In this brief talk, Robert Pondiscio makes the case for what he calls the “57 most important words in education reform.” This would serve as an excellent refresher or discussion-starter for teams or faculties that have read or are about to read Wexler or Didau, as we did recently in our blog-based book club. I […]
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Beyond Coercion: Thinking Deeper than Carrots and Sticks
One of the big things we discovered during the COVID closures of spring 2020 is that many of our students are presently motivated by carrots and sticks: credit or no credit, GPA boosts or GPA reductions, prizes or penalties, incentives or consequences. Most educators did not find this surprising. This “play the game” mentality is […]
Teachers Need Time to Learn about Using Time
Teachers Need Time to Learn about Using Time Well In the first year of my teaching career, like so many of my peers around the nation, I was proud of how many hours I worked. I didn’t count them, of course — I just noted with grim satisfaction when mine was the first car in […]
Debunking Relevance as *the* Key to Student Motivation
I’m seeing a lot on the webwaves these days about how whatever fall looks like, it needs to be relevant. If we’re going to expect students to learn something, we had better make sure it’s relevant — otherwise they won’t do it and there’s no value in them doing it. This is common thinking, and […]
What Has the Spring of 2020 Taught Us about Student Motivation?
Hey there, One of the central questions of my work has become this: how do we make schools both more productive and more humane? It’s a total copy of management thinker Peter Drucker’s career question. Since the beginning, I’ve started every one of my professional development sessions with a slide that says, “More learning, less […]