My ninth graders tend to ride the struggle bus when it comes to procrastination. There are, of course, always the kids who make my jaw drop with their teachability on work habits — when I teach them how to apply bits of effort to their studies each day, these kids put it into practice and […]
Stopping the Snowball: Catching Struggling Learners Early On
As some of you know, last year I started a ninth grade Advanced Placement World History course at our school. (Read my rationale and why I ultimately found the age level of my students to be one of our chief advantages here: How to View Teaching Situations Where the Odds are Against You: A Personal Case […]
The 500-Word Guide to Satisficing for Teachers
Psst! Satisficing is a concept woven through my book These 6 Things: How to Focus Our Teaching on the Work that Matters Most. If you don’t have a copy, ask your school to buy you one. If you do, please consider leaving a review through the link above. –DSJR Every teacher comes to a […]
An Email Management Strategy Built on Discipline and Dignity
Last time, I wrote about the absurd netherworld that has, for most of my adult life, been my email inbox and how I heroically handled all emails and arrived at the magical kingdom of inbox zero. And then about two seconds passed, and suddenly my inbox had emails in it and the perfect little “inbox zero” […]
What I Learned from Reducing my Email Inbox from About a Million* Messages to Zero
*More like 500 per inbox, but it felt like a million. For pretty much all of last school year, my inbox was a nightmare. Every time I’d open it, I’d get this messed up chemical cocktail released into my brain: one part excitement, one part anxiety. I became addicted to checking it on my phone, tapping […]