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 […]
Working Better with Parents
The past few weeks have provided me several opportunities to reflect on parenting from the teacher’s perspective. Some of the opportunities have been normal — parent/teacher conferences, my interactions with my children — and others have been serendipitous — a conversation with a mentor, repeated run-ins with an intriguing parent. Also, one of the chapters I was […]
How Humility Makes Us Better, Saner Teachers
Humility isn’t one of the highly predictive character strengths I work on with my students, but the older I get, the more I realize its centrality to a life well-lived. The pursuit of humility, once we properly understand the term, yields better relationships and faster growth. With that said, it makes great sense that we dig […]
Can Pop-Up Debate Produce Grit in Students?
With little more than one day left on the voting for my Character Lab project (update: voting has ended!), I thought it would be worth sharing with you exactly what I’m hoping to research next year with pop-up debate and grit. So let me show you the actual application that happened to be chosen as one of […]