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Monday, July 31, 2006

Metamorphosis

I was planning to spend a good deal of our opening year staff meeting on the question “What does it mean to educate students for the 21st century?” We say that is part of our purpose in our mission statement but we have never really considered what it means. It will be interesting to see where it takes us. We will spend a lot of time reading blogs and pre-meeting we will read the digital native articles.

But now the ah moment…as I was reading Karl Fisch’s blog I noticed a little box in the corner that said “….21st century teachers program” …to educate students for the 21st century we must become 21st century teachers. This along with the following quote from Karl's comments on the eMints presentation says it all…


“Quote 7: Refuse to think for your students.
I really, really, really (did I mention "really"?) like this quote. I think if all teachers read this to themselves before each class (and maybe even out loud to the class), it would help tremendously.
The title of her presentation (Fearless Courage) came from this quote from Andrew Powell of B.F. Goodrich:
Fearless courage is more than visionary. Many have the ability to look at events and trends and describe the future state. However, few are willing to take the risk of acting on that vision unless the current state is bad. To reform or change tactics when things are working, based on your vision of the future, requires courage.”

2 comments:

Karl Fisch said...

We actually haven't been consistent with what we call the teachers in our staff development - we use both "21st century teachers" and "21st century learners." I think I almost like "learners" better, but sometimes it's confusing to the adults!

I'm curious as to how you ran across my blog - and particularly the Suprglu incarnation of it. The "real" blog is The Fischbowl - the Suprglu site you link to is an aggregation of all of our teacher blogs, as well as my del.icio.us bookmarks. And I think the post you wanted to link to on eMints was actually http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2006/07/necc-fearless-courage-technology-and.html.

I'm looking forward to reading how your staff development meeting goes.

Barbara Barreda K-8 Administrator, Tech integration advocate, Going 1:1 with netbooks said...

Karl thank you for the comment. I will post more as the staff development unfolds. I like the learner idea too... but I think the concept of 21st century teachers is an important component. I was struck that we talk as if the 21st centuy has not yet arrived yet we are living in it.

As for how I found you...it is all about connections! In this case I was checking links to my blog through de.licio.us and I found Benjamin Wickoff and his work in developing a wiki for professional develoment. I commented on his work and emailed him. In turn he suggested I might also want to look at your work. The Superglu site was linked and I used it because that is where the comment was about the teachers.