What happens when Classrooms meet Higher Order Thinking Dylan Hyman TEDxAmsterdamED

So, let me tell you about Kai. Great kid, never caused any problems. He'd perfected this way of hanging over his table and holding his pencil in such way that if you weren't paying attention very carefully, you would actually think that he was working. which he was not most of the time. Had this hair that hung down in front of his eyes. You know, you could tell that it was nothing personal, but Kai just did not get whole bunch out of school. One day, for no reason really, decided to not give the lesson that was in the book. And decided to ask my students to imagine that bomb had gone off and all capital letters had been destroyed. Would anybody even notice? And how would we solve that problem? Kai back of the class put his hair out of his eyes and raised his hand and he said, "Well, we could use different color letters." What great idea. I'd finally reached him and had no idea what I'd done. But in that moment of contact, saw real brilliance. And that moment has never left me. It's brought me here today. So, as you've heard, I'm an elementary school teacher, and think the idea that inspired me the most when first started teaching was that education is not the filling of pale or bucket. It's the lighting of fire. and we can think back to all of our time at school and you remember those teachers that really could bring that fire into the classroom for you. And you can remember what it was like to be student like Kai and just not engaged with that education. have got some ideas about how we can bring that fire back into every classroom every day. And that is what I'm going to talk to you about today. But I'm going to be honest first because that fire just about went out for me in the last few years. You know, high stakes testing has changed so much of what we do in the classroom. used to love when first started teaching to spend half morning reading and writing poetry with my students. But if you want to get through that book and get to everything that's going to be on those tests as teacher, you have just got to stick to that schedule. Well, tests are good, but to paraphrase Anna Camerarance, who is writer and education blogger, they are like very, very accurate telescope that are focused on just few stars at the expense of universe of knowledge. like to know how my math lessons are catching on with my students, but also need to know how they solve their own problems. And like to hear them tell joke that they've made up themselves. These stars are shining just as bright in our children, and they need to be seen because we don't want them to burn out. And if we're letting what happens in our classroom be so influenced by external priorities and testing, where is that wonder? Where is that discovery? Where's that fire? Well, think got some insight through pretty special experience, but had to completely step out of the regular education system in order to get that experience and started working in gifted education at the day week school. Now, that is program for group of kids, maybe like the top 2% and they already know or understand pretty much everything that's being taught at school right now. So what you do is you take them out one day week and you let them have real challenge and that challenge is in teaching them how to think. You can look at it this way. These kids already have great test scores. So where can you as teacher still have something to offer them? Well, in the process and the process is thinking. And you don't grade what they do there. And you don't test it either because something very interesting happens when you stop grading children because they can no longer succeed. and they can no longer fail. The only thing they can do is learn. And don't know about you, but that is space that really like to be in. So, I'm going to tell you about one of my favorite activities to do with my students. And asked them to take two objects, like bus and pen, and combine them to make new object. And some kids will think of pen that looks like bus, and other kids will think of bus that looks like pen. But once they get going, they'll start thinking of buses that instead of exhaust pipes have ink coming out of them, and they draw all over town, beautiful drawings every day. And other kids will think of digital pen that you can put money in. And buses with sort of board where you can write down where you want to go and it subtracts the money from your pen. Do you see what mean? There's no right answer and there is no wrong answer. There is just thinking. And thinking is hard. And thinking can also be really fun. Now, another example. I'm going to share with you project that just finished with my kids. asked them to split up into groups and asked them to design original wooden toys. And once they worked out on paper what it was supposed to look like, then they had to make three-dimensional cardboard prototypes. And then from those prototypes, then they had to they learned how to draw them on the computer. And then from the computer they could get laser to cut out the pieces of the toys that they designed. But as you can see it can take really long time waiting for that laser to cut. So in the meantime they designed the packaging and they designed the pricing and they wrote commercials for their toys. So as you can imagine some kids really really enjoyed drawing an original toy and other kids really loved putting the pieces of of of three-dimensional prototype together. And some kids really enjoyed figuring out how much the thing would cost and other kids loved to write their own commercials. But they all got to do something new and they all got to do something they liked and they all feel that they had really learned. So what made this learning so different from the learning that they were doing in their own classrooms? Well, learning at primary school happens primarily by understanding, remembering, and applying. So, think back to your day at school. The teacher explains spelling rule or an algorithm so that you can understand it. And then you practice really hard with worksheets so that you can know how to use it. And then at the end, you can spell word correctly or you can do long division problem. But there are also three higher order thinking skills and they are analyzing, evaluating, creating and that's what my students were doing every step of the way to create their own wooden toys. And that's how reached Kai too. And now want to take you someplace new. But bet bunch of you are way ahead of me here. If we have the capacity to teach our gifted children like this, shouldn't we be teaching all of our children like this? Because these skills are not just for gifted kids. Creativity, solving problems, making solutions with technology, working together. These are the skills that all of our kids need. They are going to need them to find place in the 21st century workplace. Do you realize that it's estimated that kids today at primary school 65% of percent of them will be doing jobs that don't even exist yet? And how are we going to solve all these problems that we are causing on the earth? We are going to be more and more dependent on young people like boyon slant who developed his ocean cleanup project when he was only 18 years old. But even more than that, we can engage all of our learners again, even the kais. We can get them to love learning now. We can get them to discover what their passions are now. We can get them developing their talents now. And why is this important? Well, civil rights leader Howard Thurman said, "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive." Because what the world needs are people who have come alive. So, what will it take to implement higher order thinking skills in our classroom? Not much. It's well within our reach. We can implement activities that stimulate higher order thinking in just 15 minutes day by using activities like the bus and the pen or riddles. Do you guys know this one? What can travel around the world while staying in corner? It's stamp. That's right. Or imagine this, classroom where just one hour week the books get put away and one group is in the corner building chain reaction with dominoes and marbles. It's huge mess, but it's very cool. And there's another group in the corner that's researching and writing for their website that's to teach other kids how to take good care of their pets. And another group is cutting out the cards for board game that they've designed and that they're going to teach the rest of their class later. How is this possible? Well, the students I'm talking about have been given the time and support by their teacher to develop something that really interests them. Two rules. It has to be something that the entire class can learn something new from, and they have to present it when they're done. Does that sound familiar? Well, Google implements it as well, and they call it 20% time. All the employees at Google are allowed to spend 20% of their time at work developing something that really interests them as long as it is something that may eventually benefit the company as whole. That's where Gmail came from and AdSense and Google Sky. It's estimated that as much of half of Google products have originated as 20% time products. Now, I'm not advocating an implementation of lot of commercial concepts into education, but this one tells me an awful lot about the real kind of development and innovation that happens when you support people going after something they really want to know more about. Can you think about what the implications could be for our kids? So, how great would it be to implement 20% time in our schools? It's good enough for Google. It's simple. It's cheap. We don't have to buy bunch of expensive software or training. We can just ask our kids what they want to learn and we can give our teachers the time and the freedom to support that. But now I'm asking you, what else can we do to create that space where success and fall failure just fall away and only learning and the joy in learning is left? Which projects that embody the spirit of 20% time will fit into your school, into your classroom? That's why I'm here. want to start grassroots movement with schools and parents and maybe even government to to start finding answers to those questions. You know, don't want my daughter to just be seen for the few stars, but want her to shine for all the brilliance that she has. We offer this kind of education to gifted kids now, but we could be offering it to all of our kids. Imagine world where everybody, and I'm thinking of those kids we just saw on stage, everybody can be seen for all the light that they have to give. How bright will that world be? Have you got picture in your head? Well, why don't we go make that happen? Thank you.