How does my school measure up to 21st Century Standards?

How does my school measure up to 21st Century Standards?
As much as I would like to answer this question about our high school students, I’m not very familiar with the way that it is run any longer. On top of that, we have a wonderful librarian that was moved from the Middle School to the High School this year, of which, I think will bring much needed improvements. Therefore, I will be talking about our Elementary Library for this assignment. Looking at the first standard, Inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge, I have to remind myself we are talking about the library and not within my classroom. Overall, as a school I think we excel at implementing critical thinking, however, upon looking at specifics, I see some gaps. For example, students (even at a 5th grade level) are unaware of the term copyright (1.3.1). I did a small activity with students this summer and had to do a mini lesson on what that meant. I think it’s important that they’re aware that even though it’s on the web, there is still an ‘author’ to it and you can’t steal their words. Along the same frame of mind, students also have problems understanding what a reliable source looks like (1.2.4). I can see some of our students searching for ‘Egyptian Myths’ and being linked to a site with zero evidence to support it, and not understand why that’s irresponsible to use. On a lighter note, I think our library is doing a great job on many other skills; searching for new understanding (1.1.3), demonstrate mastery of technology tools available (1.1.8), and to use information technology responsible (1.3.5). Each child has to sign an AUP at the beginning of the school year stating the expectations and the consequences if those are broken.
Standard 2 I think can be used mostly in the upper grades for leading learning, but there are a few that I see to be very important in younger grades as well. For example, our students are good about using technology and other tools to organize information (2.1.4), but they’re not great about how to act on the information, whether to accept, reject, or modify it (2.4.1). I see a lot of these sub-standards in the use of writing papers or creating projects, and that’s why the standard 2.1.5 really jumps out to me at something we excel at. The ability to collaborate is important, not only among students, but with staff as well, and that’s why this standard is so important.
One thing that I think our school struggles with as a whole is the ability to link our learning with events outside of the classroom. For example standard 3.1.5, suggests that learning is connected with community issues. Every once in awhile will something come up that we see is important enough to form a lesson around. However, personally, I struggle with the ability to fit this into my already tight schedule, and the fact that most of the time these events are politically natured or controversial. This leads us to the standard of 3.3.1, respecting people’s opinions. Adults struggle with this quite a bit themselves, and often times their ideas or prejudices will rub off on children. I find it hard (or really impossible) to say to a student, “Well, what you’ve been told isn’t completely true,” or “You’ve been given the wrong information.” I think the best way to teach this standard is through example, or larger, worldlier ideas instead of something local.
If there is one standard that our library excels at it’s the 4th one! Students are always encouraged to look for and check out books that appeal to them or pursue further knowledge (4.1.1, 4.1.2). Our students have 6 years within the same library, so by the second or third year they look at it as a second home within school. This makes them feel comfortable enough to come ask questions, and how to use the library when looking for appropriate resources. One thing I think we can work on as a school with this standard is the safe practice of ethical and personal electronic communications and interactions (4.3.4). So many of these students don’t realize that what you do online can leave a mark forever, and can usually be traced back, even if it’s deleted. They don’t understand how to change their settings to ‘private’ or who to trust on the web and who not to. Part of me wants to say that some of these things are the responsibility of the parent, but the other part of me knows that information will never be given out or dealt with correctly.