Partnership for 21st Century Skills

For this week's application assignment in my graduate coursework at Walden University, I was given the task of exploring and evaluating the website of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. According to their website, the Partnership's mission is to "serve as a catalyst to position 21st century skills at the center of US K-12 education by building collaborative partnerships among education, business, community, and government leaders" (http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/). In other words, the goal of the Partnership is to foster relationships between the classroom and the "real" world to help prepare our students for the challenges they will face in the 21st century workplace. In previous weeks in my current course at Walden, we have discussed whether or not there is a disconnect between the skills our students are learning in today's educational setting and the critical skills they will need to thrive in the modern workplace. As I explored this group's website this week, I realized that they do believe this gap exists and view the aforementioned relationship as a crucial solution to the problem. The website states, "To successfully face rigorous higher education coursework, career challenges, and a globally competitive workforce, US schools must align classroom environments with real world environments by infusing 21st century skills into their teaching and learning" (http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/). The website offers numerous articles, links, and resources that educators can explore in the quest to successfully bring to life this vision of teaching our students not only our state-mandated curriculums, but also the critical skills they will need in the future.

As I explored the website, my reaction to the organization's goals and work thus far was quite positive. I was highly impressed with the number of corporations that are board members for the organization. These businesses include Intel, Apple, Dell, Ford Motor Company, Hewlett Packard, Microsoft, and Verizon just to name a few. As I perused this list of companies that are involved with the organization, I must admit that I was surprised that I have not heard more about the Partnership for 21st Century Skills in the past. I would imagine that these companies would be quite proud to be involved with such an organization and with doing what they can to foster relationships with our students of today and their future employees. It made me wonder what would happen if these corporations were more vocal about their connection with the Partnership. Would more companies get involved? Would more attention, and thus more funds for resources, be thrust on this organization that is so dedicated to helping us as educators to prepare our students to be successful in the 21st century workplace? Additionally, I was interested in the initiatives started by the organization in ten states thus far. It appears that the Partnership is doing a commendable job of helping these states get on the right track toward integrating 21st century skills into their schools. Why, then, aren't more states getting involved? In a nation where no child is to be left behind, according to our government, why aren't these initiatives being implemented in all of our states so that all of our students have equitable access to resources that will help them learn 21st century knowledge and skills? Essentially, I would like to see more attention given to organizations such as the Partnership for 21st Century Skills; given the current state of our economy and the difficult time our nation is facing, I think it would be a positive step in the right direction to focus on providing tools such as those provided by this organization for our students so that they can successfully compete in the global workforce. In the article, "The New Literacies," Miners and Pascopella describe state initiatives such as the Partnership as "pockets of hope" that can "alter the educational technology landscape" (2007, p. 30). Thus, I feel that it is my job as a dedicated teacher to explore the work of organizations such as the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, even if my state has not yet stepped up to the plate to acknowledge the importance of integrating these skills within our curriculum.

As a contemporary educator, I feel that this website has extraordinary implications for my students. I was energized to discover their resource database, Route21, which offers information about classroom materials, books, other websites, etc. that educators can examine. These resources can be browsed by support system, knowledge, and skill, which means the resources are easily accessed depending on your interest. Personally, I viewed some of the resources on the site based on my core subject area (English/language arts) and now have a lengthy list of websites I am looking forward to examining based on the helpful annotations provided in the database. By examining these resources, I can educate myself about ways to develop a relationship between my state curriculum and information and communications technology so that my students will walk away from my classroom being more prepared to thrive in the modern workplace than ever before. After evaluating the website, I believe this type of assistance for educators is one of the critical goals of this organization. Who can disagree with that? I know I can't.

In the article "Characteristics of a Globally Competitive Workforce," Bates and Phelan stated, "Today's workers are being asked to learn new technologies, to develop innovative techniques, to cross-function in work teams, to troubleshoot, to work independently, and to assume the leadership role in front-line positions" (2002, p. 122). Who is responsible for preparing our students to do all of these things? You guessed it--we as educators. However, organizations such as the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, remind me that it is not an impossible endeavor, especially when relationships can be developed between educators and the employers for whom we are preparing our students. I, personally, am looking forward to further exploring the work of this organization so that I can use their resources to reap benefits for my students.

If you have not yet heard of this organization, I urge you to check out their website--particularly the Route 21 resource database. If you find any resources that you believe to be particularly worthy of further examination, please don't hesitate to comment about them here. After all, as we have learned in my current course, collaboration is a key skill for the 21st century workplace. Fortunately, organizations such as the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, make that collaboration a little easier!

References:

Bates, R., & Phelan, K. (2002). Characteristics of a globally competitive workforce. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 4(2), 121.

Miners, Z., & Pascopella, A. (2007). The new literacies. District Administration, 43(10), 26–34.