Ask a high school mathematics teacher what skills or knowledge their students need and you will get a lot of the following:
I mean, even a study and analysis from 1997 by the National Center for Education Statistics focused on building assessments that incorporated a similar list of knowledge/skills within their items to give to eighth graders in the United States and Japan. Math hasn't really changed, right? However, I am not writing about content-specific math skills. When considering how a blended learning model would apply in a high school mathematics classroom, the bigger picture are those skills employers look for when hiring and retaining employees. A little over a month ago, Fortune published an article that identified the top 10 skills employers consider on the rise in the next five years. Can you guess what are the top five?
These align with the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report, which also includes the top two skills as those that have been disrupted and need to be reskilled in their employees. These skills can have other names, like critical thinking, digital efficiency, collaboration, problem solving, etc. We encompass this list in the title "21st Century Skills", but really these skills have been important for societal advancement since the invention of the wheel, we have only just recently begun to explicitly identify them and put them into our educational visions. How do we teach these skills though? By experiencing situations where our capabilities are tested, stretched, reinforced, broken, and/or rebuilt. I've mentioned the joy I found in cheerleading in my post The Yet in Me - My Mindset Experience as a Student and through my experience, I learned a significant lesson. As a freshman, I applied to be a co-captain because in my eyes, there was no better option. When the coaches asked me who I thought would be the best co-captain for the squad, I humbly took the approach of hyping up all my teammates and detailing all the qualities they had that would make them successful. Much to my dismay, I was not chosen! WHAT! Did they not see how AMAZING I was? When asking for feedback on why did I not receive the title, the response was simple. They considered me the best candidate but I did not articulate that I considered myself the best choice and share the characteristics I had that made me stand out compared to the rest. Isn't that conceited and selfish to brag about myself, right? Throughout the year, I remained true to me in an attempt to prove them wrong and through my actions in practice, on the field, and in the classroom, I demonstrated the characteristics and skills necessary to be a highly-effective leader, regardless of the title. Through this, a profound lesson was learned: "Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It’s about impact, influence and inspiration." - Robin Sharma My coaches saw an opportunity to teach me a deeper lesson through the experience. Did they know exactly how I was going to respond? No way! But, the risk was worth the reward because the learning impacted me on a much deeper level. The 21st Century Skills we so desperately try to incorporate in our classrooms for our students cannot be explicitly taught, they have to be incorporated in learning experiences. The next question to consider, what do these experiences look like in a high school mathematics classroom? While I am not sure yet, a blended learning classroom opens the windows and doors to exploring to find out. References Dossey, J., Peak, L., & Nelson, D. (1997). Essential Skills in Mathematics A Comparative Analysis of American and Japanese Assessments of Eighth-Graders. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs97/97885.pdf
Marr, B. (2022, August 22). The Top 10 Most In-Demand Skills For The Next 10 Years. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2022/08/22/the-top-10-most-in-demand-skills-for-the-next-10-years/?sh=4c49a68417be Pelesh, A. (2018, August 21). The Top 10 Skills In Demand at the Top 10 U.S. Companies. The Top 10 Skills in Demand at the Top 10 U.S. Companies. https://stradaeducation.org/employers/the-top-10-skills-in-demand-at-the-top-10-u-s-companies/ Ponz, B. (2001). COMPETENCIES FOR THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY. OECD. https://www.oecd.org/innovation/research/1842070.pdf Projections 2000 A look at occupational employment trends to the year 2000. (n.d.). https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1987/09/art5full.pdf Thier, J. (2023, May 1). The skills gap is so big that nearly half of workers will need to retrain this decade. Fortune. https://fortune.com/2023/05/01/most-important-skills-employers-want/
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I was that academic student with a fixed mindset. Most of the praise I received came from a place of how smart I was and the results I got. This forced me into an anxiety-filled perception that grades meant everything and if I failed something, it was because I was stupid or even worse, that the teacher or the class was the problem. I had teachers along the way that build relationships with me to encourage the learning process over the results, but I would ask those same teachers how to increase my grade, not how to increase my learning.
Senior year of high school, sitting in Dr. Igo's world history class, he asked me why I was taking the class. It was part of my graduation plan, but he wanted to know MY why, especially when I considered myself terrible at history. He challenged me to consider that I could prove myself wrong, that I could be good at history, if I kept learning and improving, taking feedback not as an attack on my character or ability, but rather an opportunity to develop my character and ability to be better. I was already at the top of my class, but I still had a fixed mindset; his class would drop my GPA, drop my rank, and limit my access to college choices. Through the struggle of his class and others, I learned a lot of content that I couldn't tell you today but more importantly, I learned that I hold the key to the doors of opportunities with my mindset. What if I had discovered this magical power sooner? This is one of many reasons why I love breaking the chains of the tyranny of now in my juniors and seniors in math. Whenever a student says "I don't know", I ask them to add a word... to which they reply "I don't know yet". Explaining to students from day one that the class is about learning math content, but also our mindset to approaching math has brought some of the most beautiful transformations I have been privileged to witness. Jo Boaler at Stanford University has published a number of books and research to support how growth mindset can change a math student's trajectory (YouCubed). When I experience students who were like me, handling their questions and concerns with empathy but redirection has been best. What would happen if I didn't share the lesson Dr. Igo shared with me? The one place it didn't carry a fixed mindset into was my joy of cheerleading. The area I grew up in had a highly-awarded competitive squad where my peers had been taking classes since three years old. My family did not have the means to afford these extracurricular activities, which supported their fear of me "breaking my neck" doing elaborate stunts or tumbling moves. That never stopped me from practicing tumbling in my living room (while watching the 1996 Magnificent Seven) or learning the cheers at recess. Reluctantly, my mom said okay when I begged her for the thousandth time to try out my 6th grade year and there was NO REASON why I should have made the squad, competing for 12 spots out of 40+ girls. I didn't make it... until I got a call asking if I wanted to cheer for another school that nobody tried out for. When agreeing, I made the decision to keep trying and learning, making up for lost time that my peers had in the gym. By no means was I the best, but I took every skill, every practice, every coach as an opportunity to try again, learn something, and improve daily. This growth mindset let me to being a part of the varsity squad my junior and senior year, capping my senior year off as co-captain, and cheering for a year in college. What if I had decided from the beginning that I didn't have the ability and nothing I could do would change it? What are you deciding to embrace the power of "yet" with today? |
My husband lovingly teases me when I reflect on my day with him and say "I learned something new today!" because he would be surprised if I didn't learn something new.
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