Making the Grade - Two San Diego Educators Get Top Marks in Helping Kids Learn

Elementary school students aren’t the only ones learning something new in the classroom.

Thanks to Just Think Literacy’s revolutionary educational curriculum, The Seminars in Critical Literacy™, currently being implemented in 24 San Diego area schools including Ada Harris Elementary and Cardiff Elementary, teachers are learning an entirely new, more effective way to engage with academic content and prepare their students for life in the 21st century.

Shortly after becoming parents almost 15 years ago, Michelle Montali and Michelle Nieto – San Diego natives and long-time educators in the San Diego Unified School District - saw a need for a better way of learning for their own children.

In this country, schools have long been entrenched in a traditional approach to teaching: lecturing and imparting facts, which students memorized, parroted back on tests and assignments, and quickly forgot. “Learning” has long been synonymous with “memorization” in schools, with critical thinking, peer collaboration or real-world applications receiving very little instructional attention.

Envisioning a different, more interactive, learning environment, Montali and Nieto combined their collective academic expertise and founded Just Think Literacy, which has since shepherded K-6 students, parents and teachers into a new era of thinking, teaching and learning.

“Our goal was to encourage elementary students of all ages, aptitudes and attitudes to become more sophisticated thinkers,” explained Montali, a former classroom teacher, staff developer and literacy consultant for 18 years. “We wanted to encourage them to construct their own understandings of the concepts that their teachers might share with them… to ‘make them their own’ by engaging in a struggle to express complex and significant ideas, to deliberate them with their classmates, to think carefully about them and draw their own conclusions.”

A carefully engineered progression of thinking and content understanding, the interim goals for each grade level are derived from the expectations of the rigorous middle school and high school standards, and the definitions of elite literacy by renowned scholars in the field. The result is a highly ambitious set of expectations and thinking objectives – one that meets, and even exceeds, Common Core Standards.

“In reading, for example, this move toward fostering understanding and interpretation represents a dramatic shift for teachers, students and administrators,” explained Nieto, an Encinitas resident, who, for more than 20 years, worked as a vice-principal, literacy coach/staff developer, and elementary school teacher. “For the first time, K-6 children are being invited to share and deepen their insights and conclusions, which gives them the confidence and global, conceptual thinking that’s so critical to becoming more competent learners, well-rounded individuals and citizens.”

Cultivating these thinking dispositions may also prepare them to do well on modern standardized tests, such as the upcoming Smarter Balanced Assessments. “We know these students are engaging in work that is meaningful to them and that will forever impact how they approach and process the world around them. We hope the tests will prove to be sensitive to this in the short run, but it’s the long-term goals for the students as people that are most important to us,” Nieto adds.

“I have to say that I truly believe The Seminars in Critical Literacy to be, hands down, one of the most meaningful programs I have ever done in my classroom. I saw true understanding, critical thinking and writing develop and increase in my students as we moved thorough the Seminars,“ shared Lisa Wilken, former Del Mar Unified Teacher grade 5/6.

As Kahlil Gibran once said, “The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.” For more information on Just Think Literacy’s Seminars in Critical Literacy, visit www.justthinkliteracy.com.