Thinking Skills in a 5th Grade Social Studies Project

We recently worked with a group of educators on an innovative Social Studies project for the school district's 5th grade students. To complete the project, students study the relationships among several cultures. They choose from 8 ambitious questions - for example, "Why do cultures create governments?" "What is the impact over time of geography on a culture?" - to structure their projects. But what's next? And how do teachers manage this project?

We worked with the district's instructional specialists to find commonalities among these diverse projects. In the end, we found that 3 guiding questions would help students succeed regardless of the topic they chose.

Even if you're not teaching 5th grade Social Studies in this district, check out these two lesson plans:

• Project Overview
  
• Leadership Past and Present (includes lesson plan and video demo)
  
• Comparing Art Forms (includes lesson plan and video demo)
  

Proactive Health and Fitness at ThinkWorks

Some ThinkWorkers used to be athletes and some didn't, but there hasn't been much to say about the topic for any of us in the recent past. We've all been working hard and hardly working out. We open the windows to oxygenate and turn on the espresso machine to increase our heart rates. The only one who bikes to work is Julia—on her little Honda Rebel. But that's all changing now.

Can you imagine a company with less than ten full-time employees—each one basically representing his or her own department—making its next hiring move to bring in a fitness trainer? That's just what ThinkWorks has done in adding Jared Palmer, certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist, to our staff. Our new Director of Proactive Health and Fitness is in the process of setting up our new gym--in the room right next door, where our building happened to have a vacancy. And he's helping each staff member outline our personal goals for increased physical wellness, strength, and stamina. He's even looking at nutritional habits with us so we can eat our way toward feeling better too.

How did such a thing come to be? As Jared says of his new position, "This isn’t the most common job in the fitness industry." Not that he's complaining. To get to work one-on-one with a small staff and chart how their work with him impacts their overall job performance and personal well-being is for him a dream-come-true.

The one who dreamed it up was Derek, our fearless leader, president and cofounder of ThinkWorks. He had a lot of time for dreaming when he was down for about three weeks in the spring. Was this before or after Laura (vice president and cofounder) spent three weeks on her couch? It's hard to keep track in the blur of intense (should I say relentless?) travel schedules interspersed with late nights and early mornings when they're back on site in Ithaca. Anyway, life forced them both to pause. And what they came to was that changing the world one desk at a time takes not only revolutionary ideas and great people (they've got both) but also physical stamina. But who has time to exercise?

We all do—now that Derek thought to colocate work-out facilities with our offices and hire someone to manage our training. Is this exciting or what? It's one thing to decide to exercise. It's something else altogether to have the space and time to do it all in a day's work. And to set goals with another human being as witness who will hold us accountable for meeting them! We're all abuzz here at ThinkWorks.

Keep in mind that this is a company with very high employee satisfaction already. In a recent impromptu office survey done behind the bosses' backs, no one scored their job satisfaction below an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10—1 being abysmal and 10 being as happy as they could imagine being in a job. (One show-off gave it an 11.) We're happy already and expect to get happier with this change. In fact, ThinkWorkers expect visible gains in physical wellness, efficiency and alertness, job satisfaction, personal happiness, and general well-being.

We'll keep you posted, because there's going to be a lot to tell. It's an amazing experiment to have the privileges of partaking in. It's going to be an adventure for all of us.

See this story as a news item on our Website.

Would You Vote for Smaller Classes or Better Teachers?

The latest and greatest, most cutting-edge research in education was funded by the Gates Foundation (maybe you've heard of philanthropists Bill and Melinda) and had the most fascinating results--kind of like putting chocolate chip cookie dough into the oven and pulling out cookie dough ice cream.

Researchers went in to determine the importance of class size. They wondered, more specifically, do smaller classes equal better outcomes? What they came to in the end, was that better teachers equal better outcomes. (You can read more about it with eSchool News.)

How much dough went into this? Only a few billion.

We love this research and its outcome because it's just what we're saying here at ThinkWorks every day: let's train our teachers to give our students what they need. The recipe for what they need is simple: what to know and how to know in balance. With the Patterns of Thinking Method, we can teach student content in a way they'll retain it and simultaneously foster and develop their thinking skills. Otherwise stated, we can stop talking about teaching them how to think and get on with the process.

A board-certified teacher of the highest caliber from Fairfax, Virginia, says that using the Patterns of Thinking Method and ThinkBlocks has sharpened her teaching. "It's honing it and making every step more powerful, efficient, and effective. . . ."

If we'd been asked, we would have voted for better teachers over smaller class size in the first place because that aligns with our Vision: Thinking at every desk. At ThinkWorks, we're passionate about training teachers to teach their students to think. Teach them to think and they will thrive. That's a good outcome.

A Little Perspective on Distinction Making: Country or Not-Country

It seems the United Nations is in charge of naming country and not-country on this planet. The insert on the left tells a bit of the fascinating stories of some current not-countries. Consider Transdniestria. It sure sounds like a country. But if its impressive name isn't enough to legitimize it, shouldn't its formal secession? What about the list Jesse Ellison provides of all the things Transdniestria has that are all its own: constitution, parliament, military, postal service, currency, flag, and national anthem? I wonder if the Transdniestrian soldier strapping his boot thinks he has no country. I wonder if the Transdniestrian carrier delivering the long-awaited letter and the woman counting out Transdniestrian coins to pay the postage due think they belong to no country. What about the children who know their anthem by heart and stand and raise their voices to sing it?

Working with distinction making (one of the four universal patterns in the Patterns of Thinking Method) means working with identity and other: we posit—declare, create, acknowledge, name—an identity, and this immediately posits all the others who are not that identity. When the U.N. determines what makes a country, it simultaneously determines what makes a not-country. When a group of people in a geographically defined place call themselves a country, thus making everyone outside their borders not-their-country, shouldn't this clear distinction be honored? This brings us to perspective.

If we want to be thinking human beings, and manage that thinking consciously, we need to be aware of the perspective that carves out any identity-other given to us. (Perspective taking is also one of the four universal patterns of thinking.) When we do this, profound questions ensue, such as: Who says? Is that true? From whose perspective is this the identity and that the other? What is the identity of that other from its own perspective? (Every other is also an identity.) And more . . .

Note that we're integrating the four patterns when we consider what perspective defines the identity and other in any given distinction.

I wonder if the lives of those Transdniestrians--soldier, mail carrier, woman, and children--will change when the U.N. decides they're allowed to be what they already say they are.

Teachers: Just Work Harder. But is it a bandwidth problem?

Teachers are busy. We think of it as a badge of honor, a signifier of the importance of education. Especially in urban school districts, teachers will go to extraordinary lengths to help their students meet standards.

But blogger-principal Chris Lehman wonders whether it's a sustainable model:

"If we expect teachers to have an ethic of care about our students, we have to have an ethic of care about toward our educators. Asking them to sacrifice their lives to teach doesn't get us there. And it certainly doesn't get us toward systemic reform."

As an English teacher at an urban high school, this thoughts often crossed my mind. Why were most of us in our 20's or 50's? Why were so few of my colleagues starting families? Why was turnover so high?

The "just work harder" model isn't working for education. What's an alternative?

That's food for thought on this Friday afternoon. This was such a great post that we added Practical Theory to our blogroll.