In The Will to Learn: How to Cultivate Student Motivation Without Losing Your Own, I lay out an approach to student motivation in which Five Key Beliefs can be influenced using just ten basic strategies. The tenth of those strategies is Normalize Struggle. What is it? How does this strategy influence the Five Key Beliefs? While the […]
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Let’s Make Teaching Better.
Dave Stuart Jr. is a husband, father, and high school teacher who writes about education. He reads extensively across the disciplines so that he can create uniquely satisfying professional development experiences for his colleagues around the world. His mission is to encourage and equip educators on the journey to long-term flourishing and professional excellence.
Professional development. (The good kind.)
If we’re going to make teaching better, we’ve got to improve professional development. I’m not the guru, but I have spent thousands of hours practicing and researching the art and science of educator-centered, high-impact PD. My hope with all of these is that they help.
And oh yeah: I’m still a teacher. I’ve never left the classroom. With 120 students on my roster each year, it’s impossible for me to detach theory from practice.
Online PD
My schedule-friendly, all-online professional development courses are designed with busy educators in mind. Whole staff or district applications are available — email support@davestuartjr.com with your needs.
In-Person PD
I speak and lead education workshops for a limited number of schools and organizations around the world each year.
Books + Blog
My best-selling book, These 6 Things, has been read and cherished by secondary teachers around the world. My blog is read by over 35,000 educators each month.
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The Latest from the Blog
The Belonging Belief – DSJR Student Motivation Guide
The Belonging belief forms the fourth and final layer of the Five Key Beliefs of student motivation, which I unpack at length in The Will to Learn: How to Cultivate Student Motivation without Losing Your Own and in Chapter Two of These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most. What is […]
Unpack Outcomes – DSJR Student Motivation Guide
In The Will to Learn: How to Cultivate Student Motivation Without Losing Your Own, I lay out an approach to student motivation in which Five Key Beliefs can be influenced using just ten basic strategies. The ninth of those strategies is Unpack Outcomes, Good or Bad. What is it? How does this strategy influence the Five Key […]
Define Success – DSJR Student Motivation Guide
In The Will to Learn: How to Cultivate Student Motivation Without Losing Your Own, I lay out an approach to student motivation in which Five Key Beliefs can be influenced using just ten basic strategies. The eighth of those strategies is Define Success: Wisely, Early, Often. What is it? Like all of The Will to Learn strategies, […]
Defining Success, Wisely, Early, and Often – DSJR One Stop Shop
strat __ From WTL Four Pillars
Woodenization – DSJR Student Motivation Guide
In The Will to Learn: How to Cultivate Student Motivation Without Losing Your Own, I lay out an approach to student motivation in which Five Key Beliefs can be influenced using just ten basic strategies. The seventh of those strategies is Woodenization. What is it? Let’s go in to a bit more depth on this. First, Woodenization […]
The Effort and Efficacy Beliefs – DSJR Student Motivation Guide
The Effort and Efficacy beliefs form the third layer of the Five Key Beliefs of student motivation, which I unpack at length in The Will to Learn: How to Cultivate Student Motivation without Losing Your Own and in Chapter Two of These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most. What are […]
Valued Within Exercises – DSJR Student Motivation Guide
In The Will to Learn: How to Cultivate Student Motivation Without Losing Your Own, I lay out an approach to student motivation in which Five Key Beliefs can be influenced using just ten basic strategies. The sixth of those strategies is Valued Within Exercises. What is it? How does this strategy influence the Five Key Beliefs? While […]
Mini-Sermons – DSJR Student Motivation Guide
In The Will to Learn: How to Cultivate Student Motivation Without Losing Your Own, I lay out an approach to student motivation in which Five Key Beliefs can be influenced using just 10 basic strategies. The fourth of those strategies is Mini-Sermons from an Apologist Winsome and Sure. What is it? The most important thinking […]
The Value Belief – DSJR Student Motivation Guide
The Value belief is the second of the Five Key Beliefs of student motivation, which I unpack at length in The Will to Learn: How to Cultivate Student Motivation without Losing Your Own and in Chapter Two of These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most. What is the Value Belief? […]
Moments of Genuine Connection (MGCs) – DSJR Student Motivation Guide
In The Will to Learn: How to Cultivate Student Motivation Without Losing Your Own, I lay out an approach to student motivation in which Five Key Beliefs can be influenced using just ten basic strategies. The first of those strategies is Tracking Attempted Moments of Genuine Connection. What is it? That’s it — Tracking. Attempted. […]
Teacher Credibility – DSJR Student Motivation Guide
Teacher Credibility is the first of the Five Key Beliefs of student motivation, which I unpack at length in The Will to Learn: How to Cultivate Student Motivation without Losing Your Own and in Chapter Two of These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most. What is Teacher Credibility? Teacher Credibility […]
The Five Key Beliefs Beneath Student Motivation – DSJR Guide
In my book These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most (2018), I introduced the Five Key Beliefs as a methodology for analyzing and doing something about student motivation problems. Due to the need to treat more than just the Five Key Beliefs in the book (after all, they are just […]
This School Year, Try the Minimalist Approach to the Will to Learn
Since The Will to Learn came out, I’ve worked with dozens of faculties and teacher groups on the material and continued to practice its ideas and strategies in my own classroom. What I’ve found is that even the short list of ten strategies I write about can be pretty overwhelming. It’s too much to focus […]
Pop-Up Debates – DSJR Guide
In the speaking and listening chapter of These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most, I argue that great classrooms can be built on just three speaking/listening structures: When a teacher uses just three methods for speaking/listening in class, both teacher and students are able to rapidly acquire proficiency in the […]
How to Get through Your Curriculum This Year (Credibility Booster)
Toward the end of last school year, I published a video for teachers who found themselves in a common teacher predicament: they didn’t have time to finish their curriculum. If this has never happened to you, congratulations: you are part of a prized minority. Schedules get disrupted, tangents get taken, rants get ranted, projects go […]