At one of the desks where I write for this blog, I’ve got three index cards taped to the wall. Each card has a single word on it, all caps: ENCOURAGED. EQUIPPED. UNDERSTOOD. These are how I want colleagues like you to experience the work I put into the world, whether it’s a blog post […]
Inner Work
Four Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Was a Student Teacher
This past Tuesday, I gave a keynote to a group of 400 student teachers from around West Michigan. It was only twenty minutes long, so I had to be quick as I went through four things I wish people had told me when I was starting out. Before I get to the four things, you […]
Time to Retire
If you, like me, hope to put an entire career’s worth of effort, care, improvement, and service into teaching — in other words, if you want to invest the bulk of your adult life, day by day, into this work — then there’s a job you’ve got to quit, right now. If you don’t stop […]
You’re Probably Right
Student motivation begins with the internal work of teaching. We can decry the obstacles to student motivation today — kids’ tendency to either care too much about grades or to not care about them at all; our students’ access to exponentially more entertainment than ever before in world history — but there aren’t many good excuses for […]
Humble-Boldness: A Common Trait of the Greatest Teachers
To be good at teaching, you need to do a few things well, getting better at them as your career progresses. And then you need to do all the rest of the things just well enough. (The “well enough” things get satisficed — one of the most useful terms I’ve come across in my research.) To be great at teaching, you need to keep on doing […]