ABSTRACT
The paper addresses why integrating the 21st century competencies in English teaching and English teacher education today is of vital importance. The paper begins by highlighting the key 21st century learning, literacy, and life competencies and showing how they map out to daily schooling of children in some of the most innovative schools in the United States. For educators whose contexts may not allow for immediate implementation of large-scale curricular changes, I describe smaller-scale daily routines that can also cultivate 21st century skills in ways that are more manageable for educators where curriculum or state standards may be externally imposed. This article concludes with a call to consideration of English teacher and teacher educator identity shifts that predicate the pedagogical practices grounded in 21st century skills and competencies. Specifically, educators are challenged to expand their identities from those of knowledgeable facilitators of English language learning and sole possessors of power over instructional decisions to those of youth capacity builders, fellow learners, and co-decision makers.
