When I first considered my innovation plan, teaching 21st century skills My journey through the Building Thinking Classrooms and being bold in writing for publication has been really encouraging for a number of reasons. Learning that I am not alone in my frustrations with the traditional mathematics classroom brings a sense of comradery but also urgency to collectively disrupt the status quo and establish new norms for the future of education. Being validated in the hard work by instructional coaches and administration has also been reassuring. When feedback from the principal's observation includes "all students were engaged and actively participating in lesson, including students who struggle to find their pacing in other classes. Intentionality of grouping is effective and appreciated. Clear evidence of student retention of and ability to employ skills was observed throughout classroom visit", I know something must be going right. It also has been really empowering to hear how other educators in different roles, schools, and subjects are also transforming education in their own capacity.
Through my master's program, I have been blessed to be a part of a collaborative community that has quite a bit in common but also diversity in our different roles in education. When we review each other's work, these fresh perspectives enhance our own and we can even come together to see the bigger picture of how our individual ripples in the pond are actually making giant waves in the ocean. We realized our impact on inspiring other educators with what we doing is better when we come together. While we have such distinct sets of circumstances, common themes of lifelong learning, play, and opportunity can be felt throughout our work. Relying on the expertise of Amanda Mask with her knowledge of video and audio editing in iCloud, Hillary Turnage and Lindsay Krueger with their knowledge of Canva and its incredible capabilities, and Katie Beauchene with her knowledge of a plethora of educational tools her teachers have played with through her coaching cycles, we decided to commit to spending time having a conversation in a podcast. Our podcast provides a glimpse into what we are writing for publication, promoting our perspective to inspire others to share their voice too. I hope you enjoy listening to our first episode by clicking the EdTech Talks Podcast graphic and become excited to read more in depth about our individual pieces. While my piece is in the middle, it is worth your time to listen and gain perspective on an even bigger picture. Promoting our publications through podcasting brings more opportunity to make waves together.
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We have globally moved from the industrial age to the digital age, but our educational system relies heavily on industrial age techniques. Classrooms mimic the factory-model process where, according to Thomas and Brown, “learning is treated as a series of steps to be mastered” (2011). When students are addressed as though they are machines achieving repetitive tasks as efficiently as possible, success is defined by the results they produce through standardization of assessments and grades (Thomas & Brown, 2011). One thing that remains constant in this world is that it is always changing, but our educational system attempts to force an outdated approach in this new environment and reality. Rather than trying to play catch up, we need to grow and adapt with the current digital age. Part of this requires adopting a new culture of learning. One reason teaching high school mathematics can be challenging is because of the instilled societal mindset: people are born good or bad at math and there is nothing one can do to change that, so why invest one’s time into something they will “never” be successful in? While a yet mindset can address this concern, incorporating a wider set of characteristics and skills that all people need, regardless of their choices in life outside of the mathematics classroom, bridges the connection between one’s passions, desires, and dreams for life with the academic knowledge. Yes, a significant amount of math content is explicit knowledge, “content that is easily identified, articulated, transferred, and testable” but despite that, according to Brown, “the pool of unchanging resources is shrinking, and that the pond is providing us with fewer and fewer things that we can even identify as fish anymore” (Thomas & Brown, 2011). Math is important, don't get me wrong, but as math teachers we need to be realistic and consider all of the other skills students can learn beyond the math content. How many students are going to be graphing transformations of functions and writing the key attributes domain, range, intercepts, etc.? Not many, but how many of them are going to have to analyze visuals and draw information and conclusions from these visuals? Plenty. Rote memorization only serves a small group of students, holistic approach serves all. Teaching 21st century skills in a blended learning environment through the lens of mathematics requires the new culture of learning approach, which heavily relies on adopting its two essential elements simultaneously: global connectivity and structured environment. With the world and information at our fingertips, society has “unlimited access and resources to learn about anything” (Thomas & Brown, 2011). There is, however, a need to be able to discern between what is valuable, relevant, and appropriate, and what is not. The focus should not be on just answering prefabricated questions, but using these answers to generate more questions because this continuous cycle fosters the mindset of life-long learning. It shifts our view to not valuing what we already know but embracing what we do not know yet and allowing us the opportunity, the time, and the space to discover and create new ideas and perspectives. Critical and analytical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, and metacognition are all 21st century skills that current and future employers seek because our world is experiencing new problems and questions we could not fathom even five, ten years ago. All levels of companies and brands need innovative employees to think outside the box and really utilize and adapt the current reality to fit the needs of the future. These skills are only taught through experience. The analogy of learning to ride a bicycle comes to mind. One can watch others ride a bicycle, get all the safety gear and training wheels, have someone coach and guide them through staying balanced, but you only know you have learned how to ride the bicycle when you fall, get back up, keep adjusting, and then having the elation of finally pedaling a few feet without crashing. Once one learns and truly understands how to ride a bicycle, other ideas and tricks start to emerge, like wheelies or trail riding. If you have not been on a bicycle in a while, getting back on takes a little time but it becomes second nature. Being able to ride a bicycle opens up the world even more than on foot. Our classroom needs to have the structure of the watching others, providing safety gear and training wheels, coaching and guiding through setbacks. Students will make mistakes and fall down, but the culture in feeling safe to get back up because those around you will support you is vital. Additionally, learning is enhanced when it becomes a collective through the relationships, and a blended learning environment that intentionally incorporates communication and collaboration builds the opportunities to develop those relationships that will improve student engagement and learning. Not only that, but it also mimics our global society, where everyone’s individual perspective and experience is relevant and valid but can positively contribute to the collective and help us to adapt our own viewpoints. Creating a significant learning environment through blended learning addresses the problem that our community considers the educational system as broken, because it is not helping students grow into young adults that can positively contribute to society. A big challenge that comes with building a blending learning environment is battling the established perception that a traditional classroom is the only appropriate structure for mathematics, but according to Gallup (Inc, 2022), Americans are at an all-time low in terms of satisfaction in the education system. The top three reasons Americans are dissatisfied is the quality of education: 65% believe there are problems with the curriculum or educational approach, 15% believe the curriculum is poor and/or outdated and 9% believe students are not learning adequate life skills. Now is the time to shift from the present average methods that produce average students with ostensibly average results to innovative environments that prepare students for a relentlessly adaptive future (Harapnuik et al., 2018). The current data shows that the current educational approach is not generating growth or superb results. Also, college is losing its leverage as a necessity to enter the lucrative workforce. With organizations conducting micro-credentialing options for specific on-job skills that introduce and strengthen an employee’s projected professional abilities and business standards (Pelletier et al., 2022), this leaves the public education system to provide significant learning environments where students can begin to develop the traits that can set them apart and help them rise above the status quo. Students will reflect your attitude and mindset towards learning, so when we shift to creating significant learning environments, we need to establish structures and routines that support students to find passion and imagination in any content area. I tend to think about the big picture but introduce things to students in pieces, starting with mindset. As the year progresses, I add other pieces that involve additional 21st century skills. Everything at once would be overwhelming, especially at the high school level, where usually up to this point, they have been conditioned to learn the game of school and think drill and kill is what teaching looks like. Incorporating reflection throughout the learning process creates a supporting layer where the small steps of growth can be redefined as exponential growth as those small pieces are added to build to the back of the puzzle box big picture. Imagine trying to do a connect the dots puzzle but without the numbers. Unless the picture is overtly obvious, it is highly unlikely we would be able to accomplish the task of creating the final picture. So many possibilities of how those dots could connect, this could easily be turned into a math lesson. If you have a picture with 10 dots, and you connect all of the dots together, that would create 45 total lines with a 362,880 combinations of ways to get those 55 lines. WOW. Imagine trying to put a puzzle together but without a picture. They actually sell those for people who want a challenge! Okay, now let's say you have that picture. What process do you take? A lot of people will start with the edges first and work their way in. Some people look for color patterns, others look for piece type patterns, and it makes managing a 100-piece puzzle that mathematically has approximately 9… with 157 zeros… 9000000000000000000000000000000000 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 ...ways to choose pieces and put them down in the correct place so much easier. When you do puzzles with friends, the different perspectives help. As educators, we have the final picture, and it is our learning environment that provides students the pieces. How we provide those pieces is what makes the difference between collecting dots and connecting dots. Because we have put together this puzzle year after year, we must intentionally consider how to provide students access to these different pieces and implement structures to give them opportunities to explore how to put them together independently or collaboratively. We can tell them all we want how to connect them but it is not until they realize for themselves the connections that they really get it. Teaching 21st century skills in a blended learning environment through the lens of mathematics requires a new culture of learning approach, relying on two essential elements simultaneously: global connectivity and structured environment. With our connections to worldwide communities and the intentionally designed settings that nurture the new culture of learning, we can change the world one student at a time, turning them into the heroes of the future. References Beautiful butterfly jigsaw puzzle. (n.d.). Lovejigsawpuzzles.com. https://www.lovejigsawpuzzles.com/jigsaws/butterfly-jigsaw-puzzle/butterfly-jigsaw.jpg
Butterfly extreme dot-to-dot / connect the dots PDF. (2023). https://teachsimplecom.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/images/butterfly-extreme-dot-to-dot-connect-the-dots-pdf/image-1628885272548-1.jpg Free Vector | Bicycles icons flat color set with people riding bikes isolated vector illustration. (n.d.). Freepik. https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/bicycles-icons-flat-color-set-with-people-riding-bikes-isolated-vector-illustration_38754353.htm Free Vector | Character illustration of people with global network concept. (n.d.). Freepik. https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/character-illustration-people-with-global-network-concept_3425172.htm Harapnuik, D., Thibodeaux, T., & Cummings, C. (2018). Choice, Ownership, and Voice through Authentic Learning. Creative Commons License. Inc, G. (2022, September 1). Americans’ Satisfaction With K-12 Education on Low Side. Gallup.com. https://news.gallup.com/poll/399731/americans-satisfaction-education-lowside.asp Pelletier, K., McCormack, M., Reeves, J., Robert, J., Arbino, N., & Educause. (2022). 2022 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report, Teaching and Learning Education. Educause. Thomas, D., & Brown, J. S. (2011). A new culture of learning : Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Douglas Thomas And John Seely Brown. School only started two weeks ago, but I can already see how these six sources of influence are the key to really big picture growth. In this post, I want to focus on influence amongst my peers, rather than the influence I have on students.
Sometimes educators are described as "being stuck in their ways", but my team and I have already changed things up in our content structure, sequence, and pacing in the interest of reaching more students. We reflected and analyzed the past data, recognizing that some things worked okay, but others could work even more effectively. I foresee the biggest impact from the six sources of influence is social ability. My district is using a new learning management system, Canvas, and the math department has switched to using the Desmos calculator over TI-84s. I could go on for days about how much better Desmos is over a physical calculator, but what has really made the difference is when other teachers see the direct impact in their classrooms. Yes, there is a learning curve, but it's so much more intuitive than a TI-84 and more accessible for sure. Not only that, with the PSAT going online this fall and the SAT going online this spring, students consistently and intentionally practicing with the new tool is critical because these standardized tests open the opportunity for students to choose to go to college. Also, not only is the graphing calculator powerful, doing Desmos activities allows for exploring and quick checks for understanding and engages in 21st Century Skills through Experiences. This requires everyone to learn new technology components and not just for the sake of technology, but how to use the technology to facilitate meaningful learning opportunities for students. Having strength in numbers allows for those weary of these changes to see examples of what peers are trying and how they are adapting them after getting feedback from implementing these resources in the classroom. Starting there and expanding out to the social motivation and peer pressure, towards personal and then finally structural, is where my brain sees the most effective path. In fact, now the science department at my campus is trying Desmos!!! With more people trying new things and then feeling more confident in their ability, there's more change! Amongst my graduate classmates, social ability and motivation are commonly identified as the biggest impact - getting peer pressure involved and having power in numbers. What I fear will happen though is as the year progresses and we get more exhausted in all aspects, we will revert back to what we've done because it's easier and less time consuming. When things get tough, we follow our past habits because they require less mental energy. Right now, my "balls to the wall or not at all" motto is leaning towards "not at all" because it feels very overwhelming to have to consider all six sources of influence. What I have decided is that social ability can be enough for now and start to incorporate other sources of influence along the way.
Stumbling upon a Reddit post about New York City and the reputation of being rude, someone clearly articulated why there are people who agree with this stereotype and others simply don't see it. The response was about ask culture versus guess culture. The moment of new perspective and clarity hit me so hard that I have to share it and connect it to my classroom. The following video is a great explanation of the two different cultures.
Personally, I lean more towards ask. Being direct with me eliminates any ambiguity of what you might actually mean and it is not my fault that you did not clearly articulate your needs or desires. The superpower of mindreading is one of the last things I would want, especially if I don't need it when you can just tell me what's on your mind if you feel comfortable to do so. Being direct can also mean actually telling me you aren't comfortable to share. Around certain people, I become a guess because it's my attempt to mirror their style and not be offensive. Now, when in my classroom, I have to consider how my students live with these different perspectives and how our interactions are a result of these cultures. Naturally, like-minded people tend to get along well with each other. It's when an ask person and a guess person start to communicate that trouble could happen. Every year, I start the school year off by sharing with students The Yet Mindset but this has me thinking there could be more this or that perspectives worth exploring and sharing, starting with Ask or Guess. Being aware of your own perspective, other perspectives, and how all of them come across to others really opens up better communication and collaboration between students, building a positive classroom culture. Initially, I thought about simply fostering an ask culture in my classroom because that's what I am comfortable with. We tend to follow confirmation bias, especially as we grow older, so rather than restrict students for my benefit (I am literally rolling my eyes with how selfish I sound by saying that) , embracing both viewpoints is another opportunity to incorporate 21st century skills: communication, collaboration, metacognition, and reflection. We can start Teaching 21st Century Skills in a Blended Learning Environment and really building the whole student while also learning and growing ourselves.
References
Therapy in a Nutshell. (2022). Are You Ask Culture or Guess Culture? This Communication Skill Is Life-Changing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OXlZUfbsPI
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/ |
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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