"Rigor Redefined" By Tony Wagner

      In the article "Rigor Redefined" by Tony Wagner he describes what skills students will need if they are planning on surviving in the ever changing work world. Jobs are changing every day and different skills are required for different jobs. There are 7 main skills we are expected to have when it comes to the work world we will be living in in the future. They are 1.Critical thinking and problem solving 2.Collaboration and leadership 3.Agility and adaptability 4.Initiative and entrepreneurialism 5.Effective oral and written communication 6.Accessing and analyzing information and 7.Curiosity and imagination. After seeing what the people in the work world are looking for in their employees and why they are exactly looking for that you really think that schools need to be teaching students how to obtain and use these skills to their full extent, while still teaching them the required curriculum. After talking about the skills students should be obtaining in an everyday class room Wagner went on to talk about the classes he has visited and how majority of them are not giving students the skills they are gonna need one they reach the real world. Most of the classes he went to were students doing what they were told or copying things off the board. And these are not giving students any of the 76 skills listed above. Then Wagner talked about how the occasional class he would go to would be allowing students to use all of the skills and not even realize they were doing it. An example of one of these classes was an algebra II class where the teacher wrote a problem up on the board that the students wouldn’t know how to solve. They were told to work in group using what they learned in algebra I and geometry to find two ways to solve thins problem. Wagner explains how this uses all of the skills it should and it really makes you think about how this shouldn’t be a rare as he says. This should be the kind of learning going on in class every single day.

      After reading this article I really thought about all the classes I am in and how uncommon it is for us to do something in those classes that is helping us develop the skills we are going to need. Also it made me realize that in the majority of my classes we are doing stuff that doesn’t use a single one of the 7 skills. Sure, we use lots of skills in class, but how often is it that we are really pushing these to the full extent they have? This article really changed how I look at my classes and what we do in the class time we have. It also made me think about how I can push myself to use these skills even when my teacher isn’t.