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 […]
Babies, Bathwater, and Grit
I was sitting in an evening meeting some months ago, one of those situations where a sampling of K-12 teachers are brought in to share their two cents about where they’d like the district to go. We were in table groups, and the facilitator had just asked us to brainstorm a list of adjectives to […]
A Conversation with David Conley
While preparing the material inside of the Teaching with Articles course, I interviewed people I greatly respect and recorded the conversations. Previously, I’ve published my conversations with Kelly Gallagher and Larry Ferlazzo. Today, I’m sharing my conversation with the father of college and career readiness, Dr. David Conley himself. Dr. Conley is president of EdImagine, […]
The Importance of Externalizing Our Brains
Thinking clearly is a big deal; at various times this year, it has occurred to me that it might be the biggest deal for being successful in the twenty-first century, whether you’re a teacher, an administrator, a parent, or a student [1]. When a teacher learns to constantly hone her ability to think clearly, she […]