This year has been hard. In some ways, what I just said is teacherspeak for October. But in other ways, this year has been uniquely difficult for educators. It’s gone worse than we expected. The needs are greater than we thought. The professional literature is a cold and barren thing compared to the raw humanity […]
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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
Need Help with Student Motivation or Teacher Time Management? Start Here. (Plus: What’s Next on the Blog🤘)
Hey there, colleague! Here’s where we’ve been on the blog since mid-summer: July through August, we did a series on student motivation and the five key beliefs methodology. The Will to Learn series was super cool. I had a blast writing it. If you’ve got a warm-up cup and an hour to dive deep, here’s […]
How to Heal a Divided World: 🌎📝 Argumentative Writing that Actually Listens to the Other Side
In today’s political climate, discussions can easily turn into verbal combat. From Congressional debates to divisive Thanksgiving dinners and angry-emoji-laden Facebook brawls, each voice ends up yelling louder and viler without ever actually listening to the fear and motivation behind the other person’s heart. Unfortunately, the same corrosiveness emerges when we teach argumentative writing to students. In […]
This Is How I Teach Students to Take Notes for Learning
At the time of writing this, I’m five weeks into school, and my students are showing that they understand note-taking much better than they did at the start of the year. During a recent post-assessment reflection, I asked students to respond in writing to the following: What’s one piece of evidence that you can find […]
A Shift then a Skip: Here’s How One Teacher’s Job Changed with a Simple Change in Thinking
Robert Macfadden is a history teacher at Palmdale High School in Palmdale, CA. A while ago, Robert wrote in with the following story. There’s a very important moment in this story that I’d like to expand upon after Robert is through. So, I’ll be back in a minute. Here’s Robert: Four years ago I had […]
How to Get Better at Satisficing as an Educator
Satisficing isn’t my word. It’s Nobel winner Herbert Simon’s. It means, “Doing something at the good-enough level, not the optimal level.” Few skills are as critical to the well-lived teacher’s life. Here’s why. On paper, teaching is an impossible job. So is administration. Doing education by the book in the twenty-first century is hopelessly Byzantine. […]
The Best Question for Helping You Simplify Lessons, Curricula, Policies, or Procedures
The question is pretty… well [looks up synonym for simple] basic: What would this look like if it had to be simple? If this lesson I’m planning had to be simple — as few moving parts as possible, as few things that could go wrong as possible, as few needless confusion points as possible — […]
A Few Helpful Ideas for Resting as an Educator
The late USC philosopher Dallas Willard used to describe the body like a battery pack for the soul. For about a year, that definition didn’t make much sense to me. But lately, it has started to click and has been helping me think better about rest in my life as a husband, father, teacher, and […]
The Case for Lumpiness
All right: finite creatures, only 24 hours in a day, only 4,000 weeks or so in a life. Got it. We’ve looked at DECIDE, CONSTRAIN, OBSESS — now today, a riff on the discipline of ELIMINATION. (You may already be noticing that the disciplines overlap one another. Quite right. There’s really not a ton to […]
Let’s Pick Some Sled Dogs
During a five-year period in the 2010s, researcher Morten Hansen conducted one of the most comprehensive surveys of worker performance ever. He found 5,000 managers and employees, from all types of professions, and he analyzed their work habits, tracked how many hours they worked each week, and followed their performance. The highest performers, it turned […]
We’re Too Hospitable to Pointlessness
“In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a fifteen-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. […]
A Simple Syllabus Language Change that Helped a Teacher Get the Breakthrough
This past school year, our colleague Tanya Ramm shared a simple shift in her syllabus language that gave her added life and agency as a teacher. Here’s all she altered: Practice: (50% of Marking Period grade) – This category includes student participation such as in-class practice with speaking, listening, reading & writing activities, as well […]
To Decide is to Cut
I was speaking with our colleague Tanya Ramm this morning, and she was describing her holiday weekend. (We had four days off for the US’s Labor Day.) Over the break, she came in to work for five hours on Friday while her husband and sons were off fishing. Then she came in to work a […]
Not a Lot of Time
There’s this thing that the stoics say: Memento Mori. “Remember that you will die.” It’s a little dark for my tastes. 😉 BUT I do think something like it very frequently, and it has guided a lot of my decision-making during this past decade of teaching high school, building a writing career, grasping the diverse […]
Guide: Three Simple, Robust Methods for Establishing Belonging in the First Weeks of School
You ever get to a point in a project where you’re so doggone close to being done, but that final bit just feels super hard? That’s how this final installment in the “Student Motivation Like a Champ As We Head Back to School” series of guides has been for me. We’ve covered some super fun […]
Get To
Last Friday I was walking into school early in the morning, and I was feeling tired. I muttered to myself, “All right, buddy — gotta do it. One more day this week.” And then I caught how it sounded, and I said, “Wait — GET TO, not got to! GET TO, baby!” It was so […]