The Yerkes-Dodson Law holds that the relationship between pressure (or stress) and performance is shaped like a bell curve. Place no pressure on a person at all, and their performance will likely be negligible; place the entire universe on their shoulders, and their performance will be similarly bad. Unfortunately, I know very few teachers who don’t operate on […]
Archives for April 2017
Less News, Better Brain
A few weeks ago, I realized that consuming the news was messing up my brain. I’d get done teaching my classes all morning, and then I’d sit down for lunch, and I’d pull up The Week or some other news site, and 60 minutes later I’d still be reading the latest stories and commentaries. It’s […]
Improving Pop-Up Debates: Better Prompts
I’ve held more than a few pop-up debates that went badly, and I could trace the badness back to before the debate started. What am I talking about? The Plague of the Poorly Formulated Pop-Up Debate Prompt. Recently, I was reading through Les Lynn’s blog (Les founded Argument-Centered Education, and his blog is the Debatifier) and […]
The Most Dangerous Word to Your Sanity (and How to Stop Saying It)
“The most dangerous word in one’s productivity vocabulary [is] ‘yes.’” –Cal Newport in Deep Work If our fixed-schedule commitments are going to yield their greatest fruit, then we have got to reduce the number of times that we say “yes” in response to requests for our time. I could delve into the things that I […]
Learning ≠ Familiarity
Here are two scenarios we can all probably relate to: In both cases, the speaker is confused about the difference between learning and familiarity. If something is learned, it can be produced (or, in the case of skill, executed) by the learner, without any aid. Learning means, “I can do it myself.” Familiarity, on the […]