PinnedThe Classroom Experiment Part III: How should students be graded? Avoiding self-judgment and activating self-improvementOne of the big questions I had as a researcher turned teacher was, is it possible to use exclusively formative assessments as both feedback and grades? …Assessment5 min readAssessment5 min read
Published inEducate.·PinnedImprov-First Learning: Designing Experiences for Structured PlayLearning activities should be like jungle gyms, not lectures and not sandboxes. — A lot of the current popular wisdom about education is not new. In fact, it goes back over 100 years, almost unchanged, to Herbert Spencer, Jean Piaget, and John Dewey. The general idea can be summarized like this: Children are not passive vessels you can stuff information into; anything they…Education6 min readEducation6 min read
Sep 20One small tweak flipped a secret switch in my classroom and now I have rapport with my students. (This is not clickbait, it really was such a small tweak!)You may have heard or noticed of the trick teachers sometimes use to get a certain behavior without yelling at kids to do the behavior. It’s calling out those already doing the behavior. Like, “Thank you Sam, for sitting quietly and looking at me”. This works way better than it…Classroom Management2 min readClassroom Management2 min read
Apr 15The Case for Multiple ChoiceMultiple choice questions have become almost synonymous with high stakes testing, and thus with contrived, challenging, limiting, unfair, and high pressure situations. On the other hand, when I tell my students their test is going to be multiple choice, they all let out a deep sigh of relief. To them…4 min read4 min read
Mar 28Teaching is an impossible job. Can AI finally make it possible?Preparing content progressions for units, writing lesson plans, making them engaging and varied while building up classroom routines and students’ skills, tracking individual progress while keeping each student in their zone of proximal development, allowing opportunities for 21st century skills, SEL and reflection, connecting emotionally, communicating with parents, collaborating with…AI5 min readAI5 min read
Jan 19Four Things Teachers Can Do To Avoid AI CheatingWith every great leap forward comes an initial panic followed by a slow adjustment. The latest leap forward has come from AI in the form of GPT-3, a langauge model that can understand and generate language quite convincingly, at least convincing at the level of a K-12 student. …AI8 min readAI8 min read
Jan 14My #1 Classroom Management Hack: Sprinkle In SlangStudents hear teachers telling them to behave properly all day, and they don’t really internalize it. Sure, you’re telling them to be quiet, but of course you are, you’re an adult. So I figured out how to leverage their succeptibility to peer pressure to my advantage: Talk like a peer…Education3 min readEducation3 min read
Sep 29, 2022The Classroom Experiment: The start of Year TwoWhen I was just about to start teaching last summer, I asked a friend and colleague whether they thought I would end up teaching for more than one year. They said, “well, at least one more year. Because at the end of the first year, you’ll have so many ideas…Teaching9 min readTeaching9 min read
Dec 20, 2021The Classroom Experiment: A Progress ReportWell, it’s been three months since I gave up the life of a work-from-home education researcher and began the life of a 7th grade science teacher. This post is an update on how it’s going. The best part about being a teacher compared to being a researcher is the turnaround…Education14 min readEducation14 min read
Aug 25, 2021The Classroom Experiment: pt 1I’ve been an education researcher for about a decade, studying how students learn, how to best teach them, as well as what and why we should be teaching in the first place. I have always been drawn to research, with its focus on isolating variables and getting to the bottom…Teaching5 min readTeaching5 min read
