If our aim is long-term flourishing for our students, then we all care about helping kids discover their aspirations, build goals backward from those aspirations, and remain committed to those goals on a regular basis. And yet, the further you get down the list of those skills, the greater the challenge becomes for our kids: Defining the big […]
character
Submit an Idea for Cultivating Character; Win a $10,000 Grant
In case you haven’t heard, Character Lab is now accepting proposals for a new year of the Teacher Innovation Grant (TIG). You can learn more about TIG here, or just read these bulleted highlights: What you need to provide prior to the 11/2/15 deadline: an idea for developing one or more character strengths in your classroom; […]
21 Ideas for Developing the Motivational Character Strengths
In “The Character Strengths and Motivation,” I laid out the 4.5 character strengths that I consider motivational in nature, and, at the end of the post, I laid out an example of the kind of “self-experimentation” we can use to learn how to teach our students to develop the “motivational strengths” in themselves (because marshaling one’s […]
These 5 Things, All Year Long: An Overview of The Non-Freaked Out Framework for Literacy Instruction
[box type=”alert”]Note from Dave: This post eventually became These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most. Please note that all of the strategies, frameworks, and research referenced below are updated (and, in some cases, significantly changed, and, in all cases, significantly improved for that back. Mike Schmoker calls it “among the most […]
Working Better with Parents
The past few weeks have provided me several opportunities to reflect on parenting from the teacher’s perspective. Some of the opportunities have been normal — parent/teacher conferences, my interactions with my children — and others have been serendipitous — a conversation with a mentor, repeated run-ins with an intriguing parent. Also, one of the chapters I was […]