Last time, I wrote about how our relationships with students are sure to break down. This is why I’ve added “Repair” to the CCP of teacher credibility that I wrote about in These 6 Things, Chapter 2: Care, Competence, and Passion. If you cannot identify and repair faltering student-teacher relationships, you’re bound to be befuddled […]
Search Results for: moments of genuine connection
How to Write a Great, Kind Email (That Is, How to Write All Emails)
In a caustic age of casually scathing public rhetoric, great organizational cultures are built one edifying communication at a time. It is the case that good emails accrue their cultural benefits slowly and incrementally, but bad emails can extract their cultural deficits rapidly and semi-permanently. So the skill of writing good, kind emails is an […]
The Dumbest Intervention Ever
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 […]
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 […]