Laughter is not just laughter. It’s the most fundamental sign of safety and connection. — Daniel Coyle, The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups Have you ever had one of those awkward moments where you tell your students a joke or share with them something that you think is funny, only to have […]
Archives for January 2019
“Elementary Children Are Primarily Interested in Subjects that Relate to Their Lives”: Busting a Damaging Myth
In the state where I work, the social studies standards call for the following grade-level emphases: Kindergarten: Myself and others Grade 1: Families and Schools Grade 2: The Local Community Grade 3: Michigan Studies Grade 4: United States Studies Grade 5: Integrated United States History Grade 6: World Geography Grade 7: World History and Geography […]
Trust, but Verify
In his fascinating and quick Anything You Want, thinker Derek Sivers tells a story to explain a lesson he learned about delegation. (And yes, I understand that you and I are teachers, and that most of us lack assistants to delegate to. But there are key parallels. More after the story.) The story goes like […]
Three Prescriptions for Thinking More Clearly about Teaching, Part 3: Write More
All right, here’s the ground we’ve covered so far: Clear thinking yields better teaching and better living and wiser choices. We want to be clear thinkers. But it doesn’t come automatically. It’s not the kind of thing that a degree confers. It’s won through practice, and we can always improve it. To start, we can […]
Three Prescriptions for Thinking More Clearly about Teaching, Part 2: Consume More Costly Things
Last time, I explained that thinking clearly is a huge promoter of our own flourishing. And since flourishing teachers tend to do better work and enjoy their lives more than frustrated teachers do, this is no small matter. It’s at the root of our mission to make teaching better. So the first step is to […]
