The Power of the Socratic Classroom

Education & Reference

synopsis

Synopsis

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.

bio

Author Biography

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.

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Author Insight

The Pledge as a Text

Sure, there will be different camps on this one, but hear me out. I like using the Pledge of Allegiance (or anything in a similar situation) as a Socratic Seminar text. The main reason is because in the schools where it is used, students say the pledge daily or weekly and they do not know what they are saying. If a school supports such a decision, then I think we owe it to students to also teach them what it means, including the implications involved. This goes for any text, really, but especially one that is used so very often. With the same reasoning, I support any text that students experience on a regular basis, including things like school mottoes, school songs, “classroom constitutions,” and even student and family handbooks. In the case of the handbooks, how can we honestly hold students and families accountable for their actions and non-actions if they don’t even know what the handbook says and implies. All of this goes back to the idea that we want to teach students HOW to think not WHAT to think, and we should carefully think about what texts have a daily impact on us in our societies large and small.

Book Excerpt

The Power of the Socratic Classroom

Although most U.S. students are extremely familiar with The Pledge of Allegiance, what many people don’t know is that it has changed several times. In addition, the U.S. flag has, of course, changed numerous times over the years, due to the number of states incorporated into the United States. My thought is that if I can show students there’s much more to think about in something as familiar as The Pledge of Allegiance, then they should be able to appreciate that we can think deeply about anything. After all, many students and teachers say The Pledge of Allegiance almost every day, or at least routinely, yet many do not fully comprehend what the Pledge is all about.

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Charles Ames Fischer

The Power of the Socratic Classroom

Synopsis

Author Biography

Author Insight

The Pledge as a Text

Book Excerpt

The Power of the Socratic Classroom

Comment on this Bubble