Search for 21st Century Skills

We have been spending a lot of time in Lower School thinking about how to make learning visible, also known as documentation. To this end, the faculty has been carefully documenting the learning story as it unfolds with both pictures and anecdotal evidence. Teamed with professional reflection and an explosion of creativity our walls have come alive in a new way. I have to qualify this. The walls of Abington Friends  have always been an amazing array of beautiful student work along with a description of the process of the final product. One of the differences here is that teachers have added their professional reflections of the learning, as well as a time line or narrative explaining, well, the time line.
Since I am the Technology Teacher, I presented my documentation as a video. Like all documentation, this is a work in progress and will change as the study continues.

As I was walking around looking at all the amazing wall displays , I was struck by how many of the learning stories reflected 21st Century Learning and Skills. If you search "21st Century Learning" you will find a host of articles, research and companies vying for your attention. In Wagner's book, The Global Achievement Gap, seven skills are listed:
1. Critical thinking and problem solving
2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence
3. Agility and adaptability
4. Initiative and entrepreneurialism
5. Effective oral and written communication
6. Accessing and analyzing information
7. Curiosity and imagination.

I would also add to this group:
8. The ability to work with a diverse group of people
9. Empathy

This is not something I am making up, Alan November took some time to speak with the corporate leaders and empathy was the number one skill they came up with. Vivian Stewart's essay " A Classroom as Wide as the World" in Heidi Hayes Jacob's  book Curriculum 21: Essential  Education for a Changing World addresses the need for students to have a global awareness and preparedness to work with different cultures.

I don't claim this as a complete listing of skills; fluency in multiple forms of communication including those which use technology and the use of design are two more I would add. Okay, so now I'm up to eleven indicators as a way to define 21st Century Learning. That seems like a fairly rich check list to use as I walk around and look at our displays. As we have many classes and therefore many displays, I will be sharing this information as a series of blog articles.

The first one, and the one which actually gave me the idea for this post is the second graders' emergent study of food waste. As part of their folk tale study, the students read the Nigerian folktale Why the Sky is Far Away. The story shares that once the sky was very close and people could eat it for food. However, they became wasteful and the sky became angry so the sky moved away. (This is obviously the abreviated version.) The students quickly made the connection to how much food they thought they saw wasted every day and devised a plan to find out if food was really being wasted. There plan was simple: they would monitor the trashcans at lunch and see what students were throwing away. They found that they were right, and students were throwing away a lot of food - both what they had brought from home and what they had purchased in the cafeteria. Now that they had the information, the class discussed why it was wrong and what they could do about it. Here is what they did:

• They spoke to Crissy, the Director of Lower School, to share their concerns and get guidance. 
• They spoke with Chris, the Chef at AFS to see how he felt about it.
• They asked to speak to the Upper School students during a morning assembly to both share what they learned and ask them to be more mindful of the waste.
• They created posters to let everyone know why they thought this was wrong and what  the second graders thought we could do to change it.
• Finally, they put up a blank poster asking for suggestions on how the rest of the school community felt they could help change the situation. 

The catalyst to this whole study is the use of the Nigerian folk tale, which is exposing them to cultures other than their own. There is the students' words of worrying about waste in the landfills, wasting their parents' money and hurting the Chef's feelings, which show empathy.

In Craig D. Jerald 's article, 21st Century Skills at a Glance, creativity in problem solving is listed high on the "expert" list of necessary skills. An interesting point in the article that is relevant here; superintendents, or school leaders, think of problem solving as the ability to creatively solve a problem; however,  employers consider the ability to identify the problem more important. These students identified the problem.

Collaboration across networks and leading by influence is also apparent. They used the networks of their second grade lives, their Lower School Director, the AFS Chef and even the Upper Schoolers. Speaking with the Upper School students, creating posters which identified the problem and possible resolutions demonstrates leading through influence.

Initiative and entrpreneurialism is obvious, as is I think accessing and analyzing information. They may not have weighed the food, or kept track over a large period of time; however for second graders their method of ascertaining this information was developmentally appropriate.

Curiosity and imagination are here too. As far as effective oral and written communication? Well I guess to be fair we will have to see if something changes. If some, a few, or many, take their message to heart. There is not a technological component, except for the pictures captured by Jeanne and Mike, their teachers, as they documented the process. However, I wouldn't be surprised to see one emerge, as I am the Technology Teacher.