21st Century Teaching

A hot topic in education these days - What is 21^st century education, you may ask? 

I believe a 21^st century teacher includes more individualized instruction and less one-size-fits-all teaching.  21^st century teaching acknowledges that all students learn differently and that most students don’t want to (and simply aren’t able to) learn from the old paper and pencil approach. A 21^st century education means more technology centered instruction and less verbal lecturing.  Students can expect to be asked more in-depth questions and they need to be able to answer more comprehensively versus repeating the simple facts.

I think this diagram really shows proof to the change in student learning styles.

Today, students want/need to learn things that they feel are real-life applicable.  As educators, we spend so much time teaching students things that they may not have use for.  Take handwriting for example.  In the primary grades we practice handwriting day-in and day-out.  We take up so much time teaching the students all the different strokes and slants to cursive writing.  We struggle to get primary students to write on a line correctly.  Why?  What college students or even working adults still have to hand-write notes, papers, or comments?  In the 21^st century everything is done on computer or voice recorder.  How about spelling?  Why are first graders working on memorizing words every night when most educated adults can’t even spell without the use of spell-check?  Even our Blackberries and IPhones spell check our messages for us!  I’m sure there are several other examples of things that we continue to teach that simply are not as useful in the 21^st century.

I don’t know about you, but as an educator I often feel inadequately trained for the 21^st century classroom.  Not only have I not had enough classes, trainings, and professional development opportunities to head toward that direction, but it doesn’t seem as if the government is fully working on implementing 21^st century education either.  Schools do not have the budgets to overhaul classrooms; not only do we need a wide variety of updated technology, but we could also use a whole new set of curriculum.   We continue to use boring teaching manuals, basal readers, and math workbooks to do the teaching for us.  Standardized testing is still mostly recalling facts and the mundane task of filling in bubbles – the paper and pencil way.  The state of Indiana has really thrown education to the wayside and in order for all schools and all teachers to get into the 21^st century mindset, there is going to need to be a big change!

This diagram is the infamous Bloom’s Pyramid.  These are the kinds of in-depth questions 21^st century learners should be responding to in order to become higher-level thinkers. 

In my classroom I try my best to be a 21^st century educator.  I keep my Bloom’s Pyramid on the wall as a reminder to myself to achieve higher levels.  I utilize more hands-on activities versus worksheets.  Even at a kindergarten and first grade level, I teach the kids how to use the basic technology available to us.  We utilize the listening station, classroom computers and out Smart Board every day.  We go to the school computer lab to practice typing and logging onto the internet once a week.  I believe my students leave the classroom well-equipped with 21^st century skills, but my fear is that they lose these skills with other teachers who may NOT be enforcing them. 

21^st century teaching and learning will be an issue for many years to come.  Will education ever get there?  What are YOUR thoughts?!