7 Survival Skills, per Wagner CRITICAL THINKING AND PROBLEM SOLVING Wagner also writes about interview he did with other HR managers wherein they remark that critical thinking skills are among the most important skills. Wagner even says, "70 percent of employers rank high school graduates deficient in this area." Of course these skills are important, and I focus a lot on ensuring students are genuinely thinking and not memorizing information. I wonder, though, if we should only fault the education system. I mean, Wagner is correct that schools should be teaching these skills, but certainly other forces are at work here. Parents play an important role, too, as well as college. Even more, popular media perpetuates a lack of thinking. Some of the most nuanced, thought-provoking movies, for instance, are some of the worst performing at the box office. The most popular ones, which require no thinking, are movies like Transformers and movies based on comic books. So Wagner's First survival skill that he mentioned is well-received, but I think the focus to build this skill needs to include more than just high schools. COLLABORATION ACROSS NETWORKS AND LEADING BY INFLUENCE Wagner's second survival skill is collaboration and leading by influence. A quote I liked was "we have to interact around the globe with people from diverse cultures and religions." This is true, and I think it would be easy to incorporate into the high school curriculum. A simple online class would allow students to collaborate with other students from somewhere else, or the teacher could build into his curriculum diversity that educates students on others. Teachers can group students together who have different backgrounds and force them to learn about each other. This would help students collaborate when they get to the workplace. AGILITY AND ADAPTABILITY Third, Agility and Adaptability is essential. I worked in an environment where people were unwilling to change and it was frustrating. One can see this lack of agility and adaptability with regards to the common core. Whether these people think its inferrior than the status quo or they are just too lazy to change, either way, their lack of adaptability only hurts the kids. INITIATIVE AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP & EFFECTIVE ORAL AND WRITTEN COMMUNICATION Wagner's fourth and fifth skills go together I think. One who has initiative needs to be able to effectively communicate in a written and oral way. He must convince the people around him to follow him and clearly communicate goals, plans, etc. To have initiative but no effective communication would be a waste. The quote Wagner has, "what do you want me to take away from this meeting" is something teachers need to consider when planning objectives and assessments. We should think about how to effectively communicate our goals to students so that they know what we want them to walk out of the classroom thinking and feeling. ACCESSING AND ANALYZING INFORMATION Six is similar to the first (critical thinking). Of course we must do more than absorb information, but also analyze it. In our classes at CSUSM, we are taking in information all day on Mondays. However, as students we must decide what's useful, what's realistic, what applies to us, what we agree/disagree with, etc. I often teach students analytical skills when looking at primary source documents. They have to figure out: is this reliable? Why or why not? CURIOSITY AND IMAGINATION Seventh, I want to teach students to be curious. I want students to question why as a country we have done certain things (I teach history) and have them decide how it's like today. I tell my students things deliberately to make them angry, and make them say, "why is it this way?" This encourages them to investigate and want to know the answer. This survival skill is something I use in the classroom to make history fun. What Wagner is missing: Wagner focuses too much on tests and his dislike for them. Tests aren't necessarily bad, I don't think. Some tests are bad and some are not. Multiple choice/scantron tests? Almost universally bad. But tests that require critical thinking? Good, right? I think Wagner should write more about what features a good test has and how, specifically, educators can improve them. There was one other thing that he wrote about in chapter four that I previously mentioned disagreeing with. He says that when a teacher gave students two pages of just text, "2/3 of them refused to do the assignment." But when the assignment was broken up with graphics of various sorts, the number dropped to 1/3 who "refused to do the assignment." I have a couple problems with this. First, why are students refusing to do assignments? Since when do teachers permit that? Second, ok, great, kids like pictures more than words. Should we give them crayons and a coloring book to for an hour instead of reading? Lots of cool graphics are great and help me too, but there are times when reading a long text devoid of pictures is necessary. It's a skill for college and a skill for when our students get careers. It's surprising to me that Wagner so vehemently advocates training students for jobs and life outside of school and then misses this. If your boss hands you a report that he wants you to read and be familiar with it, would you "refuse to do it?" Or hand it back to him and demand he puts more pictures in the report? That's not real life. Our students need to learn to read long texts without accommodations sometimes. What could incorporating these skills look like in your class or school? And what I can commit to Lots of Wagner's ideas are things that I either already do or look forward to implementing in my classroom. For example, students need to be heterogeneously grouped as frequently as possible. This speaks to Wagner's second survival skill. Sometimes I find myself wanting to be the nice teacher and let students pick their partners or their groups, but there is real value in students interacting with their peers who they do not know and may have a different background. I also want to present things in a more discovery-based way. I want the curriculum to be something they figure out on their own. This accomplishes a few things. First, students enjoy it more. Second, they take ownership of what they learn. Most importantly, they are curious and they want to learn. For me, a social science teacher, I can see myself in a government classroom presenting students a case like flag burning, and having students assert what they think, but then setting them loose to go find the information about is it legal, should it be legal, why or why not. Students would be genuinely curious about something like this. And the content is framed in a way that's much more interesting than merely stating to kids, "ok so flag-burning is legal because of Texas v. Johnson." These sorts of things I can commit to doing. I'd also commit to requiring students to do more critical thinking. I can commit to eliminating multiple choice tests, in favor of short answer/essays. It takes more time to grade, of course, but I think that's a sacrifice worth making. How will you measure your success? It will be challenging to measure my success. Grading essays, for example, is subjective. If I want students to utilize critical thinking, than their answers must necessarily be longer and more essay-like. I can observe their essays over the semester and anecdotally decide if I think they're improving, but hard data would be difficult to obtain. I can fairly easily know if I am encouraging collaboration across networks. I will know how often I use homogenous, self-selected groups rather than the more beneficial heterogeneous ones. After reading this book, I dont think I will be letting students select their own groups anymore. It's not real life. Students must learn to work with others that they don't like, are unfamiliar with, etc. Last, how will I measure if students are enjoying it more? Mostly participation and then with the surveys I hand out at the end of the year. My students, as it is, don't raise their hands or participate in class. I know I will have succeeded if I can change that. If 10 (out of 30ish) raise their hands when I ask discussion questions, then I know I have succeeded. I will also give students a survey for the end of the year, and I will ask, "would you come to this class if you didn't have to?" If 2/3+ answer yes, then I have succeeded in my endeavor to make class interesting. My reflections on the how Wagner sees the motivation, Chapter 5
The first thing I thought when I read chapter five and the “declining work ethic” and motivation Wagner describes in chapter five was, “really? Is this something measurable or merely anecdotal?” I would bet that older generations are always saying things like that about the younger ones, and that this perception is not a new one. One of the dissenters he mentions, Ellen Kumata, says that there work ethic is different, not less. Much of the research he describes resonates with my observations in the classroom. He’s correct that students “constantly connected,” communicate all the time, and like “instant gratification.” I agree that his view that these are aspects of their lives that we have to harness and utilize. I have as many group and partner activities as possible, because they like the connection and I think it builds good collaboration skills that they need. One interesting thing Wagner writes about that kind of jibes with my experience is when he says that, through interviews, he’s found that students are impatient with lectures and crave more class discussions. My students have told me they prefer lectures as a learning method. And getting students to discuss aspects of history in my class has been challenging. Perhaps this is because my classes are in the morning, but my students generally don’t want to participate in class or have discussions. I also wasn’t sure if I agreed (or disagreed) with what he says about students refusing to read large amounts of texts unless it had lots of graphics. Is this preparing them for college? Should we adapt to students or should we help them to prepare to read texts? It’s a necessary skill to have. In the workplace especially, it would not be appropriate for students to “refuse” to read a large piece of text that one’s boss gave to them, and then complain that there weren’t enough graphics. I think he’s right about giving students ownership of their curriculum, and the benefits that come with that. I’ve mentioned that in many other blog posts, so I won’t go into that again. Lastly, I agree with Wagner’s insight into disengagement among students. It would be useful for teachers to know why our students aren’t engaged. Without this information, the students are destined to end up like Juan in the story. If only one teacher had taken the time to see why Juan wasn’t engaged --his lack of reading skills-- someone could’ve rectified this and changed Juan’s education trajectory for the rest of his life. He could be engaged and be a thoughtful student. Students like this need an adult advocate to be successful. My reflections me teaching on High Tech High, as Wagner presents in Chapter 6 Overall I would love to teach at High Tech High. The first thing I read from the founder of HTH, that I really liked was his description of AP courses as "a mile-wide and an inch deep." This description is dead on, i thought. He goes on to provide a very apt analysis of something I had such a hard time defining: rigor. It's "...deepening the quality of analysis," he says. I would enjoy working at HTH at least partly because I know it's run by a school whose leader shares a similar view as I. I also loved that high tech high seeks to fill its classrooms with students that are representative of the community. One reason I got into education was to do my part to combat poverty, and I see education as the best way to do it. So the idea that HTH is not just giving an education to already well-off students is really encouraging to me. That the students arrive mostly by public transportation is surprising to me, given that San Diego's mass transit is at once expensive, takes a long time, and inconvenient. I was amazed that the school only spends $6,200 per pupil. This is very low relative to national standards and yet the facility described by Wagner seems very nice and students seem to have resources they need. I'm not quite sure how to reconcile these things except to speculate that other districts are wasting money or HTH receives private donations that don't get counted in that $6,200 statistic. Overall it seems like the students are truly getting real world skills like working together and writing. I would love to observe a day of classes at this school and see how it all works. I think it's worth pointing out that these students do have an inherent advantage over many kids at regular, comprehensive high school. That advantage is parents who care. If the parents are knowledgeable and proactive enough to put their students into a lottery to get into HTH, they obviously care about and are involved in their students education. I read this article which chronicles a High School Learning Coach's two-day shadowing of a student. Here are my thoughts about how her experience compares to my own experience and my personal philosophy. My school seems somewhat like the school described the story. The story also gave me a couple ideas on how I can improve students learning with some techniques that I would not have otherwise thought of. As in the story, my school site has blocks. Blocks can seem like forever. I do not fault students for getting restless, bored, and exhausted from sitting all day. I hadn't considered the educational benefit that might be provided by allowing students the opportunity to stand up and stretch. This was something I took from the article that I know I can incorporate into my planning immediately. I don't know that I would have basketball hoop. I feel like that would be distracting for students. I do however, agree with the author's position that we should somehow wind down the class near the end of the period, rather than trying to continue direct instruction right up to the bell. Like it or not, most students have checked out within five or so minutes of the bell ringing. The author mentions that in the school she was at, the students don't talk much. It would surprise me to learn if this was because they weren't provided the opportunity to talk. In many of my classes, students do not want to speak. I often pose questions to the class and no one raises their hand. That is one way in that I think my school site is different than her's. Also, there is not a lot of direct instruction either. I keep my direct instruction to less than 30 minutes for students because they often get bored. It sounds like the author's situation is different. Lastly, her admission of using sarcasm in her class both jibes with my current experience and my personal beliefs. It's reprehensible, I think, for a teacher to roll his/her eyes at a student's question, no matter how many times he/she has repeated his/herself. In all, I found a couple good pointers from this article. I came across some ideas that fit well with my personal philosophy -- not lecture driven, for example -- and a few that didn't. I've not taught in a school using a traditional, six-period day, so I'm not sure how it compares to a block schedule. For now, I like the blocks, as long as students get the chance to stretch and break up the instruction with discussion and movement. I read this article by the New York Times about the skills Google looks for in their candidates. Here's what I thought about whether I was preparing my students for a job in the classroom and my feelings on the philosophies expressed in the article more generally: I really enjoyed this article and I’m now thinking how I can better prepare students to get a job at Google. I work to get students to think about things in different perspectives a lot. I say, “how would you feel if you were ___ in this situation? And what about if you were _____?” This speaks to the “pulling info from various sources.” I agree with their basic philosophies, although some of the skills seem very difficult to teach in class. I agree that teaching ownership is important, and this can be done easily. I would give students challenging work, but allow them choice among different projects. With this, they complete something that they wanted to do, and they can be proud of the result, as opposed to: “here are some questions you’ll need to answer by the end of the unit.” They would not be proud nor take ownership in that. I hadn’t considered how to teach leadership before. I use a lot of group projects in my classroom, and I assumed students would learn leadership naturally from this setup. However, I realize that this may not be true, as particular students may always end up being the leader. In my class, I would have to assign students roles to ensure that all students get a chance to be the leader. The last good skill the article mentions is knowing when to back down, and when to be assertive. I’ve always wanted to organize a debate or socratic seminar and this is an optimal way to have students know to back down or be assertive. If the opposing side in the debate has some fact they didn't know, like the article mentions, then they may back down. Or they may press on. In any case, it’s great mental exercise for them and they are building their cognitive abilities, making them better suited for working at Google. Here's my reflection on this video I was amazed by some of the facts the video flashed up. 11 hours consuming media? The ways in which I’d like to use this in the classroom are to include more media in my curriculum/instruction. I’m not sure which media or how; however, given that students are spending so much time in front of a screen, it may help them to use it in the classroom as well. I hope to work at a school that embraces technology, eschews censorship, and provides adequate resources for me to use technology in my classroom. Currently, my school site has zero laptops/tablets/chromebooks for students, the internet is too slow to stream videos, and the projector malfunctions frequently. The best I can say for my current situation is that the TV has a VCR. I find this truly inhibiting, and this has made me realize how much I value technology in the classroom. This video also speaks to a lot of Wagner’s book discusses. The scantrons and rote memorization don’t lead us to real achievement. As the video says, “students guess what the teacher wants them to say.” This leads to “standardization of students,” as the video puts it. It is true that the authorities are no longer the guardians of knowledge, and that students could have the content knowledge we share with them merely by googling. I have a hard time, however, getting students to give me less than standardized answers. Students indeed try to write an answer that they think I would like to see. In fact, some ask me, “what do I write here?” Really, they mean, “what do you want me to write do that I can get an A?” I stress, as the video mentions, the need for students to write what they feel. I try to challenge them to come up with less standardized answers so that in discovering these answers for themselves, they are developing skills of evaluation and appliacton. My reflection on this video: The author here is very supportive of discovery-based education. His passion for having students try, fail, and figure things out for themselves relates to the type of classroom I hope to create. In my methods class, we discuss not pigeon-holing students’ answers. Rather, the key to their learning is to have them discover for themselves their answers and how they feel about ______ or _______. The video speaks of similar things. In the classroom, this looks like: open-ended questions that lead students’ down a road that neither the student nor the teacher knows where it goes. This, as the video says, can lead students who are surprised themselves by their own results. The video reflects my outlook on education. I want students to create their own beliefs about historical theories and concepts, rather than them memorize the connections I make between events/ideas. Students learn the content better this way, they enjoy it more, and they are concurrently learning investigative skills and learning to deal with trial and error as well. Here is my blog for chapters three and four of Tony Wagner's The Global Achievement Gap.
Chapter 3: Compare Wagner's discussion of testing with your experiences. Do you agree or disagree? Wagner believes that many of the tests we are giving our students -- state exams as well as regular ones in our classroom -- basically do not accurately assess our students' achievement of real world skills. Often, he argues, they assess students' rote memorization of facts. I agree with him, and especially so in his characterization of the AP exams. Those tests, especially, value breadth of knowledge over depth of knowledge. With depth of knowledge comes the skills Wagner values (analysis, application, etc). I never took the CAHSEE exam, so I can't really speak to its assessment standards (nor can I remember the state exam I took twelve years ago). However, my impressions from talking to other teachers are basically that it falls in line with the other state exams. While the CAHSEE does require some writing, I've been told that many of the essays are graded by computers that look only for specific phrases, and not content, cohesiveness, or development of the actual essay. This is, of course, a terrible way of grading and assessing students' writing abilities or critical thinking. Elsewhere in my personal experiences, I have witnessed the over-reliance on tests that don't measure skills. Specifically, I mean multiple choice tests. Working with cooperating teachers limits the freedom I have to create assessments, so I am often executing their plans and methods for teaching/assessing. The teachers I have worked with like multiple choice tests for a few reasons. First, they're easy to grade. Second, they give everyone a chance to get a good score. And third, students (their thinking goes) aren't capable of responding to essays, doing document-based questions, and rationally making an argument. It's sad to me that the teachers have such a lack of faith in their students abilities, and also that rather than teach them the skills they need to do the more difficult, open-ended questions, they'd rather skip them altogether. I also really appreciated Wagner's take on the higher level math assessments. I've made the argument to colleagues that I think the higher level math classes are a waste of time for most people because the skills they pretend to teach aren't applicable to the real world. My colleagues, responding to my assertions, typically give the same response that Wagner mentions. "It trains the brain to ________." Does it though? As Wagner points out, there isnt much if any evidence for this. Yet it seems to be a given. I've always thought that the probability and statistics classes Ive taken were the most beneficial to me. Given how many math classes I've taken, it's striking that the usefulness of that single class is the exception, rather than the rule for math classes. > Chapter 4: Compare Wagner's discussion of teacher education with your own. How would you design the program if you were King of the World? Sadly, I generally agree with what Wagner has to say about teacher ed. My thoughts on the program reflect what a lot of what his survey respondents said. Many things I've learned seem theoretical and not realistic. The curriculum approach that many educators love to hate, "teaching to the test," is exactly how the program is run throughout California. It's not the fault of the programs, themselves, of course. Rather, it's the state that mandates these assessments that force schools to teach to them. Are teachers better off because of the TPAs in California? Are students learning more because of the added assessment that credential candidates now must pass? I don't know these answers, and I doubt the state of California does either. Wagner's bit about teaching teachers skills and not just preparing us to take the TPAs is dead on. Granted, I've learned a lot from actual experience in clinical practice, but I don't feel as though my classes have given me the skills I need for classroom management among other things. My favorite class has always been my methods class. Until now, I had not realized why this might be the case. I assumed it was the teacher (he's great), but now I see that the reason is more likely because he is teaching skills, not content. The methods teacher isn't trying to prepare us for the TPAs, and therefore is free to teach what he thinks we need to be successful history teachers. I think all of our professors are great, and I would love to see them teach unbound by the pressures of the TPA. If I were King of the world, I would get rid of TPAs. I might keep some sort of assessment, but there would only be one. And it would measure skills, not something like, "does the candidate know what the right thing to do is?" That's all TPAs look for. Does the teacher know how to use assessments? Do they know how to differentiate for ELLs and special needs students? Of course, the operative word here is KNOW. Knowledge, is of course, the lowest level of thinking. If I were King, my assessment would measure skills. I would change the curriculum to be less geared toward the assessment and more collaborative generally. I always learn a lot discussing instructional strategies and classroom management techniques with my colleagues. I would ensure that through teaching skills, emphasizing collaboration and sharing ideas, that candidates were confident when they went into their classroom by themselves for the first time. Here is a little storify I put together using my colleagues' tweets about chapters 1 and 2 of Tony Wagner's "The Global Achievement Gap."
I wanted to learn more about the genesis of my upcoming 20% project. I'm excited to explore a subject that interests me, which feels a lot less like tedious work and more like something I enjoy. The number of things (e.g., gmail) that have come from this is encouraging. One of my favorite things I did in undergrad was the last paper I wrote as a senior, which allowed me to explore any topic I wanted and write a paper about it. Despite it being 10+ pages, I loved it. I was doing research and writing about topics that I was passionate about (cuba and socialism). After watching this short video, I'm encouraged and excited to start my own project. |
AuthorAspiring History Teacher Archives
April 2015
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