Wouldn’t it be nice to find a simple way to connect with each of your students, one last time, before the year ends? Ideally, we’d write handwritten notes to indicate to each student what we’ve appreciated about them and what we hope for their futures. But c’mon — that’s a LOT of work, both intellectually […]
Archives for April 2024
End of Year Teacher Clarity Booster: A Mission and a Project
[Note: This article is a follow-up on my previous query regarding whether or not Cal Newport’s new book, Slow Productivity, is relevant to our work as teachers. I’m finished with the first part of the book, Do Fewer Things, and so far I’d say, “Yes — the book can inform and clarify how we teachers […]
End of Year Value Booster: Ask Them
Last Tuesday, I argued that you and I as teachers should take 10 shots at telling our students why their work in our classes has mattered this school year. Between now and year’s end, give 10 short (30-60 second) mini-sermons (see Strategy #4 in The Will to Learn) that answer this question: What was it […]
Three Outputs of Truly Great Teachers
GREAT. No living person has thought more about the word “great” than Jim Collins has in his long and focused career. If you’re a teacher in search of surprising insights into both your career and your life, you could do a lot worse than picking up Collins’ Good to Great (hardcover; Kindle; audio). It’s not […]
End of Year Value Booster: “What Was It All For?” End of Year Mini-Sermon
In Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, after the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, Hamilton asks Burr, “What are you waiting for? What do you stall for? We won the war — What was it all for?” This time of the school year, this is a great question to answer for our students. What, in your view as […]