You didn’t tell us to read that chapter. I didn’t know there was a test today! I was supposed to take out the garbage? How often do we share an important piece of information with our students — or children or colleagues or friends, for that matter — and find the next day, they’ve completely…
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Parenting with a future teen in mind
I became a teacher the same year I became a parent: 1994. It’s impossible for me to separate the two in my mind. I can’t imagine teaching without the parent perspective, and I can’t imagine parenting without thinking of our children as the teenagers/students they would become. As our kids grew up, I frequently found…
Read MoreWe have so much to learn
What did you read over break? As usual I plowed through a few fun books, like Ruth Ware’s The Lying Game, Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, and Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. But I also set aside time for a few “good” books — you know, the ones that require a little more…
Read MoreCan’t we be just a little bit funny?
In the past few weeks, I’ve been reviewing textbooks and educational videos for a couple of different companies. Sounds fun, right? Not really. The biggest shortcoming of most of these materials is that they aren’t funny. At all. You won’t even crack a smile looking at them. They’re so completely devoid of humor that…
Read MoreCompassion alone is not enough
In high schools nationwide, and mine is no exception, we are seeing more and more teenagers suffering from mental health crises. Students at my school are talking openly about this – trying to raise awareness by making videos, creating T-shirts, and even speaking to the faculty. This is good. We need to be made aware…
Read MoreWhat can they do besides ‘school’?
One of my favorite lines in Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk: Do Schools Kill Creativity? is when he points out that schools are really really good at preparing students to become professors. And, I would add, teachers. Academia is nothing if not self-perpetuating. We teach students to write papers and lab reports in styles that…
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Living the 1970s dream: A lesson in critical thinking
Are Americans’ lives getting worse? Or does it just seem that way? One of our core responsibilities as high school teachers is to help our students develop critical thinking skills, learn to question assumptions and challenge “common sense”. It’s something we humans are bad at — as a rule — for all sorts of complex…
Read MoreSleepless in Psych
Yesterday in AP Psych, I tried to illustrate the difference between “effortful” and “automatic” processing by asking a student what, if anything, he ate for breakfast. Normally, that’s a pretty easy question. No one has to intentionally encode it. No flashcards required. He looked at me, a little confused, and said, “I’m so tired, I…
Read MoreKids can’t stop themselves – time for the adults to step in
How often do you check your smartphone? Every hour? Every five minutes? Multiple times per minute? Stop and think about why. Are you really waiting for an urgent call — say, from a doctor, a family member or your boss? Or are you just hoping there will be something cool or funny there? A bit…
Read MoreThe one skill all grads need
If you’ve ever remodeled your house, you know that nothing goes as planned. Last year, bathroom remodelers taking out old shower tile accidentally cut through a pipe (that was installed the wrong way) and flooded our kitchen, directly below. This year, kitchen remodelers removed old soffits and discovered they were not just decorative — they…
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MARTHA RUSH 