Some more on the Partnership for 21st Century Skills

I had another chance to look through the website and found the The Mile Guide. A comprehensive plan on how to implement 21st century skills not only into the curriculum, but into the education process as a whole. It stresses the need to for students to master the core subjects, and as an English teacher I can appreciate that. Often I have students ask the age old question of "why do I need to learn this?" My response is always the same, "English is a cross curricular subject and we take the skills we master here and apply them to mathematics and science and everything else we do."

It seems in today's world students want everything now, but don't want to take the necessary steps to get there. We as educators have a tremendous task before us. Unlike in generations past where teaching basic skills was often the norm, we are now in need of finding ways to merge the working world with the world of education. I really feel it is paramount for our students to get all of these skills and the partnership for the 21st century is an innovative website that begins to address these issues.

The Mile guide is a great starting point for assessing where a school district is in this process and where they need to be going. We all need to "Empower the people network" more in education. In the short while I have been teaching I have learned one thing, put the power to learn in the hands of those being taught and they will begin to discover new concepts on their own. I believe in the old saying, "it takes a village to raise the young", maybe in the 21st century we will one day say, "it takes the whole globe to teach the young."