Graduating in the 21st Century

This weeks focus of the generational differences and the myths that go with them is something that we could probably talk about for more classes than we will. The whole generational difference thing (especially the criticism) is a tale as old as time. I am certainly a quote person, so I gathered a few…

And in all honesty, I find the comments that people make about the younger generation so comical. Especially the comments about the younger generation always glued to their phones. My one goal moving forward is to try to always remember these quotations and these thoughts so that I don’t ever find myself in the position of complaining about “those young whippersnappers!” So after spending some days thinking, this is what I landed on when it comes to what we should be working towards as an education system.

–– GENERALIZATION ALERT —

A lot of people seem to think that the way they grew up and the way that they went to school is the way that it should still be now. It is this mentality in our older generation that can really make it hard to move forward and create a paradigm shift in education. When people use this frame of mind, they find any argument they can to justify why things should not change. Reflecting on my last two years as a connected educator, I have experienced this mentality as a barrier to the way that I teach, from parents, students, colleagues alike. And the larger problem here is that it makes it harder to move towards preparing students to graduate and enter a 21st century world.

The fact is that the 21st century world that we are preparing these students for is infinitely different than the previous century. And even though most of those changes stem from technological enhancements, it seems like many parts of education are still hesitant to incorporate technological elements. However, as a teacher I want to prepare my students to be ready for the 21st century. This is why I am so passionate about being a connected educator. I love being able to showcase these things. Our world is full of technology and when used effectively, it can be such a game changer for schools, both in terms of student engagement and learning these skills. If we don’t make the change towards incorporating 21st century skills in our classrooms, our students are going to be ill-prepared for the world they enter.

How we shift is a pretty tricky thing. The fact that the most recent ELA curriculum is already 7 years old in a world where changes happen faster than we can keep up with shows the difficulty that teachers face. I feel like there are a lot of really great examples of this already happening in schools all over the place. I think it becomes super important for us to keep pushing ourselves to challenge our pedagogy. We have to keep up with these societal changes in our own classrooms. Especially if this is true. It is past the point where we can just incorporate technology; we have to also think about whether or not what we are doing are actually developing skills to prepare our students.

Change needs to happen. The world is moving fast and our education system needs to keep up. I’m not saying I fully accept the 85% number without questioning it, but it is definitely something worth considering.