Dear colleague, For the past year and a half, folks on my building leadership team have been giving us faculty members a chance to think about, experiment with, and get consistent with tracking attempted moments of genuine connection (MGCs). That might seem crazy — I mean, how do you spend 1.5 years exploring a strategy […]
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How to Woodenize Working Memory (Woodenization Example)
Dear colleague, As I unpack in the first module of the Principles of Learning Course (and a bit in this YouTube video), one of the reasons learning is hard is because working memory is a limited resource. Working memory is whatever we’re thinking about at the moment. It’s what we think with. Hopefully, your working […]
3 Things You Can Learn From Fixing a Faucet
Dear colleague, A few Sundays ago, our bathroom tub faucet developed a drip-drip-drip that wouldn’t stop. I had a few options: I was feeling cheap (I mean, I was feeling mentally strong), so I went with #3. During the process, I gained a few insights about the teacher life. #1 – Fixing a faucet is […]
What’s a Distraction? (Woodenization Example)
Dear colleague, What’s a distraction? This is actually a great question to spend 10-15 minutes of class time on at least once per school year. Follow these basic steps to maximize the amount of learning the question produces. Step 1. Start with having your students write about the question. Use prompts like this: Prompts like […]
A Simple Pre- and Post-Test Exercise (Unpack Outcomes Example)
Dear colleague, The second-to-last strategy in The Will to Learn is one that’s easy to sleep on: Unpack Outcomes, Good or Bad. You can read a full explanation of the strategy on pp. 206-219 in your copy of the book, so today I won’t re-explain it here and will instead give a recent example from […]