It All Leads To Teamwork...

This article by Tony Wagner, Rigor Redefined, is about how we need to try harder to prepare students for everything in the 21^st century.

What does “rigor redefined” mean, anyway? It means that we need to re-look at how hard everyone works and how hard we need to work because everything that we are learning may turn out to be completely useless in the long run.  For example, there are jobs out there that we would never have thought would exist. But, there are going to be millions of jobs that we are not ready for that are just around the corner. Being the student, we cannot blame our educators. We have to take the blame as well. It has to do all with teamwork. One senior executive from Dell said, “Yesterday’s answers won’t solve today’s problems”.  This is what we will be saying once we are employed in these nonexistent (yet) jobs.

The three main ideas to take away from this article for the students is that we need to ask good questions; question ourselves, the provider, and the world even.  The teachers cannot tell us what to think. Once we grow up to be employers, we have to ask our OWN questions, instead of having people tell us the questions FOR us. We need to engage in good discussion and use teamwork; without teamwork, we cannot get great discussion. Discussion and teamwork will help us in the world when we are older as employers, when it’s not an option to be a good communicator; you have to be. Asking questions leads to teamwork, which leads to great discussion.  This article, in only the first page, inspires us to work hard and that we can really get anything done if we put our hearts to it.

The only part of this article that I question and think was not right for Wagner to say was when he mentioned how “…Young people’s poor grammar, punctuation, or spelling- the things we spend so much time teaching and testing in our schools...”  I feel as if in the last sentence of this quote is a bit harsh. These writers, who write about 21^st century jobs and such, need to realize that we, the students, are trying our hardest to get our grades up. I just got the impression from this paragraph that they do not have any faith in us.

Later in the article, Wagner started preaching about the ties when he went to many schools with very high test scores and observed the students.  What I took from these stories, is that these “AP” students are not very good at communicating or questioning.

In our English class, Mrs. Comp always tells us to question, question, question; question everything. We, the students, do not understand how important this concept is. For me, however, I learned that when Mrs. Comp questions us, it stretches our learning so much and it’s the same case when we question things.

All in all, Wagner is getting the point across to us that we need to focus really hard on “…the importance of critical thinking, communication skills, and collaboration.”