Peter Ford is finishing his 21st year as a teacher. He’s taught at a variety of district and charter schools in Los Angeles — enough to have “at least 5 former students who claim me as ‘dad’ and 3 others as ‘grandad.’ He currently teaches 8th grade mathematics (and Algebra 1) at Century Community Charter School in…
In case you missed it, I recently did a radio interview with Bob Barrett of To The Best of Our Knowledge on my local NPR affiliate, WAMC in Albany. Really nice to have a long (25 mins) in depth conversation with a jounralist who’s read the book and thought about it. Thought some readers might enjoy…
Alex Laney is a science teacher at Blessed William Howard Catholic High school in Stafford, in the UK. He’s recently been accepted onto the Future Leaders flagship program and come September will be working as an Assistant Principal responsible for Teaching and Learning in a school striving to achieve excellence for its students in a community…
My colleagues and I are in Westchester today talking behavior and culture with 160 or so educators. One participant brought up the perennial question that looms large in the minds of those who train new teachers: which technique(s) should we start with? When you’re discussing something as complex as teaching, there are obviously no right or…
Technique #59 in Teach Like a Champion is Precise Praise. One of it’s key ideas is that you should give lots of positive reinforcement to students to build morale &motivation but that you should try to distinguish acknowledgement from praise. In the book I describe the difference this way: Acknowledgment is what you often use when…