These answers aren't in books

Scripts in hand, nearly a dozen third- and fourth-graders rehearsed their skit.

In it, kids who eat oranges for breakfast triumph in the annual field day over those who start their day with doughnuts. Afterward, the fruit-eating, push-up pushing kids advise their less-fit friends how they, too, can get in shape.

Directing the playlet was Westside High School's Future Problem Solving Club. The teens decided months ago to chip away at childhood obesity by teaching good nutrition and healthy lifestyles. So they recruited students for an after-school health and nutrition club at Swanson Elementary.

As the teens are delivering lessons to the youngsters, they're also practicing a skill they can apply throughout their lives: problem solving.

Libby Slosburg, the club's co-president, said the process the students have learned has helped her think more deeply about problems, instead of just going with the first idea that pops into her head. A project in her literature class has gone more smoothly because of it.

“It really just takes your thinking that much further,” she said.

Problem solving, critical thinking and decision making are getting increased emphasis in schools these days, through extracurricular activities such as Westside's club Destination ImagiNation as well as in the classroom.

Westside offers a future problem-solving class as a freshman elective. Benson High School and Morton Magnet Middle School, both in the Omaha school district, chose “decision science” as a magnet focus. The Millard Public Schools have integrated such lessons throughout the curriculum, and the Norfolk Public Schools are in the process of doing so.

“It's definitely more on the minds of people now than it was five years ago,” said Jennifer Meyer of the Decision Education Foundation, which has consulted with Benson and Morton.

If some leaders nationally have their way, we'll be hearing about the skills more often.

Problem-solving skills are among those that the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governors Association will address as they seek to develop common core state education standards.

One group, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, holds that young people will need skills such as critical thinking and problem solving in addition to the three R's — reading, writing and arithmetic — to adapt in a fast-changing global economy.

Most of today's parents might have learned that Lincoln is the capital of Nebraska, said Ken Kay, the partnership's president. A teacher geared toward promoting critical thinking might ask students to explain why that city was made the capital.

In the workplace, he said, the ability to integrate information with technology and problem-solving skills increasingly are sought after. Farmers don't just till and plant as their fathers did — they tweak chemical and water applications to squeeze out the best yields with the least input, using technology to track costs, follow markets and even steer tractors.

Iowa is among 14 states partnering with the 21st century skills group. The Millard and Norfolk school districts have worked with it, and the Kearney district plans to start next year.

To be sure, problem solving and critical thinking aren't new in classrooms. Teachers long have challenged students to use such skills as they've tried to engage them in lessons. The Future Problem Solving Program has been around since the mid-1970s.

One difference today is that students and teachers know what those skills look like and that they will be tested, said Marlene Uhing, superintendent of the Norfolk Public Schools.

The problem-solving model generally involves identifying problems, evaluating alternatives and following through on them. Both the Future Problem Solving program taught at Westside and the Decision Science model used at Benson and Morton involve six-step processes.

Other skills often are incorporated, such as collaboration, communication and technology. The Westside club members divided up tasks, wrote lesson plans for weekly meetings with the younger students, created Web sites to document their work, posted videos and administered pre- and post-tests to gauge how much the younger students had learned.

Student are still studying basic subjects such as history, math and biology, said Peggy Pavlik, Benson High's magnet coordinator. But rather than just learning information, students are taking information and using it.

“There's so much information out there you can't learn it all,” she said. “We teach research skills so they can use the information and make decisions that make sense.”

At Benson, students apply what they're learning to problems in the community. Benson students who had seen a graphic video from the United Kingdom showing the deadly results of texting while driving were motivated to testify in support of a legislative bill that would ban the practice in Nebraska. They didn't do it for a class but because they were committed to solving the problem, Pavlik said.

“It's not about getting credit,” she said. “It's about being a problem solver.”

At Westside, the elective class revolves around a future problem-solving competition. Last year's class advanced to the international level. Afterward, the students decided to take on a problem in the community, and they'll enter the project in the community problem-solving division of this year's competition.

They began meeting at the end of August, gathering up to three times a week. They first identified a problem, then brainstormed how to tackle it. They recruited students for the Be Healthy, Be Happy Club at Swanson by performing a skit over the lunch hour. Weekly lessons typically included a lesson, a physical activity and a healthful snack.

Tova Roberts, a third-grader who participated in the club, said she has learned that healthy eating is important for her body.

Her mom, Jasmine Roberts, said the lessons have gone further. Tova has cut in half the amount of junk food she eats.

“When Mom and Dad say it, it's one thing,” Roberts said. “But when someone else says it, it sinks in.”

The older students, too, have learned by doing. In addition to learning how to make better decisions, they've practiced working together and delegating tasks, said Slosburg and David Glazer, the club's other co-president.

They've also learned a bit about another real-world challenge, one their teachers face every day: finding ways to get their lessons across and make them stick.

“We really have to come up with creative ways to teach them,” Glazer said.

Contact the writer:

444-1223, julie.anderson@owh.com

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