You’re visiting this page because you’re striving to teach and lead more successfully and to empower vibrant thinkers – whether in your classroom, in your staff room, board room or in your home.
In short, you want to be a better educator, trainer, business leader or parent.
I trust that the successful thinking tool, frameworks and ideas shared in these easy-to-use books, e-books and digital templates will make your teaching task easier, more rewarding and a lot more fun. There are more books and e-books to promote thinking in learning in the wings, so stay tuned. In the meantime, please visit our blog to learn about teaching tips, step-by-step guides to thinking tools, free downloads and more.
If you’ve lost your teaching mojo, or you are struggling to bring out the vibrant best in your students, staff or children, we know that you’ll find the simplicity and potential of these thinking tools very refreshing. Once you add thinking tools to your teaching arsenal and embrace the Thinking Skills Framework (free download) as the core of your teaching or leadership approach, you’ll realise these tools are essential for teaching thinking.
You can use these resources to help you plan powerful, engaging and explicit classroom lessons, assignment tasks and business meetings within minutes. The more confident you become with using the Thinking Skills Framework and related thinking tools, the sooner you’ll see the positive impact they have on thinking in your classroom or board room. You’ll soon feel the energy rise in your learning environments and notice the ideas begin to flow.
Over 47 years of teaching – the past 25 years as an education consultant – and over a life of parenting our three beautiful daughters, I’ve continually witnessed how easily these thinking tools help create vibrant learning environments. I have taught these tools in countless classrooms, universities, staff rooms, businesses, government departments and workshop sessions over my rewarding career in Australia, New Zealand and further afield.
So, how do I maintain passion for my career?
Quite simply, I love what I do because I continually witness people light up inside when they use simple thinking tools to tackle a task. When learners of any age or proficiency recognise they have the tools to structure and improve their thinking and have fun while learning, they get excited! They begin to feel confident and in control as they realise that any task is achievable.
I started out as a very ordinary teaching graduate in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe in 1970. In those early days in the classroom, I didn’t realise the potential I had to affect positive change every single time I stood in front of my students. I didn’t grasp the power I had to inspire, motivate and equip my students to think.
But I eventually switched on to my true role as an educator:
To shift the ownership and satisfaction of thinking and learning from you to them.
Now I want to share this authentic way of learning with every motivated educator, leader and parent.
As you know, teaching others how to think is not a simple job. THINKING TAKES EFFORT. Therefore, it needs to be taught overtly and explicitly, practised regularly, and recognised, encouraged and praised whenever it occurs.
I encourage you to have fun with these resources and share them with your students, colleagues and families so that they too use these tools as their personal learning guides and inspiration. That’s how you create thinkers for life.
Eric Frangenheim
Educational consultant and author
Rodin Educational Consultancy
