6.24.10

6/24- Yesterday was another fabulous day. The more I'm here the more I realize how absolutely little I know and how much I still have to learn. Yesterday we talked about 21st century skills, and what we as teachers have as a responsibility to help cultivate in our students. One of the scary and yet exciting parts of being a teacher (especially in the jr. high and younger years) is that quite literally my students lives are in my hands. How I teach them and prepare them for the future might determine their success and chances of realizing their dreams.

As a 21st century teacher these are (some of) the skills that I need to make sure to always touch on.


 * 1) Core subjects (in my case foreign languages) interwoven with 21st century (2C) Themes. All of our children are going to be living in the 2C and therefore must have the ability to succeed in 2C society. This means the ability to adapt to changes in demographics, deal with increased information flow, deal with change (much more so than generations before), be more aware of the world (from a number of aspects) in the sense of being decentralized, and be more "people oriented". And when I teach my "core subject" I need to be aware of these societal aspects and let my lessons and activities reflect an effective way to succeed in them.
 * 2) I need to be effective in cultivating an environment that promotes creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, communication and information, collaboration, and contextual learning. These, it seems to my "simple mind" are all centralized on the idea of "de-centralizing", which allows freedom in the classroom. The students need guidance in learning development (we'll call it a learning coach-cheerleader), but not a dictator. These skills (listed above) will truly help them to be more flexible and well rounded in their future careers and lives.
 * 3) (to be continued after I run)...OK, I'm back from my run and finished eating breakfast. By the way, for my future self and anyone who cares to know, WOW, I feel really good and I had such an awesome run!..Anyway, back to my reflections. We also have to make sure to include Information media and technology in our classes (I think that I want to start using the word "class" instead of "lesson" from this point. "Lesson" seems to feel a bit rigid for the purposes of a 2C class. "Class" feels a little less like something I have created as teacher and more like a medium for learning.) These three previously mentioned skills are means by which our students are going to be living the rest of their lives and if our classes are going to reflect "real-world" life/society, then they must include them.
 * 4) Finally, as teachers we are responsible for more than just the points in life where we have these children as our students. We must look to see how our methods of mediating classes are going to shape the rest of their lives. Therefore we must also focus on how our students can develop Life and Career Skills and be flexible and adaptive, show initiative and have self-direction, gain social and cross cultural skills, be productive and accountable for what they do in life and become responsible leaders in their future fields.

I also reflected a bit on my own classes from the past year and how many of these skills I have focused on in my class. I should be embarrassed to admit (accept for the fact that I'm still young and have plenty of time to learn and change) that I have really focused on almost none of these skills. this combined with the fact that I really never focused on any of the "Standards" (the 5 C's), what was I doing in my class. I feel like I could have trained a robot to do what I did. Oh well, I here to learn how to become better, and that is what I am going to do!

Yesterday we also watched a video "Linda, Linda, Linda". It was great, and I loved how many aspects of daily life in Japan were reflected in the movie. I need to make use of the time here and try to find more movies like this that can help my students see life and culture and work on interpretive communication. in the content of your page here.