Reflections of 21st century learning, chapter 5

As I read chapter 5 in 21st century learning, I made a few notes of thoughts I had as I was reading. I looked at the Employee evaluation worksheet (table 5.1) and was struck by how concise it was, this was the first year that we had new evaluation rubrics in our district. And while I appreciated the fact that the librarians had their own evaluation rubric separate from the teachers (first time since I became a librarian), my principal mentioned how lengthy it was and how in encompassed "so much". Again, I appreciate the fact that my district acknowledges all the various aspects of my job, but I wish my eval wasn't 4 pages long! I also noticed how student evaluations really don't align with 21st century skills.

I appreciated when the ability to deal with criticism, setbacks, and failure was discussed in this chapter. It made me feel better about both my parenting and teaching, as I have always told both my children and my students that failing is not bad, but not taking the time to figure out why you failed and learn from that experience is what is bad. My son was having issues with being afraid to try new things in school because he didn't want to fail. This was holding him back until I told him that I see more value in failing than getting straight A's on assignments. Failing forces you to look at what you did and figure out what you did wrong (problem solve) and provides opportunity to learn from your mistakes. Getting an A on an assignment doesn't necessarily mean that you learned anything new. I think that as parents and teachers, we don't want to see our kids fail, yet when we don't allow them to experience that, we are depriving them of learning opportunities that will stick with them.

Finally, this chapter also discussed social and cross cultural interaction and mentioned that educators are taking more time to "build connected and respectful learning environments" and exploring methods for students to resolve conflicts. Does this really happen? I know that my district was pushing for all teachers to be "Tribes" trained and yet I see inconsistent application of the Tribes philosophy. I almost think we need to have 9 hour school days because there just isn't enough time to fit it all in and unfortunately, what I see being cut out of the day are some of the activities that kids need most (arts, community building, conflict resolution, ect).