In The Teachers of 2030: Creating a Student-Centered Profession for the 21st Century (online magazine or PDF format), Barnett Berry invites policymakers and teacher leaders to rethink today's teaching policies by imagining the knowledge, skills and qualities teachers must have in the year 2030 -- just two decades from now. To support this discussion, Berry introduces the voices of 12 accomplished American teachers who are currently writing a book on the future of teaching. This TeacherSolutions 2030 team, supported by Metlife Foundation, has identified four emergent realities that they believe will shape education over the next 20 years: 

• A transformed learning ecology for students and teachers
• Differentiated professional pathways
• Seamless connections in and out of cyberspace
• Teacherpreneurism and the global educational marketplace

This monograph discusses these realities and also focuses on levers of change to address them, by building a robust and adaptable teaching profession. With study after study pointing to the powerful effects of qualified teachers and quality teaching on student achievement, it is clear that any effective vision for education’s future must focus on access for all students to excellent teaching.

We cannot create what we cannot imagine ...

The monograph is just the beginning, The TeacherSolutions team--made of up 12 teacher leaders from across the country, from diverse backgrounds and career stages--and Berry have collaborated on a book, forthcoming from Teachers College Press. For more than a year, the team has been engaging the expertise of their colleagues in the Teacher Leaders Network along with futurists, researchers, and reformers, while building on real successes already occurring in dynamic classrooms across the nation and the globe. They bring to the project their deep understanding and practical knowledge on issues ranging from 21st century skills to teacher preparation and retention to professional compensation and teacher leadership. Too many bookshelves are already filled with research reports and think tank policy tomes brimming with often conflicting prescriptions for this country’s teaching crisis. They are often distant from the reality of today’s schools.

The TeacherSolutions 2030 book will not be a culminating product, but the start of a conversation. Accompanying multimedia products and social networking tools will engage teachers, policymakers, parents and students in a collective vision of both the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Through their blog, The Future of Teaching, the TeacherSolutions 2030 team is already sharing a glimpse of their vision. Visit, read--and comment and question. The future will be shaped by learners who are agents of their own discoveries. It starts here.

The TeacherSolutions 2030 Team:

• Jennifer Barnett, Talladega County, AL
• Kilian Betlach, Oakland, CA
• Shannon Cde Baca, Iowa Learning Online
• Susie Highley, Indianapolis, IN
• John Holland, Richmond, VA
• Carrie Jenkins Kamm, Chicago, IL
• Renee Moore, Moorhead, MS
• Cindi Rigsbee, Orange County, NC
• Ariel Sacks, Brooklyn, NY
• Emily Vickery, Pensacola, FL
• Jose Vilson, New York, NY
• Laurie Wasserman, Medford, MA