home

=Education Subcommittee on Learning in the 21st Century= Welcome to the Wiki of the Education Subcommittee of the Education and Student Life Committee of the Board of Trustees at the Westminster Schools.

In the introduction of 21st Century Skills: Learning for Life in Our Times, Trilling and Fadel (2009) recorded a number of interesting and pertinent questions: · “How has the world changed, and what does this mean for education?” · “What does everyone need to learn now to be successful?” · “How should we learn all this?” · “How is 21st century learning different from learning in the 20th century and what does it really look like?” · “How will 21st century learning evolve through the century?” · “How will a 21st century learning approach help solve our global problems?” (xxiii)

With these questions, Trilling and Fadel suggest an inquiry-based method for directing a school in its development of a framework for change in the 21st century. Many are curious how we can maintain our traditional roots of excellence while contemplating necessary growth for the 21st century. As Westminster contemplates its future and vision as a school, all of these questions are critical for guiding us to where we are going.

One quick exercise that highlights how much our world has changed since Westminster was founded in 1951 is to compare the list of Fortune 100 companies from 1955 (link here, the first year the list was compiled) to this year’s list (link here). The vast majority of the companies who were at the pinnacle of success at our school’s founding are no longer on the list, and many do not even exist today. When Westminster was started, Apple, Microsoft, Wal-Mart, HP, Verizon, Target, Dell, FedEx, Amazon and many other companies on the 2010 list had not yet been imagined, and in some cases their founders were not even born!

We at Westminster belong to our changing world, and we contribute to the changes in our world. We want our students’ education to be relevant for the times in which they live and for the citizenry to which they will contribute both now and in the future. The purpose of this wiki is to explore the many questions and challenges raised by educating in the 21st century at Westminster.

Getting Started
What is a wiki? Go straight to the Essential Questions Contact an ESL21 member Resources

**21st Century Thinking and Schooling**
Back in 2008, some teachers at the Westminster Schools came together to begin a collaborative project on 21st Century thinking and schooling. The group's goals were: (1) to explore what was meant by 21st Century skills--teaching and learning; (2) to develop or assemble some resources that dealt with topic; and (3) to begin to explore collaborative projects that were "21st Century." The group, mostly JHS teachers, met for about three months at the end of the academic year 2007-2008. We read the Falconer, by Grant Lichtman, and hosting a meeting with him on Westminster's campus in late 2008. The group then reassembled in 2008-2009 for a few meetings, but morphed into a series of assessment study groups. While their efforts at defining 21st Century skills, developing the wiki of resources, and building collabortive projects quietly went away, the Wiki of what was accomplished is available as a resource at:

21st Century Thinking and Schooling