Words, words between the lines of age (Neil Young)

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Seth Godin recently lamented the idea that silo subjects in the U.S. seem to exist independently of skills that he considers important. 

He poses the question: 

What would happen if we taught each skill separately? 

ObedienceManagementLeadership/cooperationProblem-solvingMindfulnessCreativityAnalysis

I thought about this for a week or so and wrote a reply to his blog:

Thought you may be interested to know that the NZ curriculum is based on five key competencies (skills) that are similar to 6 of your list. Obedience is not something that has a place in our curriculum. The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) process in your country championed by Katie Novak does a lot of what you ask. Anyway - here are those 5 key competencies:  

• thinking.

• using language, symbols, and texts.

• managing self.

• relating to others.

• participating and contributing.

Those skills aren't addressed/taught separately but are incorporated into teaching programmes (please forgive the English spelling).

Not to say we've made much progress on multi-disciplinary approaches but that's next!

Warren

Seth's a great guy. Of course he wrote back! Saying: This is great, thank you!  

No, thank you, Seth!

Straight, no chaser (Thelonious Monk)

You can't teach an old dog new tricks.

I disagree.

I like new.

Here's some new:

1 Fresh tech for social studies
For the first semester I am teaching social studies (to fill in my timetable). It's been a while - my last social studies class was in my first year of teaching (19 mumble mumble mumble - huh? Okay okay -1983). This may come in handy!

2 25 ideas!
There are so many teaching ideas out there to try. That is SO cool. I have barely scratched the surface with these puppies (puppies...get it). Here are 25 in a bunch (or whatever the collective noun is for puppies).

3 Imagination is more important
Always good to be reminded of this. Who wants to be stale and boring and NOT have students use their imagination? Not this old dog - that's fer damn sure!

4 Inventive games to teach empathy and social skills
Wow - more amazing stuff from mind/shift. This time you get a whole load of stuff to help with growing empathy. Altruism ROCKS my friends!

5 Five competencies
Finally and appropriately - here are five key competencies that we need to foster in the 21st century. can you guess what they are before you look?

How did you do?