Dear colleague, As my new book* approaches its April release and my classroom practice walks its annual traverse through the universe, I got to thinking the other day, “Hmm… if I had to explain to someone the Five Key Beliefs methodology for understanding student motivation (especially secondary student motivation), how would I do it? So, […]
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An Ode to the Teacher Who Introduced Me to Etymology
I don’t know which teacher it was at Thornapple Kellogg High School — maybe Ms. Davidson or Mr. Stein or Mr. Consadine — but someone was the first to introduce me to a field of learning I love to play in: etymology. Etymology: the study of the origin of words and how their meanings change […]
In A World Gone Wild, Why Care About Student Motivation?
It’s so easy to overlook student motivation as a serious realm of study for several reasons: So in this brief article/video combo, let me give three reasons why student motivation deserves our attention, reflection, contemplation, and professionalism. (You’ll get my gist through just reading or just viewing, but you’ll get a fuller sense of what […]
“School is a word game”
I often remind my students that school is a word game. I specifically do this in a few situations: For these reasons and more, I was pumped when our colleague Continuing Ed sent along this three-minute video from Nature: (Not seeing a video? Click here.) Don’t have three minutes? The gist is this: knowledge of […]
Exciting News + You’re More Powerful than DALL-E 2
Dear colleague, The exciting news is below this post. If you’ve never seen DALL-E 2, you ought to take 15 minutes and head down its wormhole. I’ve done a few things in the past ten years that have felt a bit like peaking at the future — trying on my brother’s VR headset thing; test-driving […]