Dear colleague, On any given week, teaching can be a tough gig. But during certain segments of the year, the toughness is especially concentrated. The formerly anonymous teacher blogger Kelly Treleaven had a term for one of these concentrated periods of school year difficulty: the Dark Evil Vortex of Late September-October-November (DEVOLSON). This is what […]
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
An Old Dog Learning From an Old Trick: Lessons Learned from the September Invitation
Dear colleague, About a month ago, I invited teachers to spend a month experimenting with tracking attempted MGCs. The goal was to keep track of what we did and see what we noticed. Here’s what I learned from this work during September of 2024-2025. What I Did My Favorite Glimpses of Impact One day in […]
An Experiment in Curiosity and Well-Being
Dear colleague, My goodness — ya’ll have curiosities that run the gamut. Whether it’s restorative justice, reducing achievement gaps, competency/mastery instruction, or deep education versus cheap schooling…us professionals are pondering a lot of things. So here’s why I asked that question in my previous post. About nine months ago, I got curious about whether my […]
What are you curious about right now?
Dear colleague, I just finished recording an interview that I’m excited to share with you later this week. It’s a long-form conversation with a dear friend, and its core themes are curiosity, experimentation, and progress. It got me thinking. At a time of the school year when it can start to be hard to remember […]
Tips for Starting Pop-Up Debates Well
Dear colleague, One of our amazing colleagues wrote a comment on my YouTube channel recently that perfectly describes how to approach your first Pop-Up Debates of the school year. (For more on Pop-Up Debates, see the index of your copy of These 6 Things or this guide.) Here’s what Connie Fletcher said: One of my […]
Using MGCs to Stoke Student Work Ethic
Dear colleague, In my general-level World History courses this year, I’ve started running an “Article of the Day” experiment. Students grab the printed article as they come into class and then: Each of those bullets are skills I’ve been Woodenizing through modeling on the doc cam — again and again and again. I do, you […]
Teacher Transformation: The Two Things It Takes
Dear colleague, During this past summer, I spent much of the time enjoying time away from the teaching and writing grind. But sprinkled throughout that time, I also travelled to schools in Ohio, Michigan, California, Arkansas, Iowa, Illinois, and Texas. In the midst of that PD work, I realized something about what a good professional […]
MGCs Can Be EXHAUSTING
Dear colleague, Earlier this week, I invited you to join me in a month of experimenting and playing with Strategy #1 in The Will to Learn: Tracking Attempted Moments of Genuine Connection (MGCs). And today I’m going to write to you about something you’ll find as you work on this: MGCs can be exhausting. An […]
September Invitation: Let’s MGC Our Hearts Out
Dear colleague, This school year, I’d like to invite you into a series of month-long explorations. Whenever I do this, let’s remember a few things: Super simple. Super good. Slow yet steady growth in a reliable direction. That’s what we’re after. For this month’s invitation, check out the video below. (Not seeing a video? Click […]
The Bell is My Boss, Too
Dear colleague, This is the first year I’ve had a “the bell is our boss” poster hanging by my classroom clock, and I should not be as surprised as I am by how many students have commented on it. When I made that poster, the goal was to reinforce the idea that when the bell […]
Motivation: The Cause of Doing Work or the Effect?
Here’s a question I’m thinking about during the first weeks of school: Is motivation the CAUSE of doing the work of learning or the EFFECT? As it turns out, it’s both. Motivation gets us to try the work of learning. When I think of my students this year who are most resistant to doing the […]
Five First Week Reflections
Dear colleague, At the time of this writing, I am three days into my eighteenth year of teaching. Today, I’m sharing five reflections on the first week of school. Hopefully one of them creates encouragement or greater clarity for you. In Sum As these weary bones pack up for a weekend of as much rest […]
The Value Belief – DSJR Student Motivation Guide
The Value belief is the second of the Five Key Beliefs of student motivation, which I unpack at length in The Will to Learn: How to Cultivate Student Motivation Without Losing Your Own and in Chapter Two of These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most. What is the Value belief? […]
Moments of Genuine Connection (MGCs) – DSJR Student Motivation Guide
In The Will to Learn: How to Cultivate Student Motivation Without Losing Your Own, I lay out an approach to student motivation in which Five Key Beliefs can be influenced using just 10 basic strategies. The first of those strategies is Tracking Attempted Moments of Genuine Connection. What is it? That’s it — Tracking. Attempted. […]
Teacher Credibility – DSJR Student Motivation Guide
Teacher Credibility is the first of the Five Key Beliefs of student motivation, which I unpack at length in The Will to Learn: How to Cultivate Student Motivation Without Losing Your Own and in Chapter 2 of These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most. What Is Teacher Credibility? Teacher Credibility […]
The Five Key Beliefs Beneath Student Motivation – DSJR Guide
In my book These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most (2018), I introduced the Five Key Beliefs as a methodology for analyzing and doing something about student motivation problems. Due to the need to treat more than just the Five Key Beliefs in the book (after all, they are just […]