A True Partnership

Perusing the Partnership for 21st Century Skills website was not a simple act.  New information was plentiful and true partnership abounds!  So often, teachers feel the pressure to apply the latest, greatest trends in learning without sufficient support or professional development.  The P21 website provides every educational stakeholder with the information and support they need to meet the needs of the 21st century. 

P21's mission statement, "To serve as a catalyst to position 21st century readiness at the center of US K12 education by building collaborative partnerships among education, business, community and government leaders" is clearly enacted in many facets of the website.  Some of the collaborative partnerships that are demonstrated include professional development opportunities and resources for educators and offered by various prominent business such as Apple and Microsoft.  Extensive explanations of the invested efforts of various states who have joined P21 allows visitors to understand the progress that each states has made since signing on.  Extensive information is also provided to parents so that they may understand how vital 21st century skills are to the success of their children.  All stakeholders are called upon to endorse and participate in the continued development of 21st century skill implementation. 

The Framework for 21st Century Learning offered by P21 was insightful and sound in its structure.  The framework was constructed of 6 key elements for effective 21st century skill learning shaped as an arch and appropriately reinforced by various support systems that are necessary to successful learning.  True to their word, P21 website offers the partnership that is needed for success by providing the resources and professional development for each element of its framework and each support system.  Route 21 is an area of the P21 website devoted to providing these resources.  Route 21 can be searched according to skill, knowledge, or type of support system and educator is interested in researching.  The true partnership is evident here when an educator finds webinars or tutorials constructed and offered by various businesses that are devoted to helping an educator find creative ways to use 21st century skills and technology in the classroom. 

I particularly enjoyed reading the posts on the P21 Blog where various prominent educators answer driving questions regarding issues on implementation of 21st century skills.  Many of the posts evident on the blog really capture the reflective nature of learning even in a 21st century landscape.  No one approach to these skills is absolute and many of the posts include information from those who have been implementing the P21 framework and offer their reflections and areas of troubleshooting.  There are many high interest topics that are the focus of the driving questions such as, "Does Project Based Learning Teach Critical Thinking?" or "What if 21st century teachers could self-direct and personalize their own professional development?"  These driving questions represent many of the doubts or obstacles that educators, policy makers, or parents might face while immersing themselves in the 21st century skills approach.

My only criticism of the P21 website is how vast it is.  I certainly did not feel that I had fully grasped the breadth of information available on the site.  I am also slightly confused about how to access some of the information mentioned on the site such as the maps.  Is it necessary to become a member in order to gain access to other resources offered by the site?  I will certainly frequent the P21 site when implementing 21st century skills in order to further my understanding of how to structure my lessons, troubleshoot areas of concern, and gain the support I need to continue  my mission of offering a 21st century skill-based education to my students.

Blogging Aspirations

I am now in the full thrust of my 10th year of teaching English in central New Jersey.  Six years were spent at the middle school level and the remainder at the high school.  I primarily teach 9th grade English (both College Prep and Honors), which at our school is a genre study, but I also teach what we call English Lab, a class that targets at-risk students to aid in preparing them to pass the high school proficiency test in 11th grade.  

The potential applications of blogging in my 9th grade English classroom appear endless!  I envision maintaining a classroom blog (teacher blog) in addition to requiring my students to create and manage their own blog.