Last week, our ninth grade intervention team was having its sixth weekly meeting of the year. There have been plenty of times where these meetings depressed me more than inspired me. All four of us are hard-charging, high-belief, high-will, high-skill teachers, but all four of us were struggling with the motivational mountains that seemed lodged […]
Search Results for: moments of genuine connection
Guidelines for Developing New Teacher Mentoring Programs (NTMPs)
Recently, my district gave me a chance to think about a key area of work for any school system that seeks to maximize its long-term flourishing outcomes for both its staff and its students. That key area? New teacher mentoring programs. Whether you’re in a setting like mine, or a smaller one, or a larger […]
Two Very Different Pop-Up Debates on the Same Day
Recently I held the first pop-up debate of the school year in my on-level world history courses. (For my most thorough treatment of pop-up debates, see Ch 4 of These 6 Things.) The lesson began with the following prompt: They had five minutes to write a response, and then I asked them to share something […]
Here’s How to Overcome Student Speaking Anxiety
Kym was convinced that she had a disorder: she was unable to speak in class, and there was no way to solve it. This is what I learned on the first day of school when Kym filled out an index card telling me a bit about herself and who she wanted to be. I can […]
Belonging Booster: Values Affirmation Exercise
Recently, my students gave me a boost in teacher morale through their completion of a simple intervention that I believe supports the value, belonging, and credibility beliefs. (These are three of the five key beliefs that I write about in Chapter 2 of These 6 Things; I overview the beliefs in this blog post.) The […]