The other day, I got a great question from an early career teacher. One of my professors, towards the beginning of my program, told my cohort that we shouldn’t use please or thank you when talking to students. The reasoning was that if we are asking or thanking a student for meeting classroom expectations, that […]
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25 Questions to Ask During 2x10s
I’ve written and spoken before about 2x10s. If you’re not familiar with the strategy, either read this quick article or watch the quick video below. (Not seeing a video? Click here.) But something I’ve never done is give a list of prompts you can use to start eliciting conversation from these challenging kinds of students. […]
You’re Just Not Enough, and Neither Am I
A truth that keeps me teaching sounds a bit paradoxical. It has two propositions: It has other forms, too — like this: Holding these two ideas in your will and your mind at the same time — your impotence and your power — is a hard holding to learn. But few dualities have left me […]
Smallies v. Biggies
To me, the most powerful thing you can do to improve student effort is teach them, very clearly and well, what good effort looks like. And to really get the Effort belief zinging, you ought to do this not just for some things, but for all things…at least, all the things that you expect your […]
The Simple Slide I Use to Structure My Lessons
For the past few years, I’ve come to plan my lessons out very simply: beginning, middles, end. In my new book, I represent this idea using the following graphic: But in my day-to-day teaching, it actually looks like this: (Note: in general classes, the “Homework” piece is called “Walk Away.”) Now like any tool, the […]