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Editor’s Note: Our guest blogger today is Lillian Kellogg. She is Vice President of Client Services for Education Networks of America (ENA), overseeing marketing as well as strategic national association partnerships. She has dedicated her career to education and technology and has more than 25 years of experience in working with school districts and libraries in the field of educational technology. Among her many accomplishments, she currently serves as the Board Chair for the Partnership of 21st Century Skills (P21).

While we are firmly within the second decade of the 21st century, it is apparent that so much more needs to be done to help each student truly comprehend what they need to know and do to be successful in the years ahead. This call to action is every bit as important today as it was when we first started the conversation on 21st Century Skills, but it has changed. Early on the notion of 21st Century Skills was aspirational; today it is an alarm bell.

Work and life in the 21st century continue to change at lightning speed (see the Iowa- Did You Know? Video) and today 21st Century Skills matter more and for many more students now than they ever have before. 

In my roles as P21’s Board Chair and VP at Education Networks of America, I get to walk the walk on 21st Century Skills every day.  P21 members, leadership states, strategic partners and staff all embody the 4C’s of Communication, Collaboration, Creativity and Critical Thinking.  They have to in order to collaborate with so many different stakeholder organizations to create the tools and  resources that help education professionals at all levels infuse the 4C’s into our education systems and extended communities.  We are proud of the progress made and P21 has built a meaningful and highly regarded movement across the country. Yet we’ve a long way to go.

Our students need to learn to embody the 4C’s, to be able to think critically and adapt to new situations, to communicate their ideas effectively to both peers as well as colleagues of different backgrounds and cultures, and to collaborate and work in teams, across the room and across the globe, on problems that have no obvious solutions to be found in the back of the book.  They will need to tap into creative approaches to tackle these problems and pioneer new ways of thinking. In the end, their creativity and innovation will fuel economies both at home and abroad, and create jobs which have yet to be invented (see Students of the Future, and Jobs of the Future). 

The practices and skills we were taught in school to create successful careers and productive lives will simply not create the same level of success for our children today.  Our children deserve more. To prepare students for this constantly changing world, educators must exemplify 21st Century Skills themselves, and model them as facilitators of an educational process which brings relevance to core content, connects students to their communities, and helps them tackle and solve the inherently complex and increasingly global problems they will face. 

Creating a national movement to improve our education system is challenging work – but it is made easier by the creative and collaborative partnerships we have established with thought leaders at the state, federal and local level in education, organizations, businesses and communities at large.

And it is crucial we do this together. Because a decade on, 21st Century Skills is not just a single organization (P21), but a movement, and it will take all of us working together to make sure that all of our students are ready, for college, career, and citizenship – in this 21st century!

Image from Iowa, Did You Know via YouTube screen shot