21st Century Teaching Skills Every Educator Should Have

The last post on this blog discussed the Digital Revolution and its impact on classroom instruction.  The graph helped illustrate the differences between Education 1.0 (20^th century instruction) to Education 3.0 (21^st century instruction).  To stick with the “Point-oh” theme just a little longer, today’s discussion will focus on specific 21^st century skills all teachers should have, or be actively developing.  If you want to read the entire article (YouTube videos included!), you can do so here.

1)   Be a Risk Taker

            Don’t be afraid to experiment with your instruction.  Is every new idea always going to work?  Of course not.  But many will and the more risks you take, the more alive your classroom will become.  Don’t grow stale teaching the same thing, the same way, year in and year out.  You and your students are better than that!

2)   Actively Collaborate with other teachers and your students

        One of the most critical elements of the 21^st century is the ability to communicate with people with absolute ease.  Think email, text messaging, social media, Twitter, wikis, forums, video chatting, the list seems endless.  Each of these technologies connects us in ways unimaginable even 10 years ago.  Take advantage of this and allow your students to as well!

3)   Model the behavior you want to see in your students

        Be the change you wish to see, right?  If we demonstrate healthy risk taking, collaboration, life-long learning to our students, they will feel encouraged to do the same.  If our students see us pushing our boundaries of comfort, they too will feel empowered to push their own. 

4)   Be a visionary

        As teachers we want to foresee emerging technologies and implement them into our instruction.  Be creative!  Don’t let old ideologies or confines limit your thinking about what is possible in today’s world of learning.

5)   Commit to being a life-long learner

       This may be the most important trait of them all.  Most of us became teachers because we value learning.  Take this inherent belief and apply it toward your instructional practice.  Is there new research or professional literature that can help keep you fresh?  The Internet is filled with professional forums, blogs, articles, and videos of other teachers sharing what they are doing in their classrooms.  Learn from them and don’t be afraid to steal an idea from time to time.

6)   Become fluent in new communication modalities

        The 21^st century has brought with it new modalities of communication.  This has occurred with both positive and negative implications.  Regardless, social media, Twitter and text messaging are here to stay, so now we need to teach our students how to be responsible users.  This starts with us, the teachers, learning how to use them too.  Start out slow and gradually build up your 21^st century communication arsenal.  If you don’t have a Facebook page, start one!  Not on Twitter, create a handle and begin Tweeting!

7)   Adapt your current practices

        Finally, and most importantly, remember that just because the world is changing doesn’t mean all that was, is bad.  My guess is, even if you have not adopted any of the 21^st century tools into your instruction, your classroom is still a wonderful place to be.  Preserve that!  Don’t throw it all out in the name of technology.  Think about what current practices you employ that are successful and keep them.  Think what other practices could be slightly modified.  Finally, think about which current practices could be abandoned and replaced with new strategies more adapted to fit 21st century model of instruction.  A healthy combination of an “All of the Above” approach will preserve what works but also keep things moving into the 21st century too!