Manchester United played Shrewsbury Town in the FA Cup this week and managed a 3-0 victory, but the most interesting thing about the match might have been Stuart James’ article in the Guardian about Mat Sadler, the Shrewsbury defender who played alongside Wayne Rooney on the England U17 team 14 years ago. The “reunion” between Rooney…
Threshold is a useful tool. It helps you set expectations for your class before students enter the room. And the best teachers use it to build relationships too- to greet each student by name and maybe say a little something personal (“Loved your homework”; “Ooh. New haircut. Nice.”) But one of the challenges of Threshold…
The Atlantic Monthly published a profile of my work with the U.S. Soccer Federation this month. It’s written by Amanda Ripley, a writer I admire greatly, and has a terrible and inaccurate headline (I think I am safe in assuming she didn’t write it). It’s also a headline that obscures some important observations for educators and…
We’re in Albany today with 150 or so educators from around the country talking reading. We spent a bit of time this morning talking about a video that I love—it’s of Maggie Johnson doing Control the Game reading of a key excerpt from To Kill a Mockingbird with her 8th graders. This is one of my favorite…
During a recent lesson, Vicki Hernandez, an 8th grade biology teacher at Troy Prep in Troy, NY, asked her students to answer this question about cell respiration: Certain poisons are toxic to organisms because they interfere with the function of enzymes in the mitochondria. This results directly in the inability of the cell to… A) Store…