Content + Skill = 21st Century Student

What matters for students? How do teachers act as an example of someone who demonstrates 21st century skills?

Well, this answer is complex. As educators, we must know what the desired outcome should be for students. Before going any further, we must reflect, are these outcomes aligned with 21st century student/citizen?

Our desired outcome is a student who can intelligently take the academic content and apply it to all circumstances in life.

Once our outcome is crystal clear, the educators act as guides and show the steps to incorporate academic content, 21st century skills to their personal life and future career skills.

The only thing consistent is change, thus while teaching all the sciences, maths, world languages, arts, history, educators must be  infusing the importance skill of flexibility and adaptability!  "Only people who have the knowledge and skills to negotiate constant change and reinvent themselves for new situations will succeed." (Kay,year? pg. xvii) Sadly, Kay comments how these 21st century skills such as, innovation, creativity, critical thinking and problem solving are rarely incorporated into daily instruction.

Sheer rote memory based learning may get students good grades in grade-school and even up to college, but according to Kay, those skills will not make a student successful. John Bransford, the coauthor of "How people learn" believes that rigor is not based in sharp memory or ability to regurgitate information said to students thousands of times, rather  the application " However, in the 21st century, the true test of  rigor is for students to be able to look at material they've never seen before and know what to do with it." ( Kay, year? pg. xxiv)


Lastly, Kay retells a conversation from a manager at Apple about expectations of the workers, "any employee who needs to be managed is no longer employable." (Kay, year?, pg. xxi)

Bottom line, we want students who KNOW how to think not WHAT to think!