How do I know if I have the skill to live in this world?
The beginning of school is just around the corner, and there is a unique energy that follows it. Somewhere between a mixture of anticipation, excitement, enthusiasm, and absolute dread. As adults, we often forget what it was like to be in school and what anxiety comes with the first days of school. So, we often downplay the fear and anxiety our students feel because we know they will survive the first days of school, just like they always have.... but what if we need to adjust our views.
Beginnings are hard, even if we are familiar with the people we are beginning something with or the place we are going. This is more prevalent in schools, where the beginning and ending is much clearer and definite. For teenagers (or tweens) this anxiety is heightened by more than just peer pressure, they are beginning to build their values and opinions and learning to express them in earnest. So, the question becomes more than just how do we help them navigate being a teen, but how do we help them navigate this world they are starting to live in?
The beginning of this year, I am going to focus on the skills that we as educators are seeing as vital to the world we live in, and that are vital to our students succeeding in this world.
Empowered Leader
Global Collaborator
Creative Communicator
Computational Thinker
Innovative Designer
Knowledge Constructor
Digital Citizen
There is one skill that is not explicitly expressed in this list: Risk and Failure are okay.
Above, you see pictures of the Oberon staff as they all risked going into unknown territory to face either success or failure with a new team building exercise called Breakout EDU. This is a great tool that is inquiry-based, student-centered learning that pushes students to explore many of the above listed skills. What we learned with this session is that frustration will happen, this is inevitable when you are exploring new learning. However, we also learned there is a great sense of accomplishment when we succeed in our quest.
This year, encourage your student to explore new ideas, learn new concepts, and face risk and failure with passion for whatever they do. Michael Jordan once said, "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed."
