Resourcefulness, resilience, and collaboration are critical mindsets, and skill sets, for students to develop. For schools to support those outcomes, educators must have the opportunity to develop the same. Mitch Weisburgh, the author of, “Mindshifting: Stop Your Brain from Sabotaging Your Happiness and Success,” explores the importance and possibilities. What’s the role of wellbeing and […]

Classroom observations can become overly focused on our unconscious bias toward traditional signs of quality teaching and learning. Observers can focus on teaching moves and the appearance of engagement but miss what matters most: are students making sense of the learning. Experienced educator, Dr. Michael McDowell shares the need to “flip” our view in observation […]

Dr. Mark Williams, an Australian cognitive neuroscientist and author of, “The Connected Species: How the Evolution of the Human Brain Can Save the World,” frames connection as a fundamental social and neural bond that shapes how we perceive, think, and learn. Connection changes how we hear and see others. People whom we feel connected to […]

Tim Smyth, a high school teacher, shares his strategies for regularly surveying his students to build valuable connections. Hear some of the questions and approaches that tap information about his students. Tim has experienced knowing students better, having students know him, and at times knowing students who need emotional help. Instructional coaches can use Tim’s […]

Have you witnessed this in your classroom or had teachers share it as a coaching request? “When the cognitive load rises, many students default to learned- helplessness or passive habits. I see it in the quick, ‘I don’t get it’ before they have engaged with the problem, in the immediate search for confirmation rather than […]

“Decades of education research support the idea that by teaching less and providing more feedback, we can produce greater learning.” (Grant Wiggins) However, feedback doesn’t create learning by itself. Learning happens when students reflect on, act upon, and integrate feedback into their actions. That matches the message that I frequently share, “teachers don’t cause student […]