How teaching critical thinking can improve equity. Meet ThinkLaw Founder Colin Seale

Gifted Unleashed

Colin Seale was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, where struggles in his upbringing gave birth to his passion for educational equity. Tracked early into gifted and talented programs, Colin was afforded opportunities his neighborhood peers were not. Using lessons from his experience as a math teacher, later as an attorney, and now as a keynote speaker, contributor to Forbes and author of Thinking Like a Lawyer: A Framework for Teaching Critical Thinking to All Students and Tangible Equity: A Guide for Leveraging Student Identity, Culture, and Power to Unlock Excellence In and Beyond the Classroom, Colin founded thinkLaw, to help educators leverage inquiry-based instructional strategies to close the critical thinking gap and ensure they teach and reach all students, regardless of race, zip code or what side of the poverty line they are born into. In 2021, Colin launched The BEE Project, a non-profit organization redefining who qualifies as gifted and who gets to teach gifted children by inspiring, training, and certifying Black and Latinx educators to equitably design and lead gifted programs. These programs identify and meet the unique needs of brilliant Black and Latinx children and their families who have been overlooked and underestimated by our current system. When he’s not serving as the world’s most fervent critical thinking advocate, Colin proudly serves as the world’s greatest entertainer to his two young children.

TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:

• We are all neurodivergent. But some of us are part of the outliers.
• Children can have behavioural challenges because they are not being challenged at school!
• The order of being identified can have a big impact of how we get support!
• The label doesn’t matter, the support matters!
• High achieving is not the same as being gifted.
• It’s not about the achievement, it’s about the performance of the achievement!
• Critical thinking skills is crucial but we treat it like a luxury good! What if we gave all kids access to critical thinking?
• Recognising that none of our learning was actually objective.
• Although brilliance is distributed equally, opportunity is not!
• Doing right is more important than being right!
• We came to normalise inequity
• There is no master plan.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Learn more about Coline Seale and ThinkLaw here: thinklaw.us and raisingcriticalthinkers.us

Follow Colin on Twitter @ColinESeale @thinkLawUS | Instagram @ColinSeale @thinkLawUS | facebook thinklawUS and the facebook group tangibleequity | LinkedIn Colin Seale and his company ThinkLaw

Colin Seale’s books: Thinking like a Lawyer and

Would you like to work with me 1:1 as your gifted and 2e coach? Please send me an email at [e-mail] or find more information about my coaching offer on my website giftedunleashed.com/coaching

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