Do you ever get sucked in to those YouTube videos where people make elaborate structures in the jungle using really basic tools? I love those things. So satisfying, you know? But guess what would happen if you sent me into the jungle with a stick and told me to build a swimming pool? I’d laugh. […]
Main Content
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.
Get weekly bits of perspective, research, and encouragement.
I write to encourage and equip educators on the path to long-term flourishing and professional excellence.
Subscribe to the free newsletter.
No spam. Just blog posts.
The Latest from the Blog
What Would You Most Like to Learn About This Summer?
Dear colleague, It’s a big week in DSJ land: finishing an article series, my students in an essay-writing sprint (AKA me in a reading/feedback sprint), and my new book releasing. (Stay tuned re: the book!) So today, I’d love love LOVE to hear from you. You’d be doing me such a favor to respond to […]
The Time I Asked ChatGPT to Write an Essay Comparing Narnia, The Shining, and Rocky
Every time that I start thinking, “No, AI will never be able to do that,” I bring to mind the following example of a recent conversation I had with a computer. Three months ago, I would’ve thought this kind of thing impossible. So there I was, bored in an airport by myself, having just finished […]
I Was Wrong About ChatGPT and AI (Part 2 of 3): What I’m Not Saying and Why I’m Interested
April 26 27 28 29 30, 2023 Dear colleague, I appreciate all the concerned letters I got from folks after my recent blog post regarding ChatGPT and AI. For those of you worried that your colleague Dave has gone off and drank the Tech Bro Kool-Aid all of a sudden, let me do two things […]
The Thing with Cheating
The thing with cheating in school is that it trades a short-term “positive” (completion of an assignment; better grade) for a long-term negative (lost learning opportunity; inaccurate feedback on learning; degradation of character). In my classroom practice, the surest way to decrease student cheating is to give my students regular opportunities to think on these […]
I Was Wrong About ChatGPT and AI (Part 1 of 3)
April 24, 2023 Dear colleague, Just three months ago, I wrote an article about how ChatGPT “ain’t no thing but a chicken wing.” My main three points were this: In the three months since then, I’ve done the following: So this week, I’m going to send you three articles discussing three things: And, just so […]
You Can’t Coerce Care
A person who does a thing — who even does it well — is not necessarily a person who cares about what they’ve done. Instead, it’s quite possible to get a person to do a thing, and even to do it well, using just carrots or sticks. This, I would argue, is the condition of […]
Does Goal-Setting Help or Harm Teacher Motivation?
Goal-setting: does it help or harm teacher motivation? This is an interesting problem to me. From a Five Key Beliefs standpoint — which are as important to our teacher motivation as they are to our students’ motivation — goal-setting helps with Efficacy. It does this by making success clear and measurable rather than generalized. (“Defining […]
Ten Reasons It’s Good
Dear colleague, When a human soul is demotivated to do a task that soul is nonetheless required to do, the result is spiritual pain. This applies to our students. This is why I’m so passionate about cultivating student motivation all across the school day while we guide them toward mastery. But it also applies to […]
The Introvert and Extrovert Pressure Curves
I had this idea the other day when leading a workshop on teacher wellness for a network of schools in the Detroit area. The reason I’m sharing it here on the blog is that I’d like your take on whether or not it’s accurate. And also, if you’re experiencing lots of pressure in your soul […]
Does Teaching Students to Count Count as Much as Teaching Them What Counts?
I recently made a video during my lunch break picking apart four random “inspirational teacher quotes.” It’s a kind of video I’ve wanted to make for a while because… honestly, I guess I just think it’s funny to approach inspo-memes from a dry, analytical angle. If you’re curious, the video is here. But if you’re […]
A Time for Ish
Earlier, I wrote about the Yerkes-Dodson Dilemma: the idea that it’s hard as a teacher to avoid slipping into either an under- or over-pressured internal world. Part of what inspired that post was a children’s book a colleague* shared with me a bit ago. The book is called Ish, and in just a few minutes […]
What I Talk About When I Talk to My Children about Spelling
Before I get into this story from my parenting, let me note three important points: Now, for the story. Every weekday morning, I drive two of my daughters to their school about fifteen minutes from our house. Both have spelling lists each week, and both have teachers who give a pretest and a test on […]
The Yerkes-Dodson Dilemma
So much of effective teaching — and good living — comes down to how well you manage to stay atop the Yerkes-Dodson Curve. When you’re up there, you get it all: The trouble is that the Yerkes-Dodson Curve is slippery. I’ve yet to meet a person who has always found it easy to stay up […]
The teacher’s work is like the landscape
Dear colleague, I’ve taken a dozen or so walks these past couple of weeks because, when I’m in the valley, sometimes that’s all I can do. Walking stabilizes my soul; it depressurizes me. I’ve got teacher-y blog posts piling up that I’ve not emailed to you lately — I’ll start sending those out to you […]
The Gist of a Gisty Book
In my book These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most, I’m basically after responsible reduction. How do we reduce the impossibly large list of potential things we could do with students into a pleasantly manageable list of things? In other words, it’s a book that attempts to introduce a gist […]