Critical and Creative Thinking

Choosing a preschool for my daughter, Sakira, was an important decision last year that required careful consideration. Critical thinking helped me evaluate the options available in Taipei and make an informed decision. First, I defined the criteria pivotal to my husband and me; luckily, we shared the same values. I wanted a preschool that was close to home, had a Montessori teaching style, taught in Chinese, and had a large outdoor play area. Then, I researched the options for foreigners in Taiwan and gathered information about local and private schools that met my criteria and a few that did not, to explore. I visited a few schools but could not tour due to Covid restrictions. I had to rely on Internet research and informal interviews with neighbors, coworkers, and friends. Researching was difficult because most schools only had information in Chinese, often delivered in video introductions and slideshows, making it hard to translate and judge the school.

I translated and evaluated the evidence I gathered about each school and considered their strengths and weaknesses. I realized that the lack of an outdoor play area or time was a deal breaker and helped to narrow my search. I looked for evidence that supported or contradicted my assumptions, like the belief popular schools that were branded “bilingual” or “Montessori” were “better.” As a teacher, it was vital for me to seek out alternative perspectives of the schools I was considering by talking to current or former teachers, as I learned from first-hand experience what schools show to the parents can often be sugar-coated and misleading.

Using critical thinking skills, I made an informed decision and chose a local school that met my criteria. I considered the long-term implications of my decision and remained open to revisiting it if new information became available after enrolling. Everyone must enter a lottery to enroll in a local school, with a single vote in a single school. Competition for 3-year-olds is fierce because there are fewer seats than the demand. After evaluating the odds for each school and deciding on one, despite being last in the selection hierarchy, we won a seat in the lottery, enrolling Sakira in our first-choice school.

Through this process, I learned to weigh the evidence and provide an analysis of many different types of schools. I honed my ability to make balanced and well-reasoned judgments by rationally questioning what made a school more desirable to us and discovered my values and needs were quite different than most Taiwanese. Ultimately, my family chose a local school with a large outdoor play area, a play-to-learn teaching style that mimicked Montessori without the branding, and was close to home but near nature. Looking back on the process, I realized that critical thinking played a crucial role in our decision, and our daughter’s happy life at school affirmed we made the right one.

An example of creative thinking was when I styled Lara for her upcoming album cover. The album and title song were both called “Thousand-Faced Beast.” I had to communicate the song’s message visually: being powerful yet vulnerable, becoming a beast in pursuit of your dreams, despite your scars. This song and album were also a metaphor for Lara’s journey, as her previous two albums underperformed, and she wanted this project to be her return to stardom. Because of the title, I knew I wanted to work with animal print, but mixing animal prints tends to look cheap, and Lara needed that star quality. My inspiration usually starts on a sourcing trip to the fabric market, and here I discovered a few animal prints in gold. I wanted a large variety, but the selection was poor, so I created animal prints using other fabrics. I learned that I must make it myself if I cannot buy what I want. I like being creative by playing with fabric and testing options; I need to see how it works visually. I found gold snakeskin embossed on faux leather, but the weight was too heavy to use. I cut out dozens of tiny scales and stitched rows onto power mesh to make it more pliable to wear, which I named dragon skin. I stitched shiny gold nylon stripes on a nude mesh to craft a zebra print. I layered large gold paillettes to create fish scales. I designed a one-sleeve sheath dress – one sleeve with the mixed animal prints on the front to represent the strength of 1000 beasts, and one bare arm and sheer back to represent vulnerability (6.1: Lara Veronin’s “Thousand-Faced Beast” Album Cover + Songbook). Lara deserved an original custom garment, and her trust built my confidence. I realized my tendency to seek the answer outside myself but ultimately discovered by trial and error that I am the only one who can deliver my vision.

As an ESL teacher, I have developed my critical thinking skills to evaluate teaching methods and materials, assess my students’ progress, and create and modify lesson plans to adapt to my students’ needs. Through my experience teaching in Taiwan, I learned that keeping up to date with new educational practices and research is indispensable. This process involves accessing and assessing online research, attending professional development courses, and discussing teaching, especially reading instruction, with other educators.

      Another example of my critical thinking was when I redesigned all lesson plans, classwork, and homework to align with our new curriculum, Open Court Reading, and concepts from Science of Reading, some independently, some I learned from this course (6.2: Implementing Science of Reading Professional Development Series Certificate). Reviewing research and considering methods endorsed by experienced teachers brought awareness to alternative methods. When I learn a new teaching concept, I must reevaluate my teaching practices with humility and decide to keep, synthesize, or abandon them. I determine what works best by testing it on my students for a few lessons or up to a full year, gauging their reception, and comparing assessments. A swift correction I made was when I learned to pronounce all 44 phonemes correctly; I quickly saw how much more effectively my students could blend CVC words. However, I took a risk when I redecorated my class, utilizing a dynamic sound wall and discarding my word wall. It was when I had gone through a year of lessons, using each component of the sound wall daily, that I determined it was a superior method.

Furthermore, I learned to abandon sight words and adopt heart words to teach high-frequency words. I experimented with creating an alternative format for my phonics lessons, such as incorporating decodable drills and phonemic awareness activities, which proved successful. As a result of explicit phonics instruction, I saw my first graders transition from blending words to reading much earlier in the year than in previous classes. My research and the course I took solidified the place of evidence-based practices in my lessons and helped me to reevaluate my teaching methods and discontinue ineffective practices.

Additionally, I learned that assessing students’ knowledge of English requires much preparation and organization. I learned this by implementing different assessment methods and evaluating the results to improve my teaching. One mistake I made was assuming that just because I taught a concept, my students would know it, which led to inadequate support for some students. I realized this mistake when I saw my students’ grades and the gap between high and low scores. I learned that assessments provide valuable feedback on the effectiveness of my lessons. I revised my lesson plans to concentrate on the areas where my ESL students required more help, particularly in vocabulary and grammar, and spiraled review. I differentiated instruction, offering more opportunities for students to participate at their level. A specific example I learned to be effective was differentiating vocabulary. I utilize a color photo library, give many oral examples, and assign different activities to my students by ability: my lower-level students draw pictures and write fill-in-the-blank sentences, my mid-range students complete sentence stems, my higher-level students create their own sentences, and all share ideas orally.

Surveying and incorporating a wide range of information is vital to creating engaging lessons and activities for my students. I learned this by researching new teaching methods, materials, and resources outside of school resources, like Teachers Pay Teachers, and weaving them into my lessons. I noticed I relied too much on the Teacher’s Guide and not enough on my interpretation to adapt the lesson to my ESL class. I realized the English level was too demanding when I saw my students’ lack of enthusiasm and engagement during lessons containing a lot of written classwork. I started creating and sourcing my materials and activities, such as using an online Bingo generator to review phonics or letter magnets for practicing spelling, to make my lessons more engaging and relevant to what the current class enjoys. I try to pay attention to current fads and think of educational uses. I usually preview the syllabus to see the target concept and decide which activity might match well, which comes from trial, error, and experience. I draw the assignment on A4 paper, create it on the computer, or find one online. I keep organized folders of past activities from previous years. During lesson prepping, I stay open to new ideas and resources by seeking innovative ways to make my lessons more effective and refining my pre-prepped folders for the following year. 6.3: Letter of Reference – Albert Wang can testify to my growth in critical thinking as a teacher at Beth’s Academy.

Evidence Supporting Critical and Creative Thinking

6.1: Lara Veronin’s “Thousand-Faced Beast” Album Cover + Songbook

6.2: Implementing Science of Reading Professional Development Certificate

6.3: Letter of Reference – Albert Wang