We Are Teachers of Thinking!

Thinking is invisible.  Thank goodness, right?  Sometimes, the thoughts that are inside my head belong there, tucked deep where no one can see them.  This does create a problem, though. When considering our students, we can't see their thinking.  Even worse, we can't know by looking at them if they have the tools to think about what they are learning. Unfortunately, many don't. 

Attention: I want you to stop reading for just a moment and ask yourself this question: What do you do to help your students to be thinkers?

If you have a large list, kudos.  Please, tell us in the comments below what you do.  If your list is small, then the good news is, you have the power to change that.  You have the power to change your students' lives and help them to be thinkers!        

Education has a thinking problem.  It's not all our fault.  As educators, we understand the pressure to teach standards.  We have to prepare students for the end-of-the-year state assessments, right?  We all know, if our students don't perform well, we will be judged by our administrators and colleagues as "that teacher" who just can't cut it.  As a result, sometimes our classrooms become places that are teacher-centered and focus on work completion by students.  In the process, we forgot that we aren't just teaching standards.  We are doing something so much more important.  We are teaching thinking.  

I spend a lot of time contemplating thinking.  Does Colton understand the connections between WWI and WWII?  Can Aidan analyze both sides of the Confederate monument controversy objectively?  Is Lily reflecting on the paradox that there are all these rules for poetry that you don't even have to follow if you don't want to!? Ultimately, the question I ponder every day is how do I help my student be better thinkers?  And it has made all the difference.

I heard a teacher once complain that "these kids today can't think."  She went on to talk about how Playstations, Xboxes, cell phones, and iPads were the bane of education.  She blamed them for her students' lack of ability to think.  I was itching to ask her what she had done in her classroom to help her students be thinkers.  Had she asked questions to help them make connections to other learning? Had she included engaging discussions and writing activities that would make students' thinking visible? Had she thought about how she could get her students to be better thinkers?

We need to flip our priority.  Instead of teaching the standards to help our students think, we need to teach our students to think so they can master the standards.  This change in priority will affect every facet of our classrooms from the activities we plan, to the discussions that occur, to the products our students produce.

Teaching thinking has to be intentional.  It has to be something we mean to do.  Today's post is the first in a four-part series about intentionally teaching thinking.  The remaining posts will include:

• Essential Questions Drive Thinking
• Discussion Models To Promote Thinking
• Visible Thinking Through Writing

I hope you join me on this journey as we think about thinking.

This is the first installment of a four-part series on teaching thinking in the classroom.