THINK Global School: How We Teach 21st Century Skills

It's been almost five years now since we made the difficult decision to shift away from the IB Diploma Programme and a traditional classroom setting in favour of something more personalized and progressive. A little context on that switch: term after term, we'd see our students arrive in-country and rather than integrate into their environment and learn through first-hand experiences, they'd sequester themselves in their hotel rooms with textbooks and coffee, prepping endlessly for the exams which would determine their collegiate fate. Not ideal.  

So we have to ask: Were we preparing our students to succeed in the workplace back then? During all of that time spent with their noses in textbooks, were they building up the human skills they'd need for the world of work? In hindsight, and seeing how engaged and equipped for the future our graduates are now, it's hard to argue that we were, no matter how good our intentions. This is all the more relevant because even before the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic, the future of work was changing. Now, with millions of jobs permanently lost and many employees needing to work remotely for the foreseeable future and beyond, it's integral that schools prepare students for a workplace that is fluid and demanding. 

At THINK Global School, we prepare our students for the world of work by building up their 21st-century skills, the set of traits that employers and educators deem to be critically important for success in the workforce. To do so, we focus on three key areas: mastery, autonomy, and purpose. Below you can find information on each.  

Through our self-designed Changemaker Curriculum, we emphasize focusing on mastering skills and concepts rather than teacher lectures and textbook assignments. In any career, the way to become indispensable at what you do is through practice and building upon the skills you have in place. Our coursework is constructed around place and project-based learning, meaning students build their skill mastery by engaging in project modules with real-world applications.

Each term, students are presented with three teacher-led modules to select from. As an example, during our 2020 Panama term, some students elected to work on projects centered around blockchain applications, others designed innovative products in a digital fabrication workshop. Others built up their filmmaking skills by interviewing members of the Emberá Community and creating a documentary utilizing one of the five SPEED lenses: social, political, economic, environmental, or demographic. 

As you can see, each of these modules presented a very different driving question to explore, complete with different skills required to get the job done. We call those skills learning targets, and they act as assessment tools to measure project success. 

All projects at THINK Global School are tied to learning targets. Included in these learning targets are eleven 21st-century skills: 

• Visual Literacy
• Information Literacy
• Multicultural Literacy
• Global Awareness
• Adaptability/ Managing Complexity
• Self-Direction
• Creativity
• Risk-Taking
• Teaming and Collaboration
• Critical Thinking
• Effective Communication

Throughout their time at THINK Global School, students gain first-hand experience in the above skills as they are built into projects created by our educators (the aforementioned teacher-led module) and personal projects, which are designed by our students and approved by our educators. 

Students are considered a novice in all learning targets at the start of their TGS career, and as they demonstrate their knowledge, they can "level up" in mastery rank.  

We divide the level of mastery into three stages: Novice (can remember and understand), Specialist (can analyze, evaluate, and apply), and Master (can create new ideas and teach others). To ensure our students receive a comprehensive education, all students must achieve the rank of Novice in all of our learning targets, specialist in 70% of our learning targets, and complete at least one mastery project. 

The second way we prepare students for the world of work is by providing them with autonomy over their learning. We do this based on the belief that all learners' thinking should be respected, and that students should be free to form their own perceptions during the course of their work. By providing our students with autonomy, we're also making them responsible for their learning. This is important because when learning is self-directed, students are engaged, motivated, and recognize their individual needs. We really wanted to deviate from the one-size-fits-all approach of most standard education systems when creating the Changemaker Curriculum. It doesn't make sense to assign a uniform percentile to students of all different skills and abilities in our eyes. Less test culture. More student autonomy.

Through our project-based learning model, students are provided a driving question to answer at the start of the term, and it is up to them to formulate how to arrive at a conclusion. Rather than serve as teachers, our educators serve more in the role of mentors and project advisors, approving ideas and making sure students stay on track. 

We've found that being provided with autonomy over their work makes our students care more about their work. They are engaged and active, building up valuable 21st-century skills daily, including self-direction, creativity, and risk-taking. More than perhaps any other Changemaker Curriculum element, we encourage all educators to follow our path and switch to a more student-led approach. It might seem like a daunting proposition at first, but by utilizing quantitative tools such as the ‘Hope Survey’, we've been able to measure our students' satisfaction regarding engagement, belongingness, goal orientation, and autonomy, and the gains we've seen in these categories are nothing short of extraordinary. We're confident that would not be the case if we'd have stayed with a classroom-based approach. 

The third way we build 21st-century skills in our students is by helping them develop a sense of purpose through their studies. We are in a unique position as a school in that we can expose our students to the world firsthand. By the time our students graduate, they have lived and learned in up to ten different countries and heard critical perspectives on the social, cultural, economic, and environmental factors that shape those places through a combination of locals and guest speakers. 

Through these experiences, our students discover their purpose in life, and our educators work with them to develop the skills necessary to harness that purpose and bring about meaningful change.

Tackling these problems takes creativity, leadership, collaborative skills, global awareness, and self-direction, all skills that will ultimately serve them well in college and their career. 

Like to learn more about a THINK Global School education? Visit thinkglobalschool.org