13. Term In English Current example
from your class
Future Example
from your class
Critical Thinking
Communication
Collaboration
Creativity
The 4 Cs of Powerful Learning
jonathanmilner.org
24. Infographics & 4Cs
Term When did this
happen?
How could you add
more of this?
Rank (1-4, 1=Best)
Critical Thinking
Communication
Collaboration
Creativity
25. 1-Free Daily Infographics
Light a spark in your classroom. Challenge,
delight, & excite your students every day.
Project your infographic and let the
curiosity & exploration begin.
https://www.jonathanmilner.org/starters/
26.
27.
28. Guide to Making Infographics
• Choose a topic –Demographics
• Narrow it down-US population changes
• Find an infographic on the narrowed topic
29.
30. Write a compelling question– What race will be US majority in 2050?
Write five analytical (critical) questions* about the topic
Critical questions go beyond description: who, what, where, when; towards
analysis: why, does it matter, therefore; and into evaluation: what do you think?
1. What trends do you see in the charts?
2. If you had to draw in a chart for 2095 what would it look like?
3. What is causing the changes in the charts?
4. What are two consequences of the changes?
5. Explain whether these changes will be good or bad for the US:
Allow students to write (create) 1 critical question of their own:
Extend – Push students to learn - Learn more about American demographics at the
Pew Research Center and to act on their knowledge -
Investigate how demographics have changed at your school or in your
community over the past half century through interviews & research.
Share - Have students work in teams to find the best answer (collaborate) and
share their answers (communicate).
31.
32. Infographics & 4Cs
Questions
What’s the best thing about the infographics?
What did infographics teach you about the 4Cs?
Infographics work great for any class. What topic in your content
area would be especially well suited to an infographic?
Extensions
Teams use data to make infographics about their own class content.
Share with class.
At Piktochart it’s quick, free, & easy to make your own infographics.
http://piktochart.com/
jonathanmilner.org
34. Data Quest & 4Cs
Term When did this
happen?
How could you add
more of this?
Rank (1-4, 1=Best)
Critical Thinking
Communication
Collaboration
Creativity
35. Data Quest: How Do We Vote?
Use your knowledge of US politics, the internet,
and any other resources to answer the
questions below. Predict how each person
below will vote in the 2016 presidential election:
D=Democrat; R=Republican. Highlight each
demographic feature of each person and put the
letter D or R above each feature. Extra: Write
the % likelihood of that person’s vote. Use the
2008 Exit Polls and the 2012 Exit Polls to
complete this assignment.
37. 1. I am a female Jewish lawyer who lives in New York City.
2. I am a white male Protestant banker who lives in Charlotte, NC.
3. I am a male Catholic Latino consultant who lives in Miami, FL.
4. I am a male Muslim African-American teacher in Cleveland, OH.
5. I am a white male rancher who lives in Cody, Wyoming.
6. I am a 72 year-old retiree living on Social Security in Denver, CO.
7. I am a white male entrepreneur from Jackson, MS who earns more than
$250,000 a year.
8. I‘m a White pizza delivery high school dropout from Philadelphia, PA.
9. Create your own strongly partisan person here:
Bonus
• Do you think a Republican can win the presidency in 2016?
• Using the demographics of the American electorate and your creativity,
create the perfect candidate and the worst possible candidate. Run the
perfect candidate for president by making them a campaign slogan, a
campaign ad, and then participate in a mock election in class.
38. Data Quest & 4Cs
Questions
What’s the best thing about the data quest?
What did the data quest teach you about the 4Cs?
Extensions
Data quests work great for any class. What topic in your content area
would be especially well suited to a data quest?
Teams use data to make a data quest about their own class content.
Share with class.
44. You’ll find this and other professional development
materials & support at jonathanmilner.org
Contact Jonathan at milnerjonathan@gmail.com
Notas do Editor
Hello, I’m Jonathan Milner. I bring greetings from North Carolina. I want to thank you for taking time out of your challenging and busy teaching days to be here with us today. I’m a teacher and I know that you are very busy with classes to teach, papers to grade, lessons to plan, clubs to run, athletes to coach. I know that when I sit in professional development I spend half of my time thinking about all the things I could be doing. So today I want to promise you a great return on the time you are investing, and that you’ll return to work energized, inspired, with lots of practical and effective methods and materials to lead your students with engaging, exciting and empowering learning.
I’m always curious about the teachers who are here. One of the nice things we can do today is celebrate all the experience and expertise in this room. Since we’ll be collaborating today, we’ll share lots of our wisdom with each other. Let me find a little out about you.
¿How many have taught for < 10 years? 40-50% of teachers leave < 5 yrs.
¿Who has taught 10 > 20 years?
¿Anyone taught 20 > 30 years?
¿Anyone taught > 30 years?
Give that person a hand and maybe a cup of coffee!
¿Anyone taught over 230 years?There’s always some old geezer who has taught for like 50 or 60 years. Seems like he’s always a history teacher, and he doesn’t have teeth or hair. And I’m like, sir, you don’t teach history, you are history. What was life like before cars? Well I haven’t taught for that long but I’ve actually been a public school teacher for over twenty years. Actually, to look at it another way, I’ve taught over two centuries. In fact, my teaching career has spanned two millennia. How’s that for experience?
So I’ve been a teacher for a while and I think I’ll have something to offer everyone here because I’ve taught all sorts of subjects in all kind of schools. I mean people who aren’t teachers ask me what I teach as if I just teach one thing – wouldn’t that be nice. It would be like if I asked a mail courier which house he delivers to. All my friends think I teach history. I don’t just teach history. I teach world history, US government, comparative government, US history, European history, civics, advanced civics, geography - often at the same time - and I’ve even taught ESL and English. So, yeah, I teach history. And I’m sure you’re like me, you’ve taught all kinds of stuff, to all kinds of students.
And I’ve taught in a lot of schools, and all kinds of students: urban, rural, suburban, rich, poor, Black, White, Hispanic, Asian, American, and foreign. I’ve taught at UNCSA, Career Center, Wake Forest, The Governor’s School, Robert E. Lee High school, Stonewall Jackson Middle School.
EMPOWERMENT– Every one of my 1000+ students – from Jackson Middle to UNCSA - has one thing in common. I am no longer their teacher. But if I’ve done my job well I have helped teach them to learn. The key is for students to learn to learn. That’s the empowerment part. And when I’m not doing my job right, I’m doing all the work. I’m talking and telling, and showing, and doing. But the goal isn’t for me to learn it’s for them to learn to learn. And we’ll be working towards that today. And if I’ve done my job right, I’ve empowered my students to become autonomous learners.
Today I want to tell you something I learned in my first year of teaching at Stonewall Jackson Middle School. My first year teaching was in a tough school in Duce Ward, inner city Houston, Texas. I remember being surprised by the giant Roman numeral IIs graffitied across the Jackson schoolscape. As a naïve first year teacher, at first I guessed there must be a very active Latin club or perhaps a super-engaging world history teacher behind these hand-painted Roman numerals. I was very, very wrong.
The smartest person in the whole school was a kid named Jimmy. He didn’t have good grades or high PSAT scores or anything like that, but in his gangsta Dickies and long white t-shirt he burned with intelligence. With Jimmy, all the cognitive channels were open wide, and you could feel his brain whirring as he devoured all my class had to offer. Jimmy-the-kid was rumored to be a Southwest Cholo gang member, and at age 14 he already had Gothic gang tattoos on his knuckles. I’d been trying to connect with Jimmy all year but nothing seemed to work; not the little talks we’d have after class, not the sports analogies I’d land in class, not the Spanish slang I’d throw his way (time to write your essay, Ese). I wasn’t getting through, but I wasn’t about to give up on this brilliant kid and see his big brain put to work selling drugs or leading a gang.
One crisp Friday afternoon in October, Jimmy raced up to me at the end of class. He looked nervous, his eyes darted around the room. He was pale and sweat ran down his face.
“What’s wrong, Jimmy?” I asked.
“Meester,” he said. (All the students called all the male teachers Meester. It could make for confusion whenever a student needed one of us in the teachers’ lounge.) “There’s something I really want to talk with you about. Can you walk me to the bus Meester?”
I was elated. I’d finally broken through. I was just 25, hardly older than some of my students, and Jimmy wanted to talk to me. I was becoming a man. What, I wondered, did Jimmy want to talk about? Was he going to ask for more details on the Emancipation Proclamation? Did he want to borrow my favorite biography? This was my Stand and Deliver moment! I was ecstatic. At long last I was about to connect with Jimmy.
As we walked to the bus I was grinning ear to ear, but Jimmy was distracted, his gaze darting around every corner.
“Jimmy,” I said, “Why do you keep getting in fights, man? I mean, I don’t fight when I have problems.”
“And you don’t live in my neighborhood, Meester.”
Which was true – thank god! A softie like me wouldn’t have lasted a second at Jackson.
“But Jimmy, you’re so smart. You could really go somewhere! You could really make something of yourself with that big brain. I mean why don’t you even try, or turn your work in for once? You could be a star in my class!”
“No disrespect, Meester,” said Jimmy, “but it’s not like I’m planning to be a historian or nothin’.”
And that’s when I realized, smack in the middle of my first year teaching, that I wasn’t really trying to make my class into a little army of historians. In fact, I wasn’t really teaching history. What I was actually doing was teaching my students skills: critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity - the Four Cs. And what I’ve learned in my 22 years teaching since then is that the best teachers always use their subject-- math, English, science, or whatever it is-- to teach their kids successful habits of thinking and of being. We teachers were all taking different routes, but we were headed towards the same place.
As I spoke to Jimmy, I realized that these skills I was trying desperately to teach in my class were probably much more valuable in the Deuce Ward than they ever were back at my Alma Mater. At Wake Forest, if you couldn’t think critically or communicate creatively, then you’d have to suffer Daddy having bought you a Volvo instead of a Lexus. Here in the ‘hood, thinking fast could be a matter of life and death.
We arrived at the bus.
“So, Jimmy,” I said as he mounted the stairs to the bus. “What was it you were so desperate to talk about that you asked me to walk you out to the bus?”
“Oh nothin’, Meester,” he said casually.
“Nothin’? So why’d you ask me to walk with you? What was so important?”
“Oh yeah. That. Sorry Meester.” He paused and scanned the horizon. “So this other gang, Meester, they have a hit out on me. So I figures if a teacher walks to the bus with me, I’m less likely to get shot. You know what I mean? Capped!”
So that’s was the first time I saved a life! And you know, saving a life is something that you feel really good about, but you don’t particularly want to do again.
And that’s when I learned the second important lesson in my first year of teaching. When a gang member asks you to walk him to the bus, you tell him to download the Uber app. I guess this is just a long way of saying content is not the ends, content is only the means to practice the skills and habits of critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity. And the good news is that the hit never happened; Jimmy ended up graduating from Jackson Middle; and we all practiced the 4Cs happily ever after.
What
So that’s my mission – teaching kids these skills so they will become autonomous learners. What’s your mission?
You’ll come back to this sheet throughout the day and add new ideas to it!
How do we get there?
But remember, if we want our kids to be critical thinkers, collaborators, communicators, and creators our classrooms must embrace those same values.
And if we want students to master the the 4C we have to assess for the 4Cs. Here’s my rubric.
Why
Here’s why we need to do this!
Then I tell story about Macon and no wifi.
A couple of summers ago I was at a school giving a talk on 21st century schools and technology. The Mesozoic school where I was speaking didn’t have internet. I shouldn’t have been surprised. It was in Georgia. Actually, the school had plenty of internet - they just blocked it from teachers and students. I guess they didn’t want any one getting any ideas - or information - in their heads. I was flabbergasted, and I couldn’t exactly lead my workshop on technology without technology. That was when I understood what life must be like for Amish computer science teachers.
A school without the internet is like a library without books. Imagine going to a library to check out a book and the librarian says, “Oh no, there’s some dangerous books out there. We don’t want anybody getting their hands on those.”Or you go to the airport. “I’d like a ticket for Miami.” “Miami, oh sorry, there was a crash last summer. Flights are dangerous. We don’t do flights here.”A school’s chief job is educating students, and the internet is the greatest source of information in the history of the world, a tool, so magically amazing that it contains all the questions, answers, and knowledge of humankind at the touch of a button. Imagine having that kind of power at your disposal and deciding not to use it. Shame on them!Compare Macon students – who must know the who, what, when, where. - Knowledge Economy.
Compare with my UNCSA students who are working on the WHY. - Innovation Economy.
Content is dead – it’s been killed by your smart phone. Anybody can get any content any where and any time they want so it’s not content we’re after, but the skills of being able to master that content: think about it, share it with others, communicate it in new creative imaginative way.
No matter how much content you or any of your students have, it’s going to be exponentially less than what my phone has.