Think about it Thursday…

Think about a class where the teacher empowers students to solve problems that the teacher has never seen or solved before.  

I wonder what would happen if a central element of every class we teach were geared toward solving problems that do not resemble anything else in the class.  Think about a class where the content was the least important part of the course.  Think about a class where the content was only relevant in contextualizing the problems students had never seen before, but, all along, students had been cultivating skills to grapple with those problems.  There seems to be a shift toward developing skills and away from acquiring content for its own sake.  Think about how that shift only matters if we develop the skills that undergird larger categories of skills and mindsets (e.g. flexibility, adaptability, creativity, collaboration).