Robin Fogarty has celebrated creative thinking in the classroom since her first years as a teacher. Since then, while working as a consultant, teacher educator, editor, mentor and author, Robin has been one of the nation’s strongest advocates for developing the creative talents of teachers and students alike. Her most recent books coedited with Brian Pete and Jim Bellanca for Solution Tree Press treat How to Teach Thinking in the Common Core and Leadership Guide to the Common Core (also with Rebecca Stinson. In press) This is the second in a series of posts on Creativity from Robin.

Francesca is only two, yet she wants to play with her Mom’s iPhone and find pictures of herself in the photo album. Putting that aside when she spots the iPad, she grabs for it as her fingers poke at the screen, somehow reasoning that this is just a big iPhone. When she accidentally touches the iTunes icon, she is startled when the music magically begins.

Later that same afternoon, Francesca is looking at the picture in a magazine, of a youngster much like herself. Expecting the “screen” to change as it did with other improvised “toys”, she keeps pointing and scrolling on the paper page to no avail. The puzzlement on her face is priceless.

by Jim Bellanca

In past eras when students were tested mostly about discrete facts, teachers needed to worry about quizzes and exams which targeted specific factual outcomes and ended with grades and bubble tests. Remember how it went?  Start with vocabulary quizzes. How many words correctly spelled? How many definitions correctly matched? Count the number. Enter in the grade book. Tell students to review the ones wrong because they might appear on the final. The final. How many correctly spelled? How many words correctly matched with a definition or picked from a multiple choice? How many bubbles marked?  Grade earned: A-F.

Robin Fogarty has celebrated creative thinking in the classroom since her first years as a teacher. Since then, while working as a consultant, teacher educator, editor, mentor and author, Robin has been one of the nation’s strongest advocates for developing the creative talents of teachers and students alike. Her most recent books coedited with Brian Pete and Jim Bellanca for Solution Tree Press treat How to Teach Thinking in the Common Core and Leadership Guide to the Common Core (also with Rebecca Stinson. In press)

Driving Question:  How Do We Know Creativity When We See It?

A Chinese delegation visiting schools across America entered a College Preparatory High School on Chicago’s Near North side. After being greeted by the administrative staff the leader of the group enthusiastically voiced this request, “What we really want to see is your Creativity room. May we go there first?”

Americans are known for their creativity and innovation. In fact, it has been said by futurists that Japan may out manufacture us, but they will never out innovate us. Recent statistics in a Wired survey (2012) showed that 9 out of 10 of the most innovative companies in world are US companies. In fact in a slightly broader spectrum, 44 of 50 of the most innovative companies around the world are US companies.

Creativity is the ideation of a thought, while innovation is the realization of the idea. 

Driving Question: How can we develop tech-savvy teachers?

Kipp D. Rogers, Ph.D. is Director of Secondary Instruction for York County Schools in York County, Virginia.  As an author of several articles and three books on integrating technology into instruction, Dr. Rogers regularly shares his expertise at workshops and seminars with educators across the United States.  Follow Kipp on Twitter: @KippRogers. 

Many school administrators classify teacher technology users into two categories: those who use technology and those who don’t.  As a former principal who worked hard to encourage teachers to integrate technology into instruction, I can definitely see where some administrators would divide the technology integration line right down the middle. While this school of thought is logical, after having worked with and trained hundreds of teachers and administrators on integrating technology into instruction, I have found that there are generally three categories of technology teachers. I refer to them as, Digital Rock Stars (Digi-Stars), Digital Groupies (Digi-Groupies)and Digital Phobes (Digi-Phobes).

Driving Question: How does technology change the game in project-based learning?

Suzie Boss is an education writer and consultant who focuses on project-based learning as a strategy for improving teaching and learning. She is the author of Bringing Innovation to School: Empowering Students to Thrive in a Changing World and co-author of Reinventing Project-Based Learning: Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age. She blogs for Edutopia.org and is on the national faculty of the Buck Institute for Education.

During a recent visit to a high school that embraces 21^st century learning, I watched a team of students deeply immersed in a real-world project. Their challenge: How to make the local bank branch more environmentally sustainable while staying within a budget?

Earlier, students had used online resources to investigate a variety of green design solutions. They crunched the numbers, producing spreadsheets that compared not just short-term costs but also long-term energy savings of various approaches. Now they were using a program called SketchUp to produce a 3-D model that offered detailed views of the redesigned building from the exterior (featuring drought-resistant landscaping), interior (right down to the color of floor covering made from recycled materials), and bird’s eye perspective (showing rooftop rainwater-collection features). They knew this would be a handy visual aid when it came time to present their recommendations to the client.

When I asked one of the students how he learned to use SketchUp, he glanced up from his laptop and said simply, “Just by using it.”

In project-based learning, that’s exactly how technology integration should happen. 

 Engaged Learning: How Sister Genevieve’s Intuition Grabbed Minds and Hearts. Part I. 

by Jim Bellanca

I counted 50 desks. Each with an empty ink well. I was visiting my first grade classroom. My first grade teacher, Sister Genevieve had been a sixteen year old, fresh out of the novitiate. No computers. No worksheets. No education courses. Yet, her classroom was a beehive of engaged, active learners. I recall how many times she organized us in groups. A 5’ x5’ sand table in the back corner was a hub of activity. There, our groups took turns tracing letters and numbers, mapping our neighborhoods with monopoly houses, arranging Egyptian monuments carved from Fels-Naptha soap bars, and building President Lincoln’s log cabin. When not at the sand box, we sang alphabet songs, struggled to draw pictures of Baby Sally and Spot, rehearsed for the class Christmas and Easter pageants, measured the hallway’s linoleum squares in inches, feet and yards, lined window sills with bottled bugs and flowers, and ended the year building a paper cut-out museum of famous people from our state.

If Sister G. had attended a teacher’s college, she might have learned how several decades before John Dewey, Carlton Washburn and other Progressives were advocating the very “learn by doing” that she and her peers were doing. In 2004, when she was ready to retire, her hands-on activities-now labeled cooperative learning, graphic organizers, new games, writing projects, math manipulatives--were well established.

DRIVING QUESTION: Does Project Based Learning Teach Critical Thinking?

John Mergendoller is Executive Director of the Buck Institute for Education, where he leads a talented team focused on building the capacity of districts, schools and teachers to do high quality Project Based learning. He has taught in both elementary and high schools, and received his Ph.D. in Education and Psychology from the University of Michigan.

Critical thinking is a foundational skill for 21st century success, a reality recognized by P21 adherents and educators everywhere. But how do we help students learn to do it? And what is critical thinking, anyway? Is Project Based Learning (PBL) really the best way to help students become critical thinkers?

Driving Question: How are museums and libraries promoting 21st century learning?

Marsha L. Semmel is Director for Strategic Partnerships, Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Marsha oversees and coordinates IMLS partnerships with other federal agencies, foundations, and non-governmental organizations. Ms. Semmel led the agency’s initiative Museums, Libraries, and 21st Century Skills and has spearheaded a new partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation that focuses on creating “learning labs” for teens in libraries and museums.

"What? Such bastions of cultural heritage and preservation as museums and libraries embracing 21st century learning?” If visitors haven’t stopped by lately, they would miss how today’s museum and library staffs are answering this post’s driving question and promoting collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and innovation, and communication outside the school walls. Visitors might also be missing how the trained staffs and volunteers have expanded their knowledge of 21st century themes such as information and media literacy, environmental literacy, health, civic engagement, global cultural awareness, STEM, and financial literacy as well as web-savvy information-gathering skills and techniques. And they may not have noticed that these venerable repositories have leaped ahead with services that promote 21st century skills and your community’s “learning quotient” in partnership with other agencies, including local schools.

Essential Question: What if 21st century teachers could self-direct and personalize their own professional development?

Meg Ormiston is a teacher, author, presenter and volunteer passionate about changing the world of education through the use of digital tools and curriculum transformation. You can contact her via This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

It would be difficult for educators to work any harder; but to meet the 21st Century challenges, they now have digital tools to help them work smarter. My favorite among the new technology tools for professional learning is Twitter. The second is the flipped professional learning experience.

Traditional professional development has come in two forms. First, school districts provide a few days each school year. Teachers were (and still are in many places) herded to the cafetrium to sit passively while listening to a speaker on a topic of great interest to a few people in the room. Second, many teachers grabbed (and still do) a graduate school catalog, pick a course of interest or degree of value and hop in their cars to drive to the closest campus after the school day is done.

by Jim Bellanca

Driving Question: How can school leaders transform their districts into 21st Century deep learning places?

Kay, Ken and Greenhill, Valerie. (2012) The Leader’s Guide to 21st Century Education. Pearson Resources for 21st Century Learning. Pearson Education. Boston.

Two of the leading advocates for 21st century skills in schools, Ken Kay and Valerie Greenhill, have prepared a remarkable and lucid guide for school leaders. With seven steps that organize the change process in an easy-to-follow flow, the founder of P21 and now CEO of EdLeader21 and EdLeader21’s Chief Learning Officer guide the reader through the seven step implementation of districts that transform their schools into 21st Century deep learning places.

Driving Question: What’s Working? Lessons from pioneer 21^st century school districts - Part 2

Bob Pearlman is a 21st Century School and District Consultant and Senior Education Consultant to the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and to Fielding Nair International, Architects and Change Agents for Education Design. Pearlman was formerly Director of Strategic Planning for the New Technology Foundation (now the New Tech Network), President of the Autodesk Foundation, Coordinator of Education Reform Initiatives for the Boston Teachers Union, and a high school teacher for 27 years. Learn more about Bob’s work at http://www.bobpearlman.org

How do districts make themselves (transform) into 21st Century districts? How can a district put in place systems and supports for 21st Century Learning? How can a district engage and ready its teachers and its principals to design the new curriculum and assessments and institute the new teaching practices that best engage students for 21st Century Learning?

For the past several years I have worked with and studied many aspiring 21st Century districts. I have posted profiles of many of these districts on my website. I have also posted there a Best Practices Implementation Checklist of 21st Century School Districts (PDF). I have seen two distinct patterns of development among aspiring 21st Century districts, one a systems approach and the other a start-with-innovation approach. This week, I’ll profile the innovations approach:

(Catch up by seeing last week’s post on the systems approach)

Development Pathway 2: Build out from and Leverage Practice from innovative 21^st Century schools

These districts start with implementing an innovative school with 21st Century teaching and learning practices. The school serves as an R&D site for the district, builds district learning, and teacher capacity. Once the school refines its practices and systems, the school then serves as a district demonstration site and its teachers serve as teacher trainers and coaches as the district aims to scale 21st Century teaching and learning practices districtwide. Districts using a build-out from innovative schools approach include Manor Independent School District in Manor, TX (northeast of Austin), and Napa Valley Unified School District in Napa, CA.

In the past 10 years several models of innovative 21^st Century learning schools have emerged in the United States. These include Big Picture Learning (The Met Schools), Envision Schools, EdVisions Schools, Expeditionary Learning, High Tech High, Internationals Network Schools, International Studies Schools (Asia Society), and New Tech Network. Most were originally supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2001 to 2007 and now are members of the Hewlett Foundation’s Deeper Learning Community of Practice.

These schools feature 21^st Century learning and assessment practices, particularly project-based learning and authentic classroom-based performance assessment of 21^st Century Skills using rubrics.

What Citizenship Means for the 21st Century

 By: Lillian Kellogg, Vice President of Education Networks of America, P21 Past Chair & Michelle Herczog, Vice President, National Council for the Social Studies

The National Conference on Citizenship and National Constitution Center are celebrating the 225th anniversary of the signing of the U.S. Constitution this week in Philadelphia, and the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills is exploring how citizenship has changed in the 21^st century. Rapid technological advancements, economic globalization, and political forces around the world have had a profound impact on our democracy and conceptualization of what it means to be a productive member of society.  With every political or financial scandal, every crisis, and every election – we cannot help but wonder what can be done to strengthen American democracy so that everyone represented in “we the people” has the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to solve pressing problems of the 21^st century.

In some ways, we are grappling with age-old questions of how to get on in the world, how to communicate, collaborate, solve problems and interact with others in a civil and respectful manner. When working to instill leadership qualities and experiences for young people, we are treading a familiar and well-worn path.  But the scope, magnitude, and complexity of the world today forces us to think deeply about the best way to prepare young people to meet these modern day challenges. Besides basic skills in reading and mathematics, young people today need to acquire 21^st century skills and competencies that include:

• Knowledge of economic and political processes;
• Skill in understanding what is presented in the media;
• Ability to work well with others, especially diverse groups;
• Creativity and innovation to solve problems in new ways.

Business leaders, educators, and the general public have determined that 21^st century competencies captured as the 4Cs of communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity, are critical for success in college and career.  They are also essential for effective citizens and a vibrant democracy.  The knowledge and skills needed to engage in civic and political life, whether that be in one’s school, home town, local clubs, state, national, global and/or virtual landscapes are the same skills needed to solve hands-on, real-world problems in college and in the workplace. The skills one needs to engage in civic discourse are the very same needed to work with diverse colleagues, address challenges, and creatively solve problems which do not have easy solutions. These are all 21^st century skills.

Research reveals that civic education, especially when it is interactive and involves discussion of current issues, is an important way to develop non-civic skills that young Americans need to succeed in the 21^st century workforce. According to a study conducted by Judith Torney-Purta, Ph.D. and Britt S. Wilkenfeld, Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, “Students who experience interactive discussion-based civic education (either by itself or in combination with lecture-based civic education) score the highest on ‘21st Century Competencies,’ including working with others (especially in diverse groups) and knowledge of economic and political processes.”

In addition, the Guardian of Democracy: The Civic Mission of Schools reports that students who receive effective civic learning are:

• More likely to vote and discuss politics at home
• Four times more likely to volunteer and work on community issues
• More confident in their ability to speak publicly and communicate with their elected representatives
• Less likely to drop out of school

Civic learning in schools is necessary to prepare America’s young people for informed and active participation in a healthy democracy – to provide them the opportunity to explore their civic selves well before they are old enough to vote. Educators know that it is not enough to test for content knowledge and comprehension – they know that application of content knowledge and the development of 21^st century skills takes practice. Civic engagement is not a spontaneous phenomena – it requires dedication from all community stakeholders to ensure that our nation’s future citizens have an appreciation of democracy and the needed skills to preserve it for future generations.

We are currently working with leading civic learning organizations to explore and expand what 21^st century citizenship entails – and show why we must explicitly include civic learning into a 21st century learning curriculum.  At P21, research and collaboration with leading employers has shown us that the 21st century workplace requires high level skills for all workers, and it’s no surprise that civic life in the 21st century also requires more nuanced skills and competencies for all our citizens.

In this election season we urge parents, educators, policy-makers, and community members, as well as the students themselves – to reflect on what 21^st century citizenship means to them. It is imperative that these opportunities are made part of an authentic 21^st century learning experiences for every student, to ensure that all our students graduate ready for college, careers, and citizenship.

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Driving Question: What’s Working? Lessons from pioneer 21^st century school districts - Part 1

Bob Pearlman is a 21st Century School and District Consultant and Senior Education Consultant to the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce and to Fielding Nair International, Architects and Change Agents for Education Design. Pearlman was formerly Director of Strategic Planning for the New Technology Foundation (now the New Tech Network), President of the Autodesk Foundation, Coordinator of Education Reform Initiatives for the Boston Teachers Union, and a high school teacher for 27 years. Learn more about Bob’s work at http://www.bobpearlman.org

It is not easy to make a 21st Century school district – a district where all students achieve mastery of 21^st Century Skills and know how they are doing on acquiring these skills. How might the kids know? Learning outcomes would include the 4cs (critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity) and other 21^st Century Skills, curriculum would embed the skills in all subjects (collective learning outcomes), classroom-based performance assessments would assess the skills, and students would receive just-in-time feedback from online “living” report cards, updated whenever there is any new information.

The US Education Department through its policies and practices has not been much help to school districts implementing 21st Century Learning and Teaching practices. Thus far 17 of 50 states have become P21 Leadership States. Some states have implemented 21st Century Learning support structures for curriculum, professional development, assessment, lesson-sharing, etc., but many have not.

One notable leader is the West Virginia Department of Education, a P21 state. Led by former Superintendent Steven Paine and current Superintendent Jorea M. Marple, West Virginia has created a cornucopia of online resources -- Teach21, Learn21, Global21, Parents21 -- and provided systematic and extensive leadership development and professional development for principals and teachers.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) do represent a major improvement in the standards of most states and emphasize depth of understanding and critical thinking. The CCSS incorporate some 21st Century Skills, but not enough in my opinion for effective 21st Century learning. Ken Kay and Valerie Greenhill, in their new, definitive book, The Leader’s Guide to 21^st Century Education, write that district and school leaders should “view CCSS as the floor but not the ceiling” and should implement the CCSS in ways that intentionally address 21^st century competencies such as collaboration, creativity, global competence, financial literacy and self-direction. 

(editor’s note: P21 also embraces this philosophy in its recommendations provided in the P21 Common Core Toolkit)

Driving Question: What have we learned in the first decade of 21st century education?

Ken Kay is the founding President of P21. He currently serves as CEO of EdLeader21, a professional learning community for school superintendents and district leaders.

The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills (P21) was formally launched in 2002. In fact, September marks the 10^th anniversary of P21. It seems like a good time to celebrate, to reflect on where we have been and to consider what might lie ahead.

As I look back on the first ten years of 21^st century education, five things stand out to me as key lessons many of us have learned about what makes a 21^st century school or district.

Driving Question:
How do 21^st Century Skills actually drive the education that young people receive?

Michael Blakeslee is Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer of the National Association for Music Education. At NAfME Blakeslee has served as editor of the award-winning Music Educators Journal and of Teaching Music magazine, and many NAfME publications. In 1994, he was editor of the National Standards for Arts Education: What Every Young American Should Know and Be Able to Do in the Arts. And in 2010, he managed the process that resulted in the 21^st Century Arts Skills Map, published by the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills.

Almost everyone – from parents to public officials – recognizes that education is the key to our future success. Public officials recognize that fact loudly and frequently, focusing on the needs of an education system that will lay the foundations for our nation’s future security. Parents focus on their hopes for the individual prospects for each child and for the current safety, happiness, and well-being of each child.

But only a few individuals or groups claim to have discovered the one ultimate solution to designing and implementing an education system that will meet everyone’s satisfaction. And those few are best avoided as either well-meaning but misguided reform fanatics or as individuals with axes to grind and sales to make.

After all, our education system serves some 50 million children in more than 14,000 local school districts. And each one of those children is subject to societal expectations, to parental expectations, and to their own growing sense of self-direction. Simplistic solutions just don’t serve the need.

The real work of providing a full, balanced education to each child in America hinges on the methodical adoption of systems that are driven by concepts on which we can all agree. While certainly not simplistic (and not all that easy to accomplish), discovering a consensus around the concepts that should underpin education can have the great virtue of achieving the overarching simplicity that allows for the variety in instructional approaches that individual children need.

 Getting Specific About the Standards and 21^st Century Skills: A Response 

by Jim Bellanca

Not far back, a reader of this blog, Stan Holmes, posed a question in response to Brian Pete’s “Unstoppable” post: “Has anyone produced a specific, itemized list pairing Common Core criteria with 21st Century Skills?”  Because we want this blog to be a dialogue, that question gives me the perfect chance to launch a conversation.  So, my short answer is “Yep”.

 My long answer goes like this: Brian himself did the research and set up a framework in the book How to Teaching Thinking in the Common Core.  (For transparency sake, I have to say that I was a co-author with Brian and Robin Fogarty and hadn’t intended to get into any shameless self-marketing.)

First, let’s try to be precise about the oft confused terms “standards” and “criteria”.  I don’t know where I would find the word “criteria” treated synonymously with  “standards” in the Common Core.  These standards are a guide for what our students will need to know and do before the end of each school year in mathematics and language arts. Because the tests to measure how well students “get it” are under construction, the criteria by which students will be measured for passing these standards are still a mystery.