A teacher recently emailed me asking for points of support for student-paced mastery learning when confronted with an administrator that believes that if you’re not leading whole group instruction you’re not teaching. I sent along my standard list of research-based support and evidence of the benefits of student-paced mastery learning but I also wanted to […]
My 8 year old was talking about something the other day – I wish I could crawl inside her mind for a day…she has an amazing thought process! And she asked me “So 1st grade gets you ready for 2nd grade and 2nd grade gets you ready for 3rd grade. What does the last grade, […]
I was in Miami this past Friday working with teachers to help them implement the thematic chemistry curriculum I developed. I love doing these post-adoption trainings for so many reason. First, I love working with teachers! I love hearing their stories of what is going on in their classroom and helping them figure out ways […]
I’ve truly witnessed the dumbest gratuitous use of technology. I challenge you to think of a worse, less efficient, greater waste of time and resources than this one. I’m at the airport traveling to work with some chemistry teachers in Miami. I’m used to the TSA routine and don’t really spend a lot of time […]
It’s been a while since my first two “Myths of Mastery Learning” posts. The first was on the myth that mastery learning is a self-taught learning environment. The second is that the reason we don’t use mastery learning all over the place now is because it didn’t work. This third one is something that I […]
You Matter. Angela Maiers started a movement (Choose2Matter.org) based on these two simple words with a talk at a TEDx about the power of these words. But it’s about more than those words – it’s the power of showing people that they are noticed. They are seen. It’s moving, it’s amazing, it’s heart-warming, and it’s […]
A large number of district, schools and classrooms that include “create life-long learners” among their goals. But what are the skills really necessary to learn throughout your life? And are we really addressing those goals in the best possible ways? The changes that I believe are necessary to better work on these skills (and therefore […]
I don’t want my own children, or any student, to be demoralized or feel like failures…but it’s not the act of failing itself that makes our children feel that way – it’s the connotation that we, as a nation and as an educational system, have placed on it that makes them feel that way. Think […]
My post from yesterday described how my 8 year old daughter, out of no where, saw the need the for individualized instruction and instituted it in her “classroom” (her bedroom where she plays teacher). When I tweeted about the new post I used “#masterylearning” but then I stopped and added a new one I hadn’t […]
My 8 year old daughter was home today sick from school. She’s a very creative little girl and spends a large amount of her free time in her room playing teacher. And this is no ordinary “little kid playing teacher”. She actually sets up stations and centers, has discipline management plans, has differentiated reading groups, […]