I just saw this article pop up on my feed- it’s about the “Seven Tools for Thinking”
This, I think, represents an excellent distilling of the basic elements we must understand as educators in order to be effective. We loose track, sometimes, of the very basis of what we do. We get caught up in Common Core or assessments or scaffolding or flipping or whatever high-level representation of technique has peaked our interest, but these are the basis of all of what we do. They are the foundation. They are the bedrock.
Not only do I fear we loose track of them ourselves, but I fear we don’t explicitly show them to our students. More than any single set of facts or knowledge we might believe we should fill students’ heads with, the ability to think flexibly and well trumps all. Thinking is more powerful than knowing. Knowing will always run out as you approach the bounds of what is know; thinking never runs out.