I came across this explainer article the other day regarding how to spot text that’s been written by ChatGPT. It’s got smart design that pinpoints the exact spots in GPT-generated texts that give away their authorship (screenshot below). After reading the article from my own perspective as a high school teacher wanting to help students […]
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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
None the Worser
I love it when students ask me, “When will I ever use what I learn in school?” It’s an honest question. An important one. A faint trace of the fear many students have in their hearts that school is just a big ol’ giant waste of time. Sometimes, I like to answer it like this. […]
Pop-Up Debates as Comprehension Improvement? Apparently, Yes!
Last year, I realized at the end of first semester that I had forgotten one of my favorite instructional tools: pop-up debates. Believe it or not, this happens often to me. At this point, I’ve written about a LOT of different teaching strategies. And even though they’re situated in some intentionally simple, practical categories — […]
Pick a Student, Any Student
Dear colleague, I’m writing to see if we might help one another out. Would you be willing to describe for me a student you are working with who appears to not care about the work of learning? In your description, be sure to: What I’ll do is examine each workable scenario I receive and propose […]
“One of the teachers I work with is bad at their job. Does this hurt my credibility, too?”
First of all, what do you mean, “Bad at their job?” Sometimes, folks who say this just differ with that teacher’s philosophical or pedagogical positions. To me, fair enough that you don’t like that style of teaching. But to say that teacher is bad at their job isn’t necessarily accurate. Their job isn’t to align […]
The Five Key Beliefs in a Pep Talk from The Bear
August is always my busiest month as a PD guy, and so this past month I ended up traveling half a dozen times across the country. When traveling alone, I like to pass the time sometimes by watching movies or shows that folks I respect have recommended to me. One of the shows I watched […]
Getting Specific with Valued, Known, Respected
Whenever I talk to folks about tracking moments of genuine connection (MGC), I use three words again and again and again: valued, known, respected. These are the specific signals you try to send to a young person when you attempt an MGC with them. If you’re not meaning to signal one of these things when […]
Ya Gotta Clear the Clouds
Most of your students don’t understand what school is for. They think it’s: It has been years since I held any misconceptions like these against my students. I respect what Jerry Graff long ago taught me in his book Clueless in Academe: even in college, most kids don’t “get” school. They don’t get what it’s […]
A Seek and Find Challenge for the First Weeks of School
There are several things I’m trying to do in the first weeks of school. Things like: This is just me creating the cosmos my students and I will inhabit in my room all year. But today, I wanted to share with you a first weeks of school task that I’ve not written about before: finding things to like about […]
Using the Godfather to Help with Belonging
When my students get their first assessment results of the school year, I like to share with them one of The Godfather’s many iconic lines: It’s not personal, it’s business. (Actually, the line is “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.” It’s in one of several career-launching scenes for Al Pacino. Here’s a clip.) This […]
The Four Pillars: Defining Success at the Start of the Year (and Often Thereafter)
In my new book, one of the 10 strategies I feature is “Define Success Wisely, Early, and Often.” This made the cut from my initial list of over 50 strategies because, for most students, success is a deeply ambiguous and murky thing. And for many others, success is an overly simplistic thing, like “all As.” […]
Did Last Year’s Teachers Fail? Or, a Reflection on the Recursivity of Growing Greater Skills
Back when I first started blogging, I remember coming across an idea buried in the Common Core Appendix A. It was the most mundane-seeming of paragraphs, buried in the most mundane of documents. And yet, to me, it was revelatory. Here it is: Grammar and usage development in children and in adults rarely follows a […]
42 Prompts to Get Students Speaking or Writing at the Start of the School Year
I’m not as much a “connection over content” guy as I am a “connection AND content” guy. In my high school classes, relationship building is most often done in the context of skill or knowledge building. There’s a whole essay I could write on why I’m that way, but that’s not the point today. The […]
Can Writing More Make Sense in Classes like Phys Ed, Band, or Computer Science?
Last time, I told you to have your students write more this school year. I argued that both your life and the lives of your students will be better if you do this. But that’s pretty big talk coming from an English/history teacher, isn’t it? What about folks who don’t teach these kinds of classes? […]
This Year, Get Your Students Writing Provisionally
This year, get your students writing more. It’ll make your job easier, and it’ll make their minds and hearts stronger. When you’re thinking about where and how to get them writing, use this pyramid to help you prioritize. (That’s from p. 172 of These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most.) […]
I Used to Think I Had to Do It All and Be It All…
…and now I know that I can’t. Dear colleague, I always say — literally, always — in my speaking engagements that if I get to the end of my life and realize that I’ve sacrificed my family for work success, I’ll have failed at all of it. As we cruise through the final weeks and […]