David Spreadbury, Secondary Principal

As teachers, we often hear that we are preparing students to be ‘21st century learners’, but what does that mean? 21st century skills have been defined in many different ways, but key components always seem to involve higher order thinking, planning, collaboration, and leaderships skills coupled with increased global awareness. While the foundation of these skills may be technology, to me it simply means the focus is now on knowing how to access information rather than on memorizing content.

My experiences as a student many years ago are certainly different than those of today’s ‘Millennials’.  My memories involve fear. Teachers managed the classroom with an iron fist. They focused on delivering information to everyone in class at the same time according to a prescribed schedule that had no relation to the particular group of students in front of them. We took information from the ‘sage on the stage’ and good teachers were regarded as those that were able to get through the curriculum and successfully pass their knowledge of content on to their current class of students.  As the old song says, it was “reading and riting and rithmetic, taught to the tune of a hickory stick’.

Fortunately, since my days in primary school, we have come to realize that this model of teaching and learning is flawed. Ian McCoog redefines the “three r’s” for the 21st century as: rigor, relevance and real world skills. Robert Marzano says “Teachers must move beyond teaching content to teaching students how to learn – that is, find and evaluate content, connect with prior knowledge, and use that knowledge to solve authentic problems.” As teachers, we need to tap in to the excitement the Millennials have for social technology. When we intentionally design the learning opportunities in the classroom to do that, our students learn authentically by being engaged in what they normally do. The one size fits all approach of my school days needs to be replaced, but we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water.  Effective teaching does not mean using technology for technology’s sake, but rather finding ways to supplement the more traditional classroom interactions and learning opportunities with online activities.