Quit Teaching Basics

I have heard the phrase “we need teacher buy in” countless times in education. A school wants to improve instruction, introduce a new practice, or change something about the way we work, and before long someone says we have to get everyone to buy in first. The thinking makes sense. Teachers are professionals, they should […]

There was a time when I judged a day by my choreography. The mini lesson fit the plan, the slides clicked forward, the room felt orderly, and the stack of graded work on my desk grew smaller by the hour. I moved from piece to piece and called it progress. Then a quieter measure began

Content no longer depends on us. A learner with a phone can summon definitions, demonstrations, and endless commentary before the bell. If our value is measured by how efficiently we deliver information, we are competing with the internet, and we will always lose. What endures, however, is the kind of learning that is durable, usable,

A learner gets back a quiz with 86% stamped at the top. Eyes scan for red marks, shoulders shrug, paper folds into a binder pocket or balled up and tossed into the trach can. End of story. But where’s the learning story? What did they understand? Where did the wheels wobble? What’s the very next

The start of the school year has a way of stirring something in us. The floors shine like possibility. The dry erase boards are blank but heavy with hope. Fresh rosters. New names. Maybe even a couple of new teammates. But there’s one more thing showing up with us in the room this year. It’s

Every morning, we step into our classrooms with more than a lesson plan in hand. We carry the immense opportunity and responsibility of designing learning that matters. Tier 1 instruction isn’t some buzzword reserved for the pages of our SIP or for evaluation frameworks. It’s what we do every single day for every single learner.

Teaching isn’t hard because it’s bad work. It’s hard because we’ve piled it high with the kind of work that doesn’t work. Work that looks good on a lesson plan, sounds good at a board meeting, and feels good on paper, but leaves teachers running on fumes by fourth period on a Tuesday. We keep

Imagine a classroom where every lesson sparks curiosity, every student feels empowered, and every teacher knows exactly how their methods shape learning. This isn’t a distant dream, it’s the potential of evaluative thinking in K-12 public schools. Too often, education operates on autopilot: teachers deliver content, assuming learners will absorb it. “I taught it, now

Picture this: a classroom buzzing with energy. One learner rattling off facts like it’s nothing. Another stuck on question one, unsure where to start. The difference? It’s not intelligence. Not even effort. It’s what they walked in with. Some show up already loaded: homes full of books, rich conversations, museum trips, story time routines that

What if assessments weren’t just something learners had to endure but something they actually used? Imagine a classroom where assessments weren’t about measuring and sorting, but about guiding and growing. A space where learners didn’t brace themselves for the inevitable judgment of a grade, but instead leaned in, eager to analyze, interpret, and act on