Before I get into this story from my parenting, let me note three important points: Now, for the story. Every weekday morning, I drive two of my daughters to their school about fifteen minutes from our house. Both have spelling lists each week, and both have teachers who give a pretest and a test on […]
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The Yerkes-Dodson Dilemma
So much of effective teaching — and good living — comes down to how well you manage to stay atop the Yerkes-Dodson Curve. When you’re up there, you get it all: The trouble is that the Yerkes-Dodson Curve is slippery. I’ve yet to meet a person who has always found it easy to stay up […]
The teacher’s work is like the landscape
Dear colleague, I’ve taken a dozen or so walks these past couple of weeks because, when I’m in the valley, sometimes that’s all I can do. Walking stabilizes my soul; it depressurizes me. I’ve got teacher-y blog posts piling up that I’ve not emailed to you lately — I’ll start sending those out to you […]
The Gist of a Gisty Book
In my book These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most, I’m basically after responsible reduction. How do we reduce the impossibly large list of potential things we could do with students into a pleasantly manageable list of things? In other words, it’s a book that attempts to introduce a gist […]
Should Teachers Show Examples of Their Own Work to Students?
In response to my article “Being a Credible Teacher is Like Having a Good Wine Label,” our colleague Emily Stuver, an art teacher, asked this question: Hi Dave,I’m wondering about your opinion on something this post brings up for me. In the art teacher world (especially mine where I teach students with learning differences), there’s […]