If the curriculum your district spent X dollars on two years ago is bad*, then sticking with it because you spent X dollars on it two years ago doesn’t make sense. The X dollars is a sunk cost — money you can’t recover, whether you stick with the curriculum for ten more years or you […]
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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. Starting in Summer 2019, expect versions of my online courses that you can use in whole-school staff meetings.
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
The Four Pillars of High School Success
Recently, I shared the Everest statement of our social studies team. I’m not the leader of the team, but boy, am I privileged to be a part of it. This time, I’d like to share how our ninth grade transition team focuses its work. Why Ninth Grade? Every year of a child’s education is important, […]
An Everest Statement for a Social Studies Department
In our social studies PLC, we brainstormed an Everest statement* a couple of months ago, and I’ve been meaning to share it. The secondary social studies department aims to produce productive, contributing, and positive CITIZENS who are: –KNOWLEDGEABLE (historically, economically, and civically literate); –WISE (mature, open-minded, and globally aware); and –ENGAGED (participate in civic duties; […]
Why ‘the Best’? Will Good Do Instead?
We lose all kinds of energy and vitality when we aim to be the best at something rather than trying to be good at it. Aiming at best will guide our hearts toward competition, comparison, and viewing others as threats. It has to. That’s what best means. There can only be one. Best means scarcity. […]
The First Key to Connecting Well with All Students is to Like Them; This Often Takes Work
Please note: Names and details in my articles are changed for the sake of protecting students’ privacy. Here’s a moment of genuine connection that stood out to me today while teaching my four classes of 120 students total. While students were doing an independent practice portion of my lesson, I pulled Kandyce into the hallway. […]
The Best Way to Make Students Feel Valued, Known, and Respected…
…is to actually value, know, and respect them.
Small Tweaks for Making Chris Hulleman’s Build Connections Intervention Work Even Better
I’ve written before about Chris Hulleman’s “Build Connections” intervention, and it’s been featured in more prominent places enough to have earned a growing spot in the “common knowledge” of educators around the world. But rolling the intervention out this year, both with my students and with some of the adult participants in my workshops these […]
On the Labeling of Students
Last week, I tweeted an invitation to a free evening PD on student motivation. The title was based on dozens of questions I’ve received from earnest teachers around the planet. Here’s the placard: Within a few moments, an ELA coordinator from the American Northeast tweeted this take: “Um, let’s change the title of this. What […]
The Dumbest Intervention Ever
Last week, our ninth grade intervention team was having its sixth weekly meeting of the year. There have been plenty of times where these meetings depressed me more than inspired me. All four of us are hard-charging, high-belief, high-will, high-skill teachers, but all four of us were struggling with the motivational mountains that seemed lodged […]
A Small Tweak to a Simple Classroom Birthday Tradition (Plus Its Impacts on Motivation)
For years, I’ve been marking student birthdays as follows. Let’s say it’s Hayleigh’s birthday today. During class, I call on Hayleigh and I ask her, “Hayleigh, what is one thing you’ve learned about life?” I record what she shares in a spreadsheet, and after she shares I say, “Happy birthday,” with a big smile. From […]
Keep in Mind that They’re Credible
The next time you read a book or a blog written by a teacher-author, here’s something to remember: the reason that things work in their class is likely just as much a function of their credibility with students as it is a function of the quality of the things they do in their class. What […]
Both Experts and Novices Are Constantly At or Over the Brink of Overwhelm — And Yet Hope Is Not Lost
The default conditions of work in education, whether you’re a teacher or a coach or an administrator, is that it’s overwhelming. There is, and always will be, too much to do. This isn’t a problem faced only by novices. The difference between experts and novices isn’t that experts find a way to do it all […]
Guidelines for Developing New Teacher Mentoring Programs (NTMPs)
Recently, my district gave me a chance to think about a key area of work for any school system that seeks to maximize its long-term flourishing outcomes for both its staff and its students. That key area? New teacher mentoring programs. Whether you’re in a setting like mine, or a smaller one, or a larger […]
Two Very Different Pop-Up Debates on the Same Day
Recently I held the first pop-up debate of the school year in my on-level world history courses. (For my most thorough treatment of pop-up debates, see Ch 4 of These 6 Things.) The lesson began with the following prompt: They had five minutes to write a response, and then I asked them to share something […]
The Snowball
Two of the four groups I teach each day are ninth grade AP World History students. These kids opt-in to the open enrollment class of their own volition, and their most-cited reason for taking on such a daunting challenge — an Advanced Placement course during their ninth grade year — is because they want to […]
What If Our Students Are Bored Because We’ve Taught Them So Little?
The other day I gave my students a scenario to write about as their 100-word warm-up: Ninth graders around the United States are having a hard time caring about school. To some, it’s so boring or pointless that they consider dropping out — even in ninth grade. Imagine you are writing an article to these […]