Living in the 21st Century

What are 21^st-century skills? This week for class, we had to explore the website for The Partnership for 21st Century Skills and give our own evaluation of the information presented.  This partnership is pushing to educate every student on the 21^st century skills we need in order to compete in a global economy.  For me, as a math teacher, I focused in on the framework and concept mapping for mathematics skills. If you feel like reading along- Click HERE!

The mathematic skills included were; creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, communication and collaboration, information literacy, media literacy, information/communication/technology literacy, flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social and cross-cultural skills, productivity and accountability, and finally, leadership and responsibility. Most of these skills, I already teach in my classroom, but I was made aware of some concepts and skills that I need to practice more with my students.

The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills (P21) has its own initiative here in Ohio and it looks to be a good thing.  The only issue I have with the initiative is the “21^st Century Assessments” section of the plan.  The fifth strategy (about assessment) talks about the international effort to modernize assessment.  I agree with the idea that assessment needs to become something new, and more modern.  Expecting every student to be assessed the same way is a complete contradiction to their individual learning styles.  Unfortunately, I have a hard time believing that the U.S. will make the right decision in regards to assessment.  Education has been on a downhill slope for quite a while and it seems that new standardized assessments are coming out every few years; the previous test eliminated because it set the bar too low for the students. 

The expectations of this program are not overwhelming or unrealistic and I think these skills are what students need to be focusing on anyway.  In math, there are so many more important things to learn than finding the square root of a number or factoring a polynomial.  Students need to learn to prioritize, and evaluate their work; they need to understand data and have the ability to reason and articulate their own thoughts.  The 21^st century is a fast-moving, technology-saturated place and students need to feel prepared for the real world before they leave high school.


Feel free to leave me your thoughts! If you're a teacher, definitely check out the website... it's worth the visit.

-Kate

*something about airplanes*

Planes.

Most people see a shiny jet, soaring through the sky and they start to think of things like clouds, or flying… I think of the destination.  I daydream about where those planes are flying to and the characters aboard.  Maybe there is a little boy, traveling all alone to go visit his grandparents in Oberndorf, Austria for a week.  Perhaps it is a businessman, flying to New Delhi with the intentions of spending less time working and more time sightseeing. 

Or maybe, just maybe, it’s a college senior, traveling to Ireland to finish her student-teaching requirements abroad.

In October of 2009, that college student was me.  I took the biggest leap of my life when I stepped off that plane… my family, friends, teachers and even my country were suddenly thousands of miles away.  Within the first few hours, my luggage was lost, I took the wrong bus, missed my stop (after finding the correct bus), and ended up soaking wet before I even made it to my host family’s house.   Throughout the next several weeks, I had hundreds of mishaps, but within every mistake there was a spectacular experience.  My confidence increased ten-fold and I also learned to love the stillness of being alone.  I found the thrill of getting lost and relying on the kindness of strangers.  I spent an afternoon, sitting on the edge of a cliff, with a magnanimous view over the Atlantic; finally realizing how small I was in such a big world.

I got the chance to truly discover who I am.

My students haven’t had those chances.  I work with kids who never get the chance to travel outside of the county, let alone the country.  As high school students, they are constantly battered with ideas and images that are not their own.  They preach their parents’ opinions and race to conform to the social norms.  They speak with hate towards others, but have no defense when asked why.  They are offended by the thoughts of others, but can’t give a reason or rebuttal.

These are the students I most want to teach, and it has nothing to do with math.

I had a young man, let’s call him Joe, who made a very hateful comment about a certain group of people… let’s pretend it was about brunettes.  Joe said that he hated all brunettes.  As a person, I wanted to rip his statement apart and make him look absolutely foolish in front of the class, but as a teacher, I took it as a learning opportunity.  I calmly asked Joe why he had such resentment for brunettes. 

       The first words out of his mouth?

"I don’t know"

That’s what it all comes down to.  They don’t know!  And how could I expect them to know?  Joe only knows what he has learned up until this point.  He has never ventured out to discover his own thoughts or learn how big the world really is.  Right now, his world is the size of a pea; there is no space to grow, no adventure to be found… it’s just too small.  I want him to have a fighting chance at discovering the world and his own ideas and beliefs, but how do I do that?

I teach.

Even though these kids will probably never see another quadratic formula after high school, they will remember how to solve problems.  I will make sure of it.  I will teach them to laugh when they make a mistake, not cry.  I will teach them that the road to success is tough, but very worthwhile.  I will teach them to memorize, and visualize, and strategize.  I will teach them to accept challenges as they come instead of complaining about them.  I will teach them that there are more important things to life than school… and yes, even as a teacher, I strongly believe that.  A ‘B’ isn’t the end of the world and the ‘F’ doesn’t mean you get to stop trying.  I will teach them to have compassion, or at the very least, tolerance.  We are all sinners and everyone has done something they are not proud of.  Rise above it.

When I have a really tough day as a teacher, it’s usually has nothing to do with math.  Teaching math is easy.  Teaching life is impossibly difficult. 

-Kate

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”  

-Mark Twain

To blog or not to blog... is there really a question?

I teach high school mathematics- Algebra II and Calculus I & II to be specific.  By starting this blog with virtually no experience, it’s difficult for me to think of ways to use blogs in my classroom.  As a teacher, I am always looking for new ideas out in the blogging world, but I’ve never really thought about using blogs with my students.  That being said, I had a lot of fun brainstorming different ways to use blogs in a ‘perfect-world’ classroom (enough devices for everyone to access the internet, and no misuse of blogging).

In my calculus classes, I could set up an online blogging forum where students could discuss their struggles and their triumphs.  We could have a blog focused on a problem of the week and the first student/students to post the correct answer would be the ones to post (on their own blog) a new problem of the week.  Our annual roller coaster problem could happen entirely online and have the student use their blog as the posting site.  Then other students could access each roller coaster and vote/grade them completely online.

Algebra II could use a blog to create projects and share information with the class.  With younger students, I would want to create one blog for the class to use as a whole and acclimate them to that before I have them create individual blogs.  In that case, the blog could also be private and only allow students in the class to post on a blog topic and discuss.  I could post hints for homework questions and example tests/quizzes for the students to access before the actual test or quiz. 

          
In a perfect world, I could use a blogging site to really help incorporate technology into my lessons.  It’s sometimes tough to see other schools being showered with technology and iPads/computers for every student when I work in such a small, struggling district.  I’m looking into different grants to see if I can get a few extra things for my classroom.  The benefits are endless… now we just have to get there.

-K

The Beginning...

As usual, it's the eleventh hour and I'm finally sitting down to complete my homework for the first week of my new class.  The assignment: to create a blog.  Yes, it was that simple.  But here's the problem... I hate the thought of creating a blog as just a requirement for class.  Instead, I'm creating this blog for two purposes; #1- to (obviously) avoid failing this course on technology, and #2, (most importantly) to create a place where I can create, learn, occasionally vent, and more importantly, discuss (which is probably the goal of my class... but why get hung up on the details?).  So my goal is to continue with this blog, even when the class comes to an end. Maybe this will lead to a surge of educational posts, a way to channel my artistic thoughts, 'talk math' with other nerds, or even perhaps discuss my faith.  Regardless of what it becomes, I'm excited to start creating!

If you have any suggestions for me, being a blogging newbie, feel free to leave comments!

-K