This week, Donald Trump shocked the world when he won the election to become America’s 45th president. As I began writing this post, thousands of Americans flooded the streets in cities across the country in protest against a Donald Trump presidency. I share this, not as an endorsement of such events, but rather to acknowledge the symbolism of a nation divided. Our greatest challenge as a country will be to find a way to unite, even in the face of a very uncertain future.

How apropos to be writing a blog post in response to Sal Khan’s chapter entitled, “Embracing Uncertainty.”

Sal writes, “Since we can’t predict exactly what today’s young people will need to know in ten or twenty years, what we teach them is less important than how they learn to teach themselves.” This could not be more true or more important as we consider the way we educate today’s learners.

As we prepare for an uncertain tomorrow, educators find themselves in unchartered territory. We are asking teachers to prepare students for a future world that is difficult to imagine. There will be new inventions, industries and problems on the horizon that will impact our lives in dramatic ways. How can we embrace this uncertainty?

The opening to Sal’s fourth and final section of his book introduces the concept of the One World Schoolhouse, which reminds us that the power of education may come from uniting learners, just as we are hoping to unite the citizens of our great nation.

Using Khan’s idea of the One World Schoolhouse, we can empower students to become curious, confident, self-directed learners who are prepared to take an active role in their own learning and ultimately in the world around them.

Below are some suggestions of ways to put this idea into practice immediately.

• Leverage technology appropriately to tailor learning to meet individual student needs
• Emphasize and assess skills rather than content knowledge
• Provide students with regular opportunities to grapple with and solve actual problems
• Get out of the way and let students (possibly of different ages) come together to learn with each other rather than independently
• Accept that learning beyond the classroom is valuable and may not come in the form of practice problems or worksheets
• Celebrate outside-the-box thinking and connections made between ideas

Let’s all embrace uncertainty by shifting our focus. Let’s ensure that all students know how to teach themselves to learn with the help of one another. By leveraging the power of technology and incorporating old methodologies where students learn from and with one another, we will do our part in preparing all students for an exciting future filled with opportunity, possibility, and discovery.