In classrooms and across campuses, education leaders are reevaluating the skills, systems, and tools students need to succeed in a changing world.
The traditional approach to education has been to teach students knowledge and then evaluate whether they understood it. Knowing the information is important, but students also need to communicate what they’ve learned, adapt, participate, and think for themselves. Now that old model is evolving alongside changes in technology and workforce expectations.
As emerging technologies, such as AI, move into the classroom, educators are facing new challenges. Students already have distractions like personal digital devices, but now they must learn to use powerful new tools without becoming dependent on them. Educators are reconsidering their approach to teaching and what it means for a student to be successful.
Students Need Foundational Skills
Though technology can be a helpful educational tool, students need a foundation of skills that helps them navigate not only the classroom but also the world. They need to learn critical thinking, problem-solving, resilience, adaptability, and how to work through problems.
Rosie Riveters is a nonprofit organization that helps K-8 students develop these skills. The programs are 30-45 minutes long, aligned to standards, and require little prep time.
“What we’ve really done is retrofit our product, our programs to fit into those constraints so that they actually are plug and play for classroom teachers,” says Brittany Greer, the founder and Executive Director of Rosie Riveters.
As AI has become a part of the educational landscape, Greer doesn’t regard it as a replacement for foundational thinking, but a tool. She sees it as useful only after students have the cognitive building blocks to use it.
“The response to AI: it’s not AI skepticism, it’s the appropriateness of a tool that’s answering a question,” Greer explains.
Rosie Riveters’ programs help students through what Greer calls “productive struggle.” They are taught age-appropriate lessons in problem-solving and resilience instead of relying on technology for every answer.
“Building that ability for everybody to have access to that productive struggle, the ability to build that confidence, the muscle of that confidence, is what we really work on in classrooms with teachers.”
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