A while back, I wrote “The 300-Word Guide to Long-Term Flourishing,” and it elicited a heartfelt response about test scores and teacher evaluations from a passionate educator whom I’ll call D in this post. Her comment follows: Thank you for defining this concept so clearly! It is difficult to “refuse to freak out about high-stakes […]
Character Strengths, Integrity, and My Three-Year-Old
As I was brushing Laura’s teeth last Saturday morning, which happened to be the morning of Halloween, I listened to her titter about how excited she was because, later that day, she was “gonna be Anna!!!” from Frozen. As we were talking about it, I wanted to remind her that it was her Grandpa and Grandma Stuart who had bought the […]
What Does, and Does Not, Work in School Improvement
Before you click away, thinking, “Oh, this article is about school improvement, and I’m just a classroom teacher,” allow me to argue for the relevance of this post. First, and most simply, many of the things below that don’t work in school improvement also don’t work in classroom improvement. There are quick, potentially powerful parallels. Second, […]
Why I Would Love If My Children Became Teachers
During a speaking engagement in New York several weeks ago, I met a mother and a daughter who both teach in the district I was working with. I had goosebumps while I was talking with them — two generations of the same household, enthusiastically serving in the same district. The image of these two women […]
Two Kinds of Curiosity and the One that Science Supports
I’ve mentioned before that there are two kinds of curiosity: fruitful and fruitless. Fruitful curiosity Fruitful curiosity is that which we efficiently act upon as we’re studying a subject. In my survey world history course, I’m reading about the five pillars of Islam in our World History textbook, and it mentions the hajj to Mecca, so […]