Two of the four groups I teach each day are ninth grade AP World History students. These kids opt-in to the open enrollment class of their own volition, and their most-cited reason for taking on such a daunting challenge — an Advanced Placement course during their ninth grade year — is because they want to […]
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What If Our Students Are Bored Because We’ve Taught Them So Little?
The other day I gave my students a scenario to write about as their 100-word warm-up: Ninth graders around the United States are having a hard time caring about school. To some, it’s so boring or pointless that they consider dropping out — even in ninth grade. Imagine you are writing an article to these […]
Reading Comprehension Is Primarily a Function of Knowledge. It’s Not a Skill!
What would happen if we were to select a literate person from each of the past thirty centuries and ask that person to tell us which of the following reading comprehension skills is most important? What would they tell us? Identifying the main idea Making an inference Sequencing Drawing conclusions Relating background knowledge All but […]
What Do You Do When Your Head Blows Up?
If there’s an emoji to describe my writer’s mind during the last 4-5 months, it would be the one with the nuclear explosion coming out of the top of the head: 
You see, before this past summer started, I scheduled fewer speaking engagements than normal so that I could bury myself in research. When […]
Striking Drucker’s Balance
As I shared last time, the late Austrian management philosopher Peter Drucker spent his six-decade working life in pursuit of one big question. How do we make society both more productive and more humane? This is what Drucker wanted to know. The question fascinates me because it is so difficult, so important, so balanced. Any […]