21st Century Skills
I just recently visited the Partnerships for 21st Century Skills website (www.p21.org) and my initial thoughts were "wow, what a teacher's dream!" The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) standards for everything I had hoped my classroom would be before I became a teacher. I envisioned students collaborating to solving critical thinking problems, eagerness to use constantly available technology, and an overall eagerness to learn. This is everything we want our students to be and our curriculum to involve, yet is it truly feasible with everything else that must be included in our teaching? With standardized testing a common standards always on the docket, where are we supposed to find time to include these skills?I am a believer in these 21st century skills, because they are the skills our students need in order to be successful in the future. Part of what P21 promotes is the learning of core subjects, something we have been doing since the dawn of education. Now, P21 says that it is time to evolve a little, and I could not agree more. I always knew that 21st century skills included a lot on technology and collaboration on a world-wide level, but I did not know that there were some many other areas of interest such as health, entrepreneurship, civics, and media to name a few. I also thought that 21st century skills were more geared towards the subjects of math and science, because I associated it with engineering, architecture, and computer programming. Twenty-first century skills are coming to the forefront of education because they are the skills necessary to keep the world functioning and to be more efficient at doing so. Communication skills are just as important as math and science skills, because we will need to communicate with other countries when we are trying to fix global issues.
The P21 website has a great deal of information on what they are all about. They have an entire framework that defines what they believe 21st century skills are, and their mission is to make 21st century skills the focal point of K-12 education in the United States. The information presented by P21 has made me take another look at my role as a teacher. Should I just be the math teacher that makes sure they can solve equations, graph lines, and find area? Or should I be the teacher who teaches them how to think critically and prepares them to take on challenging real-world problems that require them to apply their knowledge? I think one way teachers can promote 21st century skills is by providing as many real-life situations as possible, whether it be with problem solving scenarios or guest speakers. Our students need to have the validity that what they are learning is going to be useful to them at some point in their future.
