INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev. — Last Tuesday night, author Bernie Trilling engaged a sold-out audience at Sierra Nevada College to envision what life will be like in 20 years for the beloved young children in our lives right now.

Everyone seemed to realize that it's nearly impossible to adequately picture or describe that future because the world, technology and society are changing so rapidly right now.

Trilling shared results from his work with the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (www.P21.org) — a nonprofit collaboration of 33 organizations which he co-chaired. This nation-wide group of businesses and educational foundations took two years to agree on a framework to describe all the skills, capacities and learning contexts necessary for graduates to be successful in life right now and tomorrow.

Bernie's summary of the framework includes mastery of the traditional “3 Rs” subjects (reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmatic) but also nurturing the new “7 C” skills and competencies: Critical thinking and problem solving, Communications (includes information and media literacy), Collaboration, Creativity and innovation, Computing and ICT (Information & Communication Technologies), Career and learning self-reliance and Cross-cultural understanding.

Many thanks go to our hard-working volunteer panel of education leaders who responded to high level questions about envisioning the opportunities and challenges of bringing forth such changes in their individual situations.

I, for one, appreciated everyone's openness and recognition of the continued need for collaborative change across the board.

Drawing on my consulting and educational experience in human and organizational change and transformation, I would say that the disruptions our community has experienced around education over the last year have provided rich fodder for taking significant next steps: perhaps we are ready for a quantum step, a leap-frog, toward becoming a model for 21st century learning — a truly world-class Education Destination?

Consider this vision: leaders from all schools (public and private) pre-K to 25 collaborating to nurture each individual child's joy of learning and success in life through a uniquely integrated, dynamic, and magnetic education-oriented community of which students and families from afar will clamor to be a part. Sound good to you?

— Mary M. Alber, PhD in Transformative Learning and Change, is a resident of Incline Village with a son at LTS and a daughter at IHS and is a volunteer speaker and sponsor coordinator for the 2011-12 Tahoe 21st Century Education Speaker Series.