21st Century Skills
The implementation of 21st century
skills into our current educational model has been growing over the past
several years. In the development of new
state-wide and national curriculums many concepts of the 21st century skills
have been incorporated. My school
district resides in the state of Iowa.
We have been working on implementing new standards and benchmarks from
the common core. One particular section
of this curriculum is dedicated to the 21st century skills. With students spending the majority of their
out of school time using technology it is obvious that we need to educate
students on how to use this new aid educationally (Miners, 2007). I agree with many of the proposed concepts
that should be used in the classroom to promote skills growth. The major themes of the 21st century cover
multiple disciplines. The focus
primarily on learning, innovation, technology, and career skills (Partnership,
2011). Many of the benchmarks addressed
in the curriculum seem very obvious but these skills might not be covered in
conventional curriculum. The major theme
that I agree with is teaching problem solving skills. Students need to be able to adapt to
situations and develop a reasonable answer to scenarios that could be
open-end. My largest argument with the
curriculum is how it is interpreted. It
is far too convoluted and basic points are lost in over wording benchmarks and
standards. There will be a positive
impact for students when it comes to being prepared to enter the
workforce. However, educators and school
systems may have many problems trying to incorporate all these skills and
concepts on top of their normal curriculum.
It will boil down to whether there is enough funding, time, and support
as to how much impact the 21st century curriculum will have.
References:
Miners, Z. (2007, October). The
new literacies. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/bbcswebdav/institution/USW1/201320_04/MS_EDUC/NCATE _EDUC_6710/Week
4/Resources/Resources/embedded/The_New_Literacies_article.pdf
Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2011,
March).Partnership for 21st century skills. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/1.__p21_framework_2-pager.pdf
Jason,
ReplyDeleteI think that your last sentence describes the situation the best. It is sad that the implementation of these new standards is going to boil down to funding, time, and support, but as nearly any educator would tell you, this is true. I think that educators need to continue to do what is working in their classrooms and slowly integrate these new changes in as they are capable of doing. Great thoughts!!
Kendra
Jason,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that one of the hardest things with this transition of the common core is figuring out how we're going to tie all of this in. I am hoping that the more inter-disciplinary lessons we create we can save more time to work on these 21st century skills. I am also hoping that within the next few years we can get more technology in our classrooms (that function properly!) so we can start implementing sooner. Nice job!
Randi
Jason,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that the most important skill that we need to teach is problem solving. Many times our students want the answer or only sees one possible solution. This year, I am trying to encourage more problem solving through the use of math journals and open ended questions. How are you addressing this in your own classroom.
Great post.
Jason, this is my first visit to your blog, and I was very interested in your blog title... teaching compassion. I read down through your older posts to see what that was about and found your passion for teaching students social skills and respect for each other. This goes hand and hand with the problem solving skills students need to learn. While I do agree it is difficult to find time to teach problem solving skills on top of the already needed curriculum it does need to be done, just as teaching respect for others needs to be done.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting to learn that the conception of 21st century skills was years ago and is now being implemented on a large scale and is rapidly growing in collaboration and consensus.
ReplyDeleteI too have been switching my rubrics to reflect the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) to reflect required strands to meet for student goals. It’s a slow process but a necessary one to help my students understand what they are expected to learn and know.
You hit it right on the nail when you state that your largest disagreement was with how the standards are interpreted. It can be very subjective to what it means to every individual. To dissect and understand what the intention of the standard is supposed to mean, would be at best a matter of interpretation. For our school, we collaborate as a Professional Learning Community (PLC) and decide for our school what the CCSS means to us and we come to an agreement as to how we are going to establish assessments that will indicate student success for various benchmarks.
Finances will forever be an obstacle, however, with some luck you can look into grants that are offered by banks, companies, and organizations who are educational friends to help.
My recent good-luck came from a local bank that was offering a grant for up to $500.00 to a classroom that had a need. I submitted my application and I received $400.00 to purchase a horseshoe table to enable me to do small group instruction in my classroom. It’s great!
It never hurts to ask! You might want to give it try and see what you can find out there.