Facilitating Student Learning by Helping them Overcome Embarrassment

Most struggling students have found themselves failing, and many of these experiences of failure become foundations to future embarrassment. This, then, becomes a huge deterrent to learning when the student begins to default to maladaptive coping mechanisms that serve them at the moment but are detrimental in the long term.

An Open Letter to Teachers (and those who love them)

Dear (overly tested subject) teacher,  How are you? February in Texas was a rough ride. And, I’ve been thinking about how to support you. I’ve been thinking about the most meaningful thing to write about this month every day to add to the writing resources and ideas for supporting teachers of writing and writers themselves.  […]

Balancing Inquiry & Support in Professional Learning: A Lesson from Bean Dad

A little while back, a dad took to social media to pat himself on the back about the lesson he’d taught his daughter when she wanted to open a can of beans but didn’t know how to use the can opener and the Twitterverse collectively cringed. In case you were lucky enough to miss it, […]

GRIT: A Reflection Protocol for Risk-Taking

As a Curriculum and Instruction Consultant in my district, when I’m not working with students as learners, I’m working with their teachers. Over the past few years, we’ve been digging into some really hard work. I mean really hard. We’re working on moving away from teaching novels to teaching reading, away from prescribing a formula […]