Metacognition

As a teacher, more than anything else, I want my students to think for themselves. This is so much harder than it sounds. Somewhere in the last 10 years or so, critical thinking has gone away, replaced with standardized thinking. They don’t want to think, they want to be told what to think. I hate that. Every time I ask “Why do you think that?” they say, “I don’t know, just because”. The sad thing is, they’re telling the truth. They don’t know why they think anything. Metacognition is the process of thinking about your thinking. How do I teach metacognition? It wouldn’t matter even if I could figure it out. I don’t think I would last very long as a teacher if an administrator came into a room of people just thinking. They don’t want them to think, they want them to do. Do anything, doesn’t matter as long as they are active and getting good grades. I hate this too. If you press a student to examine their thinking, they often get offended. They think you are telling them what they think is wrong. They don’t understand what “being the devil’s advocate” means. And, a lot of times, what they do think IS wrong…but I prefer wrong thinking over no thinking.

Which leads me to my own thinking. I think a lot. Thinking is tied to feeling, so I feel a lot. We are presented with so much information in life, information on religion, politics, education, families. It’s literally never ending. The process goes like this:

New information leads to me considering what is presented, cross-referencing what I already know (schema), making a decision on what I think, and filing the thought away into its proper category. The problem is, my thoughts don’t always fit into the right categories. I can’t make myself think “Republican” or think “Democratically” or even think “Christian”. So what happens when what I think and feel does not fit with how I am told I should think and feel?? This is cognitive dissonance, and it’s not fun.

People ask me if I am a Democrat because I have a poster of Barack Obama in my classroom. He’s our president. Isn’t that enough? I also have a picture of a tree in my classroom. What does that mean? I suppose if you go by percentages, I am more Democratic than Republican. But am I expected to fit the bill in every Democratic category?? Then comes the question, “Are you a Christian?” Uh…by a preponderance of evidence, sure. But my thoughts don’t fit categorically into Christian schema. I didn’t ask them not to fit, it just happened. E

I believe I serve a big God who has made a way for people of other faiths to spend eternity with Him. I can’t conceive of God any other way. Again, I didn’t ask or intend to feel this way, I just do. Am I wrong?? I struggle with this question every single day.

I want my life to be a reflection of who God is, truly, more than anything, that is my desire. I want to openly discuss these thoughts with other Christians and know that someone out there feels the same way.

Because, even though we should all think for ourselves, at the end of the day, it’s nice to know there is someone thinking that way too.