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Dave Stuart Jr.

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Motivation

A Simple Classroom Birthday Tradition

March 5, 2016 By Dave Stuart Jr. 16 Comments

My birthday was last week, [1] which means that I had a chance to participate in our classroom birthday tradition: words of wisdom. I’ll share my words (actually, they’re not mine) next week, but for this week let’s just talk about what “words of wisdom” is, why I think it’s a worthwhile investment of roughly one […]

The Dangers of Externalism

November 14, 2015 By Dave Stuart Jr. 15 Comments

“The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard. I always pose it this way. I say: ‘Lookit. Would you rather be the world’s greatest lover, but have everyone think you’re the world’s worst lover? […]

When Your State Reduces Your Profession to a Test Score

November 10, 2015 By Dave Stuart Jr. 13 Comments

A while back, I wrote “The 300-Word Guide to Long-Term Flourishing,” and it elicited a heartfelt response about test scores and teacher evaluations from a passionate educator whom I’ll call D in this post. Her comment follows: Thank you for defining this concept so clearly! It is difficult to “refuse to freak out about high-stakes […]

Your Students Want to Master What You’re Teaching Them

October 6, 2015 By Dave Stuart Jr. 6 Comments

Students want to be good at things because it is fun being good at things. In other words, they are motivated by being good at, or mastering, things. Daniel Pink’s Drive, perhaps the most influential book on motivation of the past decade, is the most famous affirmation of this truth. Pink boils motivation down to three […]

Truths about Student Motivation

September 15, 2015 By Dave Stuart Jr. 11 Comments

It’s still early in the school year, but I can already sense some of the self-driven kids in my classes. I’ve learned about all of my kids a little bit through the first day of school index card activity (which is partially aimed at teaching purpose); and I’ve learned about a growing number of them through follow-up, one-on-one, […]

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