Review of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills

I recently checked out the website for the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (www.21stcenturyskills.org) and I was slightly surprised by what I found. I guess that I assumed that 21st century skills referred mostly to technology because of the significant advances at the present time. I was surprised to find that 21st century skills referred not only to technology, but also to critical thinking, problem solving, and communication. It makes total sense to me now that students today need to master these skills in order to not only survive in the workplace, but also in life in general. I suppose I needed that fact pointed out to me by a website. This website also gave a lot of other information as well as resources for teachers.

What does this mean for my students? I think this means that I need to find other things to teach them other than basic math and reading skills. This is not saying that these are not important, but I also need to concentrate on enhancing their communication skills. They need to be able to effectively communicate their wants as needs as well as be able to receive information from others. They need to not only be able to tell me an answer to a question, but they need to tell me how they figured it out. Does this make sense? As many of you already know, these skills are already difficult for students with special needs. The question is... how do we fix it? Anyone have any concerns or suggestions?