“As a specialist in learning disabilities, I have found that the most dangerous disability is not any formally diagnosable condition like dyslexia or ADD. It is fear.” — “Overloaded Circuits,” by Edward M. Hallowell in Harvard Business Review’s Managing Yourself The absence of the five key beliefs might be the five key fears. If student […]
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How to Build Resilience, Part 3: Adaptability
During these past weeks of reflecting on resilience’s three pillars, I’ve started to see a relationship between the three, how they really do act like the legs on a stool. If you’ve got a deep sense of purpose but not an acceptance of unpleasant realities then you’ll err toward unchecked idealism. Unchecked idealism happens when […]
24 Tips for Leading Better Professional Development
At this point in my career, I’ve led over 100 different professional development experiences, ranging from keynotes to conference sessions to whole-day breakouts. The work has been with a broad spectrum of audiences: whole district staffs ranging from 6 people (total staff, whole district) to 1,500; elementary teachers exclusively; secondary teachers exclusively; ELA-only groups; only […]
How to Show Appropriate Affection for Students
It is a sad sign of our time that I have to add “appropriate” to the title of this post. Without it, our minds quickly slip to inappropriate affection, conditioned as we are by so many salacious stories on the local news about criminally inappropriate teacher-student interactions. Despite the news stories (and the fear they […]
We Become What We Do
The best way to become a certain kind of person is to do what those kinds of people do. This common sense dates back to at least Aristotle, who taught that the paths to both vice and virtue run through our actions. For teachers, this means that if we want to be sharper thinkers, then […]