Twenty-First Century Schools Committee

Edutopia has an interesting feature article in the June issue of their magazine on a school district in Indiana that is taking on changing their curriculum and teaching practices to meet 21st century skills.

http://www.edutopia.org/fast-forward 

Karl Fisch, who blogs at Fischbowl at Arapahoe High School in Colorado, writes about a gathering his school held with local business leaders to discuss what 21st century skills their students needed.

It was an interesting list and similar to what our Vision committee’s “Research” group has been finding.   A few that we hadn’t talked as much about in compiling our own list of 21st century skills–

They mention the idea of flexibility several times–flexibility in being creative, flexibility in learning from each experience, etc.

Another skill they listed is the ability to listen.

A third skill they call for is self-reflection and the ability to recognize and play to your own strengths.

How does this article fit into our work as a committee?

I”ve been rereading a chapter on design in Daniel Pink’s book Whole New Mind this afternoon (sitting on the porch, since it IS spring break.) and was thinking about creativity, design, and schools.

Then I ran across this video on TedTalks of Sir Ken Robinson talking about education and creativity.   His words rang true:

“Kids will take a chance and if they don’t know, they’ll have a go….They’re not frightened about being wrong….I don’t mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative, but what we do know is if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”

Robinson thinks we are educating people out of their creative capacities.   We educate all students as though they are going to be professors; we educate them in the head only.  He feels this isn’t going to serve our students in the future.

Students think they should take practical courses based on what they will do as a job, and the whole education system around the world is based on university entrance, so it tells a whole group of students that they aren’t talented, because their talents lie elsewhere.

He’s writing a new book called Epiphany about how people discover their talents.  The video is a fascinating conversation starter.

If you haven’t seen Karl Fisch’s “Did You Know ” (or his 2020 Vision presentation), I have posted the links to them on my library blog here.  They both pose much to think about.

On her blog, Cool Cat Teacher, Vicki Davis challenges businesses and educators to work together to “be the textbook”.  

She encourages teachers, CEO’s, visionaries in business or in education to make those connections, and explores using technology (like Skype) for connections outside the campus.

She throws out a fascinating challenge to businesses and to educators to think about the opportunities involved.

Any ideas for how we could spearhead a project like that here?  Should it come from the classroom teacher’s own connections?  Is there anything the campus can do to support an effort like this or are personal connections(which she suggests) better?   What university connections could we develop?

What do we need in terms of technology support to try something like this?

Food for thought….

Another interesting article in Edutopia profiles project-based learning, and gives examples of how schools are using it to teach 21st century skills.   It has several specific examples of schools using interdisciplinary projects, internships, and thematic projects.

   You!

Next week’s issue of Time has an important feature article for our committee–
“How to Bring our Schools out of the 21st Century.”  

For the past five years, the national conversation on education has focused on reading scores, math tests and closing the “achievement gap” between social classes. This is not a story about that conversation. This is a story about the big public conversation the nation is not having about education, the one that will ultimately determine not merely whether some fraction of our children get “left behind” but also whether an entire generation of kids will fail to make the grade in the global economy because they can’t think their way through abstract problems, work in teams, distinguish good information from bad or speak a language other than English.

The article raises many interesting discussion points, some of which are about to be released next week in a report by a bipartisan commission on education, the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce.   

The article complemented  many of the things we have been discussing and gave some great examples of what schools throughout the country are doing.    

Thoughts on the article?  Ideas?  

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