I love it when students ask me, “When will I ever use what I learn in school?” It’s an honest question. An important one. A faint trace of the fear many students have in their hearts that school is just a big ol’ giant waste of time. Sometimes, I like to answer it like this. […]
Uncategorized
Pop-Up Debates as Comprehension Improvement? Apparently, Yes!
Last year, I realized at the end of first semester that I had forgotten one of my favorite instructional tools: pop-up debates. Believe it or not, this happens often to me. At this point, I’ve written about a LOT of different teaching strategies. And even though they’re situated in some intentionally simple, practical categories — […]
Pick a Student, Any Student
Dear colleague, I’m writing to see if we might help one another out. Would you be willing to describe for me a student you are working with who appears to not care about the work of learning? In your description, be sure to: What I’ll do is examine each workable scenario I receive and propose […]
“One of the teachers I work with is bad at their job. Does this hurt my credibility, too?”
First of all, what do you mean, “Bad at their job?” Sometimes, folks who say this just differ with that teacher’s philosophical or pedagogical positions. To me, fair enough that you don’t like that style of teaching. But to say that teacher is bad at their job isn’t necessarily accurate. Their job isn’t to align […]
The Five Key Beliefs in a Pep Talk from The Bear
August is always my busiest month as a PD guy, and so this past month I ended up traveling half a dozen times across the country. When traveling alone, I like to pass the time sometimes by watching movies or shows that folks I respect have recommended to me. One of the shows I watched […]