Skills Our Students Need

This is part of the Education in a New Era blog series. To gain access to all the blogs in this series, click the tag “Edu in a New Era”.

In the last blog, I threw out ideas about how our society is changing and how that is affecting the workforce of the future and the current trends of education. But now, let’s look at other effects this will have on our children or, more accurately, what skills they will need to succeed now and in the future.

It’s not all about memorization of facts and figures anymore, it’s about how to process all the information we have at our fingertips.

It’s not how well you can do a menial task, but what innovation you can come up with when given a challenge.

And for us teachers, it’s about stepping back and letting students do something and fail, but then giving our students time to really reflect on their mistakes and learn from their experience.

Talk of these skills is not only a hot topic in education, but it is in the business world too, and rightfully so! People all across the professional spectrum are concerned with the skills students are acquiring and, too often not acquiring. Tony Wagner calls them “Survival Skills”, Daniel Pink’s concept is in developing six high-concept, high-touch senses. You may have heard about the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills which developed their own set of necessary skills and there are many organizations who work to promote the development of media literacies – something so important in this media rich world we live in.

Regardless of the person, organization or terminology, they all have many skills in common: innovation, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, initiative and flexibility. Click here to see a comparison of three sets of skills.

These are all arts-based skills!

When children and young adults look at and interpret a painting, they are thinking critically, when they work with a new type of media, they are problem solving, when they play in an ensemble, they are collaborating, when they play a game in PE, they are practicing good team work skills. But it’s not only in arts classes that students learn and develop these skills – it shouldn’t be!

All teachers do crave to teach these skills in their classrooms but can feel bogged down by curriculum demands and testing, let alone we do not have sufficient training in HOW to teach these skills effectively. Personally, I am only beginning to create my own repertoire of arts-infused teaching. Yes, I do activities that foster these skills, but I can do more and I hope to do more as I grow as a teacher.

But first, I guess I need to explore a bit more of the roadblocks before I can free myself of their grasp on my teaching.

Next Blog (due out on Tuesday, February 16, 2010) – High Stakes Testing and Other Creative Roadblocks.

Make a Comment - We want to hear from you! What are your thoughts on this topic? What insights do you have to offer to the discussion? Comments are welcomed and encouraged.

Workforce Preparedness

This is part of the Education in a New Era blog series. To gain access to all the blogs in this series, click the tag “Edu in New Era”.

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At a workshop I conducted just last week, we got into a small discussion about 21^st century skills and workforce preparedness. One person echoed a statement I’ve heard many times before:

We are preparing students for jobs that haven’t even been invented yet.

We do, in fact live in a global society that is ever changing. Yet how we find ourselves teaching is all too often just as Pam Harland says, “Teachers now simply type their lecture notes into PowerPoint instead of writing in chalk.” And by we, I do mean me.

It is hard to take a good look in the mirror and see what it is that I am doing as a teacher and realize what I should be doing as well. Yes, from time to time I will share a BrainPop with my students as I join the class next door or encourage my students to practice their math facts for a period of time in the computer clubhouse, but the reality is that in my classroom, there is one piece of technology – my computer that I hoard to myself throughout the day for my own needs.

Grant it – I teach fourth grade, so I wonder, “Do my students really need to be utilizing technology in order to learn the 3 Rs that are so basic and important to their success?” I answer myself in many ways:

• No, they just need to learn those skills and the traditional way is best! At least in elementary school.
• Yes, there have to be resources out there that can assist in their learning and practicing of these skills.
• Yes, and it is my responsibility to teach students media literacy too!
• Yes, and I can also allow for them to use the technology they already do to respond to and discuss their learning.

Usually the yeses outnumber the nos. But then I think of the inevitable – our reality: there are constraints and pressures and test scores and AYP. But, what it boils down to is, regardless of what grade you teach, students are using, will continue to use and will be expected to use technology throughout their lives.

This is what leads to workforce preparedness. Is seems middle school and high school grades feel more pressure in this realm, since they are closer to the students who are actually out in the workforce. But we need to remember, I need to remember, that a students’ education is not just for a period of time, but throughout their lives and I play a large role in that. Even workforce preparedness, even in fourth grade! We all link to each other and all play a part in the gradual process of coaching students to become skilled workers for the future.

Technology is not the only skill we should be discussing, either. There are other skills too. We will explore some of those in the next blog. For now, ponder the idea of the future for which we are preparing our children.

Next Blog (due out on Saturday, February 13, 2010) – Skills Our Children Need

Make a Comment - We want to hear from you. What are your thoughts on this topic? What insights do you have to offer to the discussion? Comments are welcomed and encouraged.

AEP Forum - An Urgent Message

After attending the two day forum in Cambridge, MA hosted by AEP (Arts Education Partnership), it is evident that there is an urgency to bring arts education and integration into the forefront of our education system. Now is the time to get inspired and be inspiring to your students.

It is through the arts that students can learn such 21st Century Skills as innovation, creativity, determination and initiative: skills that will be necessary , not just beneficial, for our children to compete in the workforce.