Change is good, everyone needs a refresh. For quite some time I have been thinking about the next big step for iBuild Academy. Am I content to finish my working career, or is there something else for me to do as my dream, my focus, is still to reinvent education? I have been on this path since I began my master’s program over 20 years ago.

I love working at Lamar University as a visiting professor in the Applied Digital Learning Master’s program. Hearing all of the great things going on across the country and beyond is inspiring. But there is still a lot to do when we think of our current workforce situation and the skills they lack. Our system of education is broken, stuck in a model that no longer works. We have taken away the very thinking teachers are good at… the ability to teach children to read, write, and do basic math.

Week after week, course after course, I hear of the many struggles our classroom teachers have. I listen to teachers training to be administrators and their struggles of using data to create content for the kids, but never about changing how we teach. But nowhere do I hear teachers having the ability to do what they do, teach the children. Everything is scripted for them. They are told what day they should be teaching what concept… EVEN IF THE KIDS AREN”‘ READY. The product of this struggle is kids who can’t read, do math, or do any type of problem-solving. The workforce cannot find quality workers. We need to reinvent education. The system we currently have is broken.

But this is complex. Our education system keeps adding bandaids to the problem. Our political system dictates how the money will be spent. They tell educators to fix the gun problems, the security problems, the behavior problems, the list goes on and on. But we never address the learning problem. We just don’t let the teachers teach anything to mastery. We just keep pushing the kids on.

It’s time for change.