From The Rock

We all draw on our past when it comes to judging education. Better yet, we judge education by how well the children are doing. We want kids to be prepared to live successfully in the world when they become adults, and we expect schools to prepare them. Their world is the 21st Century.

The Internet Generation

If your children are in school now, they are N-geners, or the Internet Generation. The question is, Are schools preparing the Internet Generation well enough? We are no longer an agrarian society where folks must work farms or assembly lines. What are those things that will define them? What skills must they have to compete and prosper? There are many answers, but lets hear what corporate executives are looking for.

In the article Rigor Redefined (2008), Tony Wagner interviewed many corporate CEOs to find out what they are looking for in todays workforce. Wagner was surprised at some of the answers he discovered to his questions. For example, the President of BOC Edwards indicated that what he was looking for first and foremost was someone to ask good questions. He stated that while they could always teach the technical stuff, it is very difficult to teach someone how to think and to ask good questions.

Many of these company CEOs shared their need to hire people who can work collaboratively in teams to discuss and come up with out of the box solutions for todays problems. All of this points to a need for educators to integrate into their teaching, meaningful activities with Blooms Taxonomy in mind. Throw out the old ditto sheets and give students real problems to solve. Give them opportunities to work in teams and make presentations of their work.

Redefine Rigor

Schools today need to understand the needs of their students and adjust their curriculums to meet those needs. It is a real concern when I see packaged curriculums used with no supporting real world examples attached to them. It is troublesome that the Teachers Guides provided to teachers require them to proceed with a lesson without really thinking about the real world applications. And School Districts are requiring teachers to report on planning and pacing guides the lessons taught every day, leaving little room for teaching outside the box.

Essential to learning is the relationship between the teacher and the student. Students must feel met by the teacher with insight and understanding of who they are as learners. Teachers do best when they are empowered to create meaningful lessons that speak to their students.

Technology

Our students are part of the Internet Generation. For this reason alone, it is important for teachers to embrace the use of technology in our curriculums. We can show our students how the technology that comes so naturally to them can be used in the real world to effect a difference. We should be looking to integrate smart boards, classroom response systems, projectors for PowerPoint presentations, and even cell phones into our lesson plans. While it may be more comfortable to ignore the trend, in order to ensure the success of the Internet Generation educators must welcome the opportunity to use technology in our curriculum.

Integrated Learning

An integrated approach is the best solution to avoid boring and mundane lesson plans that dont speak to the Internet Generation. By using topics such as social studies and science as the topics for reading and writing class, the students will get an experiential approach to their lessons that will make them more relevant in the long run.

The current trend toward curriculum narrowing in social studies and science is sad indeed. Transfer those skills students need to practice and integrate them into everything else you are doing. Without sufficient social studies and science instruction, we are leaving our students bereft of essential background knowledge upon which other knowledge can be built.

Many school districts have the added struggle of teaching children from poor families. Almost 17% of all school age children come from families existing below the poverty line. These children dont have the same opportunities as middle and upper class peers to gain background knowledge or vocabulary skills. A narrow curriculum focused only on tested subjects of reading, writing and math, rather than integrating secondary subjects such as social studies, science and the arts will only make these trends more noticeable.

It is the job of parents and educators alike to commit to building cultural literacy through science social studies and the arts in order to give the Internet Generation the best opportunities in life that we can. It is a proven psychological fact that the best way to learn new things is to be able to apply it to something we have already experienced. Children, especially those with limited opportunities to experience new things outside of school, must be given a broad base of experiences in which to build.

Viable research has shown that cultural literacy is highly correlated with academic achievement, which in turn is correlated to annual income. If our job as educators is to prepare children for the 21st Century, then we must attend to the building of knowledge, not just teach them to read, write and do math.