Dear colleagues, I came across this article from Jen Gonzalez recently where she makes the sound argument that asking students what they did over summer break can put students with sub-optimal summer vacations into a bad spot right out of the gate. Instead of only asking about break, Jen advocates for asking questions like the […]
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Value via Purpose: Tapping into a Nuclear Power Source of Student Motivation
Dear colleague, Picture Sarah, a sophomore in your third-period class. She’s not disruptive, but she’s not engaged either. When you ask her why she should care about what you’re teaching, she shrugs and says, “I don’t know. For the grade, I guess?” Sarah’s not lazy or defiant. And if you asked what Stanford researcher Bill […]
The Compelling Math Mini-Sermons of Caroline Ong
Dear colleague, On pp. 127-129 of The Will to Learn, I unpack the full transcript of the following mini-sermon from Texas-based secondary math educator Caroline Ong. (The mini-sermon starts at about the 1:30 mark, but the whole 2.5-minute video is important for context.) In virtually every PD I facilitate on how to improve student motivation, […]
This Is the Year of Value
Dear colleague, Toward the end of last school year as I was coming to grips with the student motivation apocalypse and the implications of AI for schooling today, one idea became clear and recurring: in this coming school year, great teachers and schools will be those mindful of the Value belief. (You can read a […]
Teaching with Articles: Still a Banger
Dear colleague, My oldest asynchronous course, Teaching with Articles, came out before my two books, These 6 Things and The Will to Learn. When I was making it, I was still learning all the things those books contain. And it was so long ago that, honestly, most of the time I forget it exists. But […]