21st century skills. Buzz word or reality? As I visit schools, I know many of them are teaching these skills. From critical thinking and problem solving, to technology literacy and collaboration, teachers are targeting these skills in the instructional process, and leveraging them in the curriculum. Many teachers are being called to teach these skills, and don’t know how to. I’ve done many workshops with teachers to arm them with these skills. However, there is one issue that seems to be a roadblock for true implementation: assessment.

I do know teachers are using rubrics and products to assess these skills. Some schools like High Tech High in San Diego have them in the grade book, but this is a rarity. This is a pocket of excellence. It shouldn’t be. When I was teaching at a project-based learning STEM school, we too wanted to teach and assess the skills of collaboration, critical thinking and communication. Now communication is naturally built into English language arts curriculum and the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts across all subjects. We had no problem assessing this, and leveraging it in the grade book. But what about a skill like collaboration? The Common Core does have a standard where students “participate in collaborative discussions,” and this is across all grade levels. However, collaboration is more than just discussions; it’s about creating together, coming to consensus and other quality indicators. Similarly with the 21st century skill of critical thinking, we can unpack our standards to find connections, but it feels like we are trying too hard. This is my struggle as an educator, and a struggle for many of the teachers I work with. We want to teach and assess 21st century skills, but we feel somewhat limited in our ability to do just that. We ran up against resistance with the district on truly assessing them in the grade book. We understood that if we truly valued 21st century skills, our assessment systems needed to model that. However, the system did not share that value the same way we did.

This is the biggest issue for teaching and assessing 21st century skills in our schools. We need our assessment systems to value them, and that means having them in the grade book. In my conversations with educators this is the biggest roadblock. For those educators that have the power to assess 21st century skills in the grade book, they create a culture where content is not king. Instead critical thinking is leveraged across the entire curriculum. Students have more buy in to collaborate, and they have quality indicators and targets to aim for in technology literacy. Through this true assessment of 21st century skills, we can re-frame what we value for our students, and really make them college and career-ready.

As educators, we are always looking for management strategies to try in the classroom. Note I said “strategies” — not “solutions.”

Many Edutopia bloggers have written about strategies and ideas for classroom management. I’ve also written a blog on PBL management strategies, but many of those same strategies can be used in non-PBL contexts.

When picking strategies, we have to know that because they are strategies, some may not work. But we can still build our toolkit so that we have something to try in any context.

However, there is a larger, more important issue to consider before venturing into management strategies to solve a problem in the classroom: engagement! I hinted at this in my PBL management post, but the best strategy for management issues is engaging curriculum and instruction. When I experience frequent management issues in my classroom, I first look to myself: “What is my role in creating this situation? Why are my students not engaged?” I ask.

It is crucial to focus on engagement rather than management. In fact, Daniel Pink articulates this point when he talks about the workforce. It still rings true: “Management is good if you want compliance, but if you want engagement, self-directed is better.”

Here, Pink is talking about the three things that are needed for engagement, but they still hold true when we think about our classrooms and what we are asking of our students.

Autonomy
If you want your students to be engaged, facilitate self-directed activities and learning models. In PBL models, students are encouraged to take ownership of their work, but you can create self-direction through flipping the classroom, differentiating instruction and other best practices. Create spaces in your classroom where students direct their own learning. Use goal setting sheets, logs, reflection, and planning forms so you can hold students accountable to the learning, while still allowing autonomy.

Mastery
Our students like getting better at stuff. This “stuff” is skills, knowledge of content, and the like. Obviously, we have important content our students need to master, but we have to let students see the process of improvement. To engage students in mastery, we have to create rubrics that show the progress from novice to master. We can also create quality indicators for those objectives that students can understand, and we have to reward students for their work with performance and public celebration.

Purpose
Students need to find purpose in their work, and teachers need to create authentic contexts, tasks, and audiences for their students to display their work. Create units or projects that have an authentic purpose and audience. Students may or may not do things for me the teacher, but when experts are part of the process and product, they will engage in the work because it matters. Have students create products that have real impact. Use principles of the flat classroom to collaborate with classrooms across the world to solve problems together. The possibilities for purposeful work are endless.

Engage Students in the Classroom
As you start your new school year, find ways to create spaces where students have autonomy, pursue mastery, and engage in tasks that have meaning. Start small at first, because as it may be challenging for you as the teacher, it may be the same for students. Often, students are disempowered in their learning and do not have the opportunity to engage in these three strategies for engagement.

Empower your students by focusing on engagement, and the management issues will dissipate.

Baptism By Fire! That’s what I call the first year of teaching. No matter how much preparation and mentoring you have received, you are building the plane as you fly it. To make sure you don’t crash and/or burn (yes, pun intended!), I put together some hard-learned lessons from my experience as a new teacher. In addition, these are good recommendations and reminders for veteran teachers. When you get hunkered down in the day-to-day while the year presses on, you tend to forget what really works well, because you are working so hard. I hope you find these five tips useful!

1) Push Out Content in Different Ways
You know what’s exhausting? Preparing PowerPoints, presentations and other lectures! Guess what? You don’t have to do this all the time. Yes, there is a time and a place for a lecture or direct instruction, but there is also a place for a variety of strategies to have students take ownership of content learning. Use jigsaw techniques, games that teach, reciprocal teaching and other effective strategies that put students in the driver’s seat of learning. Move from sage of the stage to guide on the side. While all lessons require preparation and planning, a variety of lesson types can not only keep your students interested, but also keep you energized to try new ways of teaching.

2) Go Home!
I mean it. Go home! There is always something more to do, I know it. But you know what? It can wait! Now obviously, you do need to stay late for events, meetings and tutoring with students, but you also need to set boundaries. It is easy to get sucked into the school building, so make sure you leave when appropriate. Go home to your family (or your cat, in my case). Let your students and peers know that you are taking care of your own self by attempting to have a life outside of school.

3) Establish Boundaries for Your Time
Of course this relates to the tip above, but it has more to do with the overall structures you have in place for your time during the school day. It’s OK to keep your door closed. Yes, there are times to work with students, but there is also time to put on NPR with your cup of coffee, check you email and commence your morning ritual. Your lunch is sacred, so make sure you take that time for yourself, too. If professional development is scheduled, keep that sacred as well, because it is some rare time you have to work on your practice. Students, parents and others will respect the fact that you set time aside for them, but also for yourself.

4) Use Your PLN
In a previous blog here at Edutopia, Mary Beth Hertz wrote about the importance of the “connected educator,” suggesting that we all make sure to network with fellow educators. Great teachers steal (and you’d be a liar if you said you were “borrowing”), so make sure you use technologies like Edmodo and Twitter to keep yourself connected to other educators, your personal learning network (PLN).

5) Know What You Are Assessing
Obviously, teachers should know what they are assessing, but sometimes we forget and start assessing everything. If you collect a formative assignment, only assess for a few things. Do you have to assess for conventions all the time? No, but there is a time and place for that. Do you have to assess correct answers in math problems? Perhaps not this time. Perhaps you focus on process-oriented feedback. Know what you are assessing, and be transparent about this to students. Not only is this manageable for students to digest later, but it makes the time you spend assessing and giving feedback shorter, focused and more efficient.

Again, these are tips, and may not work for everyone, but I think in general they encompass what I learned in the first years. You can only care for your students if you are caring for yourself. If you create and live in structures that allow you to work smart, then you’ll transition into a confident, veteran teacher so much more quickly!