Over the years, I’ve asked a number of students who are struggling academically what they think is causing their academic struggles. The answers are often the same. “I keep putting my homework off until the end of the week instead of getting it done right when class gets out.” “Procrastination. I have a big problem …
I had a conversation with a student recently in which he identified a key turning point in my class. He said he had prepared really hard for the first time for a particular tournament a couple of years ago. He had hoped that he would place well, and it turned out that he didn’t place …
A core memory as I built up the Wasatch Independent Debate League, and now the Independent Education Program, isn’t particularly pleasant to recall. It was years ago and we were having a tournament at the University of Utah. We initially had something like a decent number of students registered for the tournament. Not as many …
I love teaching in the homeschooling community so much, because there is just so much to love. The students, the parents, teaching in weird places….. During my time in the homeschool community I’ve taught in two different barns (finished thankfully), two old industrial buildings, outside… a lot, a smelly old church, several not smelly churches, …
As an educator, the most important thing you will ever do for a student has very little to do with teaching. It has to do with saving that student’s life. It’s not about classroom methods, it’s about being there in the right moment to play a part in preventing a suicide. Suicide can be a …
Some students will make you feel like a great teacher no matter what you do. Success lives inside them so fully, it seems to spill over to you as a teacher. Some students reveal to you how good you are as a teacher. They’ll drink if you bring them to the water, but they’ll make …
In the midst of my student teaching (I was teaching Debate and History at Davis High School), I was meeting in my college education class with my student teaching cohort and we had been assigned into small groups to talk about our classes and to workshop any classroom management issues we may have been experiencing. …
“I don’t even know what changed but I used to feel like I didn’t want to be myself, and I was ashamed of myself all the time. But I don’t feel that way anymore, I am happy to be myself, I feel valuable and I just feel good about myself. This year I learned that …
To begin my class each week, I will present to students a scenario for us to discuss and debate. The scenario will center on some controversial legal, political, ethical, or philosophical question. After doing my best to press students to take and defend positions, challenge whatever position the students take, and introduce them to some …
In my time in education, I’ve come across or been presented a number of theories of how education works or should work. These have included smaller learning communities, piagetian constructs, TJED, the trivium, VARK learning styles, open classrooms, Bloom’s taxonomy, critical approaches to education, Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, and many others. I would assume …