“K–12 teachers, I will argue, have little use for psychological theory, but could benefit from knowing the observations—developmental patterns and consistencies in children’s cognition, motivation, and emotion. Such knowledge roughly equates to “understanding children.””
Our mental space stands in direct proportion to our perception of physical space.”
“I have a child who’s a junior in high school, which means that everywhere I go, people want to talk about one thing: college.”
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“He stopped one shot after another — seven times blocking the Jets' attempts to score. In a moment most rec-league players can recognize from our wildest dreams, the fans in the United Center began chanting his name.”
Both research and real-life examples show us that if kindness and empathy are modeled to kids in everyday life they are much more likely to continue this attitude into middle school and beyond. Modeling empathy starts early. Research indicates that if parents use more descriptive language in explaining how other people might be feeling, even toddlers are more likely to learn perspective-taking.”
“The primary reason teachers gave for leaving their last job was career advancement or development, with 60% of teachers who left voluntarily citing reasons related to this category.”
“Why do we react this way to feedback that is ostensibly supposed to help us? Essentially, it’s because all of us are so awful at delivering negative feedback. It’s a self-reinforcing vicious circle that trains us to avoid what would make us better at work and in life.”
“I sat in the dark staring at my laptop. I was well into my second hour of watching sword fights on YouTube. I switched between samurai movies, anime, medieval battle scenes, and pirate duels. Two of my students just kept writing about sword fights, and I was trying to be a better teacher. If I was going to critique the battle scenes in their novels-in-progress, I needed to understand what made a good sword fight.”
“What I appreciated most is how humanizing our conversations were of mathematics — in terms of who was doing it — and how much curiosity students brought to the mathematical ideas they were exposed to.”
“Buying a new smartphone consumes as much energy as using an existing phone for an entire decade.”
Even the number of districts which have schools on a four-day week is hard to say – recently Heyward was able to identify 470 districts for certain but says she conservatively estimates that there are around 500.”
Copyright
Every week I send out articles I encounter from around the web. Subject matter ranges from hard knowledge about teaching to research about creativity and cognitive science to stories from other industries that, by analogy, inform what we do as educators. This breadth helps us see our work in new ways.
Readers include teachers, school leaders, university overseers, conference organizers, think tank workers, startup founders, nonprofit leaders, and people who are simply interested in what’s happening in education. They say it helps them keep tabs on what matters most in the conversation surrounding schools, teaching, learning, and more.
– Peter Nilsson