How to be a good student—one’s physical and mental preparedness—is absolutely critical to academic success. Sadly, teaching these skills have been thrown into the dust bin alongside sentence diagramming and mathematical algorithms. In fact, success preparedness has been so de-emphasized in recent years that … Read more
Hit the ground running. Send a message to your new class about what’s expected right from the get-go. The quicker you set a culture of kindness, respect, and high-bar work expectations, the easier it will be to maintain. So during that first hour of … Read more
To be an effective teacher, you must be able to build positive relationships with your students—because it causes them to want to listen to you, behave for you, and please you. It gives you the leverage you need to influence their behavior and work … Read more
Ready or not, it looks like most of us will be teaching on campus next month. What that will look like is still up in the air. There are many more questions to be answered and policies to be ironed out—and probably will be … Read more
Studies show that Black students are disciplined more severely than their White classmates for the same misbehavior. And the most common classroom management methods used today—with their subjective interpretations of misbehavior, token economies, and manipulative practices—are at least partly to blame. They’re rife with … Read more
I don’t read professional teaching books. I haven’t for many years. The reason is to keep my writing as authentic and untainted as possible. It must be based on what I see, what I experience, and what I have success using myself. Otherwise, I … Read more
Ever since schools shut down in mid-March, a small group of teachers, sprinkled here and there throughout nearly every school, has become even more overbearing than they were before. You know the ones. They dominate every meeting. They brag about and must share the … Read more
It’s seems likely we’ll be going back to school in the fall. What exactly that will look like is anyone’s guess. Early reports suggest that it may be a hybrid between online and in-school learning, with staggered start times and rotating schedules to limit … Read more