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…
A colleague in Blackpool, England, Stephen Tierney, recently wrote to pass along some questions that had come up in conversations about TLaC with his teachers. They were all good questions and he’s shared most of them (and my answers) on his own blog here:. But for one question I thought it would help if i shared…