Quit Teaching Basics

When we talk about assessments in education, people usually think of all those standardized tests, number crunching, and chasing after academic goals. I think of the countless data rooms I have walked into filled with pie charts, some even in frames, like a museum of academic data. But this old-school view really misses the mark […]

I saw my first motion picture when I was 4 years old. It was The Empire Strikes Back. You might have heard of the franchise. It’s still around. Of all the Star Wars movies, I find that this one has the most one liners quoted by everyone. “Do or do not. There is no try.”

So, be honest. We are less than two weeks into the new year. Have you kept the resolutions you made? If so, good for you! Keep it up! If not, don’t beat yourself up. You aren’t alone. Studies have shown that around only 9% of us see our resolutions out to the end. In fact,

The conversation tends to start in a couple different places. It can be in the car during the ride home. It might be at the dinner table in between mouthfuls. It might even be right before the light switch is clicked off at bedtime. At some point, the question passes from parent to child regarding

The reason for this week’s post stems from something I heard an adult say recently. It is something I’ve heard many times before. And it only makes me wonder this, when will I ever stop hearing it? I am sure if you have spent any time in a school anywhere that you have heard this

Recently, I had a tweet get some attention. The post above seemed to resonate with many out there in the Twitterverse. What that says is this: We all know why it’s important. We all know it is what we ought to be doing in our schools. My question is then, what’s stopping us? I can

First of all, Happy New Year to all of you reading this. A new year is such an exciting time. We all hit the internal reset button, having reflected on the past year and making goals for the next. Looking back at my last post of 2022, you will find that the first step in

I heard a teacher say once, “I am not here to have relationships with students or even to be liked. I am here to teach them the content. That’s it.” There might be more educators out there like this who feel the same way. But, what if we discovered that the relationships we have (or

If you search the internet for “copycat recipes” you will discover dozens of sites that basically take all our favorite things we eat or drink at national restaurant chains and supply the user with the copycat recipe verison of the item.  I mean, who doesn’t want to sit at home and eat some hot Red

So, below is an email I received from my editor at Taylor and Francis Press from Routledge. A minor change in the title, “Let’s Stop Teaching and Start Designing Learning: A Practical Guide.” (Changed the “quit” since we didn’t really want to give the wrong impressions when readers searched for book on Amazon.”) Looking forward