I’m running a marathon today. At some point, months ago, my little brother and I thought this was a great idea. As the training miles (and skipped training sessions) piled up, my evaluation of the idea decayed. By the final weeks of training, I found myself repeatedly saying to Crystal, “Honey, if I ever talk about wanting to run a marathon […]
A Conversation with Mike Schmoker
Four years ago, at the very outset of this blog, I was starting to blog through the Common Core State Standards. Providentially, at about the same time I had decided to re-read Mike Schmoker’s Focus. That re-read bit was new for me. I was at a point in my career where I sensed it was high time I […]
The Non-Freaked Out Framework: Five Things We’ve Got to Keep Getting Better At
The Non-Freaked Out Framework (Figure 1) is really just a set of five imperatives. One goal governs them all: let’s do increase the quantity and quality of these things, across the content areas. “Framework” is probably a bad word for what it actually is. Maybe I should call them “The Non-Freaked Out List of Important Things […]
Your Attitude About X
For years, I’ve had these words hanging on a wall that faces my desk: Your attitude about X says nothing about X and everything about your heart. I’m not telling you to believe them, but I’m saying there may be a strategic advantage to taking them seriously. When I approach Problem In the Classroom X with an […]
A Conversation with Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein
In today’s installment of the interviews I conducted while creating Teaching with Articles, we get to sit down with a powerful pair of minds that long-time readers will be very familiar with. I’ve written about Gerald Graff and/or Cathy Birkenstein in some of this blog’s most popular posts: A Simple, Two-Paragraph Template that Helps Kids to Really […]