Martha Rush

Five questions for parent conversations

By: mlsr10s March 13, 2019

Front linesa teacher's life, teaching strategiesLeave a Comment

For teachers, parent nights and parent phone calls are often a deep source of stress. It’s never fun to be the bearer of bad news — and there will be some difficult conversations when students are struggling. We want to communicate with our students’ parents, but we don’t want to say the wrong thing, and…

You can’t teach entrepreneurship unless you’re truly willing to learn from failure

By: mlsr10s March 6, 2019March 6, 2019

Front linesmindset, schools of the future, teaching strategies1 Comment

Note: This post was originally published on Quarter Zero’s Idea Board. As Chief Educator-in-Residence for Quarter Zero, I’ll be posting there every 2-3 weeks. I’ll also continue to post to this blog and NeverBore.org, but possibly less frequently. Five years ago, my high school student entrepreneurship program nearly folded. We’d had a lot of failures…

How could we care about students and not want better opportunities for them?

By: mlsr10s February 20, 2019

Front lines, In the newsa teacher's lifeLeave a Comment

“You don’t have to be indoctrinated by these loser teachers that are trying to sell you on socialism from birth.” Donald Trump, Jr. It’s hard not to be upset by the fact that one of our president’s sons — also a member of his inner circle — referred to our profession as “loser…

A ‘fitbit’ to remind us to talk less

By: mlsr10s February 13, 2019

Front lines, What research is sayingprofessional development, student engagement, technologyLeave a Comment

How much of your class time is teacher talk? How much is student talk? I noted in my book, Beat Boredom, that less than 2 minutes of a typical 60-minute English class is spent in genuine student-to-student discussion. That’s deeply concerning because students are better engaged and learning more when they are talking. Did you…

What would teenagers want to learn, if we let them choose?

By: mlsr10s February 6, 2019

Front lines, In the newseducation research, school reform, teaching strategiesLeave a Comment

While I was researching for my book, Beat Boredom, a few years ago, I visited a high school that prides itself on student-directed, project-based learning. I was excited to see it, and after talking with the school’s passionate leader, I was predisposed to be impressed. But when I got there, instead of seeing energized students…

Let’s show teens we value sleep

By: mlsr10s January 30, 2019

Front lines, What research is sayinga teacher's life, education researchLeave a Comment

This year, my school district pushed back the high school start time from 7:25 a.m. to 8:35 a.m. in response to community pressure and research showing positive results from later starts — such as fewer tardies/truancies, higher grades, fewer car accidents and better mental health. The underlying goal, of course, was to get teenage students…

Second chances do have a downside

By: mlsr10s January 9, 2019

Front linesa teacher's life, mindset, summative assessment1 Comment

I saw a graphic on Twitter earlier this week that said something like: “There is no downside to giving a student a second chance. Zero, zilch, nada.” I scoffed and passed over it, but it kept nagging at me. I went back to find it later, and of course I couldn’t. So you’ll just have…

Time to stop believing education myths

By: mlsr10s January 2, 2019

What research is sayingeducation research, teaching strategies1 Comment

One of my sons gave me a book called 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology for Christmas. It was a perfect gift — he knows how much I love reading about flaws in “common sense” and popular opinion. This is one of those books you can flip through and read in any order, so I…

Not sure ‘rigorous’ is what we want

By: mlsr10s December 19, 2018

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We use the word “rigorous” a lot in education — as in, “our students take rigorous courses” or “we have rigorous standards” — but what exactly does it mean? Is it a good thing? I looked up rigorous in a few dictionaries today, and among the definitions were words like “harsh,” “strict” and “severe.” Also,…

We spend billions on ed tech; let’s work on making better use of it

By: mlsr10s December 12, 2018

Front linesprofessional development, technologyLeave a Comment

Note: I have teamed up with Andrea Wilson Vazquez (master of makerspaces and coding) to offer Make Tech Matter design-thinking workshops with a tech focus. Interested in scheduling one for your school or organization in 2019? Email me at Martha.Rush@neverbore.org. What is one critical problem facing your community? My colleague, Andrea, and I led a…

Martha Rush

Let’s be honest about the struggle — with our colleagues and with our students

Sure, that sounds good… but what about math?

‘Cold-calling’ — done right — is an effective way to build classroom participation

Let’s do what works, not what’s easy

Living the 1970s dream: A lesson in critical thinking