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Have you ever noticed that you can gauge a person’s wisdom by how quickly they respond to questions? Sometimes you ask someone a question and without even a second of thought they’re blurting out an answer. On the other hand, there are those individuals who calmly take their time to consider a question carefully before composing a response. In most...

In a classroom environment where students' grades often depend on obedience and towing the line... it's easy for students to develop a strong aversion to risk. But that could be detrimental to their future careers. As the saying goes, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Studies show that individuals who are willing to take risks are much more likely to get promoted,...

Even the most straightforward of math problems can be approached in different ways. For example, say you want students to find the product of 14 x 3. They could write out the problem and cross multiply. They could also mentally multiply 10 by 3 and 4 by 3 and add them together. If they’ve memorized their times tables and know...

One of the most challenging aspects of teaching is getting all students to participate. On the best days hands shoot up in response to a question but on the worst days, it can feel like pulling teeth. And in my years of teaching, there were plenty of these teeth pulling moments. There are lots of reasons kids don’t participate. Sometimes...

Learning a new language can be both frustrating and exciting. One minute you think you've got things down, and the next you've forgotten how to introduce yourself. So what helps people stick with the process? It’s the little signs of progress. Like the first time you understand something you hear on the radio, or the first time you successfully order...

Why do people strive to obtain power? Traditionally, most people have thought that a quest for power comes from a desire to control other people, to be in charge. A recent study from Columbia University, though, turns this idea on its head. According to the study, people who seek power do so not because they want to control others, but...

Anyone who’s spent any amount of time working in education has likely heard of the achievement gap. The achievement gap describes the fact that in our country, students from minority backgrounds and low-income households tend to perform worse in school than their peers from wealthier homes. Countless researchers, non-profit organizations, and policymakers have dubbed this the civil rights movement of...

Many teachers will tell you that there are two phases of reading instruction. Learning to read and reading to learn. While our early years of schooling are spent learning to decode words and make sense of what’s on the page, the rest of our reading life is spent using the skill of reading to access information. I’d venture to say...

I studied French for years in school, but don't remember a word of it. In my thirties, though, I moved to Puerto Rico, and without even trying or taking a class I was able to pick up a basic level of Spanish. Speaking with others who have lived abroad, I know I’m not alone in my experience. THE most effective way...

If you ask most people what is the purpose of K-12 education, you’ll get a variety of answers. One of the most common answers is that we want to prepare students for college, the workplace, and to be successful adults. While this is definitely true, I’ve always hated this answer for one reason. I feel like it sells kids short...