Some time ago, a professor in California named Dr. Sue Baker wrote me after my post on the economic advantages of writing well. She asked, “Would it be possible to do a plug for writing instruction and how it supports our democracy? I understand that writing skills are key for employment, and that employment and being […]
The Skull and Crossbones List
If we’re going to improve the quality of writing our students are capable of — an absolutely critical endeavor — then we first need to ensure that our kids have a large amount of writing that they do. Quantity precedes quality. In improving the amount of writing students do across the school day, we need […]
Cheap Prizes: We Didn’t Get into This for Those
I recently met a teacher who had just finished his first year on the job somewhere in the northeast USA. He had just sat through my session on “Jedi Mind Tricks for Avoiding Burnout,” and he came up to me and said, “I get it, but I still don’t feel any better.” We kept talking, […]
The Write Structure: A Simple, Effective Method for Teaching Writing Across the Content Areas
Note from Dave: When I began my career in 2006, it was as a sixth grade English Language Arts teacher in Baltimore, MD. I can still remember the scripted curriculum they handed me, complete with workbooks, student consumables, and the expectation that all of my students would be working on decoding phonemes in my double-period, sixth […]
The Work Beneath the Work
One of the reasons we’re at risk of burning ourselves out this year is that there’s a work beneath our work. Here’s what I mean. The work that we’re heading into or in the midst of right now is lesson plans and unit designs and classroom set-ups and photocopies and tech checks and learning names and teaching annotation […]