The Path to Success: Teaching Teachers to Win  

Changing Times

Information is doubling every minute, resources are growing and technology is used in nearly every aspect of our lives. Times are changing quickly for all of us—as individuals, intellectuals, leaders, business owners and parents. Think about the aspects of your own life that have changed. Now imagine what this change is like for teachers. While keeping up with their own lives, they have a large responsibility for teaching our students not only to be educated in the core subject areas like math, science and English, but also to be good decision makers, collaborators, citizens and leaders.

The teaching profession broadens daily with changing policies, higher expectations and a new generation of students. West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Board of Education and State Superintendent Dr. Steven Paine recognize this and are taking notable steps to help teachers make the transition and not only survive, but thrive in this ever-changing education world. By serving as the second state to join the 21st Century Skills Initiative, West Virginia is serving as a model for the nation in teaching students to excel in the 21st century as students, as future workforce members and as leaders. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills, the leading advocacy organization for infusing 21st century skills into education, has developed a unified, collective vision for 21st century learning that can be used to strengthen American education. West Virginia and North Carolina signed on as the first to serve as role models in this initiative (for more information about the Partnership, see www.21stCenturySkills.org).

With these steps forward come challenges to increase rigor in our classrooms and ensure that curricula are engaging and relevant to students' current needs. As a teacher, there was a time in the not so distant past that one could get their teaching certificate, stay up to date with their continuing education and focus mainly on the subjects that they chose to teach. Today, our society has shifted in focus and perspective to one that relies heavily on technology and information. As a result of these changes and a new generation of students, we are increasingly devoted to lifelong human development.

This is especially challenging for teachers as they face not only the shifts in tools from chalkboard to whiteboard, but also in the way that they deliver instruction. The knowledge that students need begins with content and extends to knowledge that will help them make decisions, solve problems and change intellectual property into solutions and creativity into wealth. Multiply this by the on-going challenges that teachers face in the classroom with student issues and the pressure of standardized test scores and you get a very interesting and challenging career—now add the tech savvy student to that equation.

The Millennial Generation as Students

It’s been said that some kids have more technology in their bedrooms than we have in our classrooms. While we hope that isn’t true, the fact is students are living in a digital world. They are dubbed “millennials,” “digital natives” and "Generation Y" for their constant connection to technology and information through cell phones, text messaging and social networking Internet sites like Facebook® and Myspace®. This generation has not known a time when information was not at their fingertips and their friends were not accessible digitally and immediately. In addition to their reliance on technology, the millennials insist on solutions to problems and look for resources to solve problems and make life easier. Following the millennials, born in the 1970s to 1990s is the next generation, nicknamed “Generation E” by Gary Marx, President of the Center for Public Outreach, for its expected call for equilibrium in our society. This generation will be even more advanced and have even higher expectations than the millennial, raising the bar for education. 

For teachers, this means long gone are the days of memorization and multiple choice tests. Now we must provide our students with strong thinking and problem solving skills to lead them into the future. Teachers need support and assistance in transforming their classrooms into 21st Century learning environments if we hope to engage our students and bridge the gap between their school environment and the world in which they live and play. We are changing the way that we educate not just based on technology and millennial characteristics, but also on the careers of the future. Teachers today are teaching students and preparing them for jobs that do not yet exist. Positions like Artificial Intelligence Technician and Smart Home Engineer and Virtual Set Designer are some of the emerging careers surmised by Marx in his book “16 Trends…Their Profound Impact on our Future.”

We are also preparing teachers not only to teach students, but to thrive in their own careers. Competition for qualified educators will continue to increase with the changes in our society and demands for new ways of teaching. Studies indicate that upwards of two million new teachers will be needed over the next decade. This makes teaching the teacher vital—at the heart of today's education reform and tomorrow's regular education practices.

Teaching the Teacher

How do all of these factors affect the way that we provide professional development to teachers? Teachers have more demands on their time and scrutiny on their outcomes than ever before in history. If we should not teach students the same way that we did twenty years ago, the same should be true for teaching our teachers.

Teachers need support from all levels in their jobs and in their professional development. First and foremost, we need to come together as a society and support collective goals in education. Leaders, businesses, communities and parents all impact the way that our teachers teach. That being said, let’s talk about the factors that should be considered in developing quality professional development for teachers.

1. Consider the Life of a Teacher

Teachers’ schedules are full and they have little time for organized professional development. Further, substitutes are not always easily accessible and time and travel costs are also a factor in where and when training can take place.

1. Factor the Role of Technology

We should be using the same 21st Century technology tools in our professional development that we are expecting teachers to use in the classroom. Teachers need support in using and teaching with these tools.

1. Strive to Engage Students

Teachers need a template to create engaging learning environments for students. We need to make the 21st Century movement real for the teachers and students by providing them with tools, strategies and real world examples.

1. Get Creative

We need to find new methods and new delivery styles for professional development to avoid the common pitfalls of time and travel for teachers and also to engage them and make them want to participate and learn more. The more engaging we make it; the more likely it is to be successful.

1. Be Flexible

Times are changing and flexibility is key for teachers with busy schedules and many demands on their time. It’s not unusual for our teacher clients to be teaching full time, working or teaching during the summer, coaching sports or other extracurricular activities, taking care of their own family and taking classes for graduate or continuing education credit.

Making it Real

At The EdVenture Group, we are addressing the challenge of easily integrating 21st Century Skills into classroom instruction without adding work to teachers’ already full plates or taking time away from content and standards. The result is a suite of offerings for educators that include a change management program and 10 on-line courses developed by educators that help teachers teach 21st Century Skills as part of their existing content and lessons.

Going Virtual

The next step in making it real for teachers was creating courses that specifically addressed how to teach 21st Century Skills in the classroom. We created 10 on-line courses in partnership with the West Virginia Department of Education, West Virginia University and Marshall University that align with the 21st Century Skills defined by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills in The Assessment of 21st Century Skills: The Current Landscape. In addition to the Core Subjects, this framework includes 21st Century Content, Learning and Thinking Skills, Information and Communications Technology Literacy, Life Skills and 21st Century Assessments (for a complete list, see www.21stCenturySkills.org).

The on-line courses cover the skills that will define the 21st Century student in ways that enable teachers as participants to infuse what they learn into their current content. Further, offering them on-line courses allows us to offer the courses to educators across the US. Participants view the course content on the designated class page and are able to upload assignments, communicate with their instructor, participate in forums and chat rooms and participate in a variety of other activities as part of the on-line course. Each focusing on a specific skill set, the courses include the following:

·        Get Global provides teachers with the tools and resources essential to promoting globally aware students capable of competing in a global society.

·        Act Global allows educators to study and create their own examples of social responsibility and civic literacy in the context of global awareness.

·        Digital Speak introduces participants to Information and Communication Skills and Tools such as podcasting, blogging and social networking.

·        Critical Think focuses on helping students learn to think critically, analyze information and comprehend new ideas.

·        Problem Solved, focuses on helping students think strategically, analyze information and solve problems

·        The Life Series includes three courses that help educators integrate life skills into their teaching strategies and methods.

o        Skills For Life covers self-direction, goal setting, personal responsibility and productivity.

o        Fit for Life covers balance, stress and health and wellness awareness.

o        Lead for Life covers teamwork, leadership and social responsibility.

·        Integrating Financial Literacy in the K-12 Classroom covers financial and economic literacy as it applies to the classroom environment.

·        Business Sense for the K-12 Classroom focuses on the role of business in the economy and how entrepreneurial skills can be taught in the classroom.

Efficient, Cost Effective and Flexible

How better to teach 21st Century Skills than with 21st Century tools? By taking courses on-line, teachers not only save time and money, but also learn to use the 21st Century tools such as forums, chat rooms and digital communication tools that students are using as a part of their daily lives as digital citizens. Teachers not only learn to use the tools for themselves, but also gain new methods of instruction that they can take back to their classrooms.

Within only two weeks of taking Skills for Life, one participant said that the course was already changing the way she taught her students. While studying self-direction as part of the Skills for Life course, Laura Huffman from Margaret Bell Miller Middle School in the Central Greene School District of Pennsylvania, described to other class participants through a forum how she made self-direction a part of an existing lesson giving her 8th grade students the opportunity to develop their own project around the book “Bridge to Terabithia.” Students followed a rubric to decide how to use their talents to present information from the book using the method they chose that worked best for them. This allowed them to take ownership in their learning experience. Students in the Skills for Life course create Life Lessons that easily incorporate Life Skills into current curriculum.

In Get Global, participants create an Internet-based scrapbook by collecting resources such as Web sites, articles, images and lesson plan ideas that reflect important global issues and skills and can be easily incorporated into their classes. Teachers get to practice new tools for communication in Digital Speak, where one of the assignments is to create a podcast for the instructor. Experience with technology in this class ranges from teachers who use technology daily with their students to teachers who are focused on increasing their technology use with the skills that they take away from the class.