Dear colleagues, These are the AI-related thought pieces I have found valuable in the past month or so. The first one is good for either listening or viewing. It’s called “How Will AI Change Education?” There are a million low-quality thought pieces on this topic, but what I respect about this video is that he […]
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All Right, Fine: Let’s Talk About It
Dear colleague, The most notable through line in my professional journey this year has been wrestling with the AI boogeyman. Every school year is a journey, no matter what. But this year my journey has been more intense and existential than any I can remember. Suffice it to say, I’ve come a long way since […]
AMA Livestream re: Blogging, Writing, Speaking (Blog Birthday 2025)
Dear colleague, During the Ask Me Anything (AMA) livestream that took place on May 3, 2025, I answered the following submitted questions: If you’d like to listen, you can access the replay here! DSJR
Everest Statements in Elementary School?
Dear colleague, Recently, one of our colleagues in Saudi Arabia wrote in with the following question: I appreciate that These 6 Things is aimed at [secondary] teachers, but so much of it applies to [elementary] too! Do you have any examples of Everest Statements made by Elementary Teachers that you could share? I haven’t got […]
Two (of Many) Things I’m (Intentionally) Not Good At
Dear colleague, I was discussing teacher stress and burnout the other day with some educationally minded folks, and we arrived at an insight I haven’t written about in awhile. The insight is this: though the teaching workload today is unambiguously stressful and overloaded, much of that stress and overload could be mitigated if we gave […]
Learning Takes Drafts: 13 Years of DSJ (Blog Birthday 
)
Dear colleague, 13 years ago I wrote the first article on this blog, which, at the time, was called Teaching the Core. Since then, I’ve written 1,071 blog articles, created 100s of videos, produced half a dozen courses, spoken all around the country and the world, and published two major books that articulate my philosophy […]
Three Levels of MGCs
Dear colleague, Recently, I wrote about the MGC inflection point. I’ve been able to study and work through this thanks to a few Will to Learn partnerships* I’ve made with schools this school year. Another fruit of those partnerships is clarity on what I call the Three Levels of MGCs. As you progress through the […]
What If Students Get Too Personal?
Dear colleague, A fellow teacher wrote in to me some time ago with the following dilemma: My strongest suit is connecting with my students, on an academic level as well as a personal level. My students trust me and come to me with personal problems regularly as they sense that I care about them. I’ve […]
The MGC Inflection Point
Dear colleague, This year I’ve worked with several partner schools to help The Will to Learn take root in their schools. In each one, there’s this inflection point that happens where folks have tried MGCs for a bit — printed their rosters, started keeping track, grappled with the exhaustion — and this resistance starts happening. […]
Every Student Known
Dear colleague, For the past year and a half, folks on my building leadership team have been giving us faculty members a chance to think about, experiment with, and get consistent with tracking attempted moments of genuine connection (MGCs). That might seem crazy — I mean, how do you spend 1.5 years exploring a strategy […]
How to Woodenize Working Memory (Woodenization Example)
Dear colleague, As I unpack in the first module of the Principles of Learning Course (and a bit in this YouTube video), one of the reasons learning is hard is because working memory is a limited resource. Working memory is whatever we’re thinking about at the moment. It’s what we think with. Hopefully, your working […]
Are Worksheets Bad?
Dear colleague, It’s common enough to hear a well-meaning teacher use language like this: In one sense, I get it. When a class period becomes nothing more than a teacher distributing worksheet after worksheet to keep kids busy, that class is falling short of its potential. Our job is to teach, not to chuck worksheets […]
What’s a Distraction? (Woodenization Example)
Dear colleague, What’s a distraction? This is actually a great question to spend 10-15 minutes of class time on at least once per school year. Follow these basic steps to maximize the amount of learning the question produces. Step 1. Start with having your students write about the question. Use prompts like this: Prompts like […]
3 Things You Can Learn From Fixing a Faucet
Dear colleague, A few Sundays ago, our bathroom tub faucet developed a drip-drip-drip that wouldn’t stop. I had a few options: I was feeling cheap (I mean, I was feeling mentally strong), so I went with #3. During the process, I gained a few insights about the teacher life. #1 – Fixing a faucet is […]
A Simple Pre- and Post-Test Exercise (Unpack Outcomes Example)
Dear colleague, The second-to-last strategy in The Will to Learn is one that’s easy to sleep on: Unpack Outcomes, Good or Bad. You can read a full explanation of the strategy on pp. 206-219 in your copy of the book, so today I won’t re-explain it here and will instead give a recent example from […]
The Trouble With Sitting Behind Our Desks
Dear colleague, A couple months ago, I was asked at a PD workshop I was leading whether or not teachers should sit behind their desks while students work independently on their learning. Let’s talk a little bit about this. So first of all, it’s important we create classroom cultures where our students are sometimes independently […]