If you had to choose between (1) teaching two weeks of difficult AP course content or (2) prepping your students for a broader but less rigorous state test in your subject, which would you choose? Before you decide: Your pay is tied to student performance on the state test, but not the AP test. One…
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I have been teaching high school for 26 years, and I cannot tolerate bored, disengaged teenagers. I've spent my entire career developing student engagement strategies that work and abandoning lessons that don't work. As a result, my students frequently comment that they are "never bored" in my class. I'm proud of that -- and of my students' outstanding performance.
I'll use this blog to talk about engagement strategies as well as other issues facing teachers, students and everyone who cares about education today. I hope you find it interesting.
What teachers want
This week I presented my first workshop as a College Board consultant. My task: In six hours at a hotel conference room in Cincinnati, help 10 high school teachers hone their ability to teach AP Microeconomics, AP Macroeconomics or both. Six hours isn’t much time, let alone for two distinct subjects, and most of the teachers at…
Read MoreCould you learn in the ‘classroom of the future’?
(image from Atlantic magazine) Which metaphor best describes the way you learn? Your mind is an empty vessel. A teacher pours in new knowledge to fill you up. Your mind is fertile soil. A teacher plants a seed, and the interaction of the seed, nutrients and water — with careful tending — creates new knowledge.…
Read MoreThe right amount of stress
If you are a bright, motivated 9th grader, which combination of courses should you take? Algebra I, English, Human Geography Geometry, Honors English, Human Geography Geometry, Honors English, AP Human Geography Calculus, Honors English, AP Human Geography Option A would be typical in many high schools, but in my experience it’s too easy for most…
Read MoreYou might be surprised who is engaged
What can you do with a student who resists your efforts to engage him, scoffs at your thoughtfully planned assignments and slyly undermines you in class, without ever doing anything overt enough to warrant discipline? I’ve been working on that puzzle for years, with varying degrees of success. Sometimes, the best you can do is…
Read MoreHer math problem? Chronic boredom
Here is how Clara, a 7th grader in Rhode Island, says she spends each day in math class: 50% Doodling, working ahead, doing homework for my other classes, or reading 25% Doing pointless work (that’s the “math”) 15% Spacing out 5% Talking 5% Listening “Sometimes I just watch the clock or think about the book…
Read MoreDon’t be boring
How often do you find yourself stuck listening to a boring presentation? What do you do when that happens? For a graduate class this fall, I had to watch a video of Drexel Prof. Gerry Stahl lecturing on his research into “Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning.” (You can watch it here.) This was a keynote speech at…
Read MoreWhat we can learn from a great speaker
A few minutes into Meredith Cochie’s presentation at the national student journalism conference in Orlando Saturday, a high school student behind me whispered to her friend: “I just want to bottle her up and bring her home.” Me too. I want to bottle her up and use her to train teachers. Cochie, a journalism professor…
Read MoreWhy teachers don’t behave like entrepreneurs
Should classroom teachers behave more like entrepreneurs? What would that even look like? In a recent article on EdSurge, Senior Editor Mary Jo Madda, a former middle school teacher, argued that we should run our classrooms like “lean startups,” borrowing Eric Ries’s term. She suggests this process: Think of what you want your students to…
Read MoreGrades: Not the motivation we want
If the question is “Do rewards motivate students?” the answer is, “Absolutely, they motivate students to get rewards.” – Alfie Kohn Last week, after several days spent learning about operant conditioning and behaviorism, my AP Psych students read Alfie Kohn’s 1994 article, “The Risks of Rewards.” In this article, Kohn argues that rewards are as…
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MARTHA RUSH 