May is usually a hard month for me as a teacher. I’m exhausted. Of the year’s mountain-tops and canyon-bottoms, in May it’s the low, dark places that seem realest. I’ve succeeded beyond what I’ll ever know with some kids, yet with some I know I’ve failed. I haven’t reached them; I haven’t been The One Teacher whose work flips […]
3 Years of Teacher Blogging: the Work, the Rewards, the Opportunity
This past week, on May 6th, 2015, my wife Crystal and I celebrated the third birthday of TeachingtheCore.com (update: On August 1, 2015, TeachingtheCore.com became DaveStuartJr.com — same blog, new name). It was a crazy party — she had a glass of wine, I had a glass of scotch, we reminisced, and we were yawning by […]
6 Mindsets of Excellent Educators
If you wander through my school, you’ll see numerous examples of teacher excellence. One of our best educators is stern, intense, rarely cracking a smile; another is warm, inviting, and deeply relational; still another is peppy, exuberant, bubbling over with enthusiasm. Each of them are excellent teachers, and I’d argue that their excellence is something separate […]
An Example of Deliberate Practice from my Actual Life
One of the best reasons for infusing character strengths into our instruction is totally selfish: even if we completely fail to help our students grow character, our lives become richer as we grow the strengths in ourselves. And yet, this personal character growth is not truly selfish, either — not if our aim is to help our […]
The Imperative Nature of Deliberate Practice
So, guys. Guess what? My pop-up debate Teacher Innovator project was one of seven winners of the prize! It won! And that’s because of you. I don’t know what I’m more excited about: the fact that hundreds of you believed in the project enough to vote for it; the fact that this summer I’ll fly to […]