A mental model is a tool that helps someone think and make decisions. They can be looked at as foundational knowledge, that stuff that doesn´t change. The tools span: General Thinking Concepts, Numeracy, Systems, Physical World, The Biological World, Human Nature & Judgement, Microeconomics & Strategy, and Military & War.  It is defined in greater detail and with a video here. I learned of this from the great work of Shane Parrish over at Farnam Street. If you don´t know about him and his work, you need to stop reading this and go check it out. Like right now.

My goal for this round of Self-Directed Learning (my school gives us some Wednesday afternoons for personal learning) is to learn as many of these tools as possible to help me be a better educator and overall human. 

A method I am using to see if I understand the concept is something called the Feynman Method (which you can read about here.)

The product I hope to produce is a simple definition of the concept, some quotes that make it memorable and an example of what that might look like in the classroom (or as an educator.) I am not sure if I will do this for each one, and may adjust things along the way.