Intellect: Applying Skills to the World
6/17/2025
Recently, Newsweek published an article stating that Gen Z parents are reading to their children at a much lower rate than previous generations. I remember growing up in a home that always provided me with reading material. I loved going to Waldenbooks when we got report cards to get a few new books to add to my collection. And, though life is busy with raising a family, I try to find time every week or so to read a little bit just for fun.
We should be concerned about the results of this survey because when young people do not have these shared reading experiences, they lose out on valuable early opportunities to make connections. My own sons have enjoyed taking stories they read and re-enacting them, or playing characters from those books and incorporating them into what they are playing outside.
This is intellect at play.
Gholdy Muhammed’s journey through the five pursuits of learning goes from skills to intellect. While one may think that these are interchangeable, they are not.
I previously wrote that I could learn the quadratic formula, but that I didn’t really have any connection to it. Why would I need to know this? How would this help me in my life? What purpose does it serve?
While I still don’t have those answers, I can tell you that the trigonometry concept of SOHCATOA definitely has stuck with me. As a technical theatre educator, I have used those formulas to help me determine angles in sets that I build. It is useful to me, and I can connect the skill to the world.
That is intellect.
While learning a skill does involve some thinking, developing intellect involves deeper thinking. For some learners, it can be easy to make the connections on their own. Others, however, will need some scaffolding from a mentor, teacher, or other guide.
And that’s ok. Over time, learners of all ages can go from making connections through guidance to making connections on their own. One of the best experiences I have in consulting with clients who want help on their college entrance narratives or their job search writing is how they take what they have done in their life (skills) and using them to express the most compelling and truthful story about themselves (intellect).
The earlier we can help students discover their own genius for intellect, the earlier they will be able to make these connections independently. And the sooner they can discover the next pursuit: criticality.
Skills: More Than Regurgitation
6/7/2025
Awhile back I wrote about Gholdy Muhammed’s take on identity and how the pursuit of it relates to learning. Knowing who we are is vital to having a way to connect to the learning that is to take place.
But as I think about learning, I think about it as a lifelong endeavor. To use Muhammed’s term, it is a pursuit. Something we always go after, achieve a level of mastery, but are never really done with it. As a theatre director and teaching artist, I find myself attracted to workshops on topics I have learned already, eager to re-discover something I may have forgotten or not fully understood the first time around.
In order to be that lifelong learner, we have to develop the next pursuit that Muhammed talks about: skills. Skills may be the easiest to grasp, because it is the core of what education has become today. What is it that we want students to know or be able to do?
The challenge, however, comes when a teacher does not take the time to develop a way for a student’s identity to connect to the learning at hand. To be fair, if a teacher has 30 or more students in a classroom, and they are teaching multiple sections of a subject, they can be challenged to find at least one way for each student to connect to the learning. But it must be done.
One of the core strategies in professional development at my school is that of professional learning communities. Also known as PLCs, they offer teachers of similar content to collaborate and discuss how to not just help students learn what they need to learn, but also help each other become stronger educators. Even teachers who have been at it for 20 or 30 years can forget strategies that helped them early in their careers. And we all know that no college courses seem to prepare future educators for all of the tips and tricks that seasoned teachers learn from their years in the classroom.
The PLC process, when used correctly, can be a great place for discussing how to connect students with content, with skills. And it can be a built in team-mentoring session where younger teachers can learn from the veterans, and where veterans might just pick up a new idea or two!
Since the 2001 passage of No Child Left Behind, such a focus has been placed on test scores that students have become programmed to take tests. The problem is that not everyone is a strong test-taker. And I saw firsthand the number of students suffering from “test anxiety” dramatically increase.
Might we be able to help some students overcome this if we can make the connection between a student’s identity and the skills we want them to learn? Not that I think testing is the end-all, be-all. But if we have to have testing, and we want students to do their best on them, might we their ability to connect to what they are being tested on. In that way, they might not have to rely on so many test-prep courses, books, and practice tests to ensure that they pass.
Connect a student’s identity to what skills you want them to learn, and you unlock tremendous power in each learner to become a lifelong learner.
And it sets the stage for the next pursuit: criticality: Intellect.
Identity and Learning Make Our World Better
3/8/2025
Over the past several months, I’ve been doing a deep dive into Gholdy Muhammed’s book Unearthing Joy. In the book she offers a wonderful history of education in African American culture. Part of this history includes the idea that historically (which trace back to the days of slavery, little did I know) these learning communities called their learning “pursuits” rather than “objectives.”
I love that idea of “pursuits.” It implies that you are constantly learning, constantly going after something new. It never ends. And it’s not tied to the drudgery of the testing culture that words like “skills” and “objectives” permeate.
Muhammed identifies four pursuits from her research: identity, skills, intellect, and criticality. She adds her own fifth pursuit: joy.
I’ve been blessed to work with an amazing group of theatre educators in a national PLC over the past year, as we’ve worked to improve our practice while using the pursuits as a basis. The work is messy (as is any work in education), but so rewarding.
I’ll spend some time sharing my thoughts on each of the pursuits over the next several posts. But today I want to start with identity.
That word can feel highly politicized. But at the root of it, identity is all about how one’s lived experiences connect to the task at hand. Whether it’s an assignment in class, planning meals for your family, or deciding how to spend your money, who we are impacts how we live each moment of our lives. Too often in learning, we focus on skills (the next pursuit I’ll write about) without thinking about why students should even care in the first place. Other than “it’s on the test”, why should anyone care?
This is why I love working with words and working in the theatre. Often my actors are playing roles that are not much like them at all. I even have one actor that is a gentle soul but plays evil people REALLY WELL! How is it then, that these actors can embody the characters truthfully?
Identity.
No, that gentle soul is not really evil at heart! But by crafting a way to find some connection to the character, the actor is able to play the role honestly and tell the story truthfully. Once they use their identity to connect to the play, life begins to be injected into the script, and the fun of creating theatre begins.
I recently worked on #Censored, a one-act play about that very topic, with a wonderful group of high school students. While student performers said they were against censorship, most of them were playing characters who were in favor of some form of it. In order to help them play the characters honestly, we began talking about their own lived experiences. And through those discussions they realized that censorship comes in many forms, and many of them discovered that they supported various forms of censorship. Once we got to that point in the process, it was an easy shift for them to embody the characters they played.
And so it is with writing. I recently worked with a client who was writing an admissions essay for a prestigious program. He had a lot of great ideas on what he wanted to say, but struggled with how to get it all across clearly and succinctly. Our meetings focused on talking about the stories that he wanted to tell. Not only did I get to know more about him, but he began learning about himself and what he wanted to say through our conversations. By focusing on who he was and his lived experiences, we were using identity to shape a narrative that helped him get into the program!
So identity is not just the political rhetoric that we hear so often from our elected officials. Identity is about who you are and your own lived experiences. It influences every choice we make, whether we realize it or not. But it also impacts everyone else. And ignoring others’ identities can lead to generalization and stereotypes, which only lead to harm to our world. Once we can accept that identity is at the core of who we are and everything we do, understanding how to use that to make a positive difference in our world becomes easier to do!
Can't I Just Use AI?
11/27/2024
It has been awhile since I wrote in this space, but as we head into the holiday season, I wanted to reflect on the work that I have been doing and share some thoughts with you.
When I tell people that I do writing consulting as a small business, I get asked why? Is there really a market for it? What’s the purpose? Why not just use ChatGPT?
In short, there IS a market for writing consultants. AI may be here to stay, but it is not the magic formula for sharing YOUR own ideas and thoughts. And writing is about sharing who you are with a specific audience. A computer is not an audience, nor can it really make your own personal voice stand out.
The process of collaborating on a piece of writing involves something that will never go away: interpersonal communication. In order for me to work with my clients to the best of my ability, we have to talk and get to know each other. That process provides an exercise for the client in identifying exactly who they are. In fact, often the client makes discoveries about themselves as they go through the process. To be sure, we aren’t healing any traumas during our sessions, but we are creating pieces that clearly communicate the writer’s authentic self.
And AI isn’t there yet.
Why is writing so important?
8/16/2024
We write every single day. Be it a text, an email, or that note you write on the break room refrigerator claiming your lunch as your own, being able to communicate through the written word is extremely important. But perhaps no piece of writing is as important to a teenager as that of the college entrance essay.
As the new school year ramps up, I begin to get requests to work with students on their college entrance essays. Thankfully, the Common App has streamlined the process for students, so they only need to write one essay. However, how does a student make that essay stand out and increase the chances that they will be accepted into the college of their choice?
It really comes down to branding. In recent years I took coursework on copywriting, and identifying a company’s brand is the cornerstone of wordsmithing the best banner ad, email, or social media post. And so it is with students writing their college entrance essays.
If a student is applying to a large university, they may get accepted on their GPA alone.
However, with the increased number of students taking AP courses, those GPAs stand to be a bit higher due to weighted GPA systems. And even if that student has a strong GPA, highly selective and private schools may look more strongly at an essay to determine whether to send an acceptance letter or a rejection letter.
If a student doesn’t have the highest GPA (perhaps they struggled in a class or took courses of personal interest that did not have a weighted GPA), their overall high school resume of extracurricular activities may help them get an edge.
But if circumstances have prevented a student from attaining a high GPA or from participating in extracurricular activities, the essay can fill in the “gaps” and help those institutions understand who the student is that they are still deliberating over. And this is where branding comes in.
Don’t confuse branding with labels, though. Branding is helping to showcase the overall person, whereas labels can be used to help describe the brand. A person’s brand can feature many labels!
Branding is not something that can easily be covered in a blog post, however, because each person’s brand is so different. But through consultation and coaching, I can help a student identify their brand, and write an essay showcasing that brand to increase their chances of acceptance!
PS: This works for scholarship essay applications as well!
PPS: This works for those looking to brush up their resumes for a job search as well!