Getting Unstuck #128: Helping All Students Think Critically . . . Like a Lawyer
Today on Getting Unstuck
One of those helping others on the journey of change is Colin Seale. Colin is an educator, attorney, and critical thinking evangelist. He is the author of Thinking Like a Lawyer, which we’ll discuss in this conversation.
The essential point in Colin’s own words
“When I started looking back at the way I was in first grade, I was getting in trouble left and right. But somehow I got selected to be in a gifted and talented program, where I was now getting bused because there was nothing offered in my neighborhood to serve kids who thought and approached the world like me. And here's where I saw the equity challenge really playing out: the exact things that used to get me in detention were now what was expected of me. And when I started thinking about this critical thinking gap in education, this idea that whether it's who gets access to gifted and talented programs, whether it's who gets access to advanced placement and IB programs, whether it's who gets access to even rigorous grade level material, these things are being split across racial socio-economic lines. And at the same time, everyone is saying, critical thinking is just so essential for college and career readiness for the future of work.”
How you can use this podcast
Take the “disruption” temperature in your school or classroom. As Colin asks, how might we shift our perspective so that “what we might see as resistant, or defiant behavior is actually high-level questioning — a demand for a strong justification? A demand for evidence is a massive critical thinking disposition that can spark all sorts of ingenuity and innovation”
As a teacher, analyze your own in-class questioning strategy. Do you ask more fact-based questions or more open-ended questions? If you’re an administrator observing teachers, where do your teachers fall in their behavior? Fact-based? Open-ended? In both cases, what is the energy level of students in those classes?
Where do you or your school fall on the question of how to cover the standards? Do the standards drive the curriculum, or do teachers have the freedom to teach as they see fit with the expectation and understanding that the standards will naturally be covered?
Connect with Colin
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thinklawUS/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/thinkLawUS
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ColinESeale
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thinklawus/