In the first days of June 1944, General Dwight Eisenhower faced befuddling complexity as the final decision for the coming D-Day invasion loomed before him. The question was easy to ask — On what date shall the invasion begin? — but soul-crushingly difficult to answer. He needed a full moon in order for his nighttime […]
Archives for August 2019
The Power of the Humdrum: Why Your First Day of School Isn’t Going to Make or Break Your School Year
Great teachers did more than obsess on the efficiency of their classroom — their questions were artful; their assignments, demanding — but there was a clear tendency among positive outliers to see the power of the humdrum, the everyday. Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better, by Doug Lemov, Erica Woolway, and […]
“Stand and Practice? What Kind of PD is That?”
The workshop was being led by Dr. Chris Hulleman, the much-admired researcher behind the “Build Connections” intervention that I share in the second chapter of These 6 Things. He was leading a session at Character Lab’s annual Educator Summit in Philadelphia, and I couldn’t believe that I was actually in the same room as this […]
Fixing the Bottoms of Our Buckets: Introducing the Classroom Management Course
Picture all the things you’d like to accomplish this school year as a bucket. In that bucket is your effectiveness, your sanity, your impact on long-term flourishing, your ability to facilitate a learning experience. It’s a good, good bucket. And then that one student misbehaves again. Or that after-lunch class starts running off the rails. […]
