In the annals of being a teacher, hoping to see 20 eager hands raised when you’ve asked a question but seeing only two or three instead is among the most common challenges. Since this blog is a judgment free zone I just want to say it’s ok. We have all, every single one of us, been…
Coaches love to ask questions to help their athletes understand the decisions they must make during performance. This is especially true in group invasion games like soccer (football), rugby, basketball and hockey–games that require an especially high degree of coordination and shared decision-making. One potential problem with asking questions of athletes is making sure that the…
In their new book The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath describe a principle some high performing organizations use to grow successfully: “Reduce negative variance and increase positive variance.” This idea is relevant in at least two aspects of running and improving schools. First, one of the strongest ways a school can make a difference…
Navigator Schools is a small network of two high performing schools in California: Gilroy Prep in Gilroy and Hollister Prep in Hollister. Their results have been tremendous and yesterday I stumbled on a training video they’d made that I thought was fantastic. Not only that—I thought it provided a critical insight into how to train…
I’m not really sure where to start in talking about the clip I’m going to share in this post. It’s pretty amazing. It’s of Eric Snider, who teachers English at Achievement First Bushwick Middle School and who is a TLAC Fellow. It’s important because it shows how Eric installs a routine in his classroom. One of…