Teaching for Intellectual and Emotional Learning (Tiel): A Model for Creating Powerful Curriculum

Teachers have found a new way to analyze their curriculum through the use of the TIEL wheel. They see it providing the framework to think about teaching and learning. It has been a powerful tool. It provides an explicit method by which teachers can articulate objectives concerning their teaching. A very practical framework! — Jane Schumann, assistant professor of graduate education at the College of Saint Elizabeth

In lucid prose and easy-to-follow graphics, Folsom explains her innovative model of thinking about thinking and how attending to students” emotional needs such as empathy, ethical reasoning, and self-management enhance academic/intellectual performance and unleash powerful reservoirs of creativity and genuine ownership of learning. With over twenty years of experience in urban public education as a teacher, curriculum writer, professional developer, and program administrator, I have seldom come across abook as cogent and on-point as this. In an era of relentless attention on the wall chart of test scores, the author”s emphasis on rich, meaningful projects in an authentic context is a welcome and badly-needed antidote to worksheets and test prep. Like John Dewey, her vision of measurement in education is more about possibilities than a static snapshot of immutable norm-referenced aptitudes. In a three-year professional development program led by Professor Folsom, I have been privileged to see the TIELmodel clearly improve the classroom practice of dozens of public school educators. — Philip Panaritis, New York City Department of Education

By using TIEL, I teach students to recognize which thinking operations they are performing, which operations they might be overlooking, and which could strengthen their learning. The influence of the TIEL Wheel has encouraged me to incorporate more self-assessment assignments, critical thinking and improved small-group discussion. — Jane Moreno

Christy Folsom addresses some of the most urgent questions educators are asking today about how to teach thinking skills, and perhaps more importantly, how to integrate intellectual and emotional learning in ways that lead to engagement in lifelong learning. Built on a foundation of project-based learning, Folsom”s Thinking for Intellectual and Emotional Learning (TIEL) is a practical teacher-friendly model that connects gifted education with general education. I believe that Christy Folsom is onto something important here, showing educators how to foster relationships between and among the foundational intellectual and emotional skills essential to creating a vibrant and increasingly diverse democratic community in this rapidly changing global villageof ours.. — Dona Matthews, visiting professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto and adjunct professor at St. M

Christy Folsom addresses some of the most urgent questions educators are asking today about how to teach thinking skills, and perhaps more importantly, how to integrate intellectual and emotional learning in ways that lead to engagement in lifelong learning. Built on a foundation of project-based learning, Folsom”s Thinking for Intellectual and Emotional Learning (TIEL) is a practical teacher-friendly model that connects gifted education with general education. I believe that Christy Folsom is onto something important here, showing educators how to foster relationships between and among the foundational intellectual and emotional skills essential to creating a vibrant and increasingly diverse democratic community in this rapidly changing global village of ours. — Dona Matthews, visiting professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto and adjunct professor at St. M

In lucid prose and easy-to-follow graphics, Folsom explains her innovative model of thinking about thinking and how attending to students” emotional needs such as empathy, ethical reasoning, and self-management enhance academic/intellectual performance and unleash powerful reservoirs of creativity and genuine ownership of learning. With over twenty years of experience in urban public education as a teacher, curriculum writer, professional developer, and program administrator, I have seldom come across a book as cogent and on-point as this. In an era of relentless attention on the wall chart of test scores, the author”s emphasis on rich, meaningful projects in an authentic context is a welcome and badly-needed antidote to worksheets and test prep. Like John Dewey, her vision of measurement in education is more about possibilities than a static snapshot of immutable norm-referenced aptitudes. In a three-year professional development program led by Professor Folsom, I have been privileged to see the TIEL model clearly improve the classroom practice of dozens of public school educators. — Philip Panaritis, New York City Department of Education