student motivation

It’s common enough to see a really well-meaning teacher whose chief goal is to create a classroom where kids feel welcome, included, enjoyed, and honored, but to forget that this is only half the battle. Yes, we need kids to all identify with school, to identify with our class culture, to feel that who we’re asking […]

Emily was my staunch “When are we ever going to have to use this?” kid last year, especially when it came to learning map locations. We’d look at a map, and I’d ask them to identify the names of countries as a warm-up, and, without fail, her hand would shoot up to ask The Question. […]

“The most routine abstract thought very often struck him with an uncommon force and would stir him up remarkably. . . . A simple idea, sometimes very familiar and commonplace, would suddenly set him aflame and reveal itself to him in all its significance. He, so to speak, felt thought with unusual liveliness.” — from Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky, […]

Recently, I proved to Alexis that her ability and competence could improve with effort. On her first world history test, she did poorly on the map portion and, during our first practice session in study hall following the test, did not improve much even when I walked her through a basic retrieval practice technique. (In other words, […]

What follows is my abbreviated summary of the central structure of Camille Farrington et al.’s Teaching Adolescents to Become Learners. The report is over 80 pages long, so really, this is super abbreviated, probably past what is prudent. My hope with this post is to give you enough of a look at the Consortium Framework to realize the […]