In the beginning of October, the organization I am on the board for, Wisconsin Association for Talented and Gifted (WATG), hosted its annual conference. We were lucky to have Colin Seale as one of our keynote speakers.
Colin is the founder and CEO of thinkLaw. He has also written two books: Thinking Like a Lawyer: A Framework for Teaching Critical Thinking for All Students and Tangible Equity: A Guide for Leveraging Student Identity, Culture, and Power to Unlock Excellence In and Beyond the Classroom.
I felt that Colin was very enthusiastic, passionate, and inspiring. His keynote was about equity within schools and how teachers can put on the “equity lens” when working with their students.
Dictionary.com provides many different definitions of equity. The definitions that pertain to the education world include: “the quality of being fair or impartial…” and “something that is fair and just” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/equity). Colin stated that, “equity does not mean you get nothing!” which I feel is something very important to remember.
Something that Colin brought up a lot is that we need to make sure that students have access to a variety of opportunities. As he said, “Brilliance is distributed equally; opportunity is not. We need to be opportunity creators.” So how do we (teachers) do this? We can bring opportunities into our classrooms for students to access, whether it is hands-on, videos, virtual field trips, speakers, etc.
Colin Seale is a big pusher on critical thinking, which is something all our students need, especially our gifted students. One thing that is important to remember is that teachers do not have to create separate content in order to incorporate critical thinking into their lessons. Instead, it can be molded right into their current content! One example is having students debate. An example Colin provided is giving students two answers to a math problem and telling them that both of those answers are wrong. Students then need to say which answer is better and why. What a great way for students to think about how to get the real answer and why one of those answers is the best wrong answer.
Another way to get students to think critically that Colin shared is showing them a problem and asking them what mistake “Jane Doe” is going to make when solving the problem. Once again, this gets students to think about how to actually solve the problem, and then to think about common mistakes people might make with their solving.
As you think about ways you can include critical thinking and equity in your classroom, I would love to hear from you, so please share!!
I would like to end this post with two quotes from Colin that are very meaningful:
- “Meeting students where they are doesn’t make sense. Meet them who they are and how they are, not where they are.”
- Tell students “who they are and how they are has academic value.”
Resources
- thinkLaw
- The Bee Project
- Join Tangible Equity Community on Facebook