Teenagers and abstract thinking

Teenagers develop abstract thinking at different times.  Makes sense:  they don't all have a physical growth spurt at the same time, why should they have a cognitive growth sprurt simultaneously?

Most teachers don't accommodate this differential.

What might that look like? (from Shawn Cornally's blog Brain-based learning):

If we don't know what rung our students are on, it's very difficult to say which of the following two questions we should ask:

1. How are gas prices affected by unrest in the various oil-producing regions of the world?
2. How were gas prices affected during the Arab Spring in Egypt?

As a teacher, I like Question 1 better. It seems more open. It seems more, well, abstract. And to that student who has reached that rung on the ladder, he or she will be able to shine. Most teenagers can only be led there through Question 2 or something like it.

"It's time to do something, people."

Garr Reynolds introduces "a pep talk from Kid President" in his blog Presentation Zen.

Why be boring?  Boring is easy!

innovation incubator

From Briefings magazine, an article that pulls together much of the recent press about the outcomes of Montessori education:  we're not talking about higher test scores, though that may also be a secondary outcome.  No, we're talking about the development of personal characteristics that lead to creative, entrepreneurial leaders in business, the arts and sciences. 

The most difficult question being asked today in, around and about schools?  "How do we educate the next generation of inventive, creative and entrepreneurial leaders?"

Business writer Steve Denning answered the question this way:

“The biggest problem is that we’re applying a factory model made up of hierarchical bureaucracies and a focus on efficiency, scalability and grinding out graduated students.This system is run for the convenience of parents and educators and has little to do with lifelong learning that is critical to the future of the economy. When I started writing about this, people told me that we don’t need to invent a new system, it is already there. Montessori has been doing this for more than a century.”

Hyper-parenting

There's a spectrum of parenting styles with a sweet spot at "involved".

"Negligent" is at one extreme of that spectrum.  At the other is "hyper-parenting;". The so-called helicopter parent.  Can a parent be too involved in their child's life?  Read research about the college-age children of  hyper-parents.

Let them fail?

"Why parents need to let their children fail."

That succeeded in getting my attention.  My inner mamma bear growled:  "Ridiculous!  I won't let my children fail!  What a stupid idea."

But I was quickly surrounded by memories of swarming helicopter parents, hovering overhead to rescue their children from any pain or disappointment...

...and in doing so, rob them of the opportunity to learn to deal with it.  Life comes with pain and disappointment.  How we deal with it determines our long-term success or failure.  We only learn to pick ourselves up with optimism if we have learned to do so.  Like every baby learning to walk. 

As Scott Peck said, "We learn to solve problems by solving problems."  (not by having our parents solve them for us.)

What does a child learn
by owning their problems;
by dealing with failure and disappointment;
and by figuring out (or being asked by a loving parent or teacher), "so how are you going to handle this?"

What does he learn?
The 3 r's:
Responsibility
Resoucefulness
Resilience

Don't rob them by using the 4th R:  rescuing.

Montessori at home

Parent Map presents "10 Montessori-inspired design ideas for kids' rooms."

Montessori inspired?  Child-sized furniture and tools that help a child with independence.  Dedicated work places.  Floor-bed rather than a crib. Practical life activities such as cooking.  An aesthetic emphasizing simplicity and beauty.  Natural materials (eg., wood vs plastic).

Montessori teachers will cringe at some of these ideas, but I found some good ideas for parents.

Creating Innovators

From an interview with Tony Wagner, author of Creating Innovators:  Raising Young People Who Will Change the World.

 

Wagner: I talked to a very wide range of young innovators in their 20s -- some innovators in the so-called STEM field (science, technology, engineering and math), some who were artists and musicians and some who were social entrepreneurs. It was a demographically [diverse] and representative sample of young innovators out there. Then, as you point out, I talked to all of their parents, and then I asked each one of them -- could they name a teacher or a mentor who had made the greatest difference in their lives in their development of their capacities to innovate? About a third of them could not name any teachers. They all could name at least some adult in their lives -- two-thirds could name a teacher, the other third named mentors.

 

I interviewed each one of those teachers and mentors, trying to see if I could find the patterns of parenting and teaching that contribute the most to the development of a young innovator.
 

What I discovered is that in every single case, the teachers who had the most critical difference in the lives of these young innovators was an outlier in his or her education setting. Elementary school through graduate school, every single one of them was an outlier. What made them outliers were the ways in which they taught, and the ways in which they taught were very consistent with what I saw to be some of the practices in the leading educational institutions that produce innovators. I'm talking about Stanford's d.school, the MIT Media Lab and above all, the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, which I also profile in the book.

 

I came to see that the culture of schooling in America is radically at odds with a learning culture that produces young innovators in five essential respects.

 

Number one: The culture of schooling is all about individual achievement, ranking kids, whereas, the culture of innovation demands collaboration. Every one of these teachers and classes I observed really build teamwork into all of their assignments.

 

Number two: A culture of schooling is all about specialization. While that certainly has a role in innovation, what's very clear in the world of innovation is a problem-based, multidisciplinary approach to learning.

 

Number three: The culture of schooling is risk averse and penalizes failure. The culture of innovation is all about taking risks and learning from mistakes, trial and error.

 

Number four: The culture of schooling is a very passive experience, where people essentially sit all day consuming information and then regurgitating it. The culture of learning for young innovators is all about creating -- not consuming -- real products for real audiences.

 

And lastly, number five: The culture of schooling really relies on extrinsic incentives to motivate learning -- carrots and sticks, As and Fs. But I discovered that these young innovators were far more intrinsically motivated, and when I looked at the pattern of what parents and teachers had both done to encourage intrinsic motivation, I found a kind of remarkable emphasis in the classrooms and among the parents of play, passion and purpose.