As I was reviewing The Partnership for 21st Century skills (http://www.p21.org/) was fascinating. The ever-changing, ever-evolving climate of skills for professional and personal growth are essential elements that teachers must impart to their students. It is a teachers mission to ensure that we are preparing students to be successful in life.
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills create a framework including core subjects, learning and innovative skills, information, media and technology skills, and life and career skills. By widening the scope of education that we provide to our students, we can more fully help fulfill their needs on all levels. I appreciated that as part of the 21st Century Skills included topics such as: global awareness, financial, economic, business, and entreprenurial literacy, civic literacy, health literacy,and environmental literacy. It is evident that these are all aspects that students will need to bu successful in life- so it only makes sense that we do our part to best educate them
However, on the flip side, I wonder when these necessities stopped being taught by families and left to be taught by teachers. I wonder if it isn't the familial responsibility that we are beginning to encroach upon. I wonder how families would respond to this. But regardless, I think the intentions are good, however, I question if this is blurring the line between personal lives and educational lives.
I agree that we may seem to be crossing family lines. However, I think families are so busy that some of these things are left with no time to be taught. I think it is commendable for educators to try to teach all they can to help students. I also think it may cross lines of personal space. However, our world is beginning to cross lines. Everyone is so connected all the time with cell phones, internet, facebook and the like. I think personal lives are becoming blurred with school and work. I wonder if the lines will disappear altogether as we move toward more connection with the outside world and less connection at home. This may be something about which we need to be concerned. As we see all the positives with technology, there will also be problems to solve.
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Katie,
ReplyDeleteI can see your concerns of feeling a bit overwhelmed as an educator to be responsible to cover all of those topics such as global awareness, financial, economics, etc. If you think about it we do already cover most of these skills as they are integrated within particular standards. I forsee the future lines overlapping with family and personal life connected to the educational lives of each individual. For example, I can see facebook as a means for teachers to get to know their students outside of the classroom, and I see blogs as an effective means of homework understanding. Rather than submitting the homework into the homework bin in the classroom, submitted responses will occur via blogs and email. What a change! Great ideas and ways to get me thinking Katie!
Kourtney
I find it so facinating to hear our discussion about what our future may hold. None of us know for sure what the future will be like and how things will have changed for our students by they time they are adults. However, we can watch the changes taking place and try to guess what might come next. I think the fact that the lines have blurred as to what should be taught at home and what should be taught at school is a good point. I often wonder if what we are missing in most American schools is time. Yearly our curriculum changes and becomes more rigorous, and students are required to master skills at younger ages than in years past. Now we add in the technology component and some of these other peices that we haven't been required to teach before. Many other countries go to school for so much longer than us and I wonder if that effects what their students are capable of doing. If our students were in school more hours a school year, would it make a difference? Would our students be more capable of competing on the same level as students in other countries? I wonder.... -Nellie
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