“Thinking about Thinking”, Secondary Project.

This is a project that I delivered to ten pre-school, first and second grade classes.  A meeting was done with the Administrators of the schools to introduce  the importance of teaching critical thinking.  The project was based on reading a book in an interactive teaching strategy.  The feedback from the administrators and the teachers was positive, “very interesting”, possibly implying that this method will be used by them in the future.

I took my experience from working in a primary school that scored very low in the Achievement Gap in 2009, especially in reading.  This study calculated the gap of students based on economic issues, race, and educational institutions across America; it generated new issues of teaching and learning styles, and leadership in our education domain.

Here the situation is very different; Mozambique is the 6^th poorest country in the world and in the infancy stage of independence, so these issues of teaching and learning styles is “very interesting”.  For the most part the teacher dictates and the children repeat, my walks passing the school sounds like this:

TEACHER:            “THE BIRD IS ON THE TREE” (She is pointing at a poster taped to the board, yelling so 50 1^st graders sitting on the floor or crammed at a desk have her attention)

STUDENTS:         “THE BIRD IS ON THE TREE”

TEACHER:            “THE BIRD IS RED, WHAT COLOR IS THE BIRD?”

STUDENTS:         “THE BIRD IS RED”.

I am not an academic scholar, many more informative books have been written on this topic, but just knowing the students and talking to them as well as the adults, there are huge red flags in this strategy.

I have honed it down to one thing that I could introduce in my village; the skill of CRITICAL THINKING.  

In the American culture I believe we have this skill as second nature; we have talk shows, advertisements, statistics, competitions – they all challenge our thought processes until we ourselves have our own opinions, viewpoints, and answers. How many times do we say “let me think about this?”
We have learned how to think.

Here, that bird is red, not maroon, not crimson, but just red. Students don’t need to think about it, they just have to remember what the teacher told them. Fine for the color red, but what if someday they need an answer that wasn’t dictated by some teacher? When does that practice start?

My class started by asking their help  to  tell the story.  I brought in picture books and started questioning them from the cover. “What do you think this book is about?” “What is going to happen on the next page?””Would you eat the apple?”  They look at the pictures and  came up with many answers, then I guide them to continue thinking for the correct answer.  As the pages are turned I asked questions and pointing out images and in the end they told me the story – I didn’t have to read the words.

The kids were mesmerized with the books, for many it was the first books they laid their hands on.  These photographs demonstrate the lively interest of the students. At the end I gave them time just to look through the pile, I then had time to talk to the teacher who were also a bit mesmerized by the strategy of not militarily dictating 5 hours a day.

Personally, this was fun, and I have about 500 new friends!