You know what would crank my thinking up a few notches? Having the brilliant minds over at Character Lab guide me in proving whether pop-up debate, one of my go-to strategies for getting students speaking, listening, and arguing, develops grit in kids. Here’s the thing: only the most popular four projects of those 20 that made the […]
character strengths
Psst…
Moving Forward in the Midst of Survival Mode: A Retrospective
First of all, thank you. I am grateful for so much from January 2015, and I owe a heckuva lot to this Teaching the Core community. Specifically: You’ve commented on this past month’s blog posts like never before. Hearing your stories, your encouragement, your descriptions of what this blog does for you — I can honestly […]
How Gratitude Makes Us, and Our Students, Better
Gratitude has been on my mind a lot this week. In some ways, gratitude has been easy; in other ways, it’s been hard. And all along the way, it’s been interesting to examine how the character strength of gratitude can make us and our students the kinds of people we want to be. I. Easy “I […]
9 Principles for Working Better with Fellow Educators
Welcome to the penultimate portion of this post series (here’s Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). If you like this post, you might like Never Finished: Continually Becoming the Teachers We Want to Be (and Staying Sane in the Process). Today, we’re going to examine a part of the most underrated element of the three-fold strategy […]
A Non-Freaked Out, Focused Approach to the Common Core — Part 7 — Teach Character
The Common Core does a pretty good job of laying out some key cognitive skills students need to have to be ready for a career or college. Yes, for you CCSS doubters out there, I said it — I think the standards are good. Granted, I like boiling their goodness down and distilling it into […]
