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Dave Stuart Jr.

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The Whole of Dave’s Writing, All On One Page

I'm a teacher who writes. This is the page where you can find everything I've written. With every article I write, my goal is to help you (and me) grow more effective and more stable in our work with students.

New articles are sent to my popular (and free) email newsletter. Below, you'll find links to everything I've written to date. Since it's a lot (more than 400,000 words), I'll start with some of my more popular posts.

The Most Helpful Things I've Written for Fall 2020

Unprecedented, I think I've heard it called? Right. So let's get to work on the work will that matter most:

  • How to Build Strong Relationships with Students if You're Starting the Year Online: Principles and Practices
  • How to Humanize Your Classroom or School When You're Teaching from a Distance: Principles and Practices
  • How to Train Your Will to Want to Teach Again, Despite Everything: Principles and a Practice
  • How to Use Mechanics Instruction that Sticks When Teaching Remotely: Thoughts from the Author, Doug Stark

The Best (Most Helpful) Thing I've Written So Far

This blog can be very overwhelming, as it contains all of my rough draft thinking as a classroom teacher-writer since I started writing publicly in 2012. Thankfully, there's now a polished and refined version of much of what I've written on the blog. It's called These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most .

I'm grateful to report that These 6 Things has been called “a how-to guide for teaching with your head and your heart” and “among the most helpful, practical, insightful teaching resources” available. It's been read and appreciated by middle school math teachers in California, college writing instructors in Idaho, heads of schools in Dubai, and elementary teachers in Michigan. It's the shortest path into understanding how I think about and approach our work as educators.

If you don't have a year to sift through my blog, consider getting the book, first for you and then for your team 🙂

The first chapter is here — no opt-in required.

Most Popular

These are some of the blog posts that folks have called most useful in the past.

  • Mechanics Instruction that Sticks: Using Simple Warm-Ups to Improve Student Writing
  • Latin Word Chunks: A Case Study in Smart, Low-Stress Knowledge-Building
  • Nine Instructional Moves for Teaching Texts
  • Beyond the Fear of Public Speaking: Making the First Pop-Up Debate a Success for All Students
  • The 300-Word Guide to Long-Term Flourishing
  • 9 Principles for Working Better with Fellow Educators
  • There Are No Silver Bullets, but There Are Swords
  • Purposeful Annotation: A “Close Reading” Strategy that Makes Sense to My Students
  • There and Back Again: My Journey with Gallagher’s Article of the Week Assignment

Search My Writing

Here's a tool for searching my blog.

Elsewhere on the Web

I have not spent much time or effort writing for other outlets, but what I have written you can find below:

  • The Marshall Memo: Issues #845, 847, 848, 870, and 874
  • NEA Today: “Who Stands Between Fake News and Students? Educators”
  • “The Best of Our Knowledge” radio interview, titled “So You Wanna be a Teacher”
  • The National Speech and Debate League's Rostrum Journal, Nov/Dec 2019
  • The DonorsChoose.org blog

I've also been on a few podcasts:

  • Cult of Pedagogy w/ Jenn Gonzalez
  • Truths for Teachers w/ Angela Watson
  • On the Right Road Radio w/ Paula Phillips
  • Thrive Thursday w/ Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey
  • Class Dismissed w/ Nick Ortego
  • Writing Matters w/ Troy Hicks
  • Talks with Teachers w/ Brian Sztabnik
  • One Percent Better w/ Joe Ferraro
  • John Poelstra Show w/ John Poelstra
  • The Distilled Man w/ Kyle Ingham
  • Life on Brand w/ Hien Lam and Matt Hansen
  • CBD Podcast w/ Peter Grostic (and here's a Part 2)
  • The Chromebook Classroom w/ John Sowash

The Full List: 700+ articles

And finally, here's a list of all of my articles are in chronological order. Enjoy.

2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2012

2021
  • Here's the Thing: We Could Do Something Else
  • Habituate What You Can, Motivate What You Can’t
  • Self-Disqualification (+ What To Do About It)
  • You Really Don't Know
  • The Teacher's Journey
  • The Change to Come
  • The Two Bottlenecks
  • Highly Qualified < Highly Competent
  • We're in the Counterculture Business
  • It Might Not Be Zoom Fatigue
  • What If Schools Were Places Where the Value of Learning Was Obvious?
  • Ten Things Leaders Can Do to Improve Teacher Morale in Early 2021
  • Learning Strategy: Teaching Students to Use Quizlet Effectively
  • The Whole World Blind
  • How to Help Students Value Learning Just Because It's Learning (Video)
2020
  • “We're On Pause”
  • What Keeps the Fire? Here Are Two Skillsets that Motivated Career Educators Have in Common
  • Things That Help: Taking a Walk When I'm Stuck, or the Five-Out-Five-In
  • “Cameras On… Please?” Ideas for Turning Empty Squares into Faces
  • Sandcastles v. the Himalayas: On Weak and Strong Boundaries
  • The Workload-Pressure Paradox
  • Thankful for You
  • Things That Help: Weekly Wrap-Up Video for Parents
  • How to Teach and Reinforce Norms for the Synchronous Remote Classroom: Here's the Simple Approach I Used
  • How I Handled Misbehaviors on the First Day of Zoom Classroom
  • Things That Help: “Good Times”
  • My School Just Went Remote: Here Are Ten Things That Are Helping
  • Things That Help: Lisa Van Gemert's Content Capsules Method for Creating Joyful, Knowledge-Rich Learning Spaces, Remotely or In-Person
  • Things That Help: Emails as Letters
  • Books That Helped: October 2020
  • Things That Help: Five Tips for Better PD This (Crazy) School Year
  • The Will to Learn: Practical Methods for Improving Motivation and Engagement in Virtual or In-Person Classrooms (Session Description)
  • Workload and Pressure: Things That Help Teachers During Times Like These (Session Description)
  • Things That Help: One Fourth Grade Teacher's Simple Method for Positive Parent Contacts During Distance Learning
  • Reflection Questions for a Simpler, Clearer Calendar
  • Ten (Or So) Things That Are Helping Right Now
  • A Micro-Primer on How Motivation Works in People, Why Demoralization is So Prevalent Right Now Amongst Teachers, and What We Can Do About It
  • Things That Help: “I Can't Fix Everything, Or Sometimes Anything”
  • The #EducatorEncouragement Project: A Small Favor for Our Profession
  • Things that Help: Calling Out the Goodness You See in Students
  • The Surprisingly Similar Troubles with Strategies Based on Coercion or Engagement
  • Things That Help: Venting in a Vacuum
  • DSJ Digest: On Difficulty, Twitter, Yelling, and Naps
  • Things That Help: Go Home Early One Day to “Work from Home,” but Instead of Working Climb Into Your Bed and Pull the Covers Up to Your Chin and Sleep Like a Child
  • Why Is This So Hard? On Workload, Pressure, and the Ways through the Woods
  • Two Simple Techniques for Increasing Meaningful Interaction During In-Person PD
  • Video: Five Ways to Find More Time to Read Books
  • Weekends Can Restore, But They Don't Do It On Autopilot: Here Are Two Simple Practices That Can Help
  • Inside the Mind of a Master Teacher: Here's How Lynsay Fabio Would Approach Classroom Management During Distance Learning
  • Here's How and Why to Use Guided Meditation as a Teacher During COVID
  • A Simple Tweak for Tracking Moments of Genuine Connection in Band
  • Here's How One Teacher Humanized the Heck Out of Her Online Learning Space with a Story-Driven Intro Video
  • What to Do When Your Asynchronous Video Lessons Aren't Great But You've Got to Post Them Before You Go Crazy
  • How (and Why) to Leave Audio Feedback on Student Work This Year, Whether During In-Person or Distance Learning
  • Catchphrases that Work: “Is this a Mosquito Wing Thing?”
  • Eight Tips for Using the *New* Editing Practice that Sticks
  • A Million Words or Fewer: Deborah Bova's Tried-and-True Method for Learning from Parents at the Start of Distance Learning
  • A Middle School Science Team in New Mexico Rocks their Distance Learning Intro Video with Humor and Passion
  • An Interview w/ Troy Hicks for the Writing Matters Podcast
  • How to Deal with Bad Feelings About Teaching This Year: A Self-Examination Protocol for Understanding (and Starting to Do Something About) Negative Teacher Emotions
  • People, Not Passwords: Why You Need a Catchphrase or Two to Define Your Challenges This Fall
  • A Three-Question Checklist for Building Stronger Relationships through Moments of Genuine Connection
  • How to Use Mechanics Instruction that Sticks When Teaching Remotely: Thoughts from the Author, Doug Stark
  • How to Humanize Your Classroom or School When You're Teaching from a Distance: Principles and Practices
  • How to Train Your Will to Want to Teach Again, Despite Everything: Principles and a Practice
  • How to Build Strong Relationships with Students if You're Starting the Year Online: Principles and Practices
  • Four Months In: How's Your Will to Teach? (Plus Writing Intentions for Back to School)
  • A Beautiful, Simple Strategy for Improving Your School Culture
  • Three Questions to Ask After Every Conversation, According to Author Kate Murphy
  • Flexibility v. Consistency: The Paradox We've Got to Wrestle With
  • Lots of Nails
  • A Humane Email Norm that More Districts Should Consider
  • Summer Books: On Race, Listening, and Work
  • “If You're Not Building Knowledge, You're Not Teaching Reading.”
  • Beyond Coercion: Thinking Deeper than Carrots and Sticks
  • Teachers Need Time to Learn about Using Time
  • Debunking Relevance as *the* Key to Student Motivation
  • What Has the Spring of 2020 Taught Us about Student Motivation?
  • The Spectre of Moral Disengagement: What It Is, Why It Matters
  • A Conversation w/ Beau Larimer re: These 6 Things
  • Livestream Recording: A Conversation with Nancy Frey and Doug Fisher re: Motivation Amidst the Closures
  • What If We Took an Hour?
  • On Internal Pendulums, Tsunamis of Urgency, and Two Life-Giving Disciplines for Educators
  • Which Is the Better Lesson? An Illustration of What an Equity-Producing, Knowledge-Rich Curriculum Looks Like
  • Motivation is Heavily Affected by K-12 Curricula, Too
  • Is Classroom Management Icky? And Does It Even Matter for This Fall?
  • (Video) Guiding Students through a Simple Test Anxiety Reduction Activity
  • Shouldn’t We Just Have Students Teach Themselves?
  • Addendum: Making End-of-Year Surveys More Useful by Listing Specific Assignments
  • An End-of-Year Survey for Measuring the Five Key Beliefs
  • Something to Hate or Something to Relish
  • Consistency Breeds Ability
  • Occupational Burnout is a Thing, According to the World Health Organization
  • Flash Feedback: There's a Way to Tame the Feedback Monster
  • What Star Wars Can Teach Us About Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning: An Attempt at Useful Fun Amidst All This
  • How to Rig Google Classroom to Act as an Office Hours Paging System (Video)
  • Moments of Genuine Connection via Google Classroom: How One Savvy Teacher Makes MGCs More Powerful Amidst Phase 1
  • Just Because “Drill and Kill” Rhyme…
  • How Do We Make Class Video Meetings Less Awkward?
  • What Do Moments of Genuine Connection Look Like Amidst Emergency Remote Teaching?
  • “How Do You Remember What You Read?”: Helpful Practices for Improving Our Recall of Professional Reading
  • Updates to All the PD Things I Do
  • Zooming All the Way Out: Thinking in Phases
  • We've Got to Teach Sleep
  • 3 More Sample Lessons for Enrichment-Oriented Emergency Remote Learning*
  • Example of an Emergency Remote Teaching Enrichment Activity: Learning Strategy Brainstorm (Any Subject, Gr 4-12)
  • Example of an Emergency Remote Teaching Enrichment Activity: Counting Grass… Because Why Not!? (Math, Gr 4-12)
  • Example of an Emergency Remote Teaching Enrichment Activity: Nature Study (Biology, Art, ELA, Gr 4-12)
  • Here's an Example of a Distance Learning Enrichment Activity: 20 for 20 (Social Studies or ELA, Gr 4-12)
  • The Good News, the Bad News, and the Start of A Solution for Keeping Distance Learning Simple
  • It Turns Out that Knowledge Really Is Power: So, What’s In Your Portfolio?
  • Maslow Was Right: What His Theory Can Teach Us about Moving Ahead
  • What We Control
  • Leadership Looks Like This
  • When It Comes to Student Motivation, There Are No Novices
  • At the Core of Student Apathy…
  • Thinking in Public: The Inquiry Path that Led to This Post
  • Simple Intervention: Bill Damon's Approach to Helping Students Value School
  • Rules of Thumb When Giving Explanations
  • Learning vs. Task-Completing
  • A Phone ≠ A Brain
  • But What About That One Student? Use 2×10
  • How to Repair Relationships (And Why You Might As Well Accept that You'll Need To)
  • The Law of Entropy Says You'll Need to Focus
  • Good Teaching + Good Practice
  • Is the US Naturalization Test a Standard for Fair, Straightforward Assessments of Knowledge?
  • If Your Class Has Tests, You Have to Teach Students How to Study
  • The Two Rules of Resilience
  • When You're Speaking to Students, Speak Your Best (Plus a Primer on How We Learn to Read)
  • “Reading Level” Mostly Means Knowledge Level
  • Moments of Genuine Connection Are Awkward Sometimes
  • Why Specific Plans Are Helpful and Vague Ones Are Suffocating
  • The Customizability of Our Inner Worlds
  • Principles Must be Proven; Use “Value Drills” to Help
2019
  • Should Welders Care About History Class — or Algebra 2? Or Literature?
  • What About When Effort Doesn’t Work?
  • Simple Intervention: Birthday Buddies
  • Ten Essential Practices for Learning
  • The Peter Effect: Strong Teaching Depends on Strong Understanding
  • Video: 10 Ways to Stay Motivated as You Work on Student Motivation
  • Video: What the Beliefs Are and Aren't
  • Ptolemy v. Copernicus
  • The Magic Wand Experiment: Learning to Explicitly Teach What We Want Our Students to Do Well
  • How to Write a Great, Kind Email (That Is, How to Write All Emails)
  • Staying Checked In
  • Why Every English Teacher Should Consider “Reading Reconsidered”
  • Obscurity of Purpose Leads to the Wasting of Time
  • On Sunk Costs (and Whether You Should Change Your Curriculum Even When You Recently Spent a Lot of Money on the Current One)
  • The Four Pillars of High School Success
  • An Everest Statement for a Social Studies Department
  • Why ‘the Best’? Will Good Do Instead?
  • The First Key to Connecting Well with All Students is to Like Them; This Often Takes Work
  • The Best Way to Make Students Feel Valued, Known, and Respected…
  • Small Tweaks for Making Chris Hulleman’s Build Connections Intervention Work Even Better
  • On the Labeling of Students
  • The Dumbest Intervention Ever
  • A Small Tweak to a Simple Classroom Birthday Tradition (Plus Its Impacts on Motivation)
  • Keep in Mind that They’re Credible
  • Both Experts and Novices Are Constantly At or Over the Brink of Overwhelm — And Yet Hope Is Not Lost
  • Guidelines for Developing New Teacher Mentoring Programs (NTMPs)
  • Two Very Different Pop-Up Debates on the Same Day
  • The Snowball
  • What If Our Students Are Bored Because We’ve Taught Them So Little?
  • Reading Comprehension Is Primarily a Function of Knowledge. It’s Not a Skill!
  • What Do You Do When Your Head Blows Up?
  • Striking Drucker's Balance
  • Are Our Schools Humane?
  • Only Handle It Once (OHIO): A Simple Discipline for Making More of Your Time
  • Fearfully and Wonderfully
  • The Precious S's, Part 2: Skipping
  • The Precious S’s, Part 1: Satisficing
  • Would You Like to be a Kinder Person?
  • Using Feedback-Rich Processes to Test Whether or Not We Know Something
  • You and the Puppet: Greg Ashman's Mind Trick for Helping with Emotional Constancy
  • You'll Need Rules
  • The Power of the Humdrum: Why Your First Day of School Isn't Going to Make or Break Your School Year
  • “Stand and Practice? What Kind of PD is That?”
  • Fixing the Bottoms of Our Buckets: Introducing the Classroom Management Course
  • Something More than Balance
  • The Ego Detector
  • Here's How to Overcome Student Speaking Anxiety
  • Nine Tips for More Energy
  • Australia! Key Takeaways from My Week at a Re-Engagement College
  • Knowledge-Building Helps Student Motivation, Too
  • Critical Thinking Comes from Knowledge-Building
  • The Effort Belief in Action: Read Naturally as a Case Study
  • 20 Years x 1 Hour Per Day
  • “How Do You Do It All?”
  • Systems v. Disciplines
  • Two Ways to Make It Less Complicated
  • Why Are You Grading That?
  • Doing Good v. Doing More
  • 10 Tips for Motivating Students Toward Full Engagement in Pop-Up Debates
  • What to Do When You Have Lots of Ideas (and the Dangers of Proactivity)
  • There's Only So Much Juice in an Orange
  • Mind the Gap
  • Simple Intervention: Values Affirmation Exercise
  • The Five Key Fears?
  • The Pedestal Isn't Real
  • You're in the Montage
  • Complicated Isn't Good
  • PowerSchool Grade Notifications Might Not be Good for Kids
  • A Time for Theories
  • A Time to Learn
  • The Digital Declutter Experiment: Spring Cleaning for Your Brain
  • Why I Am a Digital Minimalist (and What the Heck that Means)
  • Slot Machines
  • How to Build Resilience, Part 3: Adaptability
  • 500 Blog Posts: A Case Study in Resilience
  • Four Traits of Rockstar Teacher Teams
  • Focus = Life
  • How to Build Resilience, Part 2: A Strong Sense of Purpose
  • 10 Tips for Teachers from Kate Spade's Manners
  • "It's All About Relationships": We Can Do Better
  • Certainties, Not Exceptions
  • How to Build Resilience, Part 1: Acceptance of Reality
  • Teacher Attrition, the Serenity Prayer, and the Resilient Inner Life
  • Why Academics *Still* Matter for Long-Term Flourishing
  • We Empirically Know that Academics Aren't the Whole Picture of Long-Term Flourishing
  • We Intuitively Know that Academics Aren't the Whole Picture of Long-Term Flourishing
  • 10 Tips for Teachers from Kate Spade's Manners
  • What is Good Professional Development?
  • 24 Tips for Leading Better Professional Development
  • Beware the Planning Fallacy
  • Successful v. Useful: Lessons on Teaching from Jim Collins and Peter Drucker
  • The Shift
  • The Pressure
  • Why I Don't Write Much About Large-Scale Teaching Reform and Policy Change
  • The Time Warp Scenario: How to Get Unstuck On Big Projects
  • Maybe It's Time for a Diet
  • Tough Minds, Tender Hearts
  • How and Why to Use Storytelling in the Classroom
  • How to Show Appropriate Affection for Students
  • When Humor Hurts: The Trouble with Sarcasm
  • How (and Why) to Use Humor in the Classroom
  • “Elementary Children Are Primarily Interested in Subjects that Relate to Their Lives”: Busting a Damaging Myth
  • Trust, but Verify
  • Three Prescriptions for Thinking More Clearly about Teaching, Part 3: Write More
  • Three Prescriptions for Thinking More Clearly about Teaching, Part 2: Consume More Costly Things
  • Three Prescriptions for Thinking More Clearly about Teaching, Part 1: Consume Fewer Urgent Things
2018
  • Looking Back on 2018's Work Outside the Classroom
  • You Actually Can, and Should, Shut if Off
  • Unconscious Thought Theory: This is Why Teacher Intuition Matters
  • We Become What We Do
  • Common Teacher Hang-up: What Do I Do When Debates Get Heated?
  • Why the Best Teaching Strategies Are Like Boxes of Building Blocks
  • Improving Student Motivation via Micro-Commenting on Papers
  • The Quarry Worker's Creed
  • Student Motivation Problems Crush the Kids — and They Crush Us, Too!
  • How (and Why) to Ask Administrators for PD Funding
  • Feeling Burned Out? Read This
  • To the Teacher Who is Struggling Right Now
  • How to Motivate Students to Turn In Their Essays Without Using Brownies
  • The Five Key Beliefs: More than Band-aids
  • Linking My Past Burning Questions with Real Kids
  • What Are Your Burning Questions Right Now?
  • The Argument for Earnest and Amicable Argument
  • The Whirlwind
  • Tech for Tech's Sake Isn't Good in Our Classrooms
  • The Secret Skills of Master Teachers: Atomic Habits
  • The Secret Skills of Master Teachers: Batching Busy (or Shallow) Work for the Sake of Deep Work
  • The Secret Skills of Master Teachers: Predictable Time Off
  • The Secrets Skills of Master Teachers: Managing Your Mood
  • The Secret Skills of Master Teachers: Working Hard (and Smart)
  • The Secret Skills of Master Teachers: Paul Graham and the Right Kind of Procrastination
  • The Secret Skills of Master Teachers: Making Bad Habits Harder and Ambiguous Habits Better
  • The Secret Skills of Master Teachers: Reducing Distractions from Students
  • The Secret Skills of Master Teachers: Are They a Thing?
  • What I Ask
  • What I Do
  • The Work, the Gap, the Mission
  • Exploring Our Unexplored Weaknesses
  • The Teacher as a Mensch
  • The Positive Parent Phone Call
  • Sane Educators = A Good Strategy
  • “Hang Up Philosophy”: A Note on Philosophies of Education
  • Guest Post from Grant Piros: Two Things To Help Schools "Learn Forward"
  • Two Things To Help Schools “Learn Forward”
  • “Worksheets Are the Worst”
  • Fast Feedback is Effective Feedback: Here's How to Do Better
  • Wheel Alignments (and a Change to the Blog)
  • Moments of Genuine Connection: A Piece of Paper, a Clipboard, and a Goal
  • Simplify Responsibly
  • Students Won't Read? Start with Their Beliefs
  • 6 Teaching Insights I Gained through Writing a Book
  • Asking the Right Question: What's It For?
  • Deciding: How I Stopped Quitting Teaching
  • I Quit Teaching
  • The Business (and Educational) Sense of Selfless Service
  • What Would This Look Like If It Were Simple?
  • “Years of Experience”: What Kind?
  • “You're My Favorite Teacher”
  • What to Do When You Need a Credibility Breakthrough: The Student-by-Student Ground Game
  • The CCPR of Teacher Credibility
  • The Folly (and Difficulty) of Yes-itis
  • Warm Self-Critique: A Mark of Great Teachers
  • What (and How) I'm Excited to Read This Summer
  • You Should Stay in Education for a Long Time, But There Is One Catch
  • This Summer, Achieve Something You Care About, and WOOP to Get Started
  • What About Teacher Flourishing?
  • A Simple Trick that Helps Performance Anxiety
  • What is WOOP, and Why Does It Help with Student Motivation?
  • Students of Our Students' Hearts
  • Using Skull and Crossbones Lists to Ctl-A Delete Bad Habit Errors
  • How to Become a More Credible Writing Teacher
  • Simple Interventions: Building Connections to Help Kids Value Coursework
  • Beliefs and Boredom
  • The Five Key Beliefs that Motivate Student Writers
  • The Finish Line
  • How to Improve School Cultures, Part 6: Think Like a Gardener, Work Like a Carpenter
  • How to Improve School Cultures, Part 5: Simple, In-House PD
  • How to Improve School Cultures, Part 4b: A Case Study in Earnest and Amicable Argument as PD
  • How to Improve School Cultures, Part 4: More and Better Arguments
  • How to Improve School Cultures, Part 3: Better Meetings
  • How to Improve School Cultures, Part 2: Collins' Level 5 Leadership
  • How to Improve School Cultures, Part 2: Collins' Level 5 Leadership
  • How to Improve School Cultures, Part 1: Coyle's Three Skills
  • Neomania is Making Us Crazier (and Less Effective) Teachers
  • The #1 Place in School Where Students' Key Beliefs are Shaped
  • Better, Saner Homework Tips, Pt 2: Make It a Good Experience for Students
  • Better, Saner Homework, Pt 1: 6 Tips to Make It More Doable for Us
  • Encouraged, Equipped, and Understood
  • Four Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Was a Student Teacher
  • Time to Retire
  • What Makes Great Professional Development?
  • Learning ≠ Turning On a Video
  • You're Probably Right
  • The Five Questions Our Students Are Asking, All the Time
  • Simple Interventions: Birthdays and Belonging
  • How I Prove to My Students that They Actually Can Memorize Things
  • The (Mis)behaviors that Undermine Our Credibility
  • Ms. Blizzard and the Potential Weight of Single Interactions
  • Humble-Boldness: A Common Trait of the Greatest Teachers
  • Not Just Home Life: A Critical Mass of Belief-Supporting Contexts
  • Five Key Beliefs: The Source of Abbe's Superpowers
  • Semester Two and New for the Sake of New
  • Doing It All vs. Doing One Thing Well
  • The “Disappointing” Key to Impactful Teaching
  • The First Principle of Teaching
  • Thank You and (Belated) Happy New Year
2017
  • On Writing a Book, Pt 5: What Makes a Book Great, and How Much Insanity Does it Take to Try Writing One?
  • On Writing a Book, Pt 4: One Sentence, One Paragraph, One Page
  • On Writing a Book, Pt 3: Distance
  • A Case Study in Simplified Instruction: The Write Structure
  • On Writing a Book, Pt 2: Eating Glass
  • On Writing a Book, Part 1: The Same Aims
  • Temporary Changes at DaveStuartJr.com
  • When Current Events Remain the Job of Single Departments, Kids Won't Graduate Understanding the World Well
  • Writing (and Learning) for Democracy
  • The Skull and Crossbones List
  • Cheap Prizes: We Didn't Get into This for Those
  • The Write Structure: A Simple, Effective Method for Teaching Writing Across the Content Areas
  • The Work Beneath the Work
  • Realistic Idealism
  • Latin Word Chunks: A Case Study in Smart, Low-Stress Knowledge-Building
  • Re-evolution, not Revolution
  • Carry It Through
  • The Best Place to Start
  • Belief Drives Behavior
  • Experience ≠ Practice
  • Learning Strategy: Deep, Focused, 25-Minute Sessions
  • Beware the Belabored Anecdote
  • Learning Strategy: Think Like a Runner
  • Learning Strategy: Mental Contrasting and Implementation Intentions
  • Drafts of Learning
  • Freedom through Restriction
  • A Dangerous Assumption
  • Setting a Summer Reading Project
  • No More (New) Reading
  • Knowledge Builds on Knowledge
  • The Goal of Reading (and Basic Strategies for Achieving It)
  • Two Ways to Improve Listening (and One Way Not To)
  • Quantity, then Quality
  • Common Student Hang-ups: Quote Bombing
  • Common Student Hang-ups: Silo Speeches
  • Exemplars, Sentence Templates, and Checks for Understanding
  • Grading ≠ Feedback, and Sometimes You Don't Need to Do Either
  • The Pyramid of Writing Priorities
  • Want More Writing Across the Content Areas? Validate the Content
  • Writing: The Most Underrated Twenty-First Century Skill
  • Optimal Pressure
  • Less News, Better Brain
  • Improving Pop-Up Debates: Better Prompts
  • The Most Dangerous Word to Your Sanity (and How to Stop Saying It)
  • Learning ≠ Familiarity
  • Learning for Life
  • Relationships: Not a Separate Goal, but a Fruit of and a Means to *the* Goal
  • The Critical Juncture
  • When Teachers Go on Autopilot: How to Recharge the Fundamentals of Instruction
  • The Any-Benefit Approach
  • Improving Pop-Up Debates: Tracking the Argument
  • Fixed-Schedule Productivity
  • Start With the Constraint
  • Productive Curiosity: The Billion Dollar Character Strength?
  • Genuine Encouragement
  • As Little Flash as Possible
  • The Three Layers of Outperforming Classrooms
  • Don't Forget the Table
  • “You Don't Need More Time…
  • Things I Believe about Grading Systems
  • Are We Measuring the Wrong Things?
  • Better and Saner Grading Tip: Start with the End
  • Better and Saner Grading Tip: Stop “Relaxing” While Grading
  • Better and Saner Grading Tip: Get Out the Stopwatch
  • Boiling Down Argument: Five Approaches to Teaching Argument
  • Boiling Down Critical Thinking
  • Simple Sub Plans that Work
  • The Case Against Complaining
  • A Low-Tech Method for Memorizing Every Student's Name in Five Days
  • There's No Such Thing as Critical Thinking Apart from Knowledge
  • Do You Need New, or Will Used Work?
  • Fulkersonian Argument: The Mixture of Debate and Discussion toward which Pop-Up Debates Strive
  • An Expectancy-Value Pop-Up Debate
  • A Single-Moding Approach to Teacher Productivity
2016
  • Perfectionism Behind, Improvementism Ahead
  • How Doug Stark Maintains Boundaries with a Large English Language Arts Teaching Load
  • Technician versus Savior versus Professional
  • Our Own Worst — and Most Joyful — Critics
  • Constraints Make Us Better
  • 16 Reflective Questions to Ponder this Month
  • This Month, Make Space for Reflection and Anticipation
  • Purposeful & Active “Reading to Learn”
  • What is the Most Pointless Thing You Do as an Educator?
  • A Simple Activity for Building Self-Regulated Learners
  • Video: My Five-Minute “Defining Everest” Ignite Talk
  • A Simple Set of Activities for Building Public Speaking Comfort in Students
  • “Overachievers” and the Tyranny of Low Expectations
  • A Simple Technique for Affecting Belonging, One Genuine Connection at a Time
  • The Physical Classroom Environment: Why Your Classroom Need Not Be Pretty
  • A Simple “Expectancy-Value” Activity for Helping Students Care about Your Coursework
  • Making Mindsets Matter: Two Approaches to the Challenging Journey from Head to Heart
  • The Four Academic Mindsets: How 25 Words Decimated the 1000s I've Written on Student Motivation
  • The Consortium Framework in 400 Words
  • Predicting Success: Dialing Long-Term Flourishing Back into Things We Might Affect This Year
  • Why Does Student Motivation Matter? And Whose Job Is It, Anyway?
  • How to Use the Non-Freaked Out Framework for Personal PD: A Case Study
  • It's Not the Work, It's the Re-Work: Version 4.0 of the Non-Freaked Out Framework
  • Reader Response: What's the Toughest Thing about Teaching, and How Do You Deal with It?
  • Triple Responsibility: Its Problems and Imperatives
  • Learning is ______________: Here's Why How You Complete that Sentence Matters
  • How to Acquire a Distant or Super Famous Mentor
  • The Growing Dragon of Student Anxiety & Swords for Fighting It
  • Four Non-Negotiable Teacher Mindsets
  • Gotta Want It, Gotta Do It: The Motivational and Executional Hurdles to Student Success
  • Today, Solve a Problem
  • Teaching Trump (and Other Controversial Topics) Without Losing Your Job
  • Our One Enduring Standard (and its Two Components)
  • What Does the Common Core Look Like in Social Studies Classrooms?
  • Character-Switching​ & The Pursuit of the Poised Life
  • “A Perverse Sort of Compassion” and the Point of Strong Teacher-Student Relationships
  • My 11 Objectives for the First Month of School
  • Principles Underlying Mechanics Instruction that Sticks
  • Refutation Two-Chance: A New Frontier for Pop-Up Debate
  • Anti-Teacher Credibility: 10 Great Ways to Become Unbelievable (in a Bad Way)
  • Teacher Credibility: If You Build It, They Will Learn (Here's How)
  • Self-Control is About Goal-Attainment: Here's How to Help Students Develop It
  • The Best Articles on Classroom Management
  • CARE: Four Underlying Principles of Classroom Management
  • A Guide to the Start of the School Year
  • A Simple Activity for Teaching About Procrastination
  • Stopping the Snowball: Catching Struggling Learners Early On
  • The 500-Word Guide to Satisficing for Teachers
  • An Email Management Strategy Built on Discipline and Dignity
  • What I Learned from Reducing my Email Inbox from About a Million* Messages to Zero
  • Stop Obsessing Over Your Uniqueness: How Multiple Discovery Theory Makes Us Better and Saner
  • “Discipline without Emotion”: One Teacher's Use of a Simple Reminder
  • Reader Response: What Is the Most Important Thing You Know Now that You Wish You Knew When You Started?
  • Unicorns and Growth Mindset
  • Inking a Top-Level Goal for Your Career
  • Effort Counts Twice
  • Lessons Learned from my Character Lab Teacher Innovation Grant Research Project
  • One Teacher's Experiment with a Choice-Based Articles of the Week Assignment
  • Pouring Ourselves Out
  • Knowing Stuff is Inseparable from Literacy
  • Some Tests Are Really Great for Students
  • The Pedagogical Benefits of Doing Hard Things
  • A Conversation with Mike Schmoker
  • The Non-Freaked Out Framework: Five Things We've Got to Keep Getting Better At
  • Your Attitude About X
  • A Conversation with Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein
  • Babies, Bathwater, and Grit
  • A Conversation with David Conley
  • The Importance of Externalizing Our Brains
  • A Conversation with Larry Ferlazzo
  • Can't Need It, Gotta Want It
  • A Conversation with Kelly Gallagher
  • Asking the Right Questions: The Best of My Blog, Organized by Question
  • What is the Role of Education?
  • “I Love You and I'm Proud of You” — What Dean L. Stuart Taught Me About Teaching
  • Write 100 Blog Posts
  • How to View Teaching Situations Where the Odds are Against You: A Personal Case Study
  • “Everyone Knows One-and-Done PD Doesn't Work”
  • “How Long Do You Spend Grading Articles of the Week?”
  • “Vision Without Execution is Hallucination”
  • How to Stop “Likes,” “Ums,” and Other Distracting Speaking Behaviors
  • A Simple Classroom Birthday Tradition
  • Conversation Challenge: an Efficient, Simple Small-Group Discussion Strategy
  • Keep These Things in Mind When Thinking about Student Discussions
  • 7 Strategies to Make Content Stick
  • Education, Not Entertainment
  • Myth: If We Supervise and Evaluate Teachers More Intensely, the Quality of Teaching Will Improve
  • Being a Workaholic is not Smart or Romantic
  • Nine Instructional Moves for Teaching Texts
  • Problems = Opportunities
  • Give Me a Number
  • A Non-Freaked Out Approach to Reading like a Professional
  • How to Read (and Actually Enjoy) More Books this Year
  • PERMA and the Science of Flourishing
  • The Work of the Teacher Through Two Lenses
  • A Simple “Craft Your Credo” Classroom Activity
  • Two Practical “Reminder” Strategies for Overcoming Noise-Induced Aimlessness
  • Teaching Success in a Noisy World
  • The #1 Problem with New Years Life-Changey Stuff: Clarity of Purpose
  • A Simple “Back from Winter Break” Classroom Activity
2015
  • My Last Blog Post of 2015: A Letter to My Readers
  • Four Questions Deep
  • Dealing with Teacher Information Overload
  • The Science of Mechanics Instruction that Sticks
  • The Dangers of Externalism
  • When Your State Reduces Your Profession to a Test Score
  • Character Strengths, Integrity, and My Three-Year-Old
  • What Does, and Does Not, Work in School Improvement
  • Why I Would Love If My Children Became Teachers
  • Two Kinds of Curiosity and the One that Science Supports
  • Future You Wants You To Do Two Things
  • 5 Steps to Argumentalizing Instruction
  • The 300-Word Guide to Pop-Up Debate
  • How to Do Hard Things
  • Two Ways to Live the Teacher's Life (and Our Need for Both of Them)
  • Your Students Want to Master What You're Teaching Them
  • Submit an Idea for Cultivating Character; Win a $10,000 Grant
  • 21 Ideas for Developing the Motivational Character Strengths
  • Teachers, Students, and Sleep
  • Helping Students Understand Motivation: The Character Strengths Angle
  • The First Article of the Week of the School Year: Key Teaching Points
  • Truths about Student Motivation
  • Paraphrase Plus: A Central Move of Engaging Classroom Discussions
  • When I Do, and Don't, Get Stressed
  • These 5 Things, All Year Long: An Overview of The Non-Freaked Out Framework for Literacy Instruction
  • This Year, Make Better Choices with Warren Buffett's 25-5 List Technique
  • An Exemplary Exercise for Building Goal-Keeping Kids (includes Downloadable Document)
  • Simple Interventions: Preventing Symptoms of Depression by Teaching Kids that People Can Change
  • The Kind of Science that Teaching Needs
  • Mechanics Instruction that Sticks: Using Simple Warm-Ups to Improve Student Writing
  • “Marly Attacks” and The Power of Expectations
  • The 300-Word Guide to Long-Term Flourishing
  • Beyond the Fear of Public Speaking: Making the First Pop-Up Debate a Success for All Students
  • Starting Strong with the “Transformative” & Simple Think-Pair-Share Strategy
  • 3,500 Teachers Can't Be Wrong: We Need Permission to Focus
  • Cures for First Day of School Overwhelm
  • Simple Questions on the First Day of School that Teach Purpose
  • A First Day of School Activity That Teaches Argument, Which Teaches Thinking (Updated)
  • Get Ready for the School Year with this 5 Minute “Defining Everest” Activity
  • Updates (and Goodbye, Sort of) to the Teaching the Core Blog
  • Why We Teach
  • The Mental Reset Button: Hit It
  • $11,195 through Donors Choose: A Reflection on Generosity
  • Pop-Up Toasts: A Last Day of School Activity that Teaches PVLEGS, Character, and Classiness
  • Defining Everest: A Reflection on the Challenges of Teaching
  • May Forward: Making the Most of a Hard Month for Teachers
  • 3 Years of Teacher Blogging: the Work, the Rewards, the Opportunity
  • 6 Mindsets of Excellent Educators
  • An Example of Deliberate Practice from my Actual Life
  • The Imperative Nature of Deliberate Practice
  • Working Better with Parents
  • How Humility Makes Us Better, Saner Teachers
  • Can Pop-Up Debate Produce Grit in Students?
  • What are the Keystone Habits for Success?
  • Psst…
  • Keystone Habits: Unlocking Success for our Students and Ourselves
  • Autopsy of a Dud Project; Analysis of a Teacher's Heart
  • Why I #LoveTeaching
  • Moving Forward in the Midst of Survival Mode: A Retrospective
  • A Simple, Powerful Tweak on the First Day of School Index Card Activity
  • On Work Schedules, Perfectionism, and Hidden Autonomy
  • How Gratitude Makes Us, and Our Students, Better
  • There Are No Silver Bullets, but There Are Swords
  • Setting a Work Schedule to Make Us Better, Saner Teachers
2014
  • Teaching is Work
  • The Two Most Important Words for Getting Great, According to Daniel Coyle
  • Takeaways from #NCTE14 (and why professional conferences are worth it)
  • We All Need Mentorship: Here's How to Make the Most of It
  • Here's Why the 80/20 Rule Matters for Educators
  • How to Read Professional Development Books: 7 Tactics You Might Not Be Using
  • 14 Tips Toward Better Relationships with Administrators, Parents, & Support Staff
  • 9 Principles for Working Better with Fellow Educators
  • Purposeful Annotation: A “Close Reading” Strategy that Makes Sense to My Students
  • Scaffolds for Dominating the Article of the Week
  • There and Back Again: My Journey with Gallagher's Article of the Week Assignment
  • A Non-Freaked Out Framework for Literacy Instruction Across the Content Areas, Common Core or Otherwise
  • Do Common Core Professional Development Like This
  • Back-to-School To-Do List #2: Establish Burning Questions
  • Back-to-School To-Do List #1: Get Ready for my First-Ever Student Teacher
  • Three Great Points in Erik Palmer's “Effective Communication” Video
  • For Noncognitive Skill Development, Start with Growth Mindset — Here's How
  • Literacy Educators: Let's Get Serious about Noncognitive Skills
  • 4 Jedi Mind Tricks for Avoiding Burnout
  • Impact = Promoting Long-Term Student Flourishing
  • Advice for Teachers Who Try Hard but Feel Hopeless
  • New Thoughts on the Non-Freaked Out Approach to Common Core Literacy
  • On Common Core Text Complexity, the Triangle of Life, and the Freakout
  • “Help! I Need Appropriately Complex Texts for my Elementary and Middle School Students!”
  • Using the Efficient “Take a Stand” Strategy to Hook Kids into a Reading
  • Here's What I Know about Reading for Meaning Statements
  • Moving Forward with Close Reading
  • An Obituary for Close Reading
  • I'm Creating a New eBook. Tell me which you'd like to read
  • PVLEGS: A Public Speaking Acronym that Transforms Students
  • Jim Burke's Common Core Companion series — Here's Why It's Awesome
  • Why I Use the Article of the Week in My Elective Classes
  • 3 Sports Metaphors that Fuel Excellence in My Classroom
  • 9 Skills the Common Core Doesn't List but that Employers Want Anyways
  • Don't You Dare Forget These Truths about Teaching
  • 12 Skills the Common Core AND Employers Want
2013
  • 9 Complex Text Resources I'm Pretty Pumped About Right Now
  • Going a Bit Deeper with the They Say / I Say Two-Paragraph Template
  • No More Painful Research
  • A Simple, Two-Paragraph Template that Helps Kids to Really Argue
  • What Texts Does the Common Core REQUIRE Students to Read?
  • Can a text be inherently worth reading, even if it wilts your soul?
  • What are you struggling with in your classroom right now?
  • Starting the Year with Debate
  • A Non-Freaked Out, Focused Approach to the Common Core — Part 7 — Teach Character
  • The Only 100 Words You Need to Read Today
  • How to Dominate Your Common Core Supply Needs with DonorsChoose.org
  • How Administrators Can Wage War on Bad PD
  • I'm Not Kidding. This is the Best I Got.
  • A Non-Freaked Out, Focused Approach to the Common Core — Part 6 — Write Like Crazy
  • Waging War on the Bad Guys
  • Germany and Long-term Student Flourishing
  • Why I Will and Won't Care if Michigan Legislators Block Funding for CCSS Implementation
  • Dave's Summer 2013 Reading List
  • A Non-Freaked Out, Focused Approach to the Common Core — Part 5 — Every Kid Speaks
  • Non-Freaked Out Common Core — Part 4 — Argument and Debate
  • A Non-Freaked Out, Focused Approach to the Common Core — Part 3 — Close Reading
  • A Non-Freaked Out, Focused Approach to the Common Core — Part 2 — Complex Texts
  • The Non-Freaked Out, Focused Approach to the Common Core
  • What's YOUR Common Core Story?
  • How to NOT Freak Out about the Common Core
  • Simple Rubrics for Common Core Speaking and Listening Standards
  • Goals for 2013
2012
  • Discussions that Promote Societal Belonging
  • Character Strengths — Beyond the Common Core
  • What's the C3 Framework, and How does it Affect Your Social Studies Class?
  • Close Reading, the Common Core, and a Freaking Awesome Prezi
  • Student Teachers Rock
  • Keyboarding Skills and the Common Core
  • How to Get Students to Really Listen, Summarize/Paraphrase, and Respond to Peers
  • Video: One Way to Rock Out CCSS-Friendly, In-class Debates
  • A First Day of School Activity that Teaches Argumentation
  • How to Craft a Bomb-Diggety Resource Request
  • Where have I been all your life? + Updates
  • Common Core L.CCR.6 Explained
  • Common Core L.CCR.5 Explained
  • Common Core L.CCR.4 Explained
  • Common Core L.CCR.3 Explained
  • Common Core L.CCR.2 Explained
  • Common Core L.CCR.1 Explained
  • Common Core SL.CCR.6 Explained
  • Common Core SL.CCR.5 Explained
  • Common Core SL.CCR.4 Explained
  • Common Core SL.CCR.3 Explained
  • Common Core SL.CCR.2 Explained
  • “What Parts of the CCSS are Social Studies Teachers Responsible For?”
  • Common Core SL.CCR.1 Explained
  • 9 Big Ideas within the Speaking and Listening Standards
  • Common Core W.CCR.10 Explained
  • Common Core W.CCR.9 Explained
  • Common Core W.CCR.8 Explained
  • Will Common Core National Assessments Motivate Students to “Enjoy & Appreciate” School?
  • Common Core W.CCR.7 Explained
  • Common Core W.CCR.6 Explained
  • Is the Common Core all about Technology?
  • Common Core W.CCR.5 Explained
  • Common Core W.CCR.4 Explained
  • Common Core W.CCR.3 Explained
  • Why I Moved to TeachingtheCore.com
  • 7 Great Common Core Resources for History AND ELA Teachers
  • Does the Common Core Allow for Creative Writing?
  • Common Core W.CCR.2 Explained
  • 8 Reasons I Embrace Arguments in my Classroom
  • Common Core W.CCR.1 Explained
  • What Texts does the Common Core REQUIRE Students to Read?
  • Common Core R.CCR.10 Explained
  • Common Core R.CCR.9 Explained
  • Common Core R.CCR.8 Explained
  • 5 Ways to Make Rigorous Arguments Fun
  • Happy 4th of July!
  • Common Core R.CCR.7 Explained
  • Why I Support the Common Core
  • Beyond the Common Core Standards
  • Common Core R.CCR.6 Explained
  • Common Core R.CCR.5 Explained
  • A Class Purpose and the Promotion of Student Flourishing
  • Highest Frequency Words in the CCSS for ELA & Literacy
  • Common Core R.CCR.4 Explained
  • Why Gerald Graff's Clueless in Academe is Worth Reading
  • Vacation; Decompression
  • Common Core R.CCR.3 Explained
  • Common Core R.CCR.2 Explained
  • Common Core R.CCR.1 Explained
  • 4 Ways to Screw Up (and Fix) In-class Arguments
  • What's the Big Deal about Text Complexity?
  • 5 Principles in Developing the Common Core
  • 3 Ways to Start Implementing the Common Core Today
  • A Helpful Document for Overviewing the CCSS with Parents
  • Fahrenheit 451, the Butchery of Figurative Language, and the CCSS
  • CCR Anchor Standards in Language: An Overview
  • CCR Anchor Standards in Speaking and Listening: An Overview
  • CCR Anchor Standards in Writing: An Overview
  • What are the “Six Shifts”?
  • 7 Things that a College and Career Ready (CCR) Person Can Do
  • What are the CCSS CCR Anchor Standards?
  • 3 Reasons that the CCSS Should Make Content Teachers Rejoice
  • CCR Anchor Standards in Reading: An Overview
  • Why Did my Students Bomb their Extended Research Paper?
  • Can the Common Core State Standards Promote Student Flourishing?
  • What do Demons have to do with the Common Core State Standards?

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