After looking at the website for The Partnership for 21st Century Skills at http://www.p21.org/, I find myself a little overwhelmed at the amount of information on their site. I did notice that they are a big promoter of how wonderful No Child Left Behind is. As a teacher, I see how NCLB has actually hurt our students, turning them into burned out test takers. The students feel overwhelmed with the amount of testing that takes place during the school year to assess academic readiness which forces the teachers to "teach to the test". I know that I have very little time to work with my students on teaching them the technology skills they will need in order to cover my curriculum for the state assessment. My question is how do I teach the tech skills, and still get through the curriculum?
I understand the issues surrounding developing 21st century skills and see the need to do so, but how do we do this in an educational environment that does not see the value in these skills? We are told to give the students an education that will make them competitive in the business world, but set up our educational system on a pattern that worked before the technology revolution and resist the changes necessary to carry out our goal.
The only way I see this happening is for me to take the burden on myself to take the steps to teach these skills the best I can and as often a possible. Instead of reports printed out and turned in, use wikis instead. Give students assignments that they do as blogging or in e-format. In order to do that, I must take the steps to get the training I need by following some of the links on p21's Professional Development page, and be familiar with my states technology standards.
Yes, I will have to take some initiative. Not only in the classroom, but also on the floor of the Legislature to convince my elected representative to spend the money for our future.
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Mindy, I completely agree with your comments. It's very challenging to meet any expectations, whether its "No Child Left Behind" or "21st Century" skills, without providing the resources that support those expectations. Unfortunately, I feel that many of our students will be hindered during time frame it will take to revamp the educational system. I'm currently trying to share data, research and resources to my colleagues to keep them abreast of the realistic changes that will enviably take place. A collabortive effort made to our legislators will hopefully, have a harder impact.
ReplyDeleteMindy, I am so tired of teaching to the test and not to the students. It is very difficult to get everything covered. I wish that we had the resources to effectively teach the students to be competitive in their lives but instead we have politicians making cutbacks that do nothing but hurt the students. I think that the transition to using technology will be slow coming in terms of full school support but like you I am trying to make those technology changes when I can take the time away from the joys of testing.
ReplyDeleteAs a teacher in Alaska I knew my students entered the world of testing in the 3rd grade. Now that I am in Las Vegas I have had the opportunity to administer standardized tests to 5 different Kindergarten classes. Yes, Kindergarten. When I first heard about what I had to do I laughed in disbelief. How was I going to give a Math and Language Arts test to 37 Kindergarten students 3 seperate times a year? Not only that, I have to bubble in their answer sheets because they are incapable of doing it themselves! And all of this is on top of the 30-40 standards based assessments I give them for their report cards. Let's add in another factor. Most of the students are ELL. Then they ask if I want my salary to be tied in with student achievement. It takes a full 2 weeks to bubble in the kids answer sheets, and this is after retesting and make ups. This happens 3 times a year, so essentially I spend one full month dealing with this standardized test with little teaching or intervention groups. What is the world coming to?
ReplyDeleteMindy,
ReplyDeleteI agree I found it interesting as to how the Partnership for 21st Century Skills can also be a proponent of NCLB. It seems as though they are contradictory to one another. NCLB is very rigid in what they expect from students in both testing and curriculum knowledge. Where P21 advocates for alternative forms of assessment and ways of displaying curriculum knowledge. I'm sure if you follow the money it will begin to make sense.