Reactions to www.p21.org
I recently visited the provided website. I found
this website very interesting. The entirety of the website is based on 21st
century skills and assistance in ensuring that these skills are used and taught
in classrooms around America. It focuses
on combing the 3Rs and 4Cs: Critical
thinking and problem solving, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity and
innovation in education.
I found this
website helpful and enjoyed the different resources, blogs and suggestions that
it made for incorporating 21st century skills into the classroom. Since it was a national website with so many
supporters it helped me to realize the how big of a debate and issue ensuring
that 21st century skills are taught and applied in the classroom. It
is obvious that educators around America are struggling in how to incorporate
these skills into their classroom.
Like all
information we read on the internet it must be taken with a grain of salt along
with a fair dose of critical thinking. I agree with some of the information
displayed on this website but think it is important to modify it in order to
meet the needs of your own classroom, community and district initiatives. Although the 3Rs and 4Cs are important skills
and definitely desirable for being successful in the 21st century I
don’t believe that it needs to be local, state and federal policies are necessary.
As stated before it is important to adapt and use these skills as appropriate
to each class, community and district.
Several of these 21st century skills also include the use of
technology and therefore, unless the federal, state and provincial government
is prepared to provide funding for resources, technology and training in order
to insist that we use these skills as a main focus every day then it should not
yet be a “policy.”
If 21st century skills become central to
teaching subject matter this will definitely help the children to become more
ctirical and independent thinkers as well as help them to be efficient at
skills necessary to the workplace. As a teacher, if these skills become a
policy then we will be expected to change our teaching practice and hopefully
will be supported in doing so with extra training, funds and support in making
sure that these skills are properly infused with other curricular necessities.
You raise an interesting point about technology funding that forces me to take another look on my own perspective on 21st century skills. I am fortunate enough to teach at a school that has kept up pretty well with the technology craze, so I have a slightly skewed view because I have the ability to use the technology necessary to implement these 21st century skills. Our school is by no means a technological pioneer, but I feel we are more fortunate than other districts in the area. My original thought, however, was that I was glad to see that P21's mission was to start at the top (federal government) because I think it is necessary that everybody jump on board. It is the same idea that the Common Core State Standards are designed to compensate, which is to get everybody on the same page. As soon as the more advanced schools start pulling away by teaching 21st century skills, those schools that do not teach these will start do drop off and we will be right back where we started. It is not necessary for every to teach 21st century skills, but it does put students who are not learning them at a disadvantage when they have to go out and compete against students who have these skills.
ReplyDeleteHi Ricky,
ReplyDeleteYou make a really good point that it definitely does need to be policy and mandatory in order for teachers to take the incorporation of these skills seriously. I think that there are positives and negatives to every school and there will always be students that are better off in one way and not in others because of the school they went to. Even if every school in the world incorporated 21st century skills it would still be to the point of interpretation. For example, I may think of collaboration as small group instruction and you may think of it is small independent groups. Does this make your children more apt for success than mine? Unfortunately, I don't think consistency will ever happen and therefore, we must do what we can with the resources we have available and collaborate with as many people as possible to gain new perspectives. Thanks for your comment!
Hi Jasmin, I really enjoyed reading your post and also it touched me personally. It is a known fact that there is no one cure all for any problem or situation; especially in the educational world. States, districts, and locals systems are all different and sometimes performance is link to the demographics of that area. With that said, it is also important to remember we all learn different just by looking at Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences and the incorporation of Bloom's Taxonomy. So, when I think about the alignment of federal, state, district, and local policies that reflect our learning there is not an equal distribution of wealth. I have taught in two areas of North Carolina with major differences. Eastern North Carolina tends to be more rural and lack the resources needed to teach efficiently while Central and Western North Carolina gets more government and state funding to support their programs and students. If we are to teach our students the twenty-first century skills needed then, as a nation and state, we must stand up to find and provide adequate resources (money) and support to all schools. Once that is in place only then can we truthfully and properly teach our students the necessary skills.
ReplyDeleteWhile navigating the Partnership for 21st Century Skills website, I was excited about their vision for the future. But what concerns me is that it is only a vision. The fact that technology supports each of the core skills points to some glaring omissions in the vision as it currently exists. Central to the discussion surrounding 21st century skills is the assumed existence of the technologies to support the teaching of these skills. Furthermore, it appears to me that the responsibility is being placed on teachers to continually do more without the guarantee that appropriate technologies will be made available to them. In no uncertain terms, I believe that the Partnership should be touting their these ideas to school districts, legislative decision-makers, and taxpayers because those are the people that can bring meaningful change to the system. Just last week, our superintendent visited our campus to meet with teachers. His message included the sobering news that we should not be expecting too much in the way of new technology because school funding in California is continuing to plummet. He closed the session by asking us to continue to "do more with less," which is a nice idea in theory but has no practical meaning. That's like saying that we can drive longer distances using less fuel or that we can feed more people with less food. Both of these scenarios are impossible....unless new technologies are developed and readily available. The same principle applies to education. 21st century education requires 21st century tools. Until this a national, state, and local priority, we will be playing catch-up.
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