Dear colleague, I don’t think it’s melodramatic to state the following: The vast majority of students today have a deeply impoverished view of the value of an education. It’s way more popular today to decry the pointlessness of learning school subjects than it is to Value them. And on top of this, a pre-COVID national […]
The Stockdale Paradox
Dear colleague, Someone asked me at a PD recently, “What’s the most important teacher book you ever read?” At the time they asked me, there just happened to be a copy of Jim Collins’ Good to Great sitting on a table nearby. I picked up the volume and I said, “Let’s go with this one.” […]
A Thousand Is More Than Four: The Quiet Power of Teaching
Dear colleague, I run this blog like I run my classroom: I assume nothing about your political leanings and keep private my own. Education, I’ve long said, is all about promoting the long-term flourishing of young people by teaching them to master things that, apart from school, they’d be unlikely to master. This is a […]
*Everyone* Is Better Off With More Mastery
Dear colleague, “Here at Musora, we believe that everyone would be better off if they played a musical instrument.” When I heard this line in the middle of a jazz band improv video I came across the other day, I immediately heard what the creator was doing: cultivating the Value belief in his listeners. It […]
No Top to the Mountain
Dear colleague, To make a really good Everest Statement (see Ch 1 of These 6 Things or this article), you want to describe a mountain that has no real top to it. Let me show you some examples of what I mean and then explain why it’s important. Here’s the statement I use for my […]