Session Description: How do we help all of our students care enough to do the work and do it as best they can? I’ve spent the past five years of my teaching career reading, experimenting, and interviewing experts about what lies at the heart of student motivation. What I’ve found is straightforward: for our students […]
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“Why Is This So Hard?”: Productive Thinking on Teacher Morale and the Existential Conundrum of Workload and Pressure This School Year (Session Description)
Session Description: Educators around the nation are experiencing a harrowing double whammy right now: Schooling amidst the pandemic has produced a number of workload increases, no matter which model you’re teaching in; and Conscientious educators feel an enormous pressure to provide a world-class education for students who are experiencing an unprecedented disruption to their K-12 […]
Things That Help: One Fourth Grade Teacher’s Simple Method for Positive Parent Contacts During Distance Learning
Recently one of our colleagues wrote in to me with a tactic that ties right in to our desire to optimize the long-term flourishing outcomes of our students without burning ourselves out in the process: My name is Marisa Silver, a 4th grade teacher in Eugene, Oregon. I am a longtime reader of your material […]
Reflection Questions for a Simpler, Clearer Calendar
On Wednesday evening I recorded “Ten (Or So) Things That Are Happening Right Now,” and I was grateful for the live attendance of colleagues around the world. “Revitalizing, encouraging, humane, hopeful” — these are the adjectives folks used to describe the two hours of recorded content. It should work well for individuals, teams, or schools, […]
Ten (Or So) Things That Are Helping Right Now
Next Wednesday night, I’m going to record a set of practical insights that are slowly changing my experience of teaching this year. These are all topics that deserve their own blog posts, but I’ve just not had the time. I’m talking about: New insights on student motivation, such as: Why the most promising avenue for […]