ThinkWorks News

ThinkWorks trains Virginia teachers in curriculum, thinking skills

September 11th, 2008

McLean, VA - When Fairfax County Public Schools unveiled their model curriculum, the Program of Study (POS), several years ago, most educators in the system applauded.  Others, however, were left scratching their heads.  Some teachers in the district found its lingo complicated, worried that it interfered with their pedagogy, and thought it ignored the realities of their classrooms.

In response, several administrators and teachers in the Virginia school district consulted with ThinkWorks, an educational company based in Ithaca, NY, committed to bringing thinking skills to schools.  Together, they used ThinkBlocks to develop several hands-on activities to bring everyone up to speed.  ThinkWorks staff led over 220 pre-K Special Educators in these activities during a recent workshop, allowing teachers to engage in the POS and gain a better understanding of their roles within it.

Elise Tripp, FCPS's Coordinator of Early Childhood Special Education, described the workshop's impact.  "After a year of struggling to help teachers make sense of the pre-K POS, the superb presentation from ThinkWorks not only clarified and concretized how to understand and look at the document, but also helped to expand our thinking about how we think and teach students to think, all of which is critical for learning."

Educators in attendance were eager to translate the day's learning into practice.  One teacher praised the district's efforts to share the POS.  After the workshop she said, "the hard work put into this project is quite evident and should be commended."

Greg Wheeler coordinates the educational support offered by ThinkWorks and was impressed by the teacher's creativity.  "These teachers dove head-first into this and grappled with the POS.  This activity proved that, for any idea you can think, you can build a model of it.  As we built the POS as a group, it was great to watch the teachers get these fuzzy concepts - words like 'Essential Understandings' or 'Benchmarks,' - out of their heads and into their hands.  Working together, the teachers could build their ideas on the table in front of each other.  They discovered that they had been talking about the same things all along but using different words!"

The day of training also included a seminar on ways to teach thinking skills effectively.  Educational researcher and ThinkWorks Founder Dr. Derek Cabrera discussed why schools should place a greater emphasis on thinking than on particular facts.  "With knowledge changing so quickly, it's important for our students to learn how to know, not just what to know.  We can do both at once - and do both very well - by infusing curricula with universal thinking skills."

The August 27 training capped off a busy summer for the school district.  FCPS revamped the POS while students were on vacation.  As they retooled the curriculum, the school district worked closely with ThinkWorks to include Cabrera's 21st Century thinking skills.