August is the right time to confirm your 2025-26 student achievement goals and ensure commitment of all school resources to achieving those goals. In the weeks before children walk into school, be bold in publicly broadcasting your educational goals for your students and embolden all educators to achieve your/their goals. Continue reading
Be Bold and Emboldened About Your 2025-26 Educational Goals
Johnny Was In 9th Grade Once; Then He Grew Up
I was in a checkout line at a local grocery market two years ago. The tall man pushing a cart in front me turned, took a hard look at my face, and said, “I know you. You were…” In that instance, I was vulnerable to our shared past. I wondered, “Who is this and what did I do that was memorable for him?” You never know when former teachers and students will cross paths. Continue reading
Betterment Is A Teacher’s Constant PD
The need for PD for teachers has never been greater. The challenges of pandemic learning loss, the post-pandemic socio-emotional needs of children, and the increasing challenges of artificial intelligence in daily and school life require teachers to upgrade their professional abilities. The responsibility that shifted from state licensing requirements to school board contract requirements now shifts to teachers’ personal requirements for professional integrity. In the absence of district-led professional development, betterment is up to each teacher. Continue reading
Teaching Is Methodical
Teaching methods matter. As methods, they are methodical in how specific strategies in each method cause different learner outcomes. These are outcomes beyond tested knowledge. We should expect and encourage rookie teachers to appropriately use methods of direct and explicit teacher-led teaching AND a variety of student-centered methods in their first year(s) of teaching. If they are not expected and encouraged to do so, it is too easy for a young teacher to become a traditional, single-method teacher. Continue reading
Teaching in the Upside Down
…there are books and stories we are not to teach to children and Cromwellian stories and dictates we are to teach. There are things teachers are not to talk about. A revised version of the old song is in order: Teaching in an America Turned Upside Down Continue reading
Lessons That Cause Learning Are Like Cookie Recipes That Must Be Perfected Over Time
If we do not analyze lesson effectiveness, we do not know if lessons really cause the learning desired. Analyzing a lesson is biting into it and chewing with student learning as the taste that matters. Without analysis for effectiveness any old lesson will do, and instead of causing learning teachers are daycare providers. Continue reading
Paying Attention Is Learned Not Innate
We really do get what we settle for. And children get what we settled for them. Attention span is a product of age and brain development. It also is a product of educational training. Educators have a child’s captive attendance through compulsory education, if not parental needs for childcare. As we have their physical presence, we can maximize their intellectual focus by explicitly teaching each child to be more intellectually attentive, to know and use deeper studying and learning techniques, and to own their personal learning. Continue reading
Educating Children Is the Essence of Paying Forward
We educate children of the next generations in the belief and hope that the knowledge and skills they learn will support their future success in times when our generation cannot. We pay now for rewards anticipated in their tomorrows. Continue reading
Teaching Critical Thinking Is Essential Education
“One scarcely needs to emphasize the importance of critical thinking as a desirable ingredient in human beings in a democratic society. No matter what views people hold of the chief function of education, they at least agree that people need to learn to think. In a society in which changes come fast, individuals cannot depend on routinized behavior or tradition to make decisions, whether on practical every day or professional matters, moral values, or political issues. In such a society, there is a natural concern that individuals be capable of intelligent and independent thought.” Hilda Taba Continue reading
Master Teachers Know How to Correct Errors in Student Learning
Teachers are craftsmen in causing children to learn. Teachers do not need to be effective 100% of the time in their instruction, but 100% of the time teachers need to correct errors in student learning. Continue reading