Do You Have 21st-Century Skills to Help Your Students Succeed? Do Your Students Have 21st-Century Skills to Think for Themselves? The Power of the Socratic Classroom has the answers you are looking for—answers that will supply the strategies to show students how to succeed into the future. A future that has unknown products, unidentified jobs, and unanticipated challenges. In Socratic Seminar, teachers shift to the role of facilitator, where they help their students develop the collaborative interpersonal skills, the critical and creative thinking skills, and the speaking and listening skills to face the upcoming challenges of the 21st century.
Charles Fischer has taught in public and private schools in a variety of settings, from rural Maine to inner city Atlanta. In the past 20 years, he has worked with a wide range of students from 4th grade to AP English and has been nominated for Teacher of the Year four times. He has his Master’s degree in Teaching & Learning from the University of Southern Maine, and received his B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from Binghamton University. His latest book, The Power of the Socratic Classroom, has won four awards, including the NIEA Best Education Book. His first novel, Beyond Infinity, won a 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award bronze medal (YA fiction). His areas of expertise are Socratic Seminar, Active Listening, Inquiry, Teaching & Learning, and Critical & Creative Thinking. He is currently working on a book of poetry, a short story collection, and several novels.
I once heard that you really don't know something until you have reflected upon it. If this is even partly true, then the post-seminar component of Socratic Seminar is a vital part of improving group dynamics and abilities. Seminars often get very exciting, so it can be hard to stop several minutes before class is supposed to end, but the reflection time will pay off in the long run.
Book Excerpt
The Power of the Socratic Classroom
The main point of the post-seminar debrief session is to improve the quality of future seminars. Certain practices, such as dwelling on past mistakes, heavily criticizing certain individuals, or spending significant time on what didn’t happen rarely help. A good balance between positive feedback, constructive criticism and neutral observations is best.
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