Imagine yourself in the middle of the war having no armor and weapons to protect yourself. Your state of being while you imagine yourself in that situation will be our state if we are not fully armored with skills and knowledge in facing the challenges that 21st century brought to us. In a real war proper weapons must be used, but what proper weapons are we going to use in the challenges we are facing right now in 21st century? In a real war all people play an important role, no exception happened, but in facing challenges brought by the 21st century are we all equipped? Do we need to have exception to happened? Do we need to let students with disabilities left behind?
We are now in the 21st century facing different challenges brought by the advancement of technology, a war to be considered, so to better prepare ourselves with it, we need to be equipped with an armor and weapons and that is the 21st century skills. For the teachers, they can help the students applied what they learn in real life problems and develop the essential skills needed for them to be prepared in those challenges. According to Educational Leadership (as cited in Oliver, 2016), “A growing number of business leaders, politicians, and educators are united around the idea that students need ‘21st century skills’ to be successful today”. It is also supported by the report of National Education Association (2015), which found that what was considered a good education in the past years ago is no longer enough for the success in college, career and citizenship in the 21st century. So indeed, in our changing world today we need to also change our ways and our strategies to help us battle for those challenges brought by the changes we all experienced right now.
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In the past years learning '3Rs' (reading, writing, and arithmetic) is already enough, but today if we want to help our society, we must be good communicators, creative, critical thinkers, and have collaboration (4Cs). Those skills will help us find opportunities and make possible solutions to any problems we are all going to encounter in the future. Learning 21st century skills does not only apply in regular students, but also for those students with disabilities. Inclusive education plays an important role on it, where it will act as a platform to every student with or without disabilities to enhance their skills. We can't just leave them behind the war of 21st century. Each student will be offered more opportunities, where in students with disabilities will be look for what abilities they have, and not on what disabilities they have. The National Center for Learning Disabilities (2019) believes that if we neglect to provide students with disabilities the 21st century skills and dispositions, it will further widen the opportunity gap for these students. Let them have the opportunity to showcase their skills and knowledge. Let them feel that they have important roles to play in our community, that they are valued and appreciated. Aside from that they should be prepared to face the realities, the challenges and the possibilities that the future will going throw at them.
Education should be a place where it will be more about encouraging student to do real and meaningful work that matters in our community. In the school, they tend to let the students do their projects and other activities, showing it only on the eyes of our teachers and doing it only for grade requirements. But if the students at early age are already engaged in doing some of the school's activities or projects for our community, then people in our community can see their work and see the students’ potential skills to help the community. Students will see the truth about the community's problems, develop their initiative to help the community and know how to deals on the realities they will all going to face. Through that school and community will have collaboration.
All students with or without disabilities must have awareness on their skills and to the competences that our community in 21st century looks for, it will help them prepare on the challenges that they'll going to face outside the premises of the school. We must open our eyes, heart and mind that students with disabilities are also part in our community and they all have something to offer to help our community. The 21st century skills have 4Cs to offer to us as the main skills in learning to deals with the innovation in the 21st century. These skills can be practice in the hand of our education system. Therefore, students, teachers, school and community must work side by side, because this will be our weapon to face the challenges of the 21st century.
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