The Effort and Efficacy beliefs are intermingled. They dance together. I’ve tried representing these with the following flywheel diagram: The best way to begin to build the Effort and Efficacy beliefs in the hearts of our students, then, is to TEACH them what wise, strategic effort looks and feels like. In order to do that, […]
Archives for March 2022
Credibility/Value Booster: Is that a Treasure Chest I See You Carrying?
It is. Recently, I was with a secondary faculty in Wisconsin, and after asking folks to craft their Everest sentences, I asked them to share with one another and answer, “So what? Why should students and families care about that Everest?” After this, I took volunteers. One of our colleagues shared that her Everest is […]
Simple Credibility Booster: Brian Sztabnik’s Sermonizing Ritual
What it is: For the last 2-3 minutes of class, high school ELA teacher Brian Sztabnik takes a crack at explaining the lasting significance of today’s lesson: how a centuries-old poem speaks to today; how a mechanically-sound sentence is a thing of simple beauty; how essay-writing teaches us to explore ideas. That’s it. What it […]
Dave’s Favorite Books on Aging for Educators 🥳
On the occasion of our birthday this year, my birthday buddies Justin Bieber and Lupita Nyong’o and I would like to offer you a list of our favorite books on getting older.* *All right, all right — so far, Lupita and Justin and I haven’t been able to actually meet, but that’s mostly a nationality […]
What I Do When a Parent, Guardian, or Student Emails Me Re: Make-Up Work or “How to Get My Grade Up”
Recently at a professional development in California, we were doing a session on workload simplification and a colleague raised her hand and asked the following: I get what you’re saying about satisficing our email inboxes. But what happens to me at least once a week is a student or family member emailing me for a […]
