How to Future Proof Your Kids

30+ years ago when I walked into my school library for the first time and saw a little off-white box with a black screen spring to life with green lettering and a single color outline of an old wagon drawn by a single ox, I was already hooked. The Oregon Trail wasn't much for graphics, especially compared to

todays games, but it was enough to pique my curiosity and set me on a path that would land me to where I am today. As a kid, I was fascinated by computers and technology, and my continued access to technology has largely shaped my experience. But more importantly than the actual technology, the thinking skills that I developed as I navigated a pre-Google world trying to learn more about this technology prepared me for a future I never could have planned when I was 7.

What do we mean by Future Proofing?

Future proofing is equipping our kids with the skills that they are most likely to need in the future. Teaching them archaic skills while neglecting modern ones is a recipe for future disappointment. Very few educational organizations are adequately preparing our kids for the future. Imagine teaching your kids to ride horses while ignoring the arrival of the automobile in the early 1900s. There's nothing wrong with learning to ride a horse, but it can't come at the expense of the skills that will be most useful to them in 20-30 years. This is Future Proofing.

As the leader of an education company that relies heavily on technology, one would think that I'd advocate as technology education being the critical component to future proofing your child. But you'd be wrong. Technology is certainly important and figures to play a major role in our childrens' lives in the future, but today's technology is ubiquitous. Increasingly, things like coding, once reserved for only the brainiest tech gurus, is accessible to novices of all ages (see our comparison of Scratch vs. Advanced Marketing Automations as an example). Kids are practically able to learn technology through osmosis these days, especially when provided a technology-rich environment.

So if technology is not the key to Future Proofing your kids, what is?

Adaptability. Flexibility. The ability to course correct and adjust in uncertain situations as input and conditions change. After all, that's essentially what the future is, isn't it? None of us can sit here and say what things will look like in 20-30 years. We can take some pretty good guesses, but who knows what technology or societal shift might change the world next? And who can predict the severity and impact of those changes? Maybe known "futurist" Ray Kurzweil... but even then, there's more questions than answers.

As a kid interested in technology before you could just Google everything, I had to figure a lot of stuff out on my own. I learned to not fear problems and began to embrace them as a fun challenge. I learned to guide my own acquisition of new knowledge by leveraging whatever resources were available to me. I learned that there often isn't a single right answer, but there's many, many ways to accomplish a goal. These lessons learned have become the foundation of my educational philosophy.

Knowing that the only certainty is uncertainty is somewhat liberating. It takes a little of the pressure off those state reading assessments and choosing which instrument our kids should learn as life altering choices. We need to focus more and do a better job teaching our kids to be flexible thinkers and problem solvers. Nearly all schools fall short here. Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic are certainly important and essential, don't get me wrong, but often we are teaching low level thinking skills, especially early on. Memorization. Process following. Algorithmic thinking. These skills are useful in tons of situations for sure, but in order to prepare to be a leader in a future of unknowns, it's simply not enough.

So how do we Future Proof our kids?

How do we teach kids adaptability and how to think flexibly? Well, for starters, we put them in slightly uncomfortable situations and let them navigate their way out. And we do it a lot. When I say uncomfortable, I mean situations in which there is no 1 clear answer or solution. For most people, not having a clear solution to a problem is a very uncomfortable situation. Countless times in teaching situations, I have been working with someone, adult or child, who just wants me to give them the answer, show them how to do it, and then repeat what I did. They crave this predictability because it is safe. It's comfortable. It's easy. And it's the opposite of the skills that our kids will need as they grow into the world we've created for them.

The next question is: won't kids hate being in these uncomfortable situations every day? That solution is simple. Make it fun! It's easier than you might think. Stop attaching success and failure to every decision they make. Use technology to enhance the experience. Create a culture of risk taking and independence and experimenting with new ideas. Sounds simple enough, right?

At Full STEAM Ahead we've been doing exactly that for a decade. At the end of our first summer camps back in 2015, we asked our kids and families how they liked our camps. There was an overwhelming positive response, but there was one common theme: the kids wanted more time to play. And they weren't asking for time to play video games or play tag; they wanted to play with the robots and play in the art room and play with the 3D printers. They CRAVED exploration and experimentation. This was an ah-ha moment for us that set us on the path to create exactly that aforementioned culture of risk-taking, independence, and experimentation.

Today, if you walk into any classroom at Full STEAM Ahead, you will see a group of smiling kids in a slightly uncomfortable situation. They have a task, but they don't fully know how to accomplish it or what the end result should or will look like. They know what the goal is, and they have been taught a set of skills to help them achieve that goal, but there's no "answer". Their success is only limited by their creativity, ingenuity, work ethic, and whatever foundational skills they've picked up from us along the way. The smiling is because they are having fun and using interesting technology and learning interesting things. They also know that if they succeed, there will be rewards, both tangible and intangible. More importantly, they know if they fail, that's Ok too. They can try again. Try something different. Or not--and that's important too. Sometimes, you just come up short. But there will always be another challenge, or another problem to solve, or another chance to showcase your genius.

Through this ongoing process, kids are learning to be confident problem solvers. They are learning to generate new and strong ideas. They are learning to persevere through failures and missteps. They are learning to guide their own learning to make their strengths stronger and learn new, previously lacking skills. No matter what challenges our kids face in the future, they will need to confidently attack problems head on and have the resilience to work through failure, uncertainty, and incomplete knowledge. Equipped with these skills, kids are ready for whatever the future may throw at them. They become impervious to uncertainty and unpredictability. They become Future Proof.