I’ve been thinking for years now that the one thing education can do without is competition. Teachers competing against one another to fill their coveted programs; teachers comparing themselves to one another on the popularity of a class or whether they are better than another in instruction and design. That’s all just irrelevant noise, and I desperately try to remove myself from these conversations.

But this also means there is another side to this coin, right?–when we get to celebrate one another’s ideas and support our education brothers and sisters. That happened this summer: a grad class involving an exhibition of our work at the end of the course. I shared some curriculum design and 21st century skills I was embedding professionally, including my podcast and this blog. But then I heard Alison Myers speak, a middle school art teacher from a nearby school district.

Alison showcased a website she was working on; samples of her students’ artwork from painting, drawing, and graphic designs they had completed remotely during her district’s distance learning hiatus in the spring; how she was communicating with these students and curating their work, facilitating and inspiring their creativity–and doing much of this type of work for the first time. She admitted she didn’t know technology well…yet, but she was giving it a shot.

I sat their watching on my laptop during this Zoom conference as she exhibited all of this, smiling and thinking, this is art class? This is rad! (I tend to say “rad” quite a bit–child of the ’80s and all.)

Alison’s exhibition also got me thinking about how different and difficult it must be for elective classes like art, music, consumer-family, even physical education–how strange it must be to transform that type of curriculum to this new shift in education. We think about readying students with 21st century and real world skills centering on communication, collaboration, creative thinking, and critical problem-solving. And I’m guilty of thinking about this in terms of only English, science, and math. But my colleagues in these electives have to be flexible and master their own creativity and critical problem-solving in order to continue encouraging their students in these passions they have chosen to explore.

I wouldn’t even know where to begin, and I’ve been at it for 18-plus years.

So, here’s my hat-tip in celebrating those elective teachers out there who keep an open-mind, who don’t shy away from making a shift to honor their craft and still highlight those essential skills kids need in the real world, who don’t let the shift in education make them obsolete. They simply asked the question: Was does teaching my discipline look like in today’s education landscape?

With Alison’s exhibition, I was inspired by the glimpse I got in her answer to that very question. After listening to her, it seemed so obvious that this would be the journey her elective takes, this would be the journey her students take in exploring their talents and their imaginations.

And if we stop competing with one another, man, we just might learn something.

Teaching Flashpoint Podcast Episode 5: “The Art of Flashpoint”