Every year, the US spends billions of dollars on teacher professional development. That’s a lot of money. If you stacked up $100 bills one on top of the other, a billion-dollar stack would be taller than the Burj Khalifa — the world’s tallest building. Unfortunately, much of this money is wasted. As Dan Weisberg of […]
Instruction
How to Motivate Students to Turn In Their Essays Without Using Brownies
There is nothing more depressing than spending your weekend grading 125 essays. Scratch that. There is. The only thing more depressing than spending your weekend grading 125 essays is spending your weekend grading 75 essays because the other 50 didn’t turn them in. That’s Lynsay Fabio, one of our many colleagues in the great field […]
The Five Key Beliefs: More than Band-aids
When a student walks up to me with a cut on their finger, I point them toward a drawer near the back of my classroom. Band-aids are great for tiny wounds like this. Teaching strategies are kind of like band-aids for teachers. For some teacher troubles, band-aids are perfect: How do I hook students into […]
Linking My Past Burning Questions with Real Kids
Let me bring you to the edge of my thinking. Here’s a quick summary of past burning questions that I’ve answered for myself — much of it publicly, in real-time, on this blog. What’s the point of school? It’s the long-term flourishing of kids. Our work is to promote that flourishing. So what? This question has helped me […]
The Argument for Earnest and Amicable Argument
Argument, my dear colleague, is precious. I’m not being sarcastic here. Something that is precious (from the Latin pretium, or price) is highly valuable; it is to be treated with the greatest of care. Like an irreplaceable family heirloom passed down through the generations, argument comes to us not at the behest of some list […]