Critical Thinking Teachers

On page 16 of Tony Wagner's The Global Achievement Gap, Wagner quotes Annmarie Neal on what her definition of critical thinking.  She says "Taking issues and situations and problems and going to root components; understanding how the problem evolved-looking at it froma systemic perspective and not accepting things at face value..."

I am going to be a special educator of students with Emotional and Behavioral Problems (EBD).  If I take them at face value, I will only see bad kids.  And bad kids are all most people see when they see students with EBD.  I cannot afford to look at my future students in that way, because if I do, I am telling them that they are nothing but their actions of the past.

I need to see the students beyond the face value, because there is a reason that they are acting out.  I can just make my job easier by not looking for the reason why they are behaving that way, but morally, I cannot.  I need to see that the student is not their behavior, there is a reason behind the behavior and I need to figure it out.

This is another example of showing respect to the students, by showing them that I believe wholeheartedly that they are who they choose to be now, not what they are doing or have done in the past.  This is especially true in the Juvenile Justice System where I plan on teaching in.  They are humans who made bad decisions in the past, and they need to be shown that they are not only what they have done, but who they choose to be.