21st Century Skills - Are These Modeled In Your Youth Organization?

Below is a graphic from an article on the World Economic Forum web site, titled, "What are 21st Century Skills Every Student Needs? I encourage you to read and share this with others.

Graphic from World Economic Forum article

As I looked through the list, these seem to be skills and habits that apply generically to all of the situations a young person will encounter as he/she travels through life. Anyone working with young people should be looking at these lists and thinking of ways the programs and services they provide reinforce one, or many, or these goals.

However, I'd encourage two other forms of learning.

One is "content".  This concept map includes pie chart graphics, that show different issues and challenges facing Chicago and the world, which need to be understood, and solved. Building understanding, solutions and them developing on-going actions requires the skills and habits suggested in the WEF article. However, learning about problems and solutions, requires on-going learning, drawing from content libraries that focus on specific issues.

The second is "process" or "systems thinking".  What are all the things you need to know to solve a complex problem. That would include habits and skills, and content. However, knowing how to sequence steps to achieve a goal, and how to build the public will and on-going support to stay focused on a problem for many years, and in many places, is also a skill that needs to be learned.

This concept map illustrates steps in the thinking process that need to be included in order for mentor-rich, non-school, tutor, mentor and learning programs to reach k-12 youth in more of the high poverty neighborhoods of Chicago and the world, and for more of those programs to have on-going strategies that help kids move through school and into jobs and careers free of poverty.

The also steps apply to other issues.

I point to nearly 200 non-school Chicago area youth serving programs in this list and to many others in Chicago and around the USA in this, this and this sections of the Tutor/Mentor Connection web library.

They all need to have one or more people reading my articles and sharing them and the links I point to with others in their organization, as part of their own on-going learning and process improvement.