Blog Posts for 21st Century Skills

Business leaders are calling for workers who can solve problems and innovate solutions, but how can educators teach such abstract skills? After all, isn't every problem unique? Doesn't every solution differ? Yes. But the fundamental tools of problems solving are common to all situations, and they can be taught. The two most important mental tools are critical thinking and creative thinking.

Critical thinking is convergent. It focuses intently on a topic, paying careful attention to logic and rules. Critical thinking breaks a subject into its parts and investigates how the parts relate to each other: categorizing, sequencing, comparing, ranking. It is in-the-box thinking.

Creative thinking is divergent. It sees a topic as a whole and imagines it as an analogy for something else: envisioning, improvising, riffing, wondering. Creative thinking reaches out to explore possibilities and defies convention and rules. It is out-of-the-box thinking.

Communication is complex. Students need to be able to write to different audiences. They need to create an appropriate voice for each topic and purpose. They need to understand how to get their point across in a larger context. All of this complexity can be bewildering. When I help students analyze communication situations, I use a simple graphic:

My friend Oliver Schinkten knows 150 awesome human beings. They’re students in his Communities and leadership classrooms at Oshkosh North High School, and they routinely do amazing things.

Last year, each student in Communities found and interviewed a local veteran of World War II, the Vietnam War, or the Korean War. They prepared questions, conducted and recorded hour-long interviews, edited them into stories, and created keepsake DVDs for the veterans and their families. The students then planned and ran an event celebrating the service of these people and presenting them with the DVDs. Afterward, many families contacted Oliver to tell them how moving and powerful the experience was, and how the DVD was a priceless heirloom they would pass down for generations.

Pretty awesome stuff for high schoolers.

Or how about the hydroponics lab that the students are building? It isn’t just a 48-foot long hoop house that will raise fish and fresh vegetables around the year to be used in the cafeteria and sold locally. It’s also a STEM Learning Center, creating a living lab for students from Oshkosh North and offering educational tours to school groups from around the area.

And it’s being funded, designed, built, and staffed by high school students.

People often assume that Oliver is teaching a gifted class, but he has public-school students from all different backgrounds, with a variety of historic levels of achievement. He says that the difference is authenticity. When students realize that what they are doing matters and is real, they engage, and the results speak for themselves.

During the 2012 election campaign, the Communities classroom created a non-partisan Web site that factually reported on the many issues in that divisive campaign. Read more

As you know, group work can give teachers headaches and students nightmares. If set up poorly, collaborative projects often result in one person doing all of the work, while others contribute minimally or actually disrupt. Arguments, inefficiency, mess, and chaos follow closely.

When set up well, though, group work taps into the power of collaboration. Here are 5 keys to setting up successful student collaborations.

1. Define group success. The first key to successful student collaboration is to make sure the group members have a common goal. They need to work together to accomplish a specific task. They will either succeed together or fail together. For everyday collaborations, make your expectations clear verbally: "Turn to your partner, discuss page 63, and answer the questions together." For large-scale group assignments, write out what success will look like for each group:


Download a free Word template.

2. Define individual success. The whole group succeeds or fails together, yes, but you should also establish expectations for individual contributions. For quick collaborations, specify what individual success is: "Each person needs to contribute one answer, and each person will report a different person's answer to the whole class." For larger-scale collaborations, write out what you expect of each group member:


Download a free Word template.

You may have heard colleagues talk about their PLNs—their personal learning networks—or you may have one of your own. But just what is a personal learning network, and why is it so helpful for educators?

What is a PLN?

A personal learning network consists of the people, places, and things that help you learn. By definition, every lifelong learner has a PLN, whether the person realizes it or not. Also, every person who has a PLN is a lifelong learner. Let’s imagine, for example, that you are a relatively new teacher. Your PLN might look like the following:

As a novelist, I love sensory details: the red scarf, the crumbling cookie, the scent of coming rain. They’re just words, but they can take us away to other places. The right sensory details allow readers to encounter the writer’s experience as if it were their own.

Using the Five Senses

The different senses are weighted individually, bearing unique effects. Understanding how a particular sense impacts the reader can help the writer create specific effects:

• Seeing is believing: People trust what they see. That’s why eyewitnesses say, “I saw it with my own eyes!” If you want readers to believe something, show them.

  Jackson marched up the street toward Tawni’s house, the present box clutched in his fingers. Up ahead, her front porch light beamed yellow. He slowed on the sidewalk. He’d have to stand on that porch for the whole block to see, ring the bell, wait, and hope.

  A car cruised slowly past, the driver rubbernecking.

  Jackson turned away and peered at the card on top of the present. It was bent. His thumb had pressed a small crater into the drawing of mistletoe.

  He glanced one last time at the glowing porch, then turned toward the street and crossed it, jamming the card into a garbage can waiting in the gutter.

• Did you hear that? Hearing is about understanding how a person feels or thinks. To reveal characters, have them speak. Hearing is also about speculation. You hear a footstep. You hear running water. Use sounds to create speculation about what is happening.

  Outside Tawni’s window, a garbage can rattled loudly in the street. An old man shouted a threat, and a young man echoed it. Tawni plucked out her earbuds and tiptoed to the window to peek out.

  No one was there. Rain began to patter in the lengthening shadows.

  Shivering, Tawni drew the sash closed, clicked the lock, and dragged down the fluttering shade.

  “Tawni,” came a muffled voice outside her window, “I’m getting soaked.”

  Her breath caught. “Who’s there?”

  “Jackson.”

  Another voice—Daddy yelling from the basement: “Who you talking to, Tawni-Girl?”

  “Nobody, Daddy. It’s just me—singing to my MP3!”

These days, people talk about xenophobia—the fear of strangers. In the ancient world, though, people had xenophilia—the love of strangers. Locals were expected to welcome travelers into their homes and offer them food and entertainment. After all, strangers brought news from far-off places, gifts of precious spices, music, art, and ideas.

Five Strangers in the Classroom

As we strive to create student-centered classrooms, we need to invite certain strangers into our midst. These strangers may make us uncomfortable, may rock our routines—but they also introduce the wonders of the world. Make sure to welcome the following strangers into your class:

• Uncertainty: In the teacher-centered model, you control everything, minimizing uncertainty. The problem is that you have to control everything, and that’s a huge burden. In the student-centered model, you and the students share the burden. That means there will be moments of uncertainty. Welcome them. Uncertainty creates space for students to step up, propose a direction, and learn leadership.
• Shared Responsibility: Oddly enough, education reform has stripped students of responsibility for their success or failure: A bad test grade is somehow the teacher’s fault. Students used to cheat on tests, but now teachers do because they have more at stake. This has to change. Students need to actively seek their education, not passively receive it. After all, they’re the ones who will suffer the consequences of a poor education. Empower students by making them responsible for their own failures and successes.
• Disagreements: We’ve come to believe that disagreements should be quelled, but a disagreement about ideas is a beautiful thing. If half the class thinks the Westward Expansion was a triumph and the other half thinks it was a tragedy—let them argue! Let them support their positions, use logic, answer objections, and appeal to their opponents. Arguments require engagement, critical thinking, and communication.