Four Skills to Teach Students In the First Five Days of School

I read a great article last week from MindShift. It was titled the same as this blog post. I decided to summarize it here, and cover four of the main points. Please feel free to check out the whole article! It’s amazing.

1. Power Researching
   • “My job used to be to give you the information, now my job is to teach you how to find the information.” –Alan November
2. Meaningful Contributions
   • “You can make meaningful contributions to the world, no matter how old you are.” –Katrina Schwartz
   • “The best teachers were kids who had really struggled with the material and really understand what it’s like to learn…Sometimes teachers suffer from knowing too much. The material they teach is easy to them and it can be hard to empathize with the stumbles of a new learner. Kids who have struggled with the material understand the pitfalls and can often explain them in ways other kids will understand.” –Alan November
3. Ask Them About Their Passions
   • In a computer science class November taught, the most resistant student ended up building a massive database of resources for people with disabilities in her town. She couldn’t finish it by the end of the year, so she came in during the summer to complete the work. “That’s the difference when students define their own problems with intrinsic motivation,” November said. They care so much they’re begging for the computer lab to stay open during the summer.
4. Build A Learning Ecology
   • “I think teachers should demonstrate how they learn in the first five days,” November said. Typically we demonstrate what we already know and have learned. That has to change. We have to teach students to learn to learn.”
   • If Twitter is such an important tool for educators, why keep it from students who also want to know how to connect and build a network? “We should teach them to follow the best minds in the world on whatever their passion is,” November said.