MLTS Reflections

MLTS- Reflections on this documentary

This documentary, Most Likely To Succeed, found at http://teddintersmith.com/mltsfilm/ made me think critically about our current state of education in my local school district. We have a strong focus on using ADST and STEM to support more project based learning opportunities for our students, which shows a positive shift in thinking from the historical model of education. This former model  that embodied solely a system of acquiring information without critically thinking. The documentary focused on looking critically at the current skills required for today’s learner.

In today’s world, content knowledge is everywhere and can be so easily accessed on the internet, so the emphasis needs to be placed on creativity and innovation. We need to think about how we can better cultivate the learning environment to support our leaners to become independent, innovative and confident thinkers. Creativity needs to be celebrated where failure simply becomes part of the natural learning process.

As the documentary discusses the acquired skills required from today’s learners are not so much cognitive skills, rather more about teaching the skills to productively use this body of knowledge taught.

Project based learning lends itself to encouraging students to think more critically about their own learning process, how they best learn, what they personally need to be successful and focuses more on the journey taken to get from point A to point B, rather than just the completion of a finished project.

Our school district has focused a lot this year on ADST and various project based learning initiatives from a district wide bridge building contest to Sphero Olympics to school wide cardboard day challenges to as well as season themed stem challenges. It is definitely a step in the right direction and supports the idea of focusing on the following skill sets:

• Teamwork skills
• Collaboration
• Creativity
• Logical thinking
• Critical thinking
• Self-awareness
• Self-reflection
• Empathy
• Feedback

In thinking about this I am curious as to what the next steps will be? After reviewing multiple data sources to reflect on and further develop our school improvement plan , it is evident that problem solving and problem based learning still needs a lot of work. We did a core competency survey and found at our school that many students have difficulty with problem solving skills, yet enjoy making and building things. This is definitely a positive direction to continue on, but I believe a lot of the difficutlies we see with problem solving and project based learning have to do with the fact that our students are not yet as resilient as we would like to see them. This concept of growth mindset is essential to student success but is not something that will happen overnight. Fear of failure and fear of looking different from others is something that we grapple with. In teaching and instilling creativity, we too need to challenge our students to take risks, not be afraid to fail and recognize that trial and error is part of project based learning, but it is not something that will happen overnight and historically is not something that has been supported.