The best teachers are the ones who put in the most time, right? Those teachers who leave early — they are the problem-teachers, aren’t they? Consider: Brazilian soccer players are often better than non-Brazilian soccer players because of their “childhood immersion” in a game called futsal — essentially a condensed version of soccer that uses […]
simplify
What is the Most Pointless Thing You Do as an Educator?
If a task didn’t flash into your mind the moment you read this post’s title, then take a minute to consider the question until something comes to you: What is the most pointless thing you do as an educator? I don’t mean to be crass with the question, either. What I’m aiming at, really, is a visceral […]
Video: My Five-Minute “Defining Everest” Ignite Talk
The other day, a gentleman inquiring about my speaking/workshop services asked for a video of me giving a keynote, and I realized that, surprisingly, I didn’t have anything. This past weekend, I remedied that. Today’s post is a little different from usual in that it centers around a video. Below, you’ll see the “Ignite”-style talk […]
Predicting Success: Dialing Long-Term Flourishing Back into Things We Might Affect This Year
If our ultimate goal is less than the long-term flourishing of kids, student motivation doesn’t matter much. English teachers want kids to become lifelong readers because we want them to flourish; science teachers aim at teaching a methodical way of thinking and viewing the world because such thinking is instrumental to a flourishing life; physical education exists […]
How to Use the Non-Freaked Out Framework for Personal PD: A Case Study
The array of professional development resources available to teachers today is as overwhelming as it is incoherent. Every month, dozens of books and hundreds of articles and thousands of tweets are published. Yet for most of us, this overabundance is more a source of stress or apathy than it is a source of professional growth. This […]