First day of school: There are two things students absolutely need to know! All teachers feel the pressure to get it right out of the gate. With two very simple starters the year will be off to a fabulous start. 1. Let your students know explicitly (say it out loud, write it down, act like it’s true, play […]
Connection
How Social Pain Hurts Our Learners
“I want my students to be stressed out and unhappy at school” said no teacher or administrator ever. But despite good intentions, it is the sad reality that school is sometimes more stressful and more isolating for kids than we’d like. And these non-physical sources of pain can obstruct learning just as much as the physical ones, especially […]
Using our Brain to Beat our Biases (Part 1)
Only 16% of African-American students in California met or exceeded the math standards tested in 2015 by the new Common Core assessment test. This is in stark contrast to 69% of Asians and 49% of whites and corresponds to a well-documented and long-standing racially demarcated achievement gap. As disturbing as these results are, because the achievement gap is […]