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" We want to have students be able to be comfortable with being uncertain. "

In the fifth #21For21 episode of Competencies without a Classroom podcast, we interview Russell Gordon, who teaches Computer Science and Mathematics at an Independent, Co-educational school in Canada. You can also visit his site for CS tips, tricks and tutorials at russellgordon.ca

What can you borrow from Russell for your classroom to help teach 21st century skills?

The 21st century skill that Russell teaches in his classes is the normalization of reflection & feedback

And that can often take the form of one question each day, "What did I learn or what did I make progress on today?"

Describing what a student made progress on, followed by daily feedback from the teacher, conditions students to learn and normalize daily effort and steady progress -- versus trying to cram work in before a deadline. Russell likens the habit of last-minute cramming to that of being a sprinter, while the expectation and reflection of "What did I make progress on today?" conditions students to become more like long-distance runners.

Russell uses a digital portfolio tool to facilitate those daily reflection and feedback discussions between himself and his students. Russell also noted that having a space for students to reflect asynchronously, within the confines of a private digital portfolio, results in students displaying depth of thought and insights that they often wouldn't show in person or in front of their peers.

Another note of interest is the note Russell makes around the quantity of work not being a priority, but rather valuing deep-thinking or quality work from students instead.

What 21st century competency or skill is being developed?

Critical thinking through reflection and incremental, consistent improvement.

"I was just learning [to implement reflection] by doing which may be a bit trite, but you can make any course organized around tests and secrets. I think if you take those evaluations away and evaluate students based on process as much as product, at least in computer studies, you're seeing course now that is actually more true to Ontario's [Gordon's province] secondary school computer studies curriculum"

21st Century Skills - Rapid Fire Questions:

Q: What's the one competency that, if Ryan were the superintendent of a school board, every student would learn?

A: Creativity, specifically the ability to think about a scenario/problem and come up with possible ideas to address that issue. As computers automate more and more tasks, creativity remains a relatively innate human trait and skill.

Q: What's one life skill each student should learn in high school?

A: Time management.

Q: If you could post anything on a billboard for everyone to see, what would it be?

A: Kindness. Russell suggests reading An Ethic of Excellence by Ron Berger, and that students watch Austin's Butterfly online.

Q: What was your favorite subject in school?

A: Political Science class - more specifically, because the format of the class was to have students read the newspapers and discuss the issues they found most interesting in class. The teacher was able to discern who actually took the time to read the papers, students were able to select issues or topics most interesting to them and then discuss those topics in class.

"I just like then if a teacher was able to provide like a narrative of the historical events that always seem to really engage me. I always liked the idea of if someone's able to really tell a good story, and I think history provides that content where you're able to give that story. And you can also show like images and things that are related to it."

Q: What's your favorite book or the one you wish you read before you turned 18?

A: An Ethic of Excellence by Ron Berger

Q: If you have a magic wand, what is one thing you would change about K-12 education today?

A: "I would love to have an education system that understands the context that all of the students that are part of our education system come from and create an education system that values students of all ethnicities, all genders, and, and really understands what it means to be inclusive of all students in their, and their experience."

Reflection Prompts for Your Students

Use the prompts below to have your students reflect on what they heard in the episode and consider how Lauren's advice can be applied to them.

  1. Watch the video of Austin's Butterfly (6:30) - what is the lesson that the teacher is trying to convey? What enabled the student to steadily improve on their work?
  2. Try Russell's reflection question. What did you learn today in class? Or what progress did you make today?
  3. Russell shares that if he was superintendent, all students would need to demonstrate evidence of creativity before graduating. How would you define creativity? Describe the ways in which you personally express your creativity.
  4. If you were in charge of designing the courses you needed to take/could choose from in high school, what course would you add? Why did you choose that course? What 21st century competencies could be developed through it?
  5. Russell spoke about time management as a competency that all students should learn in high school. How do you manage your time in and outside of class? Share a time when you displayed this competency.

Bite-Sized Video Clips

If you're running short on time, or just want to play a snippet for your class or colleagues, the bite-sized videos below are perfect for sharing.

Get Involved with #21FOR21

" ...the world is not standardized."

In the fourth #21For21 episode of Competencies without a Classroom podcast, we interview Matt Rhoads, a Secondary special education teacher, consultant and author. You can find out more about Matt at matthewrhoads.com

What can you borrow from Matt for your classroom to help teach 21st century skills?

The 21st century skill that Matt focuses on in his classrooms is reflection and metacognition.

Reflection and metacognition involves allowing students to first self-assess where they are with their feelings, their academics, how they’re interacting with others in the classroom, and how their effort & participation has been in the classroom.  The next step is providing students a number of different outlets for them to go through those reflection processes.

Matt suggests that he might provide opportunities for synchronous learning while they’re working on interactive slides, to put that there and share as a class. Then, at the end of a lesson, the class will reflect and summarize on the activity. What did we talk about? Did they understand? How did the conversations go with other students and with him? How was his feedback to students?

Often times these activities are scaffolded, where Matt first models how he might tackle or evaluate a particular topic and then asks students to do it themselves.

What 21st century competency or skill is being developed?

Metacognition/reflection skills that Matt believes are critical for success in the world today.

"There's going to be jobs that are changing in the next five to ten years that don't even exist. So you want people that are able to learn the skills are required for that job. And I think the idea of being able to reflect and summarize what they learned and show what they're able to do, what they're learning, and then articulate, what they did well versus what they need to improve in. Then that's going to put them into position to be a lifelong learner."

21st Century Skills - Rapid Fire Questions:

Q: What's the one competency that, if Ryan were the superintendent of a school board, every student would learn?

A: Critical thinking and reflection through the use of digital portfolios. Students can discuss their learnings over time, examples of what they did with their learning and how they can improve their skills as they move forward. Students can showcase their willingness to learn, their adaptability and their resilience.

Q: What's one life skill each student should learn in high school?

A: The ability to prioritize and create boundaries to prevent burnout.

Q: If you could post anything on a billboard for everyone to see, what would it be?

A: Don’t believe everything you see. Anyone can say and post anything online.

Q: What was your favorite subject in school?

A: History class.

"I just like then if a teacher was able to provide like a narrative of the historical events that always seem to really engage me. I always liked the idea of if someone's able to really tell a good story, and I think history provides that content where you're able to give that story. And you can also show like images and things that are related to it."

Q: What's your favorite book or the one you wish you read before you turned 18?

A: Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. The book covers how humans can learn a lot about each other and our behavior by looking at our search data. The book also covers how often times our search data is going to be far more accurate representation of peoples thoughts compared to what people actually tell you when you're speaking to them.

Q: If you have a magic wand, what is one thing you would change about K-12 education today?

A: Integrating more formative assessments into the curriculum that can be used for state indicators of success. Matt suggests that major yearly summative assessments (state testing) are not as valuable as formative assessments.

"... I also want to get rid of standardized tests for university entry as I don't feel like there's any sort of indicator for them that demonstrates future success."

Reflection Prompts for Your Students

Use the prompts below to have your students reflect on what they heard in the episode and consider how Lauren's advice can be applied to them.

  1. Matt suggests that if he was superintendent, all students would need to demonstrate evidence of critical thinking through reflection. Why do you think reflection is important as a 21st century skill?
  2. Matt talks about not believing everything you see and to be critical of what is presented to you online especially. Describe a time when you found something online that you believed to be misinformation or outright false. How were you able to identify the information as less than truthful? What tells or indicators led you to be suspicious? How did that experience shape how you look at information online today?
  3. If you were in charge of creating a class to showcase reflection and metacognition, what would that class look like? What tools might students use to reflect and document their learning?
  4. Learning to prioritize responsibilities and manage work-school or work-life balance was aa life skill that Matt suggested was important to learn in high school. Is this a skill you believe you have? How might you go about improving this skill? Set a SMART goal with an action plan to continue developing/improving this skill.
  5. What skill that you've learned in high school do you believe will be most useful for you after school? Describe a time in which you displayed this 21st century skill.

Bite-Sized Video Clips

If you're running short on time, or just want to play a snippet for your class or colleagues, the bite-sized videos below are perfect for sharing.

Get Involved with #21FOR21

Matt's Books

Published: Navigating the Toggled Term - preparing secondary educators for navigation fall 2020 and beyond

Coming Soon: Navigating the Toggled Term: A guide for K-12 classroom and school leaders

" I always say we have to open the window to the adult world for kids and actually have conversations about what's happening and what one is learning."

In the third #21For21 episode of Competencies without a Classroom podcast, we interview Tricia Berry, a learning specialist with the New Brunswick department of education and early childhood development.

What can you borrow from Tricia for your classroom to help teach 21st century skills?

Tricia is supporting and mandating teachers by looking at ways to modernize career development in the classroom. With the ever-changing landscape in the world in-and-outside the classroom, Tricia believes that educators and teachers will also have to respond differently. For Tricia, that means helping New Brunswick teachers to help students build their teamwork skills, their ability to problem solve and to be critical thinkers.

Tricia stresses the shift in being more intentional about the skills we try to teach students and the connection those skills have to their lives after school.

While this might seem obvious and inherent to most educators, Tricia notes that explaining 'the why' and calling out the learning helps students to understand the relevance in their learning -- which in turn increases engagement and academic achievement.

What 21st century competency or skill is being developed?

Future Ready Learning is the idea of fulfilling the portrait of a learner in New Brunswick. That is to say, developing the problem-solving skills, critical thinking and other 'global competencies' that students will need to be as autonomous, and successful, as possible in their careers.

Tricia believes that we've moved to a skill-based economy, not a job-based one; meaning its more critical than ever to teach skills that will be transferrable across many career paths, versus job-specific ones.

21st Century Skills - Rapid Fire Questions:

Q: What's the one competency that, if Tricia were the superintendent of a school board, every student would learn?

A: Experiential learning, having students encounter authentic experiences and solve problems related to the world outside the classroom. The knowledge gained from these experiences cannot be looked up on a phone.

Q: What's one life skill each student should learn in high school?

A: Social-emotional learning, A focus on acquiring social and emotional competencies - developing relationships and skills to work effectively with others.

Q: Which would you prioritize, EQ or IQ?

A: EQ. Tricia believes EQ is what will enable young people to be successful in the future. While its important to gain certain credentials and learning, many success and happiness factors will come from strong EQ.

Q: If you have a magic wand, what is one thing you would change about K-12 education today?

A: Finding knowledge can be easy these days [with online resources], changing education to be focused on the application of knowledge and having a wide variety of experiences would be Tricia's change with a magic wand.

Reflection Prompts for Your Students

Use the prompts below to have your students reflect on what they heard in the episode and consider how Lauren's advice can be applied to them.

  1. Tricia shares that if she was superintendent, all each student's curriculum would be focused on experiential learning and authentic experiences. Why do you think this competency is important? If you were in charge of including experiential learning in this class, what activities would you have students do?
  2. If you were in charge of ensuring that experiential learning was a core focus of learning in our high school, what new courses might you create for students? Why did you choose that course? What competencies could be developed through it?
  3. Consider the idea that knowledge or facts are easy to find, but the application and experiences of solving real-world problems are what will differentiate students' success in their lives after school. Set a SMART goal with an action plan to continue developing/improving this skill.
  4. Tricia believes that EQ is a greater priority over IQ. Why does she believe that EQ is a greater determinate of one's success and happiness? Do you agree with her?

Bite-Sized Video Clips

If you're running short on time, or just want to play a snippet for your class or colleagues, the bite-sized videos below are perfect for sharing.

Get Involved with #21FOR21

" I focus a lot on helping students to understand that all communication is persuasive"

In the second #21For21 episode of Competencies without a Classroom podcast, we interview Ryan Tibbens, a high school English teacher and host of the ClassCast Podcast at https://www.classcastpodcast.com/.

What can you borrow from Ryan for your classroom to help teach 21st century skills?

The 21st century skill that Ryan believes is important to students is the ability to be persuasive in their communications. Ryan starts with a basic introduction to rhetoric and builds from there to introduce the idea of all communication being persuasive. An interesting exercise is to get students to try to stump him, "Find a time when you were communicating where you weren't also trying to convince someone of something"

Ryan stresses the importance of persuasion in communication, as students who build their skills of persuasion can more often get the outcomes that they're aiming for -- and achieve those outcomes without resorting to lying or bullying. He believes that part of becoming a more effective person is your ability to influence or persuade others, while at the same time being able to identify when others are trying to influence you and how.

Ryan introduces to us the PASTA breakdown for persuasive communications. PASTA stands for Purpose, Audience, Subject, Tones and Author's bias. Ryan suggests that when reading or watching content, students should be able to identify these characteristics in the subject matter.

Most students inherently understand the 'rhetorical triangle' of purpose, audience and speaker; however, there is tremendous value in further understanding where tone and author's bias change the perception of the communication. Ryan believe that understanding the context of communication and having students learn to detect subtleties in tone will go a long way in building critical thinking skills in students.

Ryan has students create their own content, and allows them to have fun with it -- suggesting students create a radio advertisement or videos. After creating content, Ryan will ask students to do a PASTA breakdown of their creation, with opportunity for review (does this make sense for the audience? will they understand that word?) and reflection of why the student wrote or performed their work the way they did, and what they might do better next time to persuade their audience.

What 21st century competency or skill is being developed?

The PASTA framework looks to strengthen students persuasive communication skills, which directly build their critical thinking skills as well. Practice of student's communication skills can also indirectly build their public speaking abilities.

According to Ryan, students also learn to develop the ability to ask questions about what they're reading or watching, as well as the ability to incorporate the ideas and insights of those same questions in their own writing and communications.

21st Century Skills - Rapid Fire Questions:

Q: What's the one competency that, if Ryan were the superintendent of a school board, every student would learn?

A: Persuasive writing and communication.

Q: What's one life skill each student should learn in high school?

A: Personal finance.

Q: If you could post anything on a billboard for everyone to see, what would it be?

A: What is the best thing about your day?

Q: Which would you prioritize, EQ or IQ?

A: IQ. "I take IQ because a person with IQ, and a decent heart has the ability to learn, or at least fake the EQ."

Q: What's your favorite book or the one you wish you read before you turned 18?

A: Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. (with honorable mention to The Tyranny of Merit by Michael Sandel)

Q: If you have a magic wand, what is one thing you would change about K-12 education today?

A: Make high school a little bit more like college. "...folding some more vocational and trade-school sort of options. Students should have a better menu of choices between classes."

Reflection Prompts for Your Students

Use the prompts below to have your students reflect on what they heard in the episode and consider how Lauren's advice can be applied to them.

  1. Ryan shares that if he were superintendent, all students would need to demonstrate evidence of persuasive writing. Why do you think persuasive writing is important as a 21st century skill? Give an example of where you use persuasive writing or communication outside of school.
  2. Ryan's magic wand would make high school a bit more like college. If you were in charge of designing the courses you needed to take/could choose from in high school, what course would you add? Why did you choose that course? What 21st century competencies could be developed through it?
  3. Ryan shares the PASTA framework that he uses with his students to promote persuasive communication. Find a recent piece of school work and try applying this strategy to it. Did you find it useful? What did you learn from it?
  4. Record or write a short advertisement. Breakdown the piece using each part of the PASTA framework. Why did you use this particular tone? What bias does the author/speaker carry have in this advertisement? What choices did you make in your communication to try to persuade your audience?
  5. Ryan spoke about persuasive communication as a tool to better achieve the outcomes we aim towards. Share a time when you displayed persuasive communication to achieve a specific outcome you were working towards, without resorting to lying or bullying.

Bite-Sized Video Clips

If you're running short on time, or just want to play a snippet for your class or colleagues, the bite-sized videos below are perfect for sharing.

Get Involved with #21FOR21

No matter what students end up doing in their lives, they're going to be either consuming or creating content.

In the first #21For21 episode of Competencies without a Classroom podcast, we interview Bonnie Nieves, a biology teacher and author of an upcoming book, Be Awesome On Purpose.

What can you borrow from Bonnie for your classroom to help teach 21st century skills?

Consider turning quizzes in class and ask students to create visual representations of the same concepts from the quiz. The content a quiz would assess and ask students to show what they know through an infographic, meme, poster or other form

The concept of asking students to submit and create visual representations of the concepts they'd normally write a quiz for, allows students to make connections and reasoning from the material that may not have happened otherwise. Bonnie suggests changing around the parameters of the assignment to suit the needs of the teacher. For example, Bonnie might provide specific words that students should use in their visual representations to narrow their focus - or - she may even provide the image that they use.

What 21st century competency or skill is being developed?

Students develop their communication skills - creating visual representations of concepts learned in class allows them to learn how to effectively communicate their ideas outside the typical quiz format. Students are expected to 'give' versus 'taking' a test.

21st Century Skills - Rapid Fire Questions:

Q: What's the one competency that, if Bonnie were the superintendent of a school board, every student would learn?

A: Critical thinking. Bonnie uses the example of Media Literacy. In the 21st century, students will either become consumers or creators of content. Critical thinking helps determine the difference.

Q: What's one life skill each student should learn in high school?

A: Empathy.

Q: If you could post anything on a billboard for everyone to see, what would it be?

A: What is the best thing about your day?

Q: Which would you prioritize, EQ or IQ?

A: EQ.

Q: What's your favorite book or the one you wish you read before you turned 18?

A: Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Q: If you have a magic wand, what is one thing you would change about K-12 education today?

A: Promoting students based on their age. "You go when you're ready." 

Reflection Prompts for Your Students

Use the prompts below to have your students reflect on what they heard in the episode and consider how Lauren's advice can be applied to them.

  1. Bonnie says that if she were superintendent, all students would be required to demonstrate evidence of critical thinking. Why do you think this skill is important in the 21st century? Give an example of when you use critical thinking outside of school.
  2. Bonnie shares that media literacy will be an important 21st century skill and that people will take on the roles of consumers and creators. Consider a passion you have. What about this passion drives you and how could you turn this into becoming a creator? Consider a specific area related to your passion or the steps you could take.
  3. In the podcast, Bonnie suggests replacing visual representations in place of traditional quizzes as an exercise to develop communications skills. Find a recent piece of school work you did and try creating a visual representation of it in an infographic, meme or poster format. Did you find this more or less interesting to work on versus the way the work was done originally? What did you learn from it?
  4. Empathy was suggested as one life skill that is critical for students to learn in school. What does empathy mean to you? Share a time when you displayed empathy for someone else.
  5. Consider what media literacy means in the 21st century. If you were in charge of designing a course around media literacy what would it look like? What would you want students to do to prove their understanding of media literacy?

Bite-Sized Video Clips

If you're running short on time, or just want to play a snippet for your class or colleagues, the bite-sized videos below are perfect for sharing.

Get Involved with #21FOR21

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