23
April
April
We all hear lots of buzz about 21st century skills and it always amuses me to hear what people have to say about that phrase. In an earlier post, I already gave my opinion about this phrase, so I won’t belabor that point here. I think that educators need to see what that is – not just the definition – what does that look like?
I have had several student teachers working with me this past year, from 2 different nearby universities. The last 3 out of 4 were good student teachers….very different from each other, but none the less, in my humble opinion, will do fine and have lots of potential. The thing that is surprising to me is how ill-prepared they seem to be for what a current classroom situation is really like. I’m not talking about things like classroom management here. I am talking about the shift in what education and instruction should be. It worries me that there seems to be such a disconnect between the college instructors who are supposed to be training future teachers and what schools are really needing from future teachers. We talk about what skills our students need for the future but I haven’t heard a lot about what skills our future teachers will need.
I teach music in an integrated arts school. Basically, what that means is that when I teach the skills and concepts of music to my students, I do all I can to integrate that instruction with either other skills or other concepts from other content subject areas. I do not let the music instruction become secondary to the content but I do try to bring in information and make connections with what other knowledge the students need to know, be it science, math, social studies, or language arts. This has proven to be an efficient way of teaching – kill 2 birds with one stone!
Last night my 4th and 5th grade students performed for their parents a musical play based on western expansion in America. They sang appropriate folk songs loaded with social studies information, and acted out short skits depicting real life situations in history. The students began this project with improvisational theater skills and then developed their stories.
In the past I have had students perform “canned” school musicals and the audiences enjoyed them but I always felt the message and “meat” of what kids could learn was missing. Students would spend 6-8 weeks learning lines and lyrics and they would definitely learn self-confidence, poise, and gain self esteem but what else? For the same 6-8 weeks, students could write their own play, research costumes, situations, historical influences, work out technical, issues, build and create sets and props and at the end how much more is learned? That is what I am talking about. It really took no more or less time and effort on my part as the instructor to do this kind of project. It is a change in my role (as I have said before) from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side”.
None of my student teachers reported having any classes or background training in college about arts integration. They all reported little to no training in technology integration. I have to wonder then, are the universities aware of the 21st century skills we preach that kids need to know. Are they training student teachers to facilitate students being able to collaborate, create, critically think, analyze, etc.? A few of my student teachers were trained to write out the perfect lesson plan including the, now obsolete, state standards but they were at a loss as to how to tie the lesson into letting the students lead the learning. I have had supervisors from the universities come to do their observations of the student teachers and become totally side-tracked by observing how my classroom uses technology, and integration. They have been impressed by what they see in the classroom, which is a good thing, but it is still more than a little concerning that all of a sudden the last semester of schooling these student teachers are just being introduced to the new and current way education and instructional delivery is going. I am worried by the fact that the college instructors are surprised and amazed at the integration that they are seeing in a classroom. This should be the norm not the novelty. The colleges should be teaching student teachers how to include all kinds of content into instruction. The student teachers should be learning all the techniques they can to engage students through movement, visual arts, drama, poetry, and music. There should be required classes in how to integrate tools like iPods, interactive white boards, etc. into instruction so that the lesson is about the learning and not the tool.
How can we build the bridge from k-12 schools to these colleges? How can we promote the communication it will take to improve teacher training? Even more concerning…how do we get legislators and the general public to realize what are the skills teachers and administrators need when they are revamping the teacher/administrator evaluation process. Tying teacher pay to student performance is a risky thing to begin with but if you add in the reality that we aren’t even sure what teacher skills lead to exemplary student learning (I refuse to use the word “achievement” as I said in an earlier blog), we may be rewarding the very teachers and schools that hinder real 21st century learning.
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