Twenty-First Century Schools Committee

   You!

At our last meeting, we touched on the issue of how to share the vision we are developing with students and the community.

A technology teacher at Arapahoe High School, (which is working on their vision) worries on his blog that staff or students can’t articulate the school’s vision and wonders how to better share it, in his  post What are Your Core Values?  

I think this is an important consideration as our committee moves forward–how to we share the message and values of our vision with the students and staff, and the larger community?  Landon touched on this in the previous post.

Comments?  thoughts?

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?  

Since we are discussing Whole New Mind on the committee, I thought I’d post a link to my first effort to create a podcast in case you’d like to listen to a quick review of the book and don’t have time to read it.

http://futura.edublogs.org/2006/11/14/whole-new-mind/

Carolyn

After reviewing predictions for their lifetime, my 10th graders developed a list of the knowledge and skills they will need to succeed. 

What I Need to Succeed in the Future ·       Originality and ideas·       Ability to multi-task·       Good grades·       Common sense·       Money management·       A wonderful place to “chill”·       Initiative·       Self-control·       Ambition·       Negotiation skills·       Hugs and kisses·       Confidence and self esteem·       Good health·       Mentors·       Family and Friends·       Food and cooking skills·       Computer skills·       Talent·       Music·       Self-motivation·       Patience·       Games and fun·       Be happy and in love·       Passion·       Convictions and the strength to live by them·       Resources·       Independence·       A clean police record·       Job/career·       Political and governmental savvy·       Karate/Kung fu skills·       College degree·       Communication skills·       Post-graduate school·       Money·       Gardening skills·       Morals·       Manners and etiquette·       Drawing skills·       Dancing skills·       Weapons·       Faith in God·       Goals·       Sense of humor·       Transportation·       Parenting skills·       Cleaning skills·       Preserve natural resources·       Preparation for death·       Friends and family·       Imagination·       Creativity·       Relationship skills·       Self-control·       Tolerance·       Connections

Debora Orrick 

My 10th grade students researched future predictions up to 2088.  Of the many types of predited events, the following are the ones that my 10th graders thought were the most possible:

Future Possibilities ·       Develop an earthquake warning system·       Three damaging earthquakes·       Earth will get hotter·       Virtual reality·       Lifespan will be 90 years·       Decreasing natural resources·       Painless surgery·       Food and water become more valuable and costly·       More addiction to drugs, alcohol, and food in children·       A plague will kill may people·       People have three or more marriages; divorce rate will increase·       Land will be reserved for forest farming·       Food scarce because population too big·       Medication to prevent obesity·       Earlier high school graduation·       Digital equipment will get smaller and faster·       Individualized advertising·       Colonize Mars·       Create and clone Martians·       Produce effective vaccines more quickly·       E-delivery of newspapers·       New highway system·       Flying cars·       Houses built stronger with new materials·       More natural disasters·       More immigrants to U.S.·       Digital books and libraries·       Robots do everything·       Cures for HIV, cancer, and diabetes·       Men are no longer the “bread winner” of the family·       Society is still as plagued by liars as it is today·       Earth becomes one big urban community

Debora Orrick

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

I’m attending a conference(Internet Librarian) and Joel, Paula, and I are also attending the Tech Forum conference on Friday in Austin.  I’m going to be posting some blog entries “live”from both conferences on our Technology committee’s blog if you’d like to hear updates about what we are learning.  So click on the link for the Technology Visionary blog to read them.  (www.vision.edublogs.org)

The conference is set by the ocean in Monterey, Ca., and since arriving, I’ve been thinking about the things we’ve talked about on the committee about students taking time to see the stars and nature.   I think providing ways for our students to slow down and process ideas is also part of the vision we should have of the future, because in this “high tech” environment, it is easy for all of us to get caught up in the speed of things and not stop and look at the “tide pools of life” in a close, reflective way.   Being here reminds me of the need to provide our students depth as well as breadth.

  view of a tide pool

More later.  Carolyn