Sign on as a Friend of Critical Thinking to receive more ideas and free additional support to help you encourage your colleagues and teachers in creating thinking classrooms.

If working with teachers who are unfamiliar with the TC² model and with our resources, consider the ideas proposed on New to the TC² approach which contains useful lesson plans, articles and videos that are free to everyone.

If your organization is a Partner, use the suggestions on Making use of your membership to inform educators of the wealth of free TC² resources available to them.

Use the online search capacity of our Critical Challenges and Tools for Thought lesson collections and of our professional resources library to find lessons or resources on specific topics to advance individual teacher’s learning.

After reading Powering up to critical thinking from our Stories from the Classroom collection, consider creating a similar menu of professional learning supports that teachers in this school assembled to enable them to customize their individual learning plans. Pair up teachers with colleagues who would regularly offer encouragement and feedback during monthly staff meetings or shared planning time.

Let us help you offer small group after-class face-to-face or online sessions to explore issues of particular interest, co-plan lessons and offer in-class mentoring that is tailored to staff needs.

Develop the capacity of lead teachers within your organization to mentor their colleagues by providing an onsite or online coaching program such as the ones we offer on Coaching in critical inquiry or Math lead teacher certification.

A simple but powerful strategy is to invite teachers after every workshop or conference to articulate what they found especially interesting or useful and to commit to specific actions. The power of sustained professional learning found in our Stories from the Classroom collection illustrates how teachers in every subject were able to find opportunities to follow up for months on ideas learned in a day-long workshop.

Encourage teachers to articulate objectives related to nurturing a thinking classroom as part of their personal growth plans and as part of the expectations for their unit plans and reporting to parents. A school of critical thinkers found in our Stories from the Classroom collection describes one school’s efforts to establish and follow through on professional learning goals.

Create the expectation and opportunities for teachers to consciously use the four facets of our framework for Implementing a thinking classroom to assist them in making informed decisions about their own practices. This includes inviting teachers to “problematize” their practice by identifying aspects of their teaching that might be refined, to consider the criteria for judging an effective modification to their practice, to identify desirable habits of mind that might enhance their efficacy, and to work with colleagues to create a professional community of thinking educators.