Principles for Transitional Thinking
The business of preparing young people for the workplace.
Transition thinking is a term that can be applied in businesses and means taking a long-term view of the future of your business.
Whereas the day-to-day running of your business usually includes thinking about short-term operations of the business or using a limited, narrow-focused style of thinking to solve immediate problems and meet established goals, transitional thinking in the MindSage approach is related to how students, teachers, and districts can think about long term view to the impact of durable skills training on students.
Transitional thinking: Redefining what education and student success means.
If you were asked about the purpose of education, what would you say? To get into college? Secure a good job? If then asked what a student needs to do in school to achieve those goals, would your answer be to study hard, take AP classes, and get good grades?
Transitional thinking allows us to shift focus from what needs to be done for a student to succeed and instead concentrate on what kind of person a student needs to become to thrive in any future endeavor. In the end, a person's education and success depend as much on the kind of person they become as on what they know.
Here are four questions to consider as you think about the long-term future of your student’s success. First answer them as you normally would. Then answer the questions without refering to grades, GPA, or entrance to college.
What goals do I have for my students years from now?
What special strengths do I want my students to have have?
What weaknesses do I want to help my students address now?
Primer Questions
Do you personally believe developing durable skills is important? Why or why not?
What durable skills are you lacking?
In what areas can you realistically say that you’ve developed strong durable skills? Are you flexible? Determined? Do you easily take constructive criticism? Are you an effective communicator? Why or why not?
Write down your answers and observations and discuss them with the group.
An innovative approach requires an open mind.
One of the first keys to becoming an effective trainer or teacher of durable skills is understanding and appreciating the importance of developing durable skills yourself. Take a moment to reflect on how you feel about developing durable skills.
Flexibility and Life-long Learning:
If you are already an educator, chances are there is a specific subject that you teach. More than likely, you teach that subject because you enjoy it and appreciate its value.
In order for your students to also reach the same level of appreciation of the subject you teach, you need to help them understand how what they are learning will benefit them in the future. The same is true of durable skills.
To help you be convinced of the value and impact of developing durable skills try the following activity.
Take a moment to search on Google for the terms ‘durable skills or soft skills’, ‘importance of durable skills’, ‘are durable skills or soft skills important?”, ‘lack of durable skills’, or any other search related to durable skills.
What do articles from the last three years indicate? Discuss your findings with your group, other teachers, or students.
Where and When Learning Occurs.
There is a growing recognition that the time spent in the classroom does not necessarily equate to skills acquired. Simultaneously, an increasing number of people agree that meaningful learning occurs continuously outside of the classroom.
“If you actually believe that premise — that learning is happening everywhere and not just in six-hour time increments for nine months of the year — then you need to build tools that build trust that the learning that is happening outside of school time is real,” — Timothy Knowles
This is where the MindSage program's metacognitive exercises come into play. To develop durable skills taught in the classroom, students must engage in self-examination outside of the classroom. This means students need to reflect on their daily experiences and what they've learned in their lessons.
It’s no wonder that a child placed in classrooms for years knows only how to be a student. There is nothing that prepares them for the workplace environment.
The following is a quote from one of our participants regarding learning in our workplace environment: 'It was really cool to break out of the academic mindset. I feel like it's been my entire life… I’ve just been a student. And I’m like, what am I after I’m a student?
The sooner we allow young people to experience the unique challenges of working in a team setting, the more prepared they’ll be once they get there.
“At the K-12 level, there’s been a push to create more flexibility in the school day for “immersive experiences,” like internships and hands-on projects, from players such as XQ Institute, the nonprofit supported by Emerson Collective that since 2015 has poured millions of dollars into efforts across the country to “rethink high school.”
-EdSurge Article: “What If We Measured Learning Through Skills Gained, Not Time Spent in the Classroom?” Influential institutions throw their weight behind bringing competency-based education to high school and college.