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 […]
Impact = Promoting Long-Term Student Flourishing
In a recent post, I wrote some advice for teachers who try hard but feel hopeless, and part of that advice was to speak truth to power (meaning that, when an issue is important enough, we owe it to our students and our colleagues to tell our administrators what we see). And then Marianne asked a […]
Advice for Teachers Who Try Hard but Feel Hopeless
A few days ago when taking votes for my next ebook, I received a response from someone who I’ll call “Rachel.” She wrote a heart-rending message that I’m guessing literally thousands of Teaching the Core readers can relate to (details changed to protect Rachel’s anonymity): Dave, I’ve been teaching high school for close to 25 years, […]