What would it be like if you went into a school building and shadowed a student for a day, and during that day you and the student experienced 100 or so signals that pointed to the following truths: Learning is transformative. When you learn what the solar system is and how stars work, you don’t […]
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
Ten Things Leaders Can Do to Improve Teacher Morale in Early 2021
According to a recent EdWeek survey, teacher morale isn’t great in the United States right now — at least not according to us teachers. Take a look: When you look at that, you might be nodding your head. Me too. Not exactly a revelation, right? A pause for perspective: it’s not only us Now listen. […]
Learning Strategy: Teaching Students to Use Quizlet Effectively
Early this school year, I taught my students to use Quizlet for mastering key knowledge. A bit of context: my curriculum assesses both knowledge and skills. I assess skills like argumentation via pop-up debates, essays, and short-answer questions. I assess knowledge through short-answer questions and multiple choice questions. (Now if you’re thinking “all multiple choice […]
The Whole World Blind
Hey there, colleague, First, I want to say thank you for a break that I needed. The last couple of weeks I have been resting, thinking, praying, and enjoying the simple gifts of life. I’ve got some blog posts in the hopper ready for you this month, but I didn’t feel that sending them over […]
How to Help Students Value Learning Just Because It’s Learning (Video)
Some time ago a colleague and I were talking about how the ways that we talk to students about learning can help or hinder the cultivation of student beliefs in learning. This is an important topic in terms of labor-saving for teachers because we all speak to our students anyways — be it through in-person […]
“We’re On Pause”
When my son and I are wrestling, he’s got a self-awarded superpower: any time he says, “Pause,” I’ve got to stop moving while he gets to reposition himself, readjust his cape, or (most frequently) obtain a lightsaber from his room. “Pause!” he’ll say with his almost-four-year-old voice. And off he goes to prepare for whatever […]
What Keeps the Fire? Here Are Two Skillsets that Motivated Career Educators Have in Common
Teaching is one of the best jobs in the world because of its large impact potential in two areas: Externally, teaching affords us the unmatched privilege of contributing to the education of human beings. Few endeavors are as wrought with possibility as the teaching of people. And each day, we’re paid to participate in this […]
Things That Help: Taking a Walk When I’m Stuck, or the Five-Out-Five-In
Most afternoons, I find myself stuck at least once: in a lesson plan, a stack of (digitally submitted) essays, a writer’s puzzle, a problem of practice I can’t solve. Now there are rare times when I find it best to push through when I’m stuck. But more frequently, I find that it’s better to take […]
“Cameras On… Please?” Ideas for Turning Empty Squares into Faces
This isn’t going to be me wading into the Great Camera Debate of 2020 but is instead me processing strategies for getting more students to turn their cameras on during whole-class, synchronous instruction. But Dave, why? Way back in the day, I wrote a post describing how humanization is only possible in spaces where we […]
Sandcastles v. the Himalayas: On Weak and Strong Boundaries
In a world of remote and hybrid instruction, there’s lots of talk about boundaries. It comes up in professional development, during staff meetings, on blogs and Twitter: boundaries, boundaries, boundaries. And the topic is a worthy one. As I’ve said, constraints make us better. The path to freeing ourselves up to doing our best work is marked by self-imposed […]
The Workload-Pressure Paradox
Workload and pressure work together deviously to demoralize and demotivate even the best teachers. Here’s how it works. First, workload. The default circumstance of teaching in the twenty-first century is that as time goes on, the teacher’s workload increases. Each year there is more of all the things we’re tasked with doing: More email to […]
Thankful for You
My dear colleague, How could we have guessed, one year ago today, what was ahead of us professionally and personally? The hardship, the uncertainty, the fearfulness, the frustration, the angst, the triumphs and failures. None of us knew. This Thanksgiving morning, I’m thinking about you — about what it’s been like to travel through a […]
Things That Help: Weekly Wrap-Up Video for Parents
Recently, friend of the blog “Continuing Ed” McCarthy reached out to me with an example of his end-of-the-week wrap-up video to parents. This isn’t something I’ve done for my students’ families but, gosh, does it seem like a simple method for radically increasing teacher clarity, teacher credibility, and the home-school partnership. Let’s take a look […]
How to Teach and Reinforce Norms for the Synchronous Remote Classroom: Here’s the Simple Approach I Used
Recently, my school switched from in-person to remote learning, and I thought it might be useful to share how I approached establishing norms for our online “classroom.” (Zoomroom?) Normally I’d write this kind of thing down, but time is tight these days, and a video is better than nothing. (That’s also why I’m hosting a […]
How I Handled Misbehaviors on the First Day of Zoom Classroom
On the first day of synchronous learning at my school, I had a pair of students doing something I hadn’t seen before while the class was completing a writing warm-up. They were taking turns flashing their videos on and off, making funny faces each time they’d appear. I could tell they were getting a real […]
Things That Help: “Good Times”
While I don’t necessarily recommend the book,* Ben Courson’s Flirting with Darkness: Building Hope in the Face of Depression did give me a concept that’s been helpful in the days since I read it one night. It’s this habit amongst elite military groups of responding to adverse turns in events with the phrase, “Good times.” […]