Educational Leadership - October 2017

cross grade levels, teachers work to ensure that students develop their thinking skills.

Becoming educated is much more than collecting facts and details. We all hope our students will become thinkers who can work out solutions to the complex problems they will face, problems we may not even have thought of yet. When students become problem solvers, they become future-proof. We see this as much more than future-ready. Future-proof students know how to learn, and they know what they still need to learn. They also know they’ll be faced with a variety of challenges and that they’ll need to rally resources and figure out ways to meet those challenges. Over time, and with practice, they will become quicker at problem solving to the point that it will become a skill they own and can transfer across time and space. That’s when we are rewarded.

But hope isn’t a plan. We cannot simply hope that students become problem solvers; we need to offer intentional and targeted instruction that builds their skills. Learners need teachers to guide their strategic thinking—which is much more purposeful, slow, and conscientious than everyday thinking—so that this mode of thinking becomes enshrined as habit.

Preparing for a Prompt

In the video accompanying this column, Nancy
engages a group of 10th grade students. From a
choice of several books that explore the question of
how our social and cultural community or context
shape who we are, the students in this group have
selected to read The Absolutely True Diary of a
Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (Little, Brown
and Company, 2007). These students have yet to
demonstrate their skills in drawing conclusions
from texts. In previous lessons, they made guesses
or used their personal experiences to respond to
questions and engage in discussion on texts. Nancy
is concerned that they won’t perform well when
given a writing prompt (which is a type of problem
a student needs to marshal resources for and
solve), particularly this upcoming prompt:
How does our social and cultural community or
context shape who we are? After reading The Abso-
lutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman
Alexie, identify one or more themes (big ideas) and
provide specific evidence from the text to support
your analysis. Remember to apply insight by citing
small but important details, and address the compli-
cated issues that Alexie raises in the short story. 1