Woodward Academy

North Campus

One Book,

One Community:

Global Achievement

Gap,

by Tony Wagner

October 23, 2014

***As you settle in for our meeting, please take a moment

to complete the ½ page found on your chair. We will be

using this in our discussion this morning.

Introductions

-name

-children & grade

"... I have observed that the longer our

children are in school, the less curious they

become. Effective communication,

curiosity, and critical thinking skills, as we

will see, are much more than just the

traditional desirable outcomes of a liberal

arts education. They are essential

competencies and habits of mind for life in the 21st century."

- Wagner, The Global Achievement Gap (p xxiii)

“I worry about the future of science in

this country. For kids to get passionate

about science, they have to get their

hands dirty, literally, and learn to

observe…not just memorize facts from a

textbook. The kids who take my intro

lab have gotten top scores on all the AP

science courses, but they don’t know

how to observe, they want to know what

they should be looking for and what the

right answer is.”

Jonathan King, MIT professor of molecular

biology, Global Achievement Gap p. 7

”A Harris Interactive survey of 2,001

U.S. college students and 1,000 hiring

managers last fall found that 69% of

students felt they were “very or

completely prepared” for problem-

solving tasks in the workplace, while

fewer than half of the employers

agreed.”

Wall Street Journal, Oct. 22, 2014

Per Wagner, The "Global Achievement Gap" is

the gap between what even our best schools are

teaching and testing

-VS-

The skills all students will need for careers,

college, and citizenship in the 21st century.

Do you agree that there is a

“Global Achievement Gap?”

1. Critical Thinking & Problem-solving

2. Collaboration Across Networks

& Leading by Influence

3. Agility & Adaptability

4. Initiative & Entrepreneurialism

5. Effective Oral & Written Communication

6. Accessing & Analyzing Information

7. Curiosity & Imagination

HOW do we talk to our kids?"What the teacher does is the means by which

the students learn -- not the end… I have

consistently found that the kinds of questions

students are asked and the extent to which a

teacher challenges students to explain their

thinking or expand on their answers are reliable

indicators of the level of intellectual rigor in a

class." (Wagner, pp 52-53)

Guided by the Academy mission and vision statement, Woodward has looked very closely at what and how we teach for today’s learner and today’s world!

We focus on both hard and soft skills, with a new emphasis on modeling and teaching

-the 4 C’s (collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and creativity)-developing an inherent love of learning-developing a global view-resilience-flexibility and agility-passion

Thank you, Shelley Paul, Woodard

Academy Director of Learning Design, for

for sharing your resources and creative

content which was used in part for this

presentation.