In evaluating the success of an educational program, our first inclination is to use our past experiences as a basis. Even better is to assess how successful our children are as a measuring tool. It is every parents dream that their children will grow to be successful adults, and we hope their school education will help with the preparation. For this to work, schools must operate in the world of the 21st Century.
The Internet Generation
The Internet Generation, or N-Geners, consists of the students of today. What we need to be asking is: are our schools giving these students the tools they need to have a successful future? Our country is no long reliant on farms, manual labor and assembly lines to provide our professions. What will define our citizens in the future? What do our students of today have to learn to compete and thrive in our new society? While the answer can be found from many sources, I would like to explore what corporate managers and executives feel about these questions.
In the article Rigor Redefined (2008), Tony Wagner interviewed many corporate CEOs to find out what they are looking for in todays workforce. Wagner was surprised at some of the answers he discovered to his questions. For example, the President of BOC Edwards indicated that what he was looking for first and foremost was someone to ask good questions. He stated that while they could always teach the technical stuff, it is very difficult to teach someone how to think and to ask good questions.
Many of these company CEOs shared their need to hire people who can work collaboratively in teams to discuss and come up with out of the box solutions for todays problems. All of this points to a need for educators to integrate into their teaching, meaningful activities with Blooms Taxonomy in mind. Throw out the old ditto sheets and give students real problems to solve. Give them opportunities to work in teams and make presentations of their work.
Redefine Rigor
It is critical that schools today review their current curriculums and modify them to meet the needs our children will have in the future. So often packaged curriculum materials are becoming the entire lesson plan, rather than a supplement for the teacher. And I am concerned that teachers have no need to consider the real world ramifications of a lesson because the entire plan is provided in Teachers Guides. It is also troubling that school districts are requiring teachers to report their lessons on weekly planning and pacing guides, making it difficult for a teacher to apply the lessons to the real world.
A favorable rapport between student and teacher is critical to the learning process. A student must feel that their teacher understands where they are coming from and how they will learn the best. Teachers can meet this goal best when they are able to provide relevant lesson plans that their students can relate to.
Technology
This is the internet generation. We need to find ways for students to use technology in their learning. It is natural to them, and we can introduce them to the many ways technology can be used for good. The use of smart boards, projectors for PowerPoint presentations, classroom response systems, and even cell phones may be in our future as teachers. Rather than resisting this trend, we must find ways to embrace it and further connect to the children of the Internet Generation.
Integrated Learning
One way to keep packaged planning and pacing guides and subject programs from becoming dull and monotonous is to integrate experiential content into the traditional reading and writing curriculum. Social studies and science, topics that have traditionally been stand alone subjects, can actually be used to provide exciting and interesting subject matter for reading and writing classes.
The trend we are seeing toward cutting social studies and science to focus more on reading, writing and math in our school districts is disturbing. A simple solution is to integrate those subjects into the basic core skills in order to provide a rich and interesting curriculum to our students. A lack or social studies and science instruction will result in students unable to make connections and apply their knowledge to other subject areas, a critical component to lifelong success.
Many school districts have the added struggle of teaching children from poor families. Almost 17% of all school age children come from families existing below the poverty line. These children dont have the same opportunities as middle and upper class peers to gain background knowledge or vocabulary skills. A narrow curriculum focused only on tested subjects of reading, writing and math, rather than integrating secondary subjects such as social studies, science and the arts will only make these trends more noticeable.
We must take seriously the building of cultural literacy through social studies teaching so that all our children have a chance to a better life. Psychological research has shown that to learn something new, we must be able to connect it to something we already know. Building a broad base of knowledge is essential for our poor and disenfranchised populations, and these students depend upon our schools for this.
Numerous studies have found that academic achievement translates to higher incomes, and that cultural literacy has a direct effect on a students academic achievement. To prepare students o the Internet Generation for the future they will face as adults in the 21st Century, educators must provide opportunities to expand the students stores of knowledge and cultural literacy, not just focus on the tested subjects of reading, writing and math.
