Some educators are attempting to transform the world of education to meet the needs of the 21st Century Student.
At a recent retreat organized by The Charter School Growth Fund, Anastasia Goodstein – author of Totally Wired and Ypulse – noted these emerging trends in Reboot Learning!:
- The educational experience should be more individualized and customized for the student… but …there has to be some structured goals/desired outcomes.
- The role of teachers will and must change. As knowledge becomes more broadly available through technology, teachers are no longer the all-knowing beings they once were — they instead become more like “guides” or “facilitators” of learning.
- It’s about preparing them to be adaptive vs. having one job or career for the rest of their lives. We talked about the new skills needed for the 21st century like filtering/information literacy, project management, personal branding, thinking globally and the ability to adapt to rapid change. It has to be about more than just mastering subject matter or even learning one specific vocation.
- As I read about these emerging trends, I realized that these worthy ideas permeate the thinking behind such disparate groups as Girl Scouts USA and Unschooling groups … and maybe, they aren’t really all that new.
- Girl Scouts USA counsels adult volunteers to ensure that programs are girl-led so that each girl can develop the “courage, confidence, and character” to be a leader. There is a whole new initiative to create resources and pathways to ensure that Girl Scouts is a girl-driven experience.
- And yet, when you talk to adult volunteers who have been in scouting all of their long lives, you’ll hear that this is not a new idea. What is new are guidelines and materials enabling current leaders to learn to let go as the girls mature.
- Successful Girl Scout leaders have been doing this all along.
- Meanwhile, on the Unschooling Website, sponsored by Home Education Magazine, you get this unvarnished century-old suggestion from Anne Sullivan:
I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built upon the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think. Whereas, if the child is left to himself, he will think more and better, if less showily. Let him go and come freely, let him touch real things and combine his impressions for himself, instead of sitting indoors at a little round table, while a sweet-voiced teacher suggests that he build a stone wall with his wooden blocks, or make a rainbow out of strips of coloured paper, or plant straw trees in bead flower-pots. Such teaching fills the mind with artificial associations that must be got rid of, before the child can develop independent ideas out of actual experience.
I’m reminded of an even older education idea. If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach him how to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.
I think that the best teachers have always known that their goal is to enable independent learners who are are confident, creative problem solvers.
What do you think? Share your opinion in a comment!
Book Resources:
 Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens Are Really Doing Online: Anastasia Goodstein: Books
ISBN: 0312360126 |
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
As a high school teacher I know that we have to change the way students have been taught. Today’s student learn better when allowed to try new things.
As a junior kindergarten teacher, I am lucky to receive kids who are coming straight from pre-school and are reliant on their mother for their emotional and physical needs. My goal throughout the year is to make my children not only educationally independent, but also socially and emotionally independent.
I think a lot of my teaching philosophy comes from the confidence I radiate out towards my students. I got that confidence from my mother and several of my early elementary teachers.
As a new teacher, I have the knowledge and skills to my classroom a technology advanced place to learn. I use computers for computer, language arts, and math skills, a listening center for my students to listen and follow along to books on CD, and LEAP pads for them to work on any educational skill imaginable. Not only are my students exposed to the technology, but they are taught to respect the equipment.
I also have an LCD screen in which I use to play united streaming clips. If my kids want to know what a chick looks like hatching from an egg, I can instantly pull it up and take a few seconds to show them the visual.
Also, when I doing language arts and I come across a word that looks funny, I google it in front of my skills. A parent came up to me to compliment how their child said I googled something for them. At first I was embarrassed that I looked incompetent, but the parent reassured that they appreciated the point that I was teaching their child that they can always problem solve and seek out an answer to what they do not know.
Socially, each of my students were used to tattle-taleing. When a child comes up to me starting to say something about another student, my answer always is, “Did you talk to them about it?” Also, I remind the students that I am not always going to be around to stick up for them and that they should be open about their feelings to the person that is bothering them. Over the course of the year I was quite impressed to see how my students took what I taught to heart and were discussing their problems with each other.
As a teacher at a Private School, I see most students with a busy schedule i.e. swim lessons, dance lessons, t-ball, soccer, gymnastics, ballet, piano, karate, and tap. Sometimes parents are so focused on an extra curricular activities, that they ignore character building activities such as the Girl Scouts. Because of this, I believe that it is my job as an educator to develop the whole child.
I am lucky because I get my children early on. Although its my first year teaching, I am blown away at the results that I am seen in the whole-child development of my class. I am proud to send each one of my kids on to the next grade, knowing that they can be an independent thinker and are confident in themselves.
It’s interesting to see how a knowledgeable and caring educator can integrate new technology into the teaching arsenal to give even the youngest students the tools to be independent and adaptive learners.
Kudos to you!