I’m reading an intriguing, short book published in the late ’90s called Teaching with Your Mouth Shut. The author, the late Donald Finkel, argues that teachers can foster better learning without being the center of attention. I like his ideas and plan to try his student-centered methods. But three pages into the book, I read…
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How badly do you want the answers?
You have just taken a five-question quiz. Now you have a choice: I will either tell you the right answers, or I will give you a candy bar and not tell you the right answers. Which would you choose? According to Dan Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness, what you think you would do and what you…
Read MoreWrapping up NeverBore’s first semester
For my final post of 2015, I want to provide updates on a few of the pieces I’ve written this fall. I have enjoyed writing and reflecting on my 20+ years in the classroom, and I look forward to making the blog and website even better in the new year. Thanks for reading! Re-learning that…
Read MoreWhat 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 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 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 