I’m sorry to be all alarmist with the title here, but seriously: neomania is a problem, and if you’re alive with access to the Internet, you might have it. Let me back up: neomania — an obsession with what’s new — wasn’t in my vocabulary until I recently heard Mike Schmoker riff on it during a recent […]
simplify
Semester Two and New for the Sake of New
One of the folks who reviewed an early version of the book I just finished writing had this critique: There aren’t enough new things in this book. Teachers want new — where’s the new? The answer, of course, is that there’s not a ton of new in my book, just like there’s not much new on […]
Doing It All vs. Doing One Thing Well
Note from Dave: This article is by my friend and our colleague, Lindsay Veitch. I find Lindsay’s New Year’s Revelation to be especially poignant to my own season of life right now, and I hope it’s timely for you as well. It was New Year’s Eve, and we were sitting around a spread of appetizers: […]
A Case Study in Simplified Instruction: The Write Structure
Note from Dave: This article is actually by Lindsay Veitch, educator and author of The Write Structure. Enjoy! I brought my two-year-old to his pediatrician, Dr. Lisa Brown, for a well-visit the day we launched my ebook, The Write Structure. I casually mentioned this exciting news to Dr. Brown, and she replied as only the doctor of children […]
The Write Structure: A Simple, Effective Method for Teaching Writing Across the Content Areas
Note from Dave: When I began my career in 2006, it was as a sixth grade English Language Arts teacher in Baltimore, MD. I can still remember the scripted curriculum they handed me, complete with workbooks, student consumables, and the expectation that all of my students would be working on decoding phonemes in my double-period, sixth […]