21st Century Skills

In this webinar, the presenter talks about the 21st century skills in our workplaces and classes.  
 During this video, her objectives were:

• to identify and discuss skills that need to be included in workplace transitions programs--many of these skills have also been identified as important for academic transitioning as well.
• to describe what this means for general ESL classes. 
• identify transferable work skills that can be taught from beginning ESL levels.

She discussed these topics and focus on what we can do in our general ESL programs to prepare students for the workplace, to succeed in a job interview, to get promoted and manage the changes in the workplace.

Also, during the webinar, she asked the participants to think about two particular questions that are:

• What are the implications for ESL instructors? 
• How can we transfer what we are learning about transitioning from school to work in our classes?

With those two questions, she wants the participants too reflect and to give their opinion on the subject, on what they think we should do has future ESL teachers.

Moreover, She talks about the essential skills needed for a society's future workforce.  She called those the 7 C's and they are:

1. Critical thinking / problem solving
2. Communication
3. Collaboration
4. Creativity
5. Cross-cultural understanding
6. Computing
7. Career self-reliance (lifelong learning)

For each one of the 7C's, she gives examples and lists of skills included in each one of them.  They are important these days and she says that to connect school to work, we need to think about how we can integrate these 21st century skills in our classes.

Here is a quote used by Mrs. Price that makes a lot of sense if we look at the results of the research done byParrish and Johnson that shows that we should integrate academic and workplace readiness skills into every level of instruction, including ESL classes.

"A report from the National Center on Education and the Economy (2009) argues that adult education should be redesigned to promote postsecondary and work­place readiness for all learners. …This means that the skills that learners need in order to transition successfully to higher levels of education or employment should be integrated into every level of instruction, including ESL classes that are focused primarily on language instruction."(Parrish & Johnson, April 2010)

I really think that she does have a major point that is including workplace English to our education.  We have to say that English is the most important language in the world.  It is talked and used everywehere even in the most basic jobs.  We are the one, as future teachers, that can make a difference in the way our students will succeed in their future careers.  We all know that by improving their english it will provide them great tools for their job interviews and future probable promotion.  We have to say that the chances to get promotions are heighten by a lot when you have fluent English in your skills.  As Mrs. Price says, why don't we include usual workskills in our teaching by using tools used in some workplace like:

• Schedule reading
• Keeping daily logs
• Writing work orders
• Wrting E-mails
• Performance reviewing
• Using critical thinking to negociate
• Problem Solving

All those tools can and will be use in their future workplace, so why don't we make them deal with some of these situations and improve their knowledge of workplace English.

I am asking you my honorable reader, do you think that workplace English could improve our students future carreers?