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.
It's one thing to having an inquiring mind as the teacher, quite another to get students actively curious. It would be wonderful to see students generating more of their own questions in more areas. For example, when I taught mathematics, I started having students add a questions that they have at the end of every quiz or test. This helped them practice asking questions and helped me further clarify is if and where the students were stuck.
Book Excerpt
The Power of the Socratic Classroom
As early chapters of this book indicate, students do not have enough practice formulating or asking questions—and they certainly don’t have enough practice with writing and asking deep, meaningful questions. For example, according to Larry Lewin, most of the questions that students ask “either seek clarification on procedural matters (Which numbers are we supposed to do?); attempt to cut a deal (Can we write two paragraphs instead of three?); or try to detour the group from the lesson (What time does this period end?).”
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