Thursday, August 14, 2008

Learning

I've sat in meetings for the last 4 days talking about "21'st Century Learning" and "raising expectations" and "fostering student achievement". I get all excited and pumped up and ready to tackle a new school year. We as a staff (PK-12) including bus drivers and custodians and cooks talked about what students will need to survive in this changing digital landscape. What it all boils down to (IMHO) is learning how to learn. These students need to be Information Literate. They need to think critically, solve problems, find resources, collaborate, evaluate, create, and present their findings in a meaningful way. Isn't that what employers would like to see in their employees? Sure, they need to know how to write and read and do some math, but they don't need to memorize meaningless dates and facts and stuff they can look up later if they really need to know it. What they need to do is learn how to gather a ton of information, sort through it, decide what is relevant or what matters, put it all back together in a way that speaks to their given audience.

This is what pumps me up about teaching. This is what gets me excited. I love to learn, and I want to have students excited about learning too.

1 comment:

Your Organizing Guru said...

Welcome to a new school year! Paul goes into pre-preplanning tomorrow. The kids start on Friday. I'm super excited! I've been missing my daily routine and schedules! (I get to have B at home until after Labor Day.)