Our students today are being born with a smart phone in their hand, their own Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter accounts, and knowing how to use it all. These digital natives will not learn by the old methods of teaching. Unfortunately, many teachers do not understand this and have continued trying to use the old methods of standing in front of the classroom lecturing to the students. These teachers still feel that Power Point is cutting edge and they don’t understand why their students are falling asleep during class. We are now living in a global world and we need to train our students to compete in this new world. Ken Kay, co-founder of the P-21 movement, states in an article in USA Today “notes that virtually all of the industrialized countries the USA is competing with ‘are pursuing both content and skills.’” So what do we, as educators, do about this?

These 21^st century skills need to be taught in the classroom. We need to be able to train our students on these skills so they will be ready when they enter the workforce. The problem though, is that many teachers don’t have the knowledge to teach to their students. Teachers need to continue their own training and learn to expand their own knowledge so that they can implement these skills and teach their students in their classrooms. Many teachers can be loathe to learn these new skills though.

A few years back, I had a retired educator in my class who wanted to learn how to repair computers and networking. Now, my entire curriculum is web based and I do NOT stand in front of the class and lecture for 6 hours a day to my students. They would fall asleep (I probably would also). This retired educator actually went to my administrator and tried to get me fired by making false accusations against me. It eventually came out that he thought I was a bad teacher because I didn’t use the traditional outdated teaching methods and he didn’t like the way my class was setup. I have seen this reluctant attitude from many teachers across the district and until they change or leave, we will continue to face the problems that we do now.

The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills is the leading advocacy group for infusing these skills into the classroom. Please check out their sites and see what they are up to. So far, ten states have partnered with them to implement 21^st century skills into the classes.