Dear colleague, For many years now I’ve been grateful to be in touch with Alfred G. Waters Middle School in the Appoquinimink School District in Middletown, DE. My first visit there was for a PD on literacy across the school day, and it helped me clarify the ideas that I would eventually lay out in […]
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WTL Case Study: Starting a Five Beliefs Culture in a San Diego School
Dear colleague, Since The Will to Learn came out in spring of 2023, pockets of earnest educators have made it their own in delightful and admirable and powerful ways. One such example is from Ocean View Christian Academy in San Diego, CA. If you’ve been wanting to start a discussion at your school regarding the […]
It’s Dumb but It Works: Naming Your Pencils
Dear colleague, Last year I was fortunate to make a number of mini-PD visits to Hamilton Public Schools here in Michigan. For each two-hour session, we examined a single strategy from what I call the minimalist approach to The Will to Learn. During one of the sessions, a pair of colleagues were laughing about an […]
How I Start 99% of My Classes
Dear colleague, I don’t know of a better class starter/do-now/bell-ringer/warm-up than provisional writing. In my classes, this looks like me providing prompts (typically three) and students getting a set number of minutes to write toward the prompts. Sometimes, I ask them to write toward all three; other times, they get to pick. But the basic […]
Pointing the Hubble Telescope at Our Classrooms
Dear colleague, I don’t know if it’s possible to exaggerate four things about the classroom context: In The Will to Learn’s first chapter, I argue that students are souls — hypercomplex amalgamations of five distinct parts of being. I know, I know — for a lot of you, that’s not exactly a sales pitch for […]