Why Change?
MK: Do you have any reflections from yesterday? No? Okay. Let’s look at this question: Why change?
- The world is changing
- Good to great. We want to be great
- For the students
- To improve
- Be proactive rather than reactive
- Remain relevant
- If you think you are there, you are already on the way down
MK: There was an axiom from a group we used to work with that says nothing fails like success.
- Job loss and career changes
- Expectations and the role of education are changing
- There are laws that are forcing us to change
- Ethical reasons. We have a responsibility to prepare young people for the future
MK: Does this make a pretty good case for change? Would people not in this room think this list is a motivation for change? Yes. Okay great. Thanks for that.
Let’s look at the list of 21st century skills.
21st Century Skills Profile
MK: Here is the list of skills we came up with yesterday.
- Communications
- Critical Thinking/Problem Solving
- Creativity/Innovation
- Technology
- Intellectual Curiority /Adaptability
- Global/Social/Cultural Awareness
- Inter/Intrapersonal Skills
- Work Environment
- Worth Ethic/Legal/Personal Responsibility
- Teamwork
- Leadership
MK: How does this look?
- I remembered that we had more on the responsibility toward the environment. It seems we worded it more strongly yesterday and I just want to check my perception here.
- It could be under Global Awareness
- We should add civic responsibility and being a good citizen.
- I think we should also have compassion
- And service
- I think passion is missing and I interview for that in business. All of these could be blasé. When you can see a light in their eyes when they say ‘holy buckets! This is what I want to do!’ I interview for that more than technical skill.
- Financial responsibility should be in there
- Entrepreneurship too
- Not to sound like a luddite but what about basic skills of common core knowledge, such as components of government, geography, grammar, math
- One of the criticism of public schools is that we don’t teach our kids anything
- In business we can teach knowledge we want students to have these skills
- I’m sorry to argue with you, but to understand racism in this country we have to understand that we brought human beings over in ships in chains and I think there are some things that people need to know
- History needs to be something more than memorizing lists of events
MK: This reminds me of something we talked about yesterday in that content is relative in context. I can tell you that when I was a young person I felt I could do anything. I could become a brain surgeon if I wanted to and I can tell you that I have no idea what the capitals of all the 50 states are or anything about the French and Indo-Chinese situation and yet here I am standing here in front of you.
- Let’s just add core knowledge to this list.
- I’d like to add information literacy to the technology piece.
- What about special needs children? Should we add something more specific in our list?
- I think confidence should be added to this list. That’s a helpful quality in business
MK: Just to add a personal note, I can tell you that my confidence did not come from my high school experience. I did complete high school but i have no formal training beyond that and I started my first business when I was 17.
My a-ha moment happened when I was in 11th grade and when I woke up at 5 minutes to 8 and I had to be at school at 8 and I asked myself why do I have to go to school and the first five answers were for my parents, for my teachers and for someone else. I asked myself where am I in this equation. And my life changed from there.
- How do we teach work ethic?
- Kids are going to model what you do and not what you say.
- We need to hold our teachers to this list too; it’s not just for students.
- Maybe we have to add continual learning
- it’s important for us to see ourselves and adults as models of these qualities
- Skills come from experience and I’m not sure these all fit the category. They seem more like knowledge
- We have a set of things we’re calling skills but what I heard yesterday is how to know when we find them in our students. Relevancy is key. The core knowledge is where you weave these skills. We have to make math, geometry, grammar relevant to kids.
- What about calling them assets?
- Why doesn’t it say graduate?
- We want to see this go from pre-K through 12.
- What about knowledge, skills and disposition? Some of these items are about your character.
- I like it but “disposition” is too complicated for the public
Here's the final list the group decided on:
- Communication
- Critical Thinking/Problem Solving
- Creativity/Innovation
- Technology/Information Literacy
- Intellectual Curiosity/Adaptability
- Global/Social/Cultural Awareness
- Inter/Intrapersonal Skills
- Work Environment
- Work Ethic/Legal/Personal Responsibility
- Teamwork
- Leadership
- Citizenship
- Core Knowledge
MK: Okay, I think we’re ready to move on from this. We want to dive into these a little bit deeper and you get to self-select which area you want to work on. The first part of the activity is what kinds of experiences we can give young people so they can get these skills that we have on this list and how we would assess that they know it.
- It’s important we keep a pre-K-12 perspective. So much of the focus is on 9-12 but we need to think about the entire spectrum.
Jay Smethurst: We’re taking a vertical slice here into these topics and next we’ll do a more holistic integration of them through that spectum. Now come up and sign up for the group you’re interested in and sit back down and we’ll adjust the teams as necessary.
