Where will your students be in 15 years? What will they be doing? What will the world expect of them? How will the things you are doing in your class right now prepare them for that far-away result?
In 15 years, my former students won’t be writing DBQs, but they will be taking in information, evaluating its content and credibility, and communicating their own conclusions about what to do with that information.
In 15 years, they won’t be engaging in a Socratic Seminar about themes in Romeo and Juliet, but they will be in situations that require them to speak articulately to advance an argument, communicate clearly, organize their thoughts logically, disagree without attacking, support their conclusions with evidence, listen and respond to others, and connect ideas to the “real world.”
In 15 years, you won’t find many of them working with a partner to stage and perform a duet acting scene from a play, but most will be collaborating with others, considering the visual and emotional impact of stylistic choices, preparing for a presentation, speaking in front of a group with poise and confidence, analyzing the motives of others, and communicating to achieve a desired effect.
In 15 years, most former orchestra students won’t be rehearsing Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, but the discipline, persistence, attention to detail, teamwork, patience, troubleshooting, concentration, focus, and direction-following they practiced will serve them well in their work and leisure pursuits.
In 15 years, they won’t be solving a math problem, working on a coding assignment, or collecting data for a biology lab, but they will use logic, reasoning, problem solving, and analysis as they solve real-world problems as parents, employees, public servants, leaders, doctors, lawyers, programmers, and educators.
In 15 years, most won’t be playing flag football in P.E.class, but they will need to exhibit good sportspersonship, work on teams, develop “plays” and strategies, learn how to win and lose, exercise to remain healthy, and move with purpose and coordination.
Even in the best project-based learning situation, the tasks students are doing right now in school aren’t the things most people do in the real world. Even so, what we ask them to do as students ought to develop the skills and dispositions they need to thrive in the world beyond school. If not, these don’t seem like worthwhile pursuits.
As you are thinking about what you teach and how you teach it, ask yourself this key question: What transferable skills and dispositions does this require of my students, and how am I deliberately teaching students to develop them?
This question has two important components:
1. Transferable Skills and Dispositions: When planning instruction, great teachers ascribe to the adage, “Begin with the end in mind.” Unfortunately, we sometimes are a little short-sighted when we think about what “the end” is. The “end” shouldn’t lie in the course the student is currently taking. If the end is a unit test, a performance assessment, a product, or a standardized test, we are merely preparing students for a hurdle they have to get over to reach whatever is next. For some teachers, the end lies in a class the students will be taking down the road (“I’m teaching you this because you’re going to need to do this in AP next year” or “You will have to do this in college.”). I’d argue that preparing students for the next level of academia, though helpful, is still a goal that matters more to us than it probably matters to them. Transferable skills—the ones we should focus on—are the ones necessary for success in life, that students will need to develop so they can go as far as they choose to go on the road to career and life success. Along with those skills are dispositions, habits of the mind and heart, that will accompany those skills. Teamwork, persistence, patience, empathy, tolerance, altruism, self-confidence, self-reflection, impulse control, and curiosity are among the dispositions we should help our students develop. Before we teach or assign anything, we should identify the transferable skills and dispositions involved; if these elements aren’t evident, we may want to reconsider what we are teaching and why.
2. Deliberate Teaching: It’s not enough to provide tasks and activities for students that allow them to develop transferable skills and dispositions that will help them achieve far-away results. We have to be intentional and strategic about teaching students those skills. Asking students to reason through a problem won’t help the student who doesn’t know how to read the problem, take it apart, analyze its components, apply prior knowledge, choose the best tools for the job, work through a solution, and evaluate the solution’s effectiveness. Each of those transferable skills needs to be taught, probably not to every student but definitely to many. Skills don’t develop by accident, and they don’t improve without some metacognitive reflection.
A few examples might help clarify these components.
Note-taking is a skill students need to master to be successful in school that they also need in the real world. In life, however, no one tells people what kind of notes to take, when and how to format them, and what they should write down. The transferable skills inherent in note-taking include recording important information, organizing ideas, evaluating the relative importance of ideas or details, summarizing, and more. If I make those decisions for my students (by providing a format, telling them what to write down, allowing them to copy my notes, and showing them how they should organize them), I haven’t taught my students how to do anything on their own. If, however, I teach my students to use various formats of notes, allow them to consider the best format for this particular situation, ask them questions about how they plan to organize their notes, provide time for them to compare their notes with a partner, and ask them to evaluate the effectiveness of their own note-taking efforts, I’m teaching skills they can transfer throughout their lives.
An English teacher requiring students to self-select books and read during daily silent reading time in class has the opportunity to teach numerous transferable skills and dispositions: developing a “reading life,” monitoring comprehension, building reading stamina, finding value and enjoyment in reading, knowing what to do when comprehension breaks down, evaluating what they read, thinking critically, setting goals, monitoring progress and growth, and responding to a text and to other readers. Most of these skills aren’t going to happen on their own, though. Merely letting students read unbothered isn’t going to grow these skills in students; the teacher’s intentional instruction matters. With strategic use of mini-lessons and conferences with students, teachers can identify what skills each student needs to strengthen, offer just-in-time instruction to build that skill, and monitor growth and progress.
Asking and answering that key question—What transferable skills and dispositions does this require of my students, and how am I deliberately teaching students to develop them? —is the best way I know to turn good teaching into transformative teaching. Educators who become strategic about building transferable skills and dispositions in their classrooms are the ones who make a difference in the long run. Their students succeed now and are ready to achieve far-away results throughout their lives.
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