…then it’s probably not working. This is true for: My students tend to need reminders like this rather often. The most common reasons I bring this kind of “If it doesn’t feel like work…” message to my students are: It’s basically me trying to point their minds toward the power of deliberate practice and intentional […]
You’re Not a Bum
Dear colleague, A year or so ago, we decided the Stuart children needed a piece of core cultural knowledge known as Rocky (1976) in their lives. I hadn’t seen the film since I was a kid, and I had to chuckle at a couple things I didn’t remember from my first viewing decades ago: This […]
My Favorite Thing to See on a Test Corrections Sheet
Dear colleague, Short note today, but when I saw this (image below), I thought of you. Test corrections, to me, are a critical part of the learning process. They allow students to Unpack Outcomes, Good or Bad (Strategy #9 in The Will to Learn), and they imply that tests are just another part of the […]
Pop-Up Debate Problem: What Do You Do When Students Aren’t Yielding the Floor Well?
Dear colleague, Some time ago, a colleague wrote in with the following question regarding Pop-Up Debates: Dave, what do you do when multiple students stand up at the same time and don’t want to yield? I have two class sections where this is becoming a pattern, despite giving them plenty of encouragement and instruction to […]
The Secret Service
Dear colleague, One day I was walking down the hallway during my prep period, and I felt like a true-blue secret service agent. I picked up a piece of garbage. I had a brief moment of genuine connection (MGC) with a student I passed. I stopped in on a colleague and gave a word of […]