I think it would be painful to survey how many teachers make a habit of “relaxing” at night with a stack of student writing in their laps and a show they’ve been wanting to watch on Netflix. I’ve done this plenty of times myself. But here is the problem: grading and/or giving feedback on student […]
Inner Work
Better and Saner Grading Tip: Get Out the Stopwatch
I don’t have all the answers when it comes to taming the beast that is grading student writing, but here’s something that I have found to help this year: using a stopwatch. Step One: Sit down with a stack of papers, a stack of rubrics, and a beverage. (Based on personal experimentation, stimulants tend to […]
The Case Against Complaining
Some time ago, I met a pair of teachers who happened to be married. Each of them had been teaching for several decades, and both seemed thoroughly unhappy. Every time that either of them contributed to the conversation that we were sharing, they complained, making known another thing they found unsatisfactory or unacceptable. I’m not talking about […]
Do You Need New, or Will Used Work?
Many times early on in my career, I would run into a situation where a given strategy — say, modeling higher-order reading — wasn’t working like I wanted it to, and so I would go and seek a new strategy. This created a cycle: try, fail, find new, try, fail, find new. This used up precious […]
A Single-Moding Approach to Teacher Productivity
Some people I respect run a community/training site for online entrepreneurs called Fizzle, and in Fizzle there’s this course called Productivity Essentials [1]. In the course, a key idea is that there are two required modes for online entrepreneurs: CEO Mode and Worker Bee mode. In the video below, Chase Reeves lays these out in his typical winsome […]
