5-10 YEAR PREDICTION: Michael Godsey is an English teacher from San Luis Obispo, CA--but he's not sure that the traditional role of "teacher" will be around for much longer. In a recent op-ed in The Atlantic, Godsey explains that as teachers shift from "content expert" to "curriculum facilitator," ever-improving education technologies may cause constructs like teachers' unions and in-person PD to become completely obsolete. Godsey cites the growth of sites like TeachersPayTeachers and schools that use some form of blended learning (the number of K-12 students who took an online course increased from roughly 45,000 in 2000 to more than 3 million in 2009) as evidence that teachers are rapidly switching to more of a "facilitator" role.
Whether or not this change is being brought to light worries Godsey. "There is a profound difference between a local expert teacher using the Internet and all its resources to supplement and improve his or her lessons, and a teacher facilitating the educational plans of massive organizations," he writes. "Why isn’t this line being publicly and sharply delineated, or even generally discussed?"
Godsey calls out that this line should be especially shared with new, aspiring teachers, whose classrooms in the coming five to 10 years may look extremely different from ten years ago.
