HCS 21st Century Skills for students - Communication Skills: Oral and Written

Communication Skills: Oral and Written – Demonstrated proficiency in written and oral methods of communication as well as choosing effective means of communicating the message to the target audience.

The Catholic Schools Standards Project seventh standard is Academic Excellence.  An integral skill in our HCS is the development of strong communication skills in both oral and written format.  Our challenge lies in that technology has changed the construct of oral and written.  Now, there are multiple types of communication writing - academic, informational, social media (as in Twitter and Instagram posts), blogging, podcast, video copy, Webinars, etc.  Oral and written skills can be practiced and conveyed through a broad range of media and we need to be exposing our students to effective and ethical uses of these media in order for them to be prepared to fully integrate and positively impact the world we live in as graduates of Hawaii Catholic Schools.

A central part of our mission as Catholic educators is to make sure our students are grounded in our faith.  Not only do we want them rooted in Catholic faith and the teachings of Jesus, but we also want them capable of spreading the Gospel.  In order to do this, we must make sure our students develop strong oral and written communication skills.  The ability to filter and curate information and develop cogent arguments that an audience can make sense out of is essential to any adult in the 21st Century.  Students in Hawaii Catholic Schools have the blessing of intimate interaction and access to an effective role model to draw from and enhance their learning - Jesus Christ.

Jesus used effective communication skills - mostly oral, to spread his message.  His disciples did the same and took it a step further by writing The Word down in what is our Bible.  The power of developing effective communication skills cannot be under-stated.  The more opportunities we create for our students to develop and practice their public speaking, broadcasting, writing and research skills the more doors we open for them as they enter adulthood.

The challenge lies in that we need to develop these skills as a integral part of the teaching and learning process.  No longer will only paper and pencil and multiple choice tests suffice.  No longer can we simply say "write a 5 paragraph essay."  Students need to be taught how to write for the Internet (140 characters or less), how to write for technical publications, informational writing, copy for internet-based media, etc.  They also need to be taught how to deliver short, relevant and detail filled speeches and/or presentations.  I'm not even talking about PowerPoint here, this is more like Podcasts or TED talks or Webinars.  The kind of PSA message that gets your point across in as few words as possible with as much impact as possible.  This is actually not as big a shift for Catholic Schools as it is for some public schools as these are skills that have been a central part of Catholic education since its inception.  We just now have many more means of acquiring our information and distributing our message!


This short (under 5 minutes) video from Edutopia provides some great insights around the term "communication" from one of our most incredible visionaries, George Lucas.  It is an interesting perspective on how to prepare kids for the rigor and challenges and diverse technological world they will enter into as adults.  George Lucas - Teaching Communication 

So let's support the development of a broad range of communication skills, both oral and written and technology centered that will support our students educated in Hawaii Catholic Schools so they are prepared to enter their next phase of life prepared to spread the word of God and contribute effectively to our society!

Initiative

Initiative – Taking action at one’s own discretion, independent of outside influence or control.

Merriam-Webster defines initiative as a noun meaning any one of three things: 1) the power or opportunity to do something before others do, 2) the energy and desire that is needed to do something, 3) a plan or program that is intended to solve a problem.

Any one of these definitions fits well with the idea of providing our HCS students with a 21st Century education.  In more traditional classrooms, initiative has been frowned upon.  for many years our students have been asked to regurgitate data and facts.  Students, even teachers or administrators, that showed initiative and stepped out of the normal progression of learning often ran into barriers.  However, in the last few years, initiative has become one of the most critical skills sought after by businesses looking to gain an edge in a globally competitive market.  The fact, as Tony Wagner points out,  that "knowledge is a commodity at the fingertips of everyone at a moment's notice," is driving schools to create learning opportunities where students generate original ideas and show initiative in developing those ideas along with thoughtful plans to solve potential problems.

This paradigm shift presents a challenge for educators and educational systems in that it is difficult to assess and label as good or bad, the process of showing initiative.  Rather the process and thinking behind the process matter more than the outcome.  Add to that a set of parents who want to know a child's grade or see something that indicates their child has "succeeded" and teachers are caught in a dilemma.  Students crave situations for them to demonstrate initiative.  Parents, who were educated in a system that asked for correct answers and success was equal to 90-100%, have a difficult time comprehending that a student that generates an idea, develops that idea into an action and tries it and fails actually learned a lot while working through the process.

I was recently with some friends and we were talking science projects for our children.  One of my friends, an educator, was totally flabbergasted when her son came home and was interested in recreating the magnetic field that has been measured around the Bermuda Triangle.  He wanted to do this an make things disappear.  I loudly applauded his intiative and risk taking..  My cheers were met with a resounding "No Way!"  and the reasoning was because it would not work.  My argument went to the fact that two things were in place to have success: 1) The student was interested in the topic and would devote time to it as long as the process was the learning and not the result. 2) This was an original and creative idea that showed initiative on her son's part.  I felt that should be honored and respected.  As it turns out, he was talked out of the magnetic field project and did something more generic (I honestly cannot remember because I was so bummed he did not get to pursue his idea!)  But this friend of mine was more interested in the student being successful than pursuing a novel idea.  What did the student learn from this experience?  The message is clear - conform and choose ideas that have a reasonable chance of success.  Trying something that is highly challenging and has a high degree of failure is not a good thing.  (This is a teacher whom I have tremendous respect for!  And still do!)

We do the same in the classroom.  I am advocating that we coach and teach students the processes to pursue ideas.  That students experience failure as a part of the learning process so that when they move out into the fast paced, global market and 21st Century they are ready to deal effectively with failure and understand the process of generating new ideas and taking initiative to act on them whether they seem doomed for failure or not.  They at least can assess the risks and make an informed decision as to whether or not to move forward.

Structuring opportunities for students to show initiative is a key component in developing 21st Century skills for our future generation.

Curating Information

Hawaii Catholic Schools has identified a series of skills, developed from the work of Tony Wagner and the p21.org.  On of these identified skills that we want all Hawaii Catholic Schools' students to develop is Curating Information.  Hawaii Catholic Schools defines curating information as actively managing, validating, maintaining, creating and finding pertinent resources.

As taken from the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, curating is derived from the noun curator which is defined as "someone who has the care and superintendence of something."  The origin of the word curator is in "Latin, from curare, to care, from cura, care."  Information is defined as "knowledge that you get about someone or something: facts or details about a subject."  As I put these terms together, the two definitions create an interesting picture for 21st Century educators.

For as long as I have been in education (suffice to say a number of years!) teachers and adminstrators have been the gatekeepers of information at school!  we decide what information students are to learn and tell back to us.  We decide the content that is most relevant.  We manage the students' access to content through texbooks and other resources.  We decide on the topics they will research and create reports, using our format of presentation, on.  Teachers have been the guardians of information and it has provided us a certain degree of job security!

With the advent of the internet and the proliferation of mobile devices with 3G/4G access to information, educators no longer have sole ownership of content.  Everyone has access to everything at anytime they need or want to use it.  This shift necessitates a change in how we approach teaching and learning.  No longer is our role that of information dispensor or the ultimate guru of knowldge.  We now must teach the skills necessary to manage and filter the vast quantity of knowledge that is constantly moving, growing and shifting across the digital world!

As the term Curating Information hints at, students are now the owners of any knowledge they wish to search for or show an interest in.  People are creating their own content constantly in forums such as blogs, Vimeos or YouTube videos.  Teaching students HOW to navigate this ocean of digital content and apply it to our physical world in a practical and effective manner is, quite possibly, the most important 21st century skill we can help our students develop.

One of the best ways we can model this for our students is to transform ourselves into  Teachers as Curators of Student Learning.  There is so much quality information out there on the internet that is relevant for us as we look to improve our practice as both classroom teachers and school leaders.  For us to truly teach our students the skill of Curating Information, we need to open our minds and shift our paradigm around how we engage our students int the act of learning!

Hawaii Catholic Schools: 21st Century Skills series - Entrepreneurialism

Hawaii Catholic Schools has identified a series of skills, gleaned from the work of Tony Wagner and the p21.org.

One of these 21st Century skills is Entrepreneurialism.   The Webster-Merriam online dictionary defines entrepreneur as "a person who starts a business and is willing to risk loss in order to make money." Entrepreneurialism is identified as a noun.  For Hawaii Catholic Schools and our students, we define entrepreneurialism as "undertaking the process of creating and/or organizing original ideas into functional applications."  This can demonstrated through students starting/beginning/creating a business and demonstrating in their process of creating that they understand and accept  the inherent risk of failure that lies beneath the surface of their work.  

This idea of taking inherent risk during the creation phase is a bit of a foreign idea in schools, where getting 100% is considered the pinnacle of success.  Reframing Failure is a short 5-minute video posted by Edutopia (a FANTASTIC resource for educators and parents!!!) that asks us to rethink how we see learning - and failing.  Schools have spoon-fed our students a steady stream of "give us the right answer" or "there is only one answer." Teachers tell students that they are wrong, if they miss it, or tell them they are right if they get it correct.  As a system, we have consistently been deficient in developing any kind of exploratory or analytical or entrepreneurial skills in our students.  Ask students, or many of our teachers, to come up with a new idea, and most will ask for the "right answer."  Or worse, they want to know what every single little step is so they can "get the right answer!"  Very few will risk and move forward trying anything innovative or new.  

We have placed such a huge value on getting things correct, that we have failed to develop a skill that literally drives our society: Entrpreneurialsim.  To be entrepreneurial, you have to develop sound thinking, research skills, presentation skills, business acumen, math skills, etc., etc.  The key difference between this list of descriptors  and how they look inside and outside of school is that inside school we are developing many of these skills (and actually are doing a relatively good job of it!) but we are doing it without the connection to failure.  Most of our students leave school possessing everything necessary to succeed and make choices, except that many of them have not experienced failure.  An entrepreneurial spirit embraces failure as a valuable learning tool.  The ability to understand and assess risk and reward.  To look ahead and see potential pitfalls and plan to address them in case they show up.  These are characteristics of an entrepreneurial mind and these are the skills we need to actively seek to develop in our students in Hawaii Catholic Schools!

Please share how you are developing ENTREPRENEURIALISM  in your students!
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