When Connie (not her real name) ran out of my classroom last spring, tears streaming down her face, I felt like a horrible idiot. On the first day of school, she had voluntarily identified herself as being anxious about public speaking on her index card, but through a simple progression from Think-Pair-Share experiences to Pop-Up Discussions and Debates, […]
Instruction
Gotta Want It, Gotta Do It: The Motivational and Executional Hurdles to Student Success
This past summer’s speaking work led me to a clarification on how I think about the character strengths that hang on my ninth grade classroom wall. This is exciting to me because, while my students tend to engage with the reflective or experimental work we do around helping them grow the strengths, I’m not satisfied […]
Teaching Trump (and Other Controversial Topics) Without Losing Your Job
Last February, I showed an Ezra Klein video on the rise of Donald Trump in some of my history classes. The video’s thesis was that Trump is “the most dangerous major presidential candidate in memory.” My stated purpose was that the video served as a timely example of how one’s claim need not always come at the very start of an argument. […]
What Does the Common Core Look Like in Social Studies Classrooms?
For too many social studies teachers, the Common Core State Standards still mean the exaltation of Skill at the diminishment of Knowledge. When we parrot tweetables like “It’s not what you know, it’s what you can do,” we throw out more than bathwater. If our aim is to create social studies classrooms where the reading, […]
“A Perverse Sort of Compassion” and the Point of Strong Teacher-Student Relationships
In the Tiistila school just outside of Helsinki, Finland, a third of the kids are immigrants, many of whom are refugees. Heikki Vuorinen is a teacher at this school, and his kids are from all over the world with all kinds of backgrounds and challenges. Yet, fascinatingly, Vuorinen isn’t comfortable focusing on the immense odds faced by […]