Twenty-First Century Schools Committee

Architects Prakash Nair and Randall Fielding focus their work on physical school design to reflect good practices in schools and have many articles about this on their site, DesignShare.com as well as on their firm’s webpage.

Randall Fielding challenges us to think outside the box in designing schools to reflect a different model for teaching (a model that is a cross between Da Vinci’s studio, Einstein’s studio, and chef Jamie Oliver’s cooking studio!) in this excellent article that was published in Edutopia.

This fascinating commentary by Fielding’s colleague, Prakash Nair, about how school design needs to look at new models of education that are more “whole person” and Eastern was interesting to me in light of some of the conversations about the personal aspects of student learning we’ve had.

I’d be interested to hear your thoughts about their ideas.   More food for thought! 

Carolyn

Released in September, “The Workforce Readiness Report Card”  was prepared by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, and the Society for Human Resource Management.   

According to this article in Technology and Learning, employers are particularly looking for four skills– (I am mostly quoting them here):

1. a combination of basic knowledge and applied skills, with applied skills trumping basics
2. professionalism/work ethic, teamwork/collaboration, and oral communications
3. knowledge of foreign languages, an area that will increase in importance in the next five years, more than any other basic skill;
4. and creativity/innovation, which is projected to increase in importance for future workforce entrants.

The study found significant breakdowns in some of these areas among current students, particularly in communication(both oral and written) and professionalism.   There was concern that students from strong programs have those skills and are very employable and that students from weaker programs lack those, creating a huge divide among employees.

There was also a sense that while employers value what they call applied skills(leadership, innovation, creativity, and ethics) that because of the segmentation of subjects in testing driven by NCLB, that students are not being taught to use those applied skills.

They recommend two possible options to help students–first, making sure the curriculum includes those higher level thinking skills and connections, and second, that businesses get involved in schools to provide leadership, mentorships, etc.

In conclusion, the author asks, “If one is to take at face value the findings of “The Workforce Readiness Report Card,” the United States faces a perfect storm of challenges arising from the disconnect between education and workforce values, the growing disparity in the degree of preparation of new hires, and the apparent inability of nearly all graduates to communicate effectively. But how do educators feel about this? Do these findings resonate with their experiences in the field?”

Any comments?   The article is really interesting–I recommend it highly!

http://www.techlearning.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=193700630

Since our Future Graduate brainstorming post is a continued conversation, I’m going to start a new post here for us to continue the discussion.

(If you look want to read the older posts, look on the right side of the blog under Categories. (Scroll down). If you click on Future Graduates, it will open up those previous discussions.)

I just finished reading Whole New Mind, by Daniel Pink.  It has really illuminated my thinking about the creative abilities that our future students will need.    I’d highly recommend the book, and it’s quick reading, by the way. I think it fits in well with some of  the Model Schools’ bullet points like creativity, innovation, problem-solving, etc.,  although the book gets more specific and breaks down the areas of creativity into some very specific skills, which I found interesting.

It also makes me wonder with all the standardized tests, increased math and science requirements, that maybe we should be looking at a model of “Creativity Across the Curriculum,”  just as we consider that we should teach Writing across the Curriculum.   Many of our teachers are already doing this, but I’m sure for all of us there is the tendency because of the rigor of “content” there can be a tendency to neglect the creative side of education?

I just participated in an online conference(K12 Online) which I write more about on our Technology blog, but there were sessions on so many web tools that students can use across the curriculum in innovative and creative ways.  I saw one on Google Earth using a map of buildings of Las Vegas to teach shapes and volume in math, for example.   Very interesting!

On we go– let’s continue the future graduate brainstorming here…. Carolyn