First, we must come to an agreement: Students do not want to arrive “unprepared”. Students do not intend to come to class without a pencil, without paper, needing to go to the bathroom. They do not mean to leave their notebooks on the kitchen counter. They did not want to be have a tussle at…
What is Self-Efficacy? Self-Efficacy is a person’s fundamental belief in their own ability to succeed. Goodness, what a beautiful goal for our students and our teaching- support students in their belief in themselves and their own competence, their own potential. I have always told my students that, if I have done my job, I should…
I found the idea of creating classroom rules a conundrum. Knowing that kids are so attached to the concepts of fairness and boundaries, how can we possibly create a comprehensive list? Through many years in the classroom, I never found a reason for more than one rule: Be respectful, of yourself, of your class, of…
Think about WHO you are teaching before you think about WHAT you are teaching. In graduate school, we learned to build the most beautiful lessons, designed to take the kids right to the spot. We would plan to work out their background knowledge, have them discover, be completely wowed, then implement this incredible new understanding….