Beside(s) Content

“Developing content knowledge provides the foundation for acquiring these skills, while the skills in turn are necessary to truly learn and use the content. In other words, the skills and content knowledge are not only intertwined but also reinforce each other.”

http://www.hewlett.org/newsroom/news/national-research-council-report-highlights-importance-deeper-learning


Of course great teachers have always focused on teaching students to communicate, collaborate, create, solve problems, and innovate.  Great teachers ask students to work together through project-based learning to enhance all of these skills.  In our school, it is commonplace to walk into a classroom and see students working together to design a road trip across the US, or build a tower out of straws that can withstand an earthquake, or make a claymation video to bring awareness to a critical problem facing the environment.  None of this is news to anyone who sees and values great teaching.

The problem is that while these skills are discussed, written about, and extolled, they remain a minor part of most schools’ curriculum, behind content.  Unless individual teachers value these skills, they don’t get the attention that they deserve.  Even teachers who appreciate these skills often let them play second fiddle to content.  After all, content is what is in the textbook; what is assessed; and what parents, students, the State expect to be taught.  While the system doesn’t deny that 21C skills can be taught, it certainly doesn’t promote them or make it easy.  That needs to change -- now.

Every student and parent can tell you the subjects that define school -- English, history, math, science, art, PE, foreign language.  What would a school look like that raised the awareness and place of 21C skills to stand on equal footing beside the subject areas?  What if instead of asking a student how they did on their algebra test, parents asked how they did on their metacognition today (and it didn’t seem weird)?  What if administrators created a schedule that made it easy for teachers to plan lessons that gave students the opportunity to work and reflect on 21C skills?  What if a school decided to report on student growth on 21C skills in addition to mastery of content?  What if students knew they were supposed to develop their ability to innovate, rather than it being an unnoticed by-product of a project?  All of these what ifs are doable and pretty easily, but they won’t happen unless we (students, teachers, parents, administrators, the State) change our collective minds about what students should learn in school.