If you’re ever in a meeting of educators and want to get heads nodding vigorously, here’s what you say: “It’s all about relationships.” This is one of the most agreed upon maxims of my career. It’s also not all that helpful. It’s not that relationships aren’t important. They are magnificently important. It’s not that relationships […]
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Certainties, Not Exceptions
When the lesson plan doesn’t go as planned, or the student comes in and puts their head down, or the stroke of the policymaker’s pen undoes years of curriculum work, or the article of the week response doesn’t get turned in, or the department meeting disorients more than it orients, or the stack of papers gets bigger, not smaller… […]
How to Build Resilience, Part 1: Acceptance of Reality
Last time, we established some basic insights from the literature on resilience: it’s a thing; it makes our lives better; it’s a lot like the serenity prayer popularized by twelve-step groups like Alcoholics Anonymous. Resilient people are characterized by three tendencies: I. Acceptance of reality (treated below)II. A strong sense of purpose (treated in this […]
Teacher Attrition, the Serenity Prayer, and the Resilient Inner Life
How can we keep the best teachers in education, engaged in the work, and flourishing long-term? This is a core question of my work as a teacher and writer, and so I was grateful at a recent conference to learn from Wendy Zdeb, Executive Director of the Michigan Association for Secondary School Principals (MASSP). Wendy is […]
Why Academics *Still* Matter for Long-Term Flourishing
Despite the intuitive and empirical evidence for the case that academics alone aren’t the key to the long-term flourishing of our young people, our schools are wise to focus on academic mastery for all students. Why? Because the work of mastering something — be it writing or biology or physical fitness or music — has, as its […]