What happens when Classrooms meet Higher Order Thinking? A Story that will solve problems of so many teachers.

So let me tell you about Kai, a great kid. He never caused any problems. He perfected this way of hanging over his table and holding his pencil in such a way that if you weren't paying attention very carefully, you would actually think that he was working, which he was not most of the time. He had his hair that hung down in front of his eyes. You could tell it was nothing personal, but Kai just did not get a whole bunch out of school.

One day, for no reason really, I decided to not give the lesson that was in the book and instead asked my students to imagine that a bomb had gone off and all capital letters had been destroyed. I asked, "Would anybody even notice, and how would we solve that problem?" Kai, from the back of the class, put his hair out of his eyes, raised his hand, and said, "Well, we could use different color letters." What a great idea! I had finally reached him, and I had no idea what I'd done, but in a moment of contact, I saw real brilliance, and that moment has never left me. It has brought me here today.

As you've heard, I'm an elementary school teacher, and I think the idea that inspired me the most when I first started teaching was that education is not the filling of a pail or a bucket; it's the lighting of a fire. We can think back to all our time at school and remember those teachers who could really bring that fire into the classroom for us. You can remember what it was like to be a student like Kai and just not engaged with that education.

I have got some ideas about how we can bring that fire back into every classroom every day, and that is what I'm going to talk to you about today. But I'm going to be honest first because that fire just about went out for me in the last few years. You know, high-stakes testing has changed so much of what we do in the classroom. I used to love, when I first started teaching, to spend half a morning reading and writing poetry with my students. But if you want to get through that book and get to everything that's going to be on those tests as a teacher, you have just got to stick to that schedule.

Tests are good, but to paraphrase Annie Cameron, who is a writer and education blogger, they are like a very, very accurate telescope that is focused on just a few stars at the expense of a universe of knowledge. I like to know how my math lessons are catching on with my students, but I also need to know how they solve their own problems, and I like to hear them tell a joke that they've made up themselves. These stars are shining just as bright in our children, and they need to be seen because we don't want them to burn out.

If we're letting what happens in our classroom be so influenced by external priorities and testing, where is that discovery? Where is that fire? Well, I think I got some insight through a pretty special experience, but I had to completely step out of the regular education system in order to get that experience. I started working in gifted education at the Day a Week School. Now that is a program for a group of kids, maybe the top 2%, who already know or understand pretty much everything that's being taught at school right now. So, what you do is you take them out one day a week and you let them have a real challenge. That challenge is in teaching them how to think.

You can look at it this way: these kids already have great test scores, so where can a teacher still have something to offer them? Well, in the process, and the process is thinking. You don't grade what they do there, and you don't test it either, because something very interesting happens when you stop grading children. They can no longer succeed, and they can no longer fail. The only thing they can do is learn, and I don't know about you, but that is a space that I really like to be in.

So, I'm going to tell you about one of my favorite activities to do with my students. I ask them to take two objects, like a bus and a pen, and combine them to make a new object. Some kids will think of a pen that looks like a bus, and other kids will think of a bus that looks like a pen. But once they get going, they'll start thinking of buses that, instead of exhaust pipes, have ink coming out of them and draw all over town beautiful drawings every day. Other kids will think of a digital pen that you can put money in and buses with a sort of board where you can write down where you want to go, and it subtracts the money from your pen. Do you see what I mean? There's no right answer and no wrong answer; there is just thinking. And thinking is hard, but thinking can also be really fun.

Now, another example: I'm going to share with you a project that I just finished with my kids. I asked them to split up into groups and design original wooden toys. Once they worked out on paper what it was supposed to look like, they had to make three-dimensional cardboard prototypes. Then, from those prototypes, they learned how to draw them on the computer, and from the computer, they could get a laser to cut out the pieces of the toys that they designed. But as you can see, it can take a really long time waiting for that laser to cut. So, in the meantime, they designed the packaging and the pricing and made commercials for their toys.

As you can imagine, some kids really enjoyed drawing an original toy, others loved putting the pieces of a three-dimensional prototype together, some enjoyed figuring out how much the thing would cost, and others loved to write their own commercials. But they all got to do something new, something they liked, and they all felt that they had really learned.

So, what made this learning so different from the learning that they're doing in their own classrooms? Well, learning in primary school happens primarily by understanding, remembering, and applying. Think back to your day at school: the teacher explains a spelling rule or an algorithm so that you can understand it, and then you practice really hard with worksheets so that you can know how to use it. At the end, you can spell a word correctly or do a long division problem. But there are also three higher-order thinking skills: analyzing, evaluating, and creating.

That's what my students were doing every step of the way to create their own wooden toys, and that's how I reached Kai too. Now, I want to take you someplace new. But I bet a bunch of you are way ahead of me. If we have the capacity to teach our gifted children like this, shouldn't we be teaching all of our children like this? These skills are not just for gifted kids: creativity, solving problems, making solutions with technology, and working together. These are the skills that all of our kids need. They're going to need them to find a place in the 21st-century workplace. Do you realize that it's estimated that 65% of kids in primary school today will be doing jobs that don't even exist yet?

How are we going to solve all these problems that we are causing on the earth? We are going to be more and more dependent on young people like Boyan Slat, who developed his ocean cleaner project when he was only 18 years old. But even more than that, we can engage all of our learners again, even the Kais. We can get them to love learning now, discover their passions now, and develop their talents now. Why is this important? Well, civil rights leader Howard Thurman said, "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, because what the world needs are people who have come alive."

So, what will it take to implement higher-order thinking skills in our classroom? Not much. It's well within our reach. We can implement activities that stimulate higher-order thinking in just 15 minutes a day by using activities like the bus and the pen or riddles. Do you guys know this one? "What can travel around the world while staying in a corner?" It's a stamp, that's right.

Imagine this: a classroom where, just one hour a week, the books get put away. One group is in the corner building a chain reaction with dominoes and marbles. It's a huge mess, but it's very cool. Another group is in the corner researching and writing for their website to teach other kids how to take good care of their pets. Another group is cutting out the cards for a board game that they've designed and are going to teach the rest of their class later.

How is this possible? The students I'm talking about have been given the time and support by their teacher to develop something that really interests them. Two rules: it has to be something that the entire class can learn something new from, and they have to present it when they're done. Does that sound familiar? Well, Google implements it as well, and they call it 20% time. All the employees at Google are allowed to spend 20% of their time at work developing something that really interests them, as long as it is something that may eventually benefit the company as a whole. That's where Gmail, AdSense, and Google Sky came from. It's estimated that as much as half of Google products have originated as 20% time products.

Now, I'm not advocating implementing a lot of commercial concepts into education, but this one tells me a lot about the real kind of development and innovation that happens when you support people going after something they really want to know more about. Think about what the implications could be for our kids.

So, how great would it be to implement 20% time in our schools? It's good enough for Google. It's simple, it's cheap, and we don't have to buy a bunch of expensive software or training. We can just ask our kids what they want to learn and give our teachers the time and freedom to support that.

Now, I'm asking you: what else can we do to create that space where success and failure just fall away and only learning and the joy of learning are left? Which projects that embody the spirit of 20% time will fit into your school and your classroom? That's why I'm here. I want to start a grassroots movement with schools, parents, and maybe even my government to start finding answers to those questions.

I don't want my daughter to just be seen for the few stars, but I want her to shine for all the brilliance that she has. We offer this kind of education to gifted kids now, but we could be offering it to all of our kids. Imagine a world where everybody, and I'm thinking of those kids we just saw on stage, can be seen for all the light that they have to give. How bright will that world be? Have you got a picture in your head? Why don't we go make that happen? Thank you.