Rethinking Student Success in a VUCA world
In this post, I’d like to summarize the golden nuggets presented by Superintendent Michael Matsuda from Anaheim Union High School District at the Changing the Conversation event in Anaheim in August 2021:
First, Matsuda opened by stating that we live in a VUCA world, or a world of volatility, uncertainty, confusion, and ambiguity. He went on to explain the conditions for Gen-Z exacerbated by “Pandemic VUCA”, such as high unemployment, high debt, and a broken health care system, just to name a few. He used this anchoring article to explain how Google Certificates are disrupting the world of education as it is a way for people to gain knowledge and skills to land a job and/or grow their career or business without a college degree in a matter of 3-6 months.
With this in mind, he urged us to shift away from traditional education metrics to developing career and life skills, as well as emotional intelligence, to make education work for our students, not the other way around.
He highlighted the Career Preparedness Systems Framework that AUHSD upholds, which focuses on three key things:
Developing 21st-century soft skills through the 5 C’s (collaboration, communication, creativity, civic engagement, critical thinking, caring/compassion)
Elevating student voice through various school initiatives, and
Teaching students career and technical hard skills.
He concluded by saying that we must be intentional about creating a culture of continuous learning and redefine learning loss to engage and challenge our students as we head into a new school year. Finally, he closed by sharing this quote:
