Here’s a thing I don’t think we think about enough: Your students WANT to be motivated. This is something fundamental to human beings. So, this is what I contend: you’ve never met a student who set out to become demotivated in school. Every. One. Of your students, down in the roots of their will, desires […]
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Let’s Make Teaching Better.
Dave Stuart Jr. is a husband, father, and high school teacher who writes about education. He reads extensively across the disciplines so that he can create uniquely satisfying professional development experiences for his colleagues around the world. His mission is to encourage and equip educators on the journey to long-term flourishing and professional excellence.
Professional development. (The good kind.)
If we’re going to make teaching better, we’ve got to improve professional development. I’m not the guru, but I have spent thousands of hours practicing and researching the art and science of educator-centered, high-impact PD. My hope with all of these is that they help.
And oh yeah: I’m still a teacher. I’ve never left the classroom. With 120 students on my roster each year, it’s impossible for me to detach theory from practice.
Online PD
My schedule-friendly, all-online professional development courses are designed with busy educators in mind. Whole staff or district applications are available — email support@davestuartjr.com with your needs.
In-Person PD
I speak and lead education workshops for a limited number of schools and organizations around the world each year.
Books + Blog
My best-selling book, These 6 Things, has been read and cherished by secondary teachers around the world. My blog is read by over 35,000 educators each month.
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The Latest from the Blog
Diving Deeper into Caroline Ong’s “Math is Beautiful” High Horse — In Her Own Words
Today’s a good time to let our colleague Caroline Ong, of “Math is Beautiful High Horse” renown (article about that here), to give us a bit more context on what she’s doing when she takes these opportunities to micro-rant to her students about how lovely and important and useful and beautiful her discipline is: Howdy […]
The Rainbow of Why: Go Jackson Pollock with Those Colors
Last time, we looked at this video of Caroline Ong in her Geometry class going on a “math is beautiful” tangent with her students. I labeled this as an example of a strategy we’re currently contemplating: An Apologist Winsome and Sure. Head here for a brief explanation of what the heck I mean by those […]
An Apologist Winsome and Sure: Caroline Ong’s “Math is Beautiful High Horse” Example
My favorite method for cultivating Value in the hearts of your students for the work of your discipline is called “An Apologist Winsome and Sure.” That’s a weird title — purposefully so — so let me briefly explain what I mean. An apologist is someone who makes a case for something that’s controversial. But this […]
How to *Have Fun* Helping Your Students Value School This Year
Note to readers: This post is ongoing project in August 2022. I’ll be adding to it frequently. Introduction When students don’t optimally Value school, they’ll say things like this: This is boring. This is pointless. Why do we have to do this? When will I ever use this in my life? When they don’t optimally […]
The Inner Work (Teaching Simplified for Back to School Series)
This is meant to be a one-stop-shop solution to all of your back-to-school-specific needs with the inner work of teaching. The essential question that this article’s sections seek to answer for you and me is this: What methods are best suited to getting our heads and hearts right for a new school year? Start Your […]
Have Your 🍰 and Eat It, Too
Hey there colleague, Last week I began posting a month of helpful back-to-school blog posts as teachers across the nation take the field for another great season of promoting long-term flourishing. Some of you were like, “Yes, bring on the daily emails! Miss you, bruv.” And others of you were like, “Dude. Too many emails.” […]
Think on Helpful Things (Teaching Simplified, August 2022)
Here’s a dynamic of the soul that must be contended with: too much pressure makes us worse at our jobs, which in turns adds to our pressure. I call this the Workload-Pressure Cycle. It’s a recursive doom loop. Left undisrupted, it disrupts our souls. It looks like this: Thankfully, there are two ways in which […]
Simple Rules, Visualized (Teaching Simplified Series, August 2022)
Last chance! Register for tomorrow’s student motivation workshop. All participants get access to the live, virtual event with me, plus a recording of the event, plus a link to the slides I use, PLUS a cheatsheet PDF I developed today after talking with some genius school leaders in Linden, CA. So many pluses, right? Riiiiiiiiiiiiight? […]
Two Start-of-the-Year Questions for Educators (Teaching Simplified Series, 2022)
Reminder: You can still register for my innovative and encouraging workshop for teachers that’s taking place this week. It’ll help move you from argh to agency in the all-important realm of student motivation. What are the best-leveraged ways to help our students want to do the work of learning? That’s what we’ll cover. It’s gonna […]
From “Argh to Agency:” Unveiling Season 11 of This Blog
Dear colleague, Today on the first day of August 2022, I’m excited to share with you what the 11th year of this blog will offer to earnest, hard-working educators like you and me. I think the purpose of DaveStuartJr.com is to act as a lighthouse in the oft-stormy seas of being a teacher in the […]
Closing Out the School Year: A Letter to My Colleagues
Dear Colleague, I was reading C. S. Lewis this morning and I came across this line: “Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out […]
A Time to Weep and a Time to Love
The other morning before school, I found myself looking at the faces and reading the stories of the people who were killed in Texas last week. I typically try to not to dwell on tragedies like this; a soul handles only so much sorrow before it numbs, and ours is a time awash in cause […]
School Year Shut Down: Dedicate the Year Behind
A few months back during the Five Key Beliefs for Leaders experience, I reconnected with our colleague Martee Lopez-Schmidt, and she shared her experience using Henry Seton’s daily class period dedication strategy. It is a lovely idea for cultivating the five key beliefs (especially Credibility, Value, and Belonging), but alas — I did not have […]
Reframing the End of School Countdown
Over the past year, I’ve been delighted to partner with Alfred G. Waters Middle School in Middletown, DE. We’ve worked on student motivation, teacher motivation, and early career teacher support. Recently, Dr. John Tanner (AGW’s principal) wrote the following message to his faculty that ties in well to the end-of-year thread we’ve been pursuing on […]
School Year Shut Down: Acknowledge a Colleague
All right — time for this week’s first super-simple shot at helping your soul ready for summer. (For the full series, head here.) Here’s the play: Pick a colleague, any colleague. Sit down with a sheet of paper. Brainstorm moments or observations or memories from this year that you’ve appreciated about this colleague. Tell them […]