During a five-year period in the 2010s, researcher Morten Hansen conducted one of the most comprehensive surveys of worker performance ever. He found 5,000 managers and employees, from all types of professions, and he analyzed their work habits, tracked how many hours they worked each week, and followed their performance. The highest performers, it turned […]
We’re Too Hospitable to Pointlessness
“In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a fifteen-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. […]
A Simple Syllabus Language Change that Helped a Teacher Get the Breakthrough
This past school year, our colleague Tanya Ramm shared a simple shift in her syllabus language that gave her added life and agency as a teacher. Here’s all she altered: Practice: (50% of Marking Period grade) – This category includes student participation such as in-class practice with speaking, listening, reading & writing activities, as well […]
To Decide is to Cut
I was speaking with our colleague Tanya Ramm this morning, and she was describing her holiday weekend. (We had four days off for the US’s Labor Day.) Over the break, she came in to work for five hours on Friday while her husband and sons were off fishing. Then she came in to work a […]
Not a Lot of Time
There’s this thing that the stoics say: Memento Mori. “Remember that you will die.” It’s a little dark for my tastes. 😉 BUT I do think something like it very frequently, and it has guided a lot of my decision-making during this past decade of teaching high school, building a writing career, grasping the diverse […]