I’m sitting in the Grand Rapids airport right now waiting for a flight to haul me out to California for the week. In Cali (oh, Cali — why can’t I be visiting you in February?) I’ll be leading four professional development days in a row at three separate schools, all around the non-freaked out approach […]
Three Great Points in Erik Palmer’s “Effective Communication” Video
I’ve written about Erik Palmer’s work before (remember PVLEGS?), and I’m working through his latest book Teaching the Core Skills of Listening and Speaking. But recently, I found something else of his that’s totally free and pretty powerful. It’s a video called “Effective Communication,” and while I’d encourage you to click here to watch it yourself, I […]
For Noncognitive Skill Development, Start with Growth Mindset — Here’s How
In my last post, I wrote that we literacy educators are wise to treat noncognitive skill development seriously and systematically; the research supporting them is too overwhelming to do less than choose the noncogs we want to aim for in our classrooms and then concertedly pursue their growth in ourselves and our students. In this post, I’d like to […]
Literacy Educators: Let’s Get Serious about Noncognitive Skills
The Common Core does a pretty good job of laying out some key cognitive skills students need to have to be ready for the literacy demands of a career or college. Granted, we need to reduce the standards into a simpler, more power-packed set of focused literacy priorities (the non-freaked out approach being one possible example) if we’re going to truly see literacy […]
4 Jedi Mind Tricks for Avoiding Burnout
A lot of us educators got into this gig because we wanted to impact lives. Last post, I shared how I define impact. While some may have found it a bit too basic, I see no other way to begin seriously considering how to build an impactful career than by starting with the ultimate aim of teaching: the long-term flourishing […]