If you look at a sampling of my blog posts over the years (here’s an organized list), you’ll notice that I went through a phase of believing that every blog post needed an image (here are some examples). Eventually, I gave the practice up, deciding to stop spending time — small though it was — on making title images. […]
The Three Layers of Outperforming Classrooms
The best kinds of classes can be built by teachers who attend to three foundational layers. First, the layer too often taken for granted: the key beliefs that underlie behavior and effort. Specifically, these teachers understand the four components of teacher credibility — trust, competence, dynamism, and immediacy — knowing both how to build these […]
Don’t Forget the Table
If learning is a feast, then noncognitive factors are the table. This is reflected in the Foundations Framework that I use in my own classroom and in the professional development workshops I’ve led around the country. (See Figure 1, below.) The literature on noncognitive factors can be pretty overwhelming. Having read a fair amount of it, I […]
“You Don’t Need More Time…
…you just need to decide.” — Seth Godin I’ve asked 11,683 people who subscribe to the newsletter a simple question: What’s the most frustrating thing about your job? In these responses, the word “time” appears 2,437 times. Here are some examples: Not enough time and too many expectations placed on teachers that are not in […]
Things I Believe about Grading Systems
There are a million debates about how or whether we should grade, and many people smarter than me have spent thousands of words explaining and advocating and rhetoricizing for all kinds of philosophies and systems. No matter what system you use — standards-based, traditional, 3P, no grades at all — I’ll just put out a […]