Playing the College Game

Sizer, N.F. (2002). Playing the College Game. Crossing the stage (pp.75-112). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Summary:

In chapter four of her book Crossing the Stage, Sizer shares how many seniors feel they have entered into the realm of a slightly dishonest game world when applying to college. Hyper alert to hypocrisy, they struggle with the need to stay true to who they are (faults and all) and the push to market themselves as top-grade meat for selective schools. They hope that once this stressful, self-depleting process is over, they will have earned the ticket to truly discover themselves when they actually get to college. During the senior year, however, authenticity must be put on hold for the sake of playing the game.

According to Sizer, the game involves a lot of gambling.  Students become so overwhelmed with the brand new task of selecting a school, that they often fall into the trap of applying to the most selective schools that they might have the chance of getting into. They don’t have the energy or experience to seek schools and properly evaluate whether or not each would be a good fit for them. Instead, they often resort to parents’ prodding, arbitrary qualities in a brochure, or those which simply sound impressive.  They are unsure how to measure whether or not they have a “feel” for the college even upon visiting, and would rather someone “impose order on all the chaos” (p. 84) by telling them where to go.

Once the application process commences, students are terrified to see their statistics staring back at them on a form. Standardized tests cause the most frustration, as students (and teachers) note the inequitable nature of the test, but must “play the game” in order to move to the next level. They feel “ripped off” (p. 95) by a system that takes their money and spits back a number. They are torn between engaging in activities they are truly interested in and those that will look good on their application. Sizer notes that adults “encourage this inflation” by recommending students involve themselves in certain activities in order “look good on your CV” (p. 100). Once their resumes and applications are filled, they cynically pit their odds against one another, and begin to prepare excuses as to why another student may get in before them (p.102). These issues often relate to how heavily a college considers the applicant’s racial and ethnic identity and/or whether or not s/he is a child of alumni. Many students alter their sense of justice during this time. Some are willing to take whatever odds will work in their favor in order to gain admittance, even if they acknowledge that it may not be completely just. On the flip side, students who may understand the larger reasons behind affirmative action will insist upon “strict equity” when applications are being reviewed (p. 104).

Students also begin to question the level of preparation they received at their own high schools. When they hear tales of high scores and radical projects at other schools, they sometimes feel betrayed by a high school should have pushed them to do more. They wonder if the grades they have earned in high school will be the same in college. This causes further disillusion in how seniors perceive their abilities. Once again, they question their worth.

The only section that students seem to approve of is the application essay. They know that “they are being given a chance – and that they can’t throw it away” (p. 105). However, while many students are accustomed to examining their faults, they are uncertain how to reflect upon their positive qualities. They have great difficulty bragging when they are so keenly aware of their own faults. It feels dishonest, but once again, they play the game and request the assistance of others to help them “dress things up” (p. 107).  One student describes how “for the sake of his future, he described his present in a way quite different than he knew it to be” (p. 109). The struggle between being honest and selling out is intense and students feel the pressure to bill themselves as “impressive products rather than in works in process” (p.111).

Response:

Sizer clearly articulated what I am experiencing in my classroom. It is so interesting that her description of interviews from ten years ago sound eerily similar to own my own students in 2011. I am looking forward to moving into the “What We Can Do” section in order to make some changes.

I realized how vigilant I need to be about the way I encourage students to sell themselves when applying to schools. This year, I have asked my students to put themselves in the shoes of admissions readers several times. My hope was that by examining case studies, the admissions process would be demystified as they became familiar with how an application package is viewed. My fear is that I have further perpetuated the “game.” I find that many of my students have no idea where they want to go to school or what they want in a college. They just want to stop playing the high school game and discover who they truly are in college.  I do not want to perpetuate dishonesty. I want them to feel pride in what they have to offer a school without making them feel they have to game the system.  I am encouraging the creation of more personal digital portfolios this year with the hope that students will feel they can present a more vivid picture of who they are to combat their poor test scores. I don’t want this to just be an extension of the dishonest package, however.  How can I encourage them to be “real” while they fear being judged?

I was also struck by how the students Sizer spoke to began to question their own high school.  This is something especially disheartening to me. I have noticed students beginning to question their experience at HTHI when they note lack of AP classes on their transcripts. The school they once held pride in for being different doesn’t seem to align with “what colleges are looking for” and students feel betrayed by a school may not have prepared them in the way it should.  I find it extremely difficult to be a college-prep school and one that offers authentic learning experiences when “college prep” still entails “college admissions prep,” which is smattered with tests and adding up hours of activities. 

As a senior teacher, I feel much like the students who struggle between being true to education and playing the college game.  I would love to change the narrative surrounding college at our school. I hate to hear college used as a carrot… Too often, I hear the phrase, “When you’re in college, you’re going to have to do _______” when a teacher assigns a difficult assignment.  However, to some extent, I know it’s true.  I spoke to a graduate who insists that our school is amazing because of the authentic learning opportunities, but feels that by being too radical, we shortchange our students who are preparing to complete inauthentic tasks in college, such as high stakes exams and papers.  She insisted that we should strike the proper balance in order to prepare students for this.  To some extent, I agree, but then again, are these (usually larger public colleges) justified in continuing an older style of learning? If we change, but colleges don’t, does this mean I still need to play the game in order to help my students? Must I teach them the language of power in order to teach them to combat it? How can I be a game-changer? How can I make my students more aware of what college is (or should be) in order to add meaning to the senior year?

Quotes:

“Success in life depends fare more on how well a student does in college than on which one he attends. Although teachers and counselors may stress the importance of making a good match rather than putting blind faith in a selective college, it’s hard for students to believe it. There are so many mysteries, rumors, and ‘deals’ regarding college admission that it’s hard to blame seniors who may prefer to think that a little ‘luck’ now is preferable to the hard work required to do well once they get to college. High school has been give to them. College is something they have to go out and get for themselves” (p.77).

“This obsession with college, however, has cause us as a nation to pay less attention to other ways in which a person might prepare himself or herself for productive adulthood. It has also affected the senior year in high school, because it has created the false impression that college admission is the only rite of passage, when in fact there are several” (p.78).

“College is the reward for surviving high school, the pot of gold at the end of the adolescent rainbow” (p. 79).

“’My whole life is reduced to a piece of paper,’ one senior observed. ‘They don’t want to hear your reasons: just what you did. The more I thought about, the more I got stressed out. Not so much working on it, but thinking about it.’ Being a ‘beggar’ is disheartening, and the notion that so much is riding on so little invites manipulation – and procrastination” (p. 87).

Regarding SATs: “Any system that can be manipulated, she believed, could not really be objective. But none of the adults in the seniors’ world – not parents not teachers – dare to counsel them to bypass these exams, let alone organize a revolt against them. ON this issue, therefore, seniors grow increasingly cynical and sullen. One told me, ‘We are just objects to be played with, and in a matter that will really affect our lives’” (p.96).

“Each ‘lift’ is added without much worry about being dishonest; each is tolerated by the culture that surrounds the seniors. Added together, the seniors hope, these things will make them stand out. But the growing disconnection between the person presented in the application and the person who still has to live with herself, her family, and her teachers can’t help but undermine what is left of the senior year” (p. 112)

Leadership Characteristics That Facilitate Change

Méndez-Morse, S. (1992). Leadership characteristics that facilitate change. Retrieved from http://www.sedl.org/pubs/catalog/items/cha02.html

Annotation by Cori Brooks

This online resource is an overview of the characteristics that great leaders have which can promote and implement change the best in a school or district.  It highlights the 6 characteristics as being visionary, believing that schools are for learning, valuing human resources, communicating and listening effectively, being proactive, and taking risks.

Disrupting Injustice: Principals Narrate the Strategies They Use to Improve Their Schools and Advocate Social Justice

Example 2: summary of the work, evaluation of methods and findings, and reflection on relevance to your practice

Summary: Theoharis’s article “ Disrupting Injustice: Principals Narrate Strategies They Use to Improve Their Schools and Advance Social Justice” offers strategies that six different principals implemented of their campuses. The primary purpose of these strategies was focused on leveling the playing field for all students, particularly they wanted to address under privileged students of low socio-economic status and students of color. What they found was integration of all students into the similar learning environments irrespective of perceived ability level and/or educational titles such as EL and gifted resulted in improvement of the schools in many ways.

Evaluation and findings: Much of what was stated in this article are questions that arouse for our senior staff as we grappled with the ideas about how to implement positive changes in scheduling for our students. The first strategy described in the article was “Eliminate pullout and segregated programs.” One principal stated that “ Teaching students in heterogeneous groups within the regular classroom was a critical philosophical decision that each of these principals made.” It seems that this is an important factor in the achievement of a truly equitable school environment. Students are not pushed if they are solely in support classes that do not demand rigor of them. Additionally the article noted on another strategy “Increase student learning time”, that often students being pulled out and tracked into lower ability groups are receiving less instruction by a classroom teacher. This furthers the inequity that results from tracked classes.

THEOHARIS, G. (2010). Disrupting Injustice: Principals Narrate the Strategies They Use to Improve Their Schools and Advance Social Justice. Teachers College Record, 112(1), 331-373

Additionally student were having to choose between music and math “ Students often had to make choices between [extra help in] math and taking band...my rich kids, many of them have experiences outside of school, but for my poor students, they need to have opportunities like band and art in school. They should not have to make the choice between math and music... so we had to change the way we scheduled students.” We have had a similar occurrence on our campus so this idea really resonates with me. I believe that students should be able to choose, when ever appropriate and possible, their own experiences from SIGS and Xblocks to electives that are of interest to them.

Reflection and Relevance: This could not be more relevant for my current put it to practice action research project. Students having been somewhat tracked on our campus due to ability levels in math has created issues of equity in my mind. Inequities in the way I approach my two sections of English are being identified and addressed through my studies in this course. Using the strategies provided in this piece will be a guiding resource in my own practice and ta resource that I share with my colleagues when we begin to discuss our schedule for second semester.

By: JoHanna Simko

You, There—What Do You Think?

Annotation by Kathleen Blough

Bleedorn, Berenice. (2003). You, There—What Do You Think?. In An Education Track for Creativity and Other Quality Thinking Processes. (p. 86-93). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Education.

Summary/Analysis:

This summary/analysis pertains to a chapter entitled, “You, There---What Do You Think?” by Berenice Bleedorn in the book, An Education Track for Creativity and Other Quality Thinking Processes. According to Berenice Bleedorn, she believes:

All humans have an inherit urge to learn and to grow, to enhance themselves, and to be recognized as significant in some way. The process of delivering learning is complicated by the fact that humans differ in their basic learning and thinking styles. Assessing achievement only on the basis of standardized tests is a serious limitation to the evaluation of student learning. Unless creativity, empathy, flexibility, vision, global awareness, tolerance for ambiguity, and ethical standards are taught and modeled by teachers, standardized test scores may be high but application of skills and knowledge may fail application for positive human future development, both individually and collectively. (p. xi)

In this book, Ms. Bleedorn, simply draws upon the works of Dr. E. Paul Torrance, J.P. Guilford, Harland Cleveland, Piet Muller, Frank Maraviglia, Josef Mestenhauser, Patience Dirkx, Gary Jedynak, Efiong Etuk, Lynne Krause, Earl Belide, Garnet Millar, Marie Manthey, and many others. She has written essays for each chapter in this book, which reflect her personal journey and her belief system regarding teaching creativity.

The chapter, “You There—What Do You Think?” focuses on giving children the opportunity to think and be heard without fear. I believe in the same thought and idea about teaching—with our world changing so rapidly especially in the field of technology, it is important to note that “education’s responsibility is to prepare the student mind/brain not only for learning, remembering, and arriving at an answer, but also for thinking at complex levels where the answer is not predetermined (p. 86). The emphasis is on developing citizens that practice habits of thought for themselves and the world.

I found interesting and wanted to note that all humans share a common basic value system. People crave “affection, respect, skill, understanding, power and influence, goods and services, well-being and responsibility” (p. 87). If this is the case, then when a student is in school what happens in school can have a positive or negative effect on this value system. The teacher and peers in school can affect children’s evaluation of themselves. I see this in many classrooms with resource students. The teacher comes into the classroom, and the child is singled out, pulled out of the classroom for their services, and the student is left to feel stupid or different because they are singled out. This action leaves the child to think they are stupid, and the teacher in this case, needs to be sure to recognize the child’s individual talents that make him or her special or figure out a way to release a child to special education services in a more humane way.

The rest of the chapter gives hints, advice, and exercises on how to be aware of every student’s personal significance as an independent thinker. The subheadings are: “What Teaching Taught Me about Teaching” and “What Do You Think.”

Notable Quotes:

“It is important to design learning activities that represent a great variety of thinking skills and interests”(p. 89).

“Remembering a student’s name is less important than recognizing something special about every one. Students are neither a name nor a category nor a number nor a research statistic. At any age, they are highly complicated social, physical, intellectual interactive systems, and being so recognized is vital to their thinking, self-concept, and motivation”(p. 89).

Notable Ideas:

“Make use of playful, brainstorming “warm-up” thinking tasks before beginning a serious class. Warm-ups can be designed to relate to the level of experience of students. (Examples: Why would anyone want to live on a farm? Make a list. Why would anyone not want to live on a farm? Make a list.)"(p. 92).

"How is an owl like a scientist? Think of twenty different ways” (p. 92).

“List plus and minus features of riding a bus”(p. 92).

Reflection:

This book written by Berenice Bleedorn gives the reader insights that are relevant to teachers as well as the global work force. It helps make practitioners think about their craft and how to improve student engagement and learning. It made me think about how everyone needs to understand that the human brain has all the capabilities for success, and as educators, we need to provide opportunities for students to grow and expand their individual attitudes and their personal significance. Educators must allow for many opportunities for students to be heard. This seems to be key to a student’s level of intellect. Allowing for quality thinking exercises to occur in the classroom on a daily basis may be a very effective way to get clear and open-ended solutions to problems and issues. Educators are setting the foundation for individuals to THINK. In this book, I’m also taking away to ponder and think about how the learning environment affects a student’s attitude toward learning. The learning environment includes the teacher and student interaction, the classroom structure, the models of instruction, and students as active participants in their learning. I want to focus on the affective factors contributing to the production of creative ideas. It is really important for teachers to pay attention to how they interact with their students. I believe knowing this about quality thinking processes will help me become a better teacher. I will ponder many ideas about my students: Do the students in the classroom feel empowered with the ability to think? Are the activities that are provided go beyond the right answer? Or do educators provide time for students to stretch their minds? Do educators allow time for student’s to think freely and to contribute personally? Do lessons allow for creative expression? Does the teacher really KNOW the student or just their name? These are all wonderful jumping off points and points to ponder when it comes to the idea of embedding creative thinking into the classroom lesson planning.

Crossing the Stage: Redesigning the Senior Year

Sizer, Nancy F. (2002). Crossing the Stage: Redesigning Senior Year (pp.xvii-xxviii) Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Summary:

In the introduction to this book, Nancy Faust Sizer illuminates the “emotional chaos” (p. xvii) that marks the senior year. She discusses how the “senioritis” that runs rampant when the spring semester arrives (and sometimes months before) is due to their coexistence in three time zones: the past, present, and future.  Students are splaying their past onto college applications and are asked to measure its worth. Meanwhile, they are preparing for the “big breakup” (p. xviii) with their childhood, their friends, and all that is familiar to them. They want to embrace the present, but are watching it slip away as they wonder what they will have the opportunity to face in the future. This transition, Sizer contends, is often more difficult than we remember.

She highlights the cultural imperatives that have seeped into our collective mindset. Seniors grow up with a certain mythological understanding of 12^th grade because the “magic” of senior year is often conveyed through the selective memories adults share of their own experience.  She shares that the archetypal senior hero of these stories faces challenges, but “somehow” emerges with a magical maturity. “The emphasis here is on ‘somehow,’” Sizer continues. “In our memories, the transformation was magical… Hence the assumptions that surround the experience of the senior year” (p. xx). Seniors grow up with the idea that there are things they should be feeling or doing simply because they have inherited the title of “senior.” They have inherited the crown – now when does the magical transformation take place?

Sizer argues that this is a paradigm that must be considered. When the seniors feel that “almost desperate darkness” (p. xxiii) when the magic doesn’t just happen, they start to question the system that led them here. They wonder what they have really learned all these years in school… Is it enough for the next step? This is where we non-seniors must step in. High schools, colleges, and the workplace need to help students recognize “…how much that know and are able to do in order to perform well, in whatever arena, after high school” (p. xxiv). While they can identify how many courses they have passed, they carry a lot of “subliminal nervousness” about whether or not they are truly ready for the world post-breakup. Fearing the truth, they recline into the safety of proclaiming their status. We are the (magic) seniors… Just watch! Something is supposed to happen! Instead of maintaining the myth, we need to help them take pride in their work and recognize them as they are. We need to help them value learning for its sake, rather than the points. Ideally, this should begin much earlier than the 12^th grade in order to empower students to own their learning and not simply to “limp” away from high school wondering whether or not they did anything worthwhile.

Response:

Sizer’s words were strong and clear – they hit me hard. My seniors are working on their college applications right now, and I can see the anxiety bubbling up under the surface. While I consider our school progressive and not deeply-routed in tradition, it can be difficult to balance true, authentic learning for its sake while students are filling out their school stats on an application that shouts, “Pick me!”  It is crushing to watch a young student tear up because she just feeling like she understands this whole “college thing” or to read a student’s remarks on the week’s class:


"We've been working on our resumes in English class and writing up applications for college. The app I got was pretty confusing and I realized that I barely know any of the stuff included in it. Which makes me wonder, am I truly ready to graduate high school?"

We pledge to a college-going culture, but we also promise to engage in real-world learning. Clearly, these two need to be better integrated. I plan to pursue Sizer’s contention that the high school, college, and workplace need to be in better communication. I think we discuss college in the same mythological, intangible, unclear manner that Sizer contends we do the senior year. This is a problem. We know how to organize internships in order to immerse them in the work world. Some students do take a college course at USD. But, never do all three meet. How can the relationship be improved so that students don’t feel the pain of their breakup from high school as profusely? How can the experience be altered so that students don’t feel cheated and shell-shocked at graduation, but ready to take their place at the next piece of the triad? I have ordered Sizer’s book and am looking forward to reading more of her ideas!

Quotes:

“The institutions that ought to support the seniors – high schools, colleges, the workplace – seem isolated from one another. High schools charge ahead with the same old schedule and the same old program, seemingly uninterested in the number of new challenges that have been added to the seniors’ lives, only marginally willing to help them cope” (p.xvii).

“Being a senior year is a pervasive American cultural experience, ranking up there with being married, having children, holding a job, attending church, and going to baseball games. Between 80 and 90 percent of our teenagers finish high school [as of 2001]. They build up expectations for their senior year, live through it self-consciously, and remember it clearly for years. These are – or are meant to be – their  “glory days.”  More young women may wear a prom dress than a wedding dress” (p.xvii).

“The spotlight shown on seniors captures the imagination of far more people than just the seniors and their parents and teachers. The experience is full of fascination and mythology for us all” (p.xvii)

“Seniors expect to be honored as leaders” (p.xxi).

“Seniors live in three time dimensions at once… Living in the present while planning for the future can test the mettle of even the oldest and wisest of us” (p. xxii).

“Without knowing what they need to learn, they carry around a lot of subliminal nervousness, but they are not sufficiently alert to the dangers of a year of ‘coasting.’” (p. xxiv)

“With the seniors’ help, we need to examine the  senior year for what should stay the same and what can be altered in small and even big ways. Perhaps we teachers should recognize that the academic growth that has been our worthy stock in trade for many years must be not abandoned, not cheapened, but altered to suit the seniors’ changed circumstances” (p. xxvii)

“Most of all, we need to bring about a more graceful transition between high school and what follows it. Our goal is to leave all the participants feeling that the senior year was a glory time but also one of permanent usefulness, one to feel proud of after all” (p.xxviii)

My Use of Images in Teaching About Literacy

My Use of Images in Teaching About Literacy
Annotation provided by Kali Frederick

Lalik, Rosary. (2003.) My Use of Images in Teaching About Literacy. In L. Sanders-Bustle (ed.) Image, Inquiry, and Transformative Practice: Engaging Learners in Creative and Critical Inquiry Through Visual Representation (pgs. 87 - 108). New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

Summary
Through a descriptive narrative, Rosary Lalik explores the world of teaching and teaching literacy to teachers. This chapter is a brutally honest depiction of the fear and uncertainty that teachers sometimes feel when facing a classroom of students. Her prose reads like a journal and her research is intertwined subtly to support her ideas. Lalik loves photographs and believes that literacy can be defined in many different ways. She uses photographs and other images to intrigue her students and evoke conversations. Their passionate discourse leads them to experiential research and library sources. While uncovering the truth behind the photographs they learn something more about literacy. This article is a must read for anyone pursuing methods that can be used to motivate students to read, research, engage in discussions, or reflect on personal reactions.

Quotes, Connections, and Reflection
This entire chapter was engaging. But what struck me the most was Lalik’s complete honesty about her work and feelings towards teaching. She states early on that her professional focus on literacy is to help teachers understand the multitude of avenues a teacher can use to inspire literacy exploration. Literacy, “involves the use of multiple forms and representation for construing and transforming the world,” (p. 89). Making the world accessible and understandable is a goal for most teachers. By opening up the definitions of literacy, we seek to include all children in the quest to understand the world.

Lalik provides a detailed description of her class and the project that is designed to explore the world of literacy. The project involves looking at difficult images of homelessness, which inspires the students to learn more about the issue. The students design a project around the topic and use many different avenues to better understand the issue. Some use experiential learning, others libraries, others personal interviews, etc. But all come together to gain a better understanding of the issue and provide some solutions. Lilak observes of her stubborn students, “how odd the critical and imaginative in teaching and learning can feel, especially to those of us long stifled in technocratic corners,” (p. 100). As a teacher that works at a progressive charter school, I thought that families who attended our school were enthusiastic about the different atmosphere. But instead, I was faced with a group of people who want desperately for their child’s education to be different, but they are uncomfortable with anything too different. Lilak experiences something similar after her class finishes. The students (who are all teachers) empasize how powerful the class was, but reflect that, as Lalik explains, “the kind of literacy they learned with me is hard to fit into the spaces of the standards lists, although they tell me they prefer it,” (p.101). As parents, educators and community members, we know something is not right with our educational system. Our students are not leaving school ready, willing, and able to take on an ever changing economy and society. And yet we propose and support more testing, as though repeated testing will yield different results. As Joe and I delve more deeply into our classroom practices, we find ample evidence (in the student work and demeanor) that supports the metohds we use in the classroom, but few articles address an integrated, cross-curricular high school classroom to the level that we take it. If we want innovative problem solvers, multiple choice exams will not accurately test for that quality. If we desire collaborative leaders who recognize and utilize other’s strengths accordingly, multiple choice tests and prompted writing, will not highlight those who possess these qualities. We need to embrace imagniation and innovation in the classroom and as assessments. And these practices should make us a bit uncomfortable.

Another aspect of Lalik’s chapter that I appreciated and could relate to is a bit outside of the literacy realm. She is explaining how difficult writing is for her and she says, “I write. I said I like to write. I try to write, but I am mute and grossly inarticulate [...] I vow to learn to speak through courses that I teach,” (p. 94). There are many times that I feel this way. I know what I want to say and do, but it is so very challenging. I can only hope that through our projects and work, I will help our students gain their voice for what they want, hope and dream, and in turn, they can help me find mine in education.

References
Freire, P. (1985). The politics of education. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey.

Giroux, H. (1988). Teachers as Transformative Intellectuals: Toward a Critical Pedagogy of Learning. New York: Bergin & Garvey.

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.

Thinking Connections: Learning to Think and Thinking to Learn

Perkins, D.N., Goodrich, H., Tishman, S., & Mirman Owen, J. (1994). Thinking Connections: Learning to Think and Thinking to Learn. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Group.

An Annotation by Jaimee Rojas

Summary/Analysis: Developed in conjunction with the Project Zero Cognitive Skills Group of Harvard University and the Northeastern Regional Educational Laboratory, this program proposes thinking strategies that can be used by educators within the context of their regular curriculum. These critical and creative thinking strategies are interchangeable throughout disciplines and are meant to help our students create and hone long-lasting thinking skills. Using specific skills and strategies, students will learn to practice meta-cognitive thinking and will develop ways to access deeper learning through deeper thinking. Thinking Connections, the name of the program developed by these researchers from Harvard's Project Zero and Northeastern's EdLab, offers educators 3 thinking modules to cultivate a culture of thinking in the classroom. These 3 modules must be introduced and practiced so the authors propose a 12-week timeline, so that each module takes 4 weeks. The three modules: The Mental Management Strategy, The Decision-Making Strategy and Understanding through Design are taught in three steps, a pre-task step, a post-task step, and a second post-task step, with the task being the teacher's task. The Mental Management strategy, for instance, asks students to focus on their thoughts, remember the last time they did a task like the one they are about to do, and form visual images of the task or topic they will be addressing. This allows students to get into a focused state of mind prior to beginning the task. Then, the students complete the task, whether it is taking a quiz, reading a passage, critiquing a peer's work, etc. This strategy seems to work best for skill-based tasks. After they complete the task, the teacher leads the students through the post-task steps: making connections, where students make connections between other areas of study and their own personal lives. Then the second post-task step: thinking about thinking: where students give feedback on the task by identifying what went well and what was hard about the task. This task is meant to empower students: to show them how to be aware of their thought processes and that they have the power to improve upon them. The Decision-Making Strategy (Module 2) uses three powerful questions: What are the options, What are the Reasons? and What is the best choice? and Module Three: Understanding by Design provides a systematic approach to deeper learning and three thought-provoking questions: What are the purposes (of this design)? What are the Features and Reasons? And how well does it work?

These three modules provide an accessible infusion structure for thinking. As an instructor, I can implement this line of questioning in my daily lessons in a project-based environment. Once I teach my students how to use these skills, the art of practicing them will lend itself to deeper learning. I am close to being sold on the program, but the research on whether this program works is thin. There is one brief paragraph on the results of testing this program, which shows it has been formally tested in grades three through six. The results, which I might add are written in the book by the authors, purports the following: that Thinking Connections is very teachable, that students in grades 3-6 respond well, that student scores on thinking skills tests have improved after the full 12 weeks of the program and reinforcement thereafter, and that teachers improve their thinking skills and their teaching.

One useful part of the text is a dialogue between teacher and student an an FAQ for the teacher. I really gained a lot of knowledge from this formula and can see it being useful in my own research as far as how to give the audience useful tips and strategies. The book posts popular questions that have run through my head often, "What do I do when my students have no ideas?" "Sometimes my students' suggestions form improvements in a design are outlandish. how realistic should their ideas for improvements be?" In addition to these questions and scripts, the book offers worksheets and lessons for each of the 12 weeks. The Thinking Connections really is a pre-packaged thinking strategies curriculum that seems easy to implement, but it does make me wonder why didn't these thinking routines become more popular in the education world?


Critical Text/Quotes:
"Teachers have mentioned that they become increasingly aware of their own thinking processes as they work through this programs with their students. Once teachers internalize the steps in the strategies, they know that they, as well as their students, have the power to apply the strategies across the curriculum and in their daily lives. (p. v1)"

"Teaching thinking is an excellent way to integrate different subject matter. Since thinking should be a part of every subject, the teaching of thinking strategies provides an excellent way to connect subject matter to one another. (p. vi)"

"All students can learn to be better thinkers and learners and that they can develop positive attitudes toward thinking and learning. (p. v.)"

"Research shows that students notice differences in praise. if they see big differences, tehy often start focusing on the game of getting praise instead of on the task. Other students may quietly drop out. Fuller and more honest participation results when strong praise is avoided in favor of midly positive acceptance of everyone's efforts. Therefore, a simple 'okay,' or 'good' or 'yes, that's interesting,' is preferred."


Other Sources: (no other sources were given, but the following programs have done extensive research into these thinking routines)
Harvard Project Zero
Northeastern Regional Education Lab