I mean, not many people will argue with the idea that “all children can learn.”And yet…Do you ever secretly worry sometimes that maybe there are some students who can’t learn or at least can’t succeed at high levels?Have you ever met a student in whom it was difficult to believe?I bet if we’re honest, we’ve […]
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I want to tell you a story about two teachers. Both were my professors my first semester in graduate school.Both teachers were brilliant researchers and writers, both were highly engaging teachers, and both were likable human beings.And, I was failing both of their classes.It wasn’t that I wasn’t trying. I worked really hard, attended class, […]
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I have sat through my share of really bad PD. In fact, I got really good at being able to tell whether a workshop was going to be useful within the first 5 minutes and if I determined that I wasn’t going to get anything out of the workshop, I would quickly tune out. I […]
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All of us can use a little advice. But there is a lot of bad advice out there. Below are the top 5 worst pieces of advice given to teachers we’ve heard.Bad Advice # 1: You Need a Teaching Make-Over. Whenever you struggle in one area of your teaching, it is tempting to attempt a […]
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A few years ago, my sister talked me into going to a yoga class with her. I’d never taken a yoga class before because I didn’t see how stretching equated to a workout. I preferred going to a gym and lifting weights or taking a really rigorous cardio class.But she insisted that yoga was tougher […]
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For the last 10 years or so, I have presented at every ASCD Annual Conference and this year was no different. What was different was that my schedule was unusually packed. I went non-stop all day every day starting Thursday (Except for Saturday which I never work) and as a result, I didn’t get a […]
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I find that at the root of feeling overwhelmed are actually one or more of these three common mistakes:Mistake 1: Too much stuff.Ever feel like you are drowning in a pile of stuff – ungraded papers, or handouts from the last eight workshops you attended, paperwork that needs to be completed, or a stack of […]
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One of my first contracts as a consultant was to design a support plan for teachers who were struggling to teach Advanced Placement courses for non-traditional AP students. Many of these students had never taken an AP course before and were really struggling with the rigorous material and the fast pace of the course.It’s something […]
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It’s happened to the best of us. We teach a lesson because the curriculum guide demands it. But we don’t find the lesson particularly interesting and we have a hard time finding ways to make it engaging to our students. We just can’t seem to “sell it.” We get through the lesson but the truth […]
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