21st Century Learning Lives On At San Carlos Charter Learning Center

 Fifth and sixth grade learners visited the Denver Museum last month and on Monday took a virtual jaunt out to Arizona State’s Science to explore both Geology and Taxonomy with several professors from ASU.  Monday, seventh and eighth grade learners enjoyed an inspiring conversation from Congresswoman Jackie Speier on the importance of facing your fears and taking risks as well as the value in giving back to your community.  At our recent Learners’ Exhibition this month, K-8 learners publicly shared their yearlong personal learning projects.  One grade eight learner demonstrated and shared how he built a 300X telescope from scratch while another learner built and demonstrated her hovercraft to a packed audience.  Kindergarten and first grade learners, with the support of mobile learning technology, are actively improving their reading skills.  Learners in our third and fourth grade classes are engaged in their reading and literature both with e-books and from visits of well know children’s authors like Gennifer Choldenko and Jennifer Holm. Thanks to the support of parents and partnering local corporations like Vidyo, San Carlos Charter Learning Center is a model for 21^st Century Teaching and Learning.

When you survey both public education and private school educators across the United States, it is apparent that the new “new thing” in education is the buzz around 21^st Century Learning.  Over the last few years, as the education world has been catching up and trying to better understand this movement, it is validating to observe that the characteristics that accompany “21^st Century Learning” are, in fact, characteristics that have embodied the vision of SCLCC for the last eighteen years.  The strength of the CLC learning experiences comes from both our educators and the collaborative nature of the CLC classroom experience.  As much as people talk about “21^st Century Learning, what is just as important is having educators with the skills and interests to develop into 21^st Century Educators. 

 More than ten years ago, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) published a comprehensive white paper that posited several scenarios regarding how the future of public education could change over the next fifty years.  Their scenarios range from naively optimistic to doom and gloom.  And, their predictions have proven to be pretty accurate.  It is worth a read. 

Apple’s education experts identified six essential design principles that embody the critical elements for the design of any “School for Tomorrow:”  

1.  Relevant and Applied Curriculum-- Students should be engaged in relevant and contextual problem- and project-based learning designed to develop 21st century skills and provided using a multi-disciplinary approach. 

2.  Informative Assessment-- Assessments used in the classroom should increase relevant feedback to students, teachers, parents, and decision-makers and should be designed to continuously improve student learning and inform the learning environment. 

3.  Culture of Innovation and Creativity-- schools should create a culture that supports and reinforces innovation for student learning and leverages the creativity and ingenuity of every adult and student to solve their unique problems. Additionally, the teaching and learning environment should generate the continuous development of these skills.

4.  Social and Emotional Connections-- each student should have a clear and purposeful connection to the social environment in school, with at least one adult who is purposefully in tune with the student’s learning preferences, learning interests, and social connections.

5.  24/7 Access to Tools and Resources-- Students and educators need 24 by 7 access to information, resources, and technologies that engage and empower them to do background research, information and resource gathering, and data analysis, to publish with multiple media types to wide and varied audiences, to communicate with peers and experts, and to gain experience and expertise in collaborative work. 

6.  21^st Century Skill Outcomes-- Business leaders have been especially outspoken in their call for a workforce well versed in 21st century skills. The highest ranked skills for students entering the workforce were not facts and basic skills; they were applied skills that enable workers to use the knowledge and basic skills they have acquired.  The most desirable skills: work ethic, collaboration, social responsibility, and critical thinking and problem solving. Employers also see creativity and innovation as being increasingly important in the future.

When we talk about effective learning communities, these are the characteristics that we look for in supporting our learners.  At CLC, these characteristics have been central to our vision and to our charter since the school started back in the early 1990’s.  When we talk about effective learning, it is as much about programming like STEM as it is about the actual educators we have in front of our children.  Education Week recently wrote about what makes an effective educator for the children of today and tomorrow.  21^st Century Educators should: 

1) Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity so that all students achieve in the global society.

2) Enable students to maximize the potential of their formal and informal learning experiences.

3) Facilitate learning in multiple modalities.

4) Work as effective members of learning teams.

5) Use the full range of digital-age tools to improve student engagement and achievement.

6) Work with their students to co-create new learning opportunities.

7) Use data to support student learning and program improvements.

8)  Be lifelong learners.

9) Be global educators.

 It is daunting to find educators who fit all of these expectations.  It is as much about training for effective educators to rise to this standard as it is about recruiting strong educators to fill the open positions.  Strong educators are thinking about these things and are always looking to improve their skills and adapt to the changing needs of today’s learner. 

Some additional challenges face our learners as we head into the 21^st Century:  

1. America is failing to teach non-European languages; 90 percent of U.S. secondary schools offer Spanish classes; just 1 percent offer Chinese and even fewer offer Arabic.

2. Nearly one in three high school students in America this year will not graduate.

3. In a 2002 National Geographic Survey, 85 percent of 18- to 24-year-old Americans were unable to locate Afghanistan and Iraq on a map; 69 percent were unable to locate Great Britain; 29 percent were unable to find the Pacific Ocean.

4. Eight percent of Internet users or about 12 million Americans keep a blog. Thirty-nine percent or about 57 million read blogs.

5. Educational standards - grade-by-grade, subject-by-subject learning goals - have declined in 30 states from 2000-2006.

Working collaboratively with Lynette Hovland, the San Carlos School District’s Director of Curriculum, CLC has worked to share our ideas and some of our best practices with the San Carlos School District.  The virtues of public education is as much about sharing what we learn with others as it is about providing the best possible learning experience so that our children are prepared for the society of tomorrow. 

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