As an industry we invest a significant amount of funding to facilitate and assess the teaching of content. As teachers, we deliver content and students are tested on how much they know. That is the paradigm, right? As I posed in this article, we know that when students develop noncognitive skills and executive functions they […]
There is an interesting paradox of time in education. We know that when students develop noncognitive skills and executive functions they more successfully engage with and learn the content we are teaching. Yet, as teachers, we are hired to teach the content of our courses and have very little time for anything else. Or do […]
Mitigating Learning Loss I shared in a recent post that Mo Willems, author and artist of children’s classics like “Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus” and “Knuffle Bunny”, is a family favorite. A few days ago while reading “Can I Play Too” with my youngest daughter I was struck by the parallel between the […]
My favorite children’s book author and artist is Mo Willems. "Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus", "Knuffle Bunny", "Leonardo, the Terrible Monster", to name a few, are all brilliant. Yesterday, while reading with my youngest daughter, Olive, we picked up “Can I Play Too?”. We have read this book many times but yesterday it […]
As we slowly begin to reopen schools in full or part-time hybrid schedules mitigating the learning losses that occurred during the pandemic is of top priority. This is a tricky task because for many students there are virtually no gaps in their learning, while others are faced with a massive chasm that may prove to […]
“Liberating education consists in acts of cognition not transferrals of information.” Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed I recently listened to Dushaw Hockett’s TEDx Talk on implicit bias. If you have not watched his talk do yourself a favor, right now, and do so now. One thing stood out for me as he spoke, the […]
As teachers we are always modeling for students, it is up to us to decide what they learn. Parenting and Teaching If you’re a parent you know this all too well. Literally everything we say, but more importantly do, seems to be absorbed by our children and put into action. Parenting is like looking in […]
My education hero is Paulo Freire. Pedagogy of the Oppressed literally changed my life and turned my ideas and aspirations as a teacher on their head. When you engage with Freire you see the world differently. One thing he speaks of is praxis as the interplay between theory and practice. This is important because what […]
Simple, Shared, Classroom Routines During a school visit a few years ago I encouraged the staff to adopt common classroom routines to help their students be more successful. During my presentation to the staff, one teacher challenged me. He felt that committing to common classroom routines school-wide was “taylorism”. This particular teacher made it clear […]
I have the honor of speaking with educators around the country and for the most part, we’re a kind and decent brood. Even if we don’t see eye to eye, we usually let the person giving a talk at a training finish before interjecting. Usually… It was a warm spring day in Oakland, CA, I […]
