Here are some problems that have cropped up in my pop-up debates this year: Students give their mandatory speech and then sit down and disengage from the ongoing discussion — so, poor listening; Students repeat one another — which is both a cause and an effect of poor listening; Students make effective arguments that are […]
Fixed-Schedule Productivity
I’m not the only dedicated professional who takes his work seriously enough to stop doing it around dinner time. Cal Newport is a computer science professor at Georgetown University. In addition to being a productive academic, he’s also written several successful non-academic books. [1] In Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Newport introduces […]
Start With the Constraint
It’s possible that the most important moment in my teaching career came not while teaching, but while speaking to a beautiful young woman I dated at the start of my career. I was a first-year teacher, and I was introducing this woman to what my working life was like. “Some days,” I told her, “the […]
Productive Curiosity: The Billion Dollar Character Strength?
In January of this year, “billionaire buddies” Warren Buffett and Bill Gates held a Q&A session at Columbia University. At the 5:08 mark, the moderator asks, “What quality has been most important for you?” They both answered with the same thing: curiosity. Here is how Gates defines curiosity in the interview: “You try and predict […]
Genuine Encouragement
If you’re like me, seasons of discouragement come along at some point in a school year. We get tired, we get behind, we get frustrated, we experience setbacks. These things accrue, and it becomes easier and easier to hit the snooze button. Interestingly, I find that in these situations the way up is often down. [1] […]