The question I’ve been asking myself recently is, “If my job is not to teach well, but to have students learn well, what changes?”

Think about a time when you surprised yourself by how well you were able to learn a challenging new thing. If you’re like most adults, what comes to mind is something like figuring out how to fix the broken video camera without any experience — not something taught to you in an academic class.

The information age needs to birth its own new model to educate students for the jobs of the future (or really the present as this shift is already underway). In other words, we need to ask what our children need to do to begin preparing for this new age.

We want to build community with our neighbors by showing up each and every day whether for a quick chat, or when it matters most. We want to learn about our neighbors’ lives through listening and sharing authentically.

While typical adolescence can be rocky, rife with ups and downs for everyone, research has shown that it may be particularly problematic for girls and gender non-binary students due in no small part to the increased number of roles these youth are expected to step into.…

It’s no secret to young folks of all ages and their caregivers that students are facing high anxiety, stress, and pressure on all fronts, issues of bullying and hazing (on and offline), and cultures that are not responsive enough to student health and wellness…

Much of 21st century schooling is languishing in an outdated paradigm in desperate need of a revolution, and, if it does not evolve, the system will be guilty of dooming these students to the impending jobocalypse.

One of the questions I get from concerned parents from time to time is, “Will they learn the same things in this class that students are learning in the other classes?” I usually send a long explanation of the goals of the class and the skills we’ll be working on, but I’m always tempted to respond with an email that just says, “No.”

One of the benefits of being intrinsically motivated is that students are more likely to achieve at a higher level than students who are simply chasing letter grades…

No, not that f-word. I’m talking about failure — though, in the education world, I’m pretty sure the word “fail” elicits more horror than its other four-letter counterpart…  

Mastery-based teaching gives education back to the people who instinctively want to learn, to create, to solve problems. It says to kids, “This is yours. We’re here to help. Go make something useful for those people over there.” And remarkably and without fail, they do….

I think this is why students are so amazed to see their teachers walking down a sidewalk or shopping in the supermarket. It’s like finding your dining room table in someone else’s house. That would be weird. You would wonder how it got there. You wouldn’t be entirely sure how to talk about it…

Points are academic currency, the foundation of the standard educational economy. On one level their accumulation supposedly measures learning, but on another level, they are a way teachers pay students to learn or at least engage in behavior that looks like learning.

When I was a teenager, I thought school was pretty stupid. I mean, I understood the general idea – school was supposed to provide me with an education, which meant that I would be able to know things and do things in the future based on the classes I was taking day-to-day. But I couldn’t imagine a world where I would need to know any of this stuff…

When most of us think back to group projects in school, it is not a fond memory.  You know, there was that one kid who didn’t contribute anything, so the rest of you had to work harder…  

“She can’t go there. It’s not rigorous enough.” This was my wife’s verdict after we visited a potential daycare. At the time our daughter was three months old.“ You’ll make an excellent independent school parent,” I told her….

A sophomore recently told me that today’s technology meant that eighth graders had it so much easier than he had it when he was a kid. While his tone may seem hyperbolic, the reality underpinning his statement is anything but…

Over the past decade, I’ve witnessed students become increasingly stressed as their performance seems to carry more weight in determining a less predictable future…

A story you may have heard before: A traditionally great high school student goes to college. Student A took all of the AP classes she could cram into her schedule…

Tim Hayes, the owner of Cardboard Helicopter, held up a plastic Tyrannosaurus with a deep groove in its back and told us, “This is Taco-saurus Rex. It’s our biggest seller…

Education in America is fundamentally broken. Some of the basic educational practices and assumptions in the United States are simply wrong, and, as a result, signs of distress have been…

One of the common critiques of “traditional education” is that it doesn’t “work” for everyone, that only a sliver of students are able to do well and succeed in the…

“Mr. Cleminshaw, you’re the whitest person I’ve ever seen.” Thus a student welcomed me to my first class on my first day of my first full time teaching job…