Periodically, Dave livestreams an hour of professional development on a select topic for his colleagues around the world. His aim in these sessions is to provide world-class professional development that addresses head and heart, research and practice, teacher and student. As Jen Gonzalez said in a recent Cult of Pedagogy piece, “Dave goes deep.” Below, […]
Search Results for: moments of genuine connection
How to Build Strong Relationships with Students if You’re Starting the Year Online: Principles and Practices
So you’re starting the school year as a distance educator and you have no idea how to build strong relationships with students you’ve never met in person. Before the hyperventilation kicks in, let’s center on a few grounding principles. Grounding Principle 1: You know things that work for building relationships in normal circumstances. First, you […]
Consistency Breeds Ability
The biggest gains in our professional lives don’t come from massive, one-time pushes. That weekend getaway to plan out next year’s curricula? It’s not the key. The really late night we plan to spend this Friday to get the stack of papers graded? Only a band-aid. The big gains come from consistency — from showing […]
The Good News, the Bad News, and the Start of A Solution for Keeping Distance Learning Simple
It looks like a lot of us are going to be distance teaching for a while. I’ve been thinking and reading and reflecting on what this means and how we’d be wisest to approach it. Before I begin, let me be transparent: I’ve been paralyzed at the keyboard on this topic — far more so, […]
Maslow Was Right: What His Theory Can Teach Us about Moving Ahead
It’s possible that right now isn’t the best time to obsess about providing a continuous stream of curricular objectives for our students. That time will come, but it’s probably not now. We’re all familiar with A. H. Maslow’s theoretical hierarchy of needs: physiological, safety, love, self-esteem, self-actualization, and, in his later writings, self-transcendence [1]. While […]