩子们为我们谁都无法准确预测的未来做好准备？说来奇怪，我们必须回到基础和过去，为未来做好准备。这意味着帮助孩子们深入学习未来学科的基础，这样他们就会对建立在这些基础之上的一切事物产生无限的好奇心。
我们可以让他们深入了解塑造未来的力量。这意味着，虽然我们不知道5年、
10年、20年后他们将使用什么确切的技术，但我们的确知道，技术将是未来的驱动力。我们不知道未来几年人工智能的边界会扩大多少，但我们知道，人工智能将是一支不可忽视的力量。我们不知道国家和全球金融机构将采取什么形式，也不知道世界将如何变化，但我们知道，资金、商业和商务永远不会不重要。
训练孩子们在生成式人工智能工具上给出智能提示符很容易，但帮助他们理解这项技术是如何产生的、目前的边界是什么，以及未来的潜力可能是什么，却要困难得多。前者只需要肤浅的知识和死记硬背，而后者则需要教师首先对学科进行深入的参与，这样好奇心就可以延伸到学生身上。
我不会假装这很容易。当你向孩子们教授不断发展和面向未来的学科时，你自己必须不断地学习和提升技能。再加上你周围世界不和谐的害怕声音，以及家长们担心他们在孩子的世界里无法预测或控制的事情。这意味着，教孩子一项新时代的技能，让他们为未来做好准备，也是带着他们的父母一起踏上“一切都会好起来的”和“不，最好不要在两节课内快速教他们20个提示符或常见例子，最好用20节课教他们实际技术”的旅程。
有时，你得与每个孩子和家长一起经历多次这样的旅程，他们才会开始相信这一点，开始以不同的方式看待这个世界。我承认，这有时会让人精疲力竭，让人受不了。但等到所有的艰苦努力都结出硕果，你的学生遥遥领先的那一天，这是非常值得的，因为他们对某一学科的了解来自充满好奇心和批判性思维的理解，并最终在实验中达到顶峰。当你意识到你不仅改变了学生和你一起学习的方式，而且从根本上改变了他们看待世界的方式时，这是非常值得的！
如果5年前你问我最大的技能提升是什么，我会说是从以实体学习工具为主转变为如今教师可以使用大量在线工具。如果你在过去18个月里问我同样的问题，我会惊讶于我的回答会改变多少次。我已经使用人工智能平台几百个小时，为孩子们提供个性化学习。
这意味着，我自己先花了几十个小时辛苦学习。如今，在教授每门学科时，我们能够把每个孩子最感兴趣的学习背景、节奏和形式考虑进去。例如：如果一名学生想设计一款旅行应用软件，同时他又喜欢历史，那么这个平台可以直观地把这两个兴趣结合起来，并结合这两种兴趣构建模拟、测试、练习和复习材料，这样学生的学习之旅就会更有价值、更个性化。
但首先，我自己必须下功夫，了解如此强大的技术是如何产生的，以及创造它的过程，甚至这样的人工智能可能会给整个人类带来什么样的伦理问题。
如果你在8个月前问我同样的技能提升问题，我会说我最近学到的最重要的一件事是辨别数据的能力。我们使用的工具不断为我们提供数以百万计的数据点，告诉我们学生需要什么——他们在哪些方面表现优异、需要哪些支持，甚至他们可能正在形成哪些偏见。对数据提出正确的问题并理解得到的答案，是我过去一年作为一名教师的学习珠峰。
亲爱的未来的老师们，教授新时代的技能不适合胆小的人，但绝对适合意志坚强的人！
Teachers' Day 2024: A letter from a teacher to future
educators who are about to start their exciting
journey
By Dhanjit Sarma
When I was starting my journey as an educator, my mentor told me
something that guided me on my most hopeless days: teaching is the
greatest act of optimism.
Dear future teachers,
When I was starting my own journey as an educator, my mentor told
me something that has stayed with me and guided me on my most
hopeless days: teaching is the greatest act of optimism. I think
teacher’s day is a great time to remind myself and, more
importantly all of you, who are about to start your own exciting
journey of shaping the future of the world, about this simple and
self-evident but often-ignored truth!
I want you to take a moment to unpack this line instead of
dismissing it as a Hallmark greeting card-type missive that makes
you smile for a second, but doesn’t really mean anything.
Why is teaching an act of optimism?
I believe that optimism requires a sense of excitement for all the
weird and wonderful things that are changing in the world all
around us… And I honestly can’t think of a better explanation for
your new role in the world. And the reason I’m bringing this up
today is because very soon, you’ll find yourself almost deafened by
noise that will make you question whether teaching is an act of
optimism… Or fear.
Because fear grabs eyeballs and is addictive.
It’s easier to get students and parents to pay attention by
terrifying them about the uncertainty of the future than to inspire
them to look forward to it and approach it with positivity. That’s
the sad truth and difficult choice you’re going to have to contend
with. I can also tell you that there’s nothing more rewarding when
you achieve the latter. But that also requires work. You can’t make
students comfortable with uncertainty unless you get comfortable
with it yourself – which starts with the acceptance that the role
of the teacher in today’s day and age is not the same as it used to
be.
Gone are the times when vocations and professions evolved over
generations. Now the world can change in a matter of months. How do
you prepare children for a future that none of us can predict with
any degree of accuracy? Oddly enough, we have to go back to the
basics and the past to get ready for the future. Which means
helping children deeply learn the foundations of the disciplines of
the future, so they become endlessly curious about everything that
gets built on those foundations.
We can’t prepare for what the future might look like, but we can
equip them with deep knowledge of the forces that will shape the
future. What this means is that while we don’t know what exact tech
they will be using 5, 10, 20 years from now, we do know that tech
will be the driving force of the future. We don’t know how much the
boundaries of AI will expand over the coming years, but we know
that AI will be a force to reckon with. We don’t know what shape
national and global financial institutions will take or how the
world will do entrepreneurship, but we know that money, commerce,
and business will never not be important.
It’s easy to train kids to give smart prompts on generative AI
tools, but it is a lot harder to help them understand how that
technology came to be, what its current contours are, and what its
future potential might be. The first requires superficial knowledge
and rote learning, while the second needs deep engagement with the
subject first by the teacher, so that curiosity can extend to the
student.
I’m not going to pretend that it’s easy. When you’re teaching
evolving and future-looking subjects to kids, your own learning and
upskilling can never stop. Add to that the cacophony of fear from
the world all around you. It is natural for parents to worry about
things they can’t predict or control in their children’s world.
Which means that teaching a child a new-age skill to make them
future-ready is to also take their parents along on this journey of
“It’s really going to be okay” and “No, it is NOT better to quickly
teach them 20 prompts or common use cases in 2 classes, it’s better
to teach them the actual technology in 20!”
Sometimes you’ll have to take this journey with each child and
parent multiple times before they start believing in it, and start
seeing the world differently. And I will admit that this can be
exhausting and overwhelming at times. But it’s so, so worth it the
day all the hard work comes to fruition and your student charges
far ahead because their knowledge of a subject comes from a space
of understanding charged with curiosity, critical thinking, and
culminates in experimentation. It’s so, so worth it when you
realise that you’ve changed the way your students not only learn
with you, but how they look at the world, fundamentally!
5 years ago if you’d asked me what my biggest upskilling
achievement was, I’d say it was the transition from mostly physical
learning tools to the plethora of online tools that are now
available to educators. I’m amazed by how many times my answer
would have changed if you’d asked me the same question over the
last 18 months. I’ve spent hundreds of hours using the AI-enabled
platform that personalises and individualises learning for
kids.
Which means I’ve spent dozens of back-breaking hours learning it
first. We now have the ability to teach every child every subject
by factoring in the context, pace, and format of learning that they
are most interested in. For example: If a student wants to design a
travel app but also has a love for history, the platform can
intuitively combine these two interests and build simulations,
tests, practise exercises and revision material combining these two
things so the student’s learning journey can be that much more
rewarding and personal.
But first, I have to put in the work to myself learn how such
powerful technology came to be and what goes into creating it, even
what ethical questions AI like that might raise for humanity as a
whole.
If you’d asked me the same upskilling question 8 months ago, I’d
say that the single most important thing I’ve learned recently is
the ability to discern data. The tools we use are constantly giving
us millions of data points about what our students need – where
they are excelling, what they need support with, even what biases
they might be developing. Asking the right questions to data and
understanding the answers I get has been my Learning Everest as a
teacher this past year.
Dear future teachers, teaching new-age skills is not for the faint
of heart, but it is definitely for the strong of mind!
