What am I going to do as an English teacher to engage with the 21^st century skills?

By Elena Zakharova

We have to hear lots of complains from teachers today, that pupils are not those ones, as they used to be ten or fifteen years ago. They try to find and emphasize their individuality, so teachers try to find and continue to develop some positive, distinguishing and individual qualities and features in a person.

Almost every teacher learned to operate the computer be a good computer user and an effective networker to find a common language with young people and to be able to find new and contemporary methods of teaching and communicating. Because of learning on-line, pupils enjoy getting and doing some tasks via the Internet. According to O.M. Braterskaya, “It will bring visible benefits however digitally involved students are.” (p.42)

Besides, while preparing for the lessons and conducting them, many teachers take into account psychologists’ belief that different people learn in different ways, as there are three main types of people. I mean visual, auditory and haptic types. In fact these types of people perceive, remember and master the material differently and it’s up to the teacher to know the individuality of his students, to feel an instant rapport with students and help them to study using appropriate for each type ideas and methods.

I am firmly convinced that the role of a teacher has changed recently. We mustn’t teach new generation of pupils with obsolete and archaic methods. I’m totally sure that the work of a teacher has changed much. I have been working at school for more than twenty years and my former pupils are my colleagues now. As far as I remember, some years ago every lesson was teacher - centered, a teacher found and gave information, rules, examples etc., while students listened, wrote down, learned by heart and reproduced the material.

Times are changing, school is changing as well. Now a teacher is the Controller, the Prompter, the Resource, the Assessor, the Organizer, the Participant, the Tutor, the Facilitator. The most important roles are the Organizer, the Tutor and the Facilitator.

New standards of education give us other approaches to the aim, methods, contents and tools of education. Braterskaya’s (2015) study found the following:

That is what new Federal Educational Standards require from modern teaching – reverse the paradigm of teaching – away from a traditional model of teachers as envoys of knowledge and toward a teacher model as facilitators who carefully direct and observe students, identifying their educational needs and guiding them to higher levels of learning. (p.43)

1024693656. Why do we need new approaches? “Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.” “We call these “new” students as the N-[for Net]-gen or D-[for digital]-gen. But the most useful designation which was found for them is Natives. Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet.” (Marc Prensky, 2001, p.1) They can find information anytime and anywhere. Teachers are no longer the main source of information. Sure, pupils know how to use a search engine, but nobody show them how to validate, synthesize, leverage information, collaborate and solve problems with inf. And that’s why our curriculum should be focused not on fact and content but on skills. It means we need to rethink the tools we use and the types of problems we ask students to solve. Every lesson we create no matter what tools are used has to be relevant, challenging, engaging and pupil-centered. But every lesson doesn’t have to entertain students, they don’t need to be entertained, they need to be engaged. So, the teacher’s charge is to provide meaningful and powerful engagement. And it starts with us.

Firstly, we should find some sites, try some software, do some research.

Secondly, we should collaborate: not to do something alone, plan carefully and ask what others have found successfully.

Thirdly, take a risk because any change cannot occur without conflict, try it and see what happened.

And to sum all up, I think that before teaching pupils this year, every teacher should answer the question, “what does it mean to teach?”

Literature.

1. Braterskaya O.M. “Meeting new standards in language teaching: inverting instruction, classroom and methods”, «Обучая, вдохновляй: к новым высотам педагогического мастерства»,Материалы XXI международной конференции национального объединения преподавателей английского языка в России Екатеринбург, 2015, c.42- 43.
2. Marc Prensky “Digital Natives Digital Immigrants” from On the Horizon (MCB University Press, Vol. 9 No. 5, October 2001, p.1)
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=075aWDdZUlM