Dear colleague, I was discussing teacher stress and burnout the other day with some educationally minded folks, and we arrived at an insight I haven’t written about in awhile. The insight is this: though the teaching workload today is unambiguously stressful and overloaded, much of that stress and overload could be mitigated if we gave […]
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Learning Takes Drafts: 13 Years of DSJ (Blog Birthday 
)
Dear colleague, 13 years ago I wrote the first article on this blog, which, at the time, was called Teaching the Core. Since then, I’ve written 1,071 blog articles, created 100s of videos, produced half a dozen courses, spoken all around the country and the world, and published two major books that articulate my philosophy […]
Three Levels of MGCs
Dear colleague, Recently, I wrote about the MGC inflection point. I’ve been able to study and work through this thanks to a few Will to Learn partnerships* I’ve made with schools this school year. Another fruit of those partnerships is clarity on what I call the Three Levels of MGCs. As you progress through the […]
What If Students Get Too Personal?
Dear colleague, A fellow teacher wrote in to me some time ago with the following dilemma: My strongest suit is connecting with my students, on an academic level as well as a personal level. My students trust me and come to me with personal problems regularly as they sense that I care about them. I’ve […]
The MGC Inflection Point
Dear colleague, This year I’ve worked with several partner schools to help The Will to Learn take root in their schools. In each one, there’s this inflection point that happens where folks have tried Moments of Genuine Connection (MGCs) for a bit — printed their rosters, started keeping track, grappled with the exhaustion — and […]