Develop Students’ Essential Skills
Whatever content area you teach, you’re also giving your students something much larger: the skills, habits, and mindsets they’ll need to be successful throughout their lives. For many of us, it’s the reason we got into teaching in the first place! By giving students the tools they need today, we help create a better world tomorrow.
Of course, this is easier said than done! We hear often about so-called 21st-century skills: the attitudes and abilities that students will need to thrive in jobs that don’t yet exist, and may not for decades. But what exactly are these competencies, and how do we instill them in our young people?
We designed the Modern Classroom model specifically to help our students develop skills that will serve them for the rest of their lives, no matter what paths they may choose to pursue. Here are a few of those key skills, and how our model supports their development:
Note-taking. Whether it’s writing on a notepad or dictating into a smartphone, students must learn how to take the essential points of a presentation and distill them in a concise, comprehensible way. Our teachers build this skill by giving students guided notes to accompany instructional videos, or by requiring students to take video notes using a standard format like Cornell notes. Some of our educators even make students show their notes before taking mastery checks!
Self-direction. Students in a Modern Classroom don’t sit quietly and let learning come to them — they have to be active in achieving mastery themselves. When a teacher’s videos aren’t enough, students must learn to seek out additional supports: review videos from other instructors, help from a classmate, or questions for the teacher. This can be challenging at first, but over time students become real self-directed learners — and learn how they themselves best acquire mastery. In a world where unlimited information is only a click away, this is a useful muscle to develop!
Collaboration. A Modern Classroom doesn’t revolve around a teacher — students are both free and encouraged to learn alongside their peers. Why wait for the teacher to be available when you can ask the student sitting next to you? Techniques like public pacing trackers, lesson superstars (ahead-of-pace students who can review classmates’ work), and the ever popular “ask 3 before me” strategy inspire students towards collaboration that counts.
Metacognition. It isn’t easy, even for us as adults, to recognize our own strengths and areas for improvement. In a Modern Classroom, students must do this every day! In deciding whether or not they’re ready for the next mastery check, or what they need to do to revise, or even whom they’ll work with on a given day, students reflect on what does and does not help them grow. This is a skill that will serve them well in college, career, and beyond.
Grit. Sitting and listening may be easy, but true learning isn’t. It’s especially difficult when, as often happens, students try to show mastery the first time and fail! But that’s life. By destigmatizing failure, giving students multiple chances to succeed, and holding students to the high standard of mastery (and not just completion), teachers help students understand that there’s nothing they ultimately can’t learn. Students also get to experience the joy — and the well-earned self-esteem — of a challenge surmounted.