Don Gifford is the Educational Program Consultant for History, Government, and Social Studies for the Kansas State Department of Education
I recently attended a “Learning & the Brain” conference entitled “Engaged, Empowered Minds: Using Brain Science to Educate Ethical 21st Century Citizens and Problem Solvers.” Long title but right up my alley. I heard great presentations from a variety of great speakers such as:
It was nothing but three days of discussing what teachers can do to help kids become the kind of citizens we want and need them to be. There is no way in a short blog post I can recap the entire conference so I have decided to share some bullet points from each of the presenters listed above:
Tony Wagner
- Knowledge is a commodity – Knowing stuff is no longer the way to get ahead
- 5 Inconsistencies in education and real life success
- Measuring and rewarding individuals for task performance vs innovation and collaboration on a body of work over time
- Silos and compartmentalization of knowledge vs interdisciplinary questions and answers
- Educational consumer/Knowledge provider vs Educational Doer/Creator and Coach
- Failure and the fear of failure/risk aversion vs risk takers, fail-adjust-retry-adjust, iterations
- Carrots and Sticks, extrinsic motivation vs do well, do good, feel good, intrinsic motivation
- More play, more passion, more purpose in school
Ron Berger
- Two thing you will be known and remembered for
- Quality of your character
- Quality of your work
- Get smart to do well and good
- Models for Excellence
Sandra Chapman
- Build a forward thinking visionary brain
- Stop asking students to multitask
- Multitasking is to the brain what smoking is to the lungs
- Work on student focus and persistence
Marilyn Price-Mitchell
- 8 Core Abilities
- Levels of Engagement
- Elementary – Responsible contributors, collect, gather, donate, engage
- Middle School – Face to face contact, organize, confront “a disorienting moral dilemma.” Facing the distress of others while having the ability to do something about it
- High School — Disorienting moral dilemma, confront their own values, reflect on what their values mean, changing perspective (If I were in their position then . . .), taking action
- Transformational moments—Empathy confronts reality, the hopelessness of a situation vs the hopefulness of the actor.
Joel Westheimer
- Teachers and staff must model civic engagement
- No written word no spoken plea can teach our youth what they should be nor all the books on all the shelves it’s what the teachers are themselves — Kipling
- 3 types of citizens – we need them all
- Personally responsible – obeys the law, gives blood, votes, helps those in need
- Participatory – active member of community organization, organizes others to help, leads
- Social Justice Oriented – identifies causes, proposes solutions, works for change
- The purpose of schools is to comfort the troubled and trouble the comfortable –Maxine Greene
- Kids don’t suffer from a lack of facts they suffer from a flood of them
Howard Gardner
- We used to think of the brain as a computer, we now know that the brain is a network of many computers
- Most parents want schools to prepare their kids to be
- Good people
- Good workers
- Good citizens
- Success is determined by your ENA
- Excellence – your desire to do something well
- Ethics – your desire to do something good
- Engagement – your desire to do something about either
- Grit alone isn’t a virtue if the goal of the “grind” isn’t virtuous in itself
There’s more . . . but I must stop. Please investigate a couple of these ideas and think about possible ways they could be implemented at your school or in your classroom.
