Posted: February 22nd, 2017

develop their critical-thinking skills, learn to solve problems, make informed decisions, and get involved with lessons.

You are an American History teacher, and you want your students to do more than simply memorize their way through the information you are teaching. You want them to develop their critical-thinking skills, learn to solve problems, make informed decisions, and get involved with lessons. This turns out to be a daunting task, however. The students seem to want you to describe every required detail in assignments; and when you call on students who don’t have their hands raised, the most common response is, “I didn’t have my hand up” or “I don’t know.” In other cases, they say, “C’mon, just tell us what you want us to know,” and “Why do we have to learn this stuff?”