How ESSA Can Shape a General Education Classroom

As the successor to No Child Left Behind begins its march through public education, it will create many ways for “real-world” skills to be integrated into all classrooms. The Every Students Succeeds Act, better known as ‘ESSA,’ provides opportunity for classrooms to incorporate 21st century skills into the daily curriculum. Doing so will help create more robust and workplace-proficient students, and it is a welcome academic reform.

With such a push to integrate 21st century skills in the classroom, some teachers might feel that they must change what they teach to accomplish this goal. I argue that they simply need to look to where the content they teach will ultimately take a student, and use industry’s approaches to those skills to find the best way to guide learning. This could be accomplished by reaching out to local businesses or CTE teachers to see how the performance of the ‘4 Cs’ are measured by employers. The ‘4 (or 5) Cs’ of 21st century skills are creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration (with the addition of culture, connectivity or climate often making an appearance.)

The education and business worlds are constantly trying to reinvent themselves to gain traction in some direction. The major difference between the two worlds is that businesses aim to succeed financially for their stakeholders’ gain and education institutions are measured by the academic success of their students. There is a shift taking place in many school districts across the nation in which student academic success is directly aligned –through business partnerships, advisory boards, business councils and chambers of commerce – to financial outcomes for cities or regions.

In the years to come, look for more businesses to be a part of meetings about curriculum development, project–based learning experiences, teacher externships and CTE class integration into school systems. They realize the power in creating a pipeline for impassioned students who have the skills that would be most beneficial outside of academia.

This shift will be the driving force forward for teachers who search for how to use the Cs of 21st century skills in their classrooms.

By Adam Guidry, Lead Teacher
Academy of Environmental and Urban Planning
Glencliff High School, Nashville, TN