It’s 1:52pm on the last day of school. There are about two dozen sixteen-year-olds in my 7th block class sitting in a giant circle. No one is on their cell phone. No one is distracted. Everyone is focused, attentive. The conversation dances across topics and disciplines: history,
Here’s an important question: Isn’t mastering the skills articulated in the standards enough? When you look at standards for English, it becomes evident that literacy is a discipline organized primarily by the processes, strategies and skills students are expected to be able to Do. In
The following is an excerpt from “As Good As Gold? Why We Focus on the Wrong Drivers in Education,” the first in the new series of Gold Papers by John Hattie and Arran Hamilton. Read earlier excerpts, “The Limits of Lesson Observation” and “The Limits of
By about this time of the year, most teachers have experienced the sensation of playing Whack-A-Mole: They keep addressing and re-addressing the students who aren’t quite where they should be when they should be, and then, by the time those students are in their places, other
Eddie settled in with his back to the wall in his usual student desk in a classroom where time seemed to move sluggishly. Eddie was a rising senior now, and could not wait to graduate from this classroom, something that, thankfully, would happen in a
Bandura (1994) defines self-efficacy as “people’s judgments of their capabilities to organize and execute courses of action required to attain designated types of performances.” In other words, if we have self-efficacy we believe that we have the knowledge and skills to perform a task and
In these first weeks of school, teaching -- comprised of equal parts science, art, psychology, and honed wisdom -- can feel like the “easy” part. It’s introducing and practicing new routines that can leave new and seasoned educators feeling exhausted. It may not come as a surprise
Every single one of us is a learner at any and every stage in life. Part of how we navigate that learning is through understanding that reflection is part of the process. One of the ways we continue to grow and improve is taking time to look at
We all know that teacher-student relationships are one of the biggest predictors of student success. Actually, it’s been reported that teachers that have strong relationships with their students have 31 percent fewer behavioral issues (Marzano, 2003). That’s right, 31 percent. However, let’s take a minute to
Authentic dialogue across differences is powerful precisely because it allows us to see beyond the barriers of our own culturally-conditioned realities. Whatever mind-spaces we may have been socialized into, as teachers we are called to transcend our particular truths and perspectives and come to a