Dave Stuart Jr.

Next Wednesday night, I’m going to record a set of practical insights that are slowly changing my experience of teaching this year. These are all topics that deserve their own blog posts, but I’ve just not had the time. I’m talking about: New insights on student motivation, such as:  Why the most promising avenue for […]

The start of this school year has seen a plummet in teacher morale like none I’ve observed before. The workload is up, the pressure is on, and the end remains hidden in the future’s fog. Lots of days, it feels like what we used to do was a walk in the park, and what we’re […]

One of our colleagues, Beth Sheehan, told me a story via email about one of her rough days earlier this year. Beth is a third grade teacher at Spruce Elementary. Here’s what she shared: I am teaching remotely in a Title I school and I am exhausted after 11 days. Our families have been slammed […]

Dear colleague, I made a video for us. [Video not showing? Click here.] In it, there are just two things I’m trying to say. First, this has been a hard year. At first I thought it was just me, but I found out that it wasn’t. Second, some specific things have helped: Reaching out to […]

“Madi, you did just wonderfully on that recent assessment. Well done.” “John, I can’t recall a time where I’ve seen a student deal with failure so winsomely as you did with this past assessment. As I overheard you discussing it with your friends and reading through your test corrections afterward, I was impressed by and […]

In a recent post where I describe the double whammy of this year’s rapid increases in teacher workload and teacher pressure, our colleague Jennifer wrote in with this to say. I’m stuck in my home three days a week teaching remotely. Two days a week I teach remotely from my packed up classroom. I’ve been […]

In response to a recent post, our colleague Beau Larimer commented with one of the methods he has used a time or two after a particularly frustrating Zoom session: In the moment right after getting off a Zoom lesson, in my weirdly empty and silent classroom, I’ll sometimes let out a yell of frustration or […]

Hey there colleague, Here’s what I’ve got for your consideration as we head into the weekend. New Reads In case you missed it, on Wednesday I published “Why Is This So Hard? On Workload, Pressure, and the Ways through the Woods.” The piece is an attempt at articulating what’s been going on in a lot […]

That’s it. It helps. Because this is hard. Thank you to our colleague Beth Sheehan for sharing this great idea with me over email.

This is a post about hope, but it won’t always sound like it. I’ve been teaching for eleven days so far this school year — we started, in-person, the day after Labor Day. And every day ends with me driving home or walking in the woods or zoning out at dinner, internally asking a variation […]

Here in my middle age, life on autopilot means busy, fast, and hurried. I’ve got four children (ages three to nine) and an energetic wife and two demanding careers as a teacher and a writer. Everywhere I look in my life, there is a thing that would gladly take more of my time. Which of […]

Note from Dave: In the article that follows, educator Lynsay Fabio walks through how she would approach classroom management during distance learning. She gives us a glimpse into how her mind processes planning for and implementing classroom management. Few kinds of writing were as enlightening, in my early years of teaching especially, as looks into […]

Note from Dave: For years, I’ve kept a correspondence with Camille Napier Bernstein, an English teacher in MA who thinks and cares deeply about her work. Camille’s thinking has popped up on my blog before (see this “Principles Must Be Proven” post), but today I’ve got something for you that’s so good and comprehensive there’s […]