Creating Innovators is the title of Tony Wagner’s new book. After extensive interviews with over 150 well known CEOs, Tony Wagner makes a powerful case for the need to develop a climate and culture that promotes the development of problem solvers and innovators. While innovation is the fuel that has powered our economy, the culture and climate in our classrooms make it virtually impossible to develop young problem solvers and innovators.
Tony has developed a list of skills and attributes that employers want from their employees. For each of the attributes that the employers want, Wagner has identified an impediment that exists in virtually all of our school systems that will keep the desired attribute from being developed. If you have not had the chance to read Creating Innovators, I highly recommend watching a video of Tony where he discussed the needs of business and the impediments to the development of those skills.
There are proven classroom strategies and after school STEM teams that achieve the desired outcomes. When given the opportunity to flourish, the student education outcomes are amazing. The challenge is to create a culture and climate where this can occur. In our research, we have seen schools that have a highly diverse population of students that closely approximates the demographics of the community produce classes where 100% of the students graduate and 98% go to college.
What we need are strong partnerships between our K-12 educators, business leaders and leaders from higher education collaborating on strategies for making these outcomes the norm instead of the rare exception.
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