What Students Have Said
“He treated us as thinkers. He worked to engage our minds and spirits. I still make use of the critical thinking skills he imparted – unpacking generalizations, analogies and causalities to make sense of this crazy world!”
“Mr. O’Reilly was the first educator who taught me that there are multiple perspectives on any given historical event, and that I should question anyone who presents ‘the’ interpretation. I’ll never forget the class in which we debated the merits of various historians’ interpretations of the Salem Witch Trials (did moldy rye bread make the women hallucinate?!). Moreover, Mr. O instilled in me a lifelong obsession with research: there’s always more to the story to uncover, and it’s exciting to pore over the evidence! Mr. O’s natural curiosity is contagious, and I believe his pursuit of knowledge has yielded true wisdom. I hope many history teachers will choose to emulate him. ”
“[At American Legion Boys State] I consistently found that I was the only person who was truly thinking critically about the scenarios [decision-making problems], and doubting proposed solutions…. The speakers used unsound analogies and cause-and-effect arguments…I felt alone when I voiced my opinion in opposition to their views until I met up with [my friends who also took your class]. All of us agreed that the speakers’ agenda was really visible once analyzed as we had learned to do in your class…. Now I really see that the skills I learned in your class are invaluable and instrumental to how I am choosing to live my life and how I behave as a human being. ”
“Everything you taught me about asking questions, both the easy ones and the difficult ones, about looking beyond the accepted ‘official’ history, and searching for the complete story, has brought me a lot of long nights and a caffeine addiction, but also many achievements that I am proud of…. I do not believe it is a stretch to say that you have made me into an analytic writer, thinker, and global citizen that I am today, and I believe I am 100% better for it.”
“I will remember Mr. O’Reilly for his immeasurable contribution to my education, his wisdom and insight which knows no bounds, and for the moment when he gave me someone to talk to during a time when I felt like people had forgotten.”
“I came [to college] with more primary source analysis skills than I knew what to do with, and they served me so, so well. From a class where we analyzed NSA documents…, to a discussion course where I was able to refute a classmate’s straw man argument, to the way I write and think and read, Mr. O’s lessons are everywhere.”
What Teachers Have Said
“I had the pleasure and privilege of working under Kevin early in my teaching career. His emphasis on critical thinking and decision-making has been profoundly influential to my own practice and I continue to use much of his work in my classroom today, twenty years later. Kevin has been a true mentor to me whom I’ve tried to emulate and continue to be inspired by. I am deeply indebted to him and continuously try to pay him back by paying it forward to the young teachers I mentor today.”
I [would] be delighted to somehow work with [Kevin] on anything he is doing connected with teaching thinking, especially critical thinking, but including creative thinking, decision making, problem solving, and a bunch of other specific types of thinking. And this is all based on what I saw Kevin do that fateful day in 1976 when I visited his classroom and saw him turn students into active critical thinkers comparing textbooks that gave radically different accounts of the startup of the Revolutionary War -- turning over to the students the power to judge and judge well which of texts was most likely to be more reliable than the other, and why. And 7 of my own books and about 100 articles later, I still have that green pamphlet that was what turned you on about What Happened on Lexington Green.
— Professor Robert Swartz, Former Executive Director, The Center for Teaching Thinking