Professional Learning for Busy Educators

Most teachers intrinsically understand the need to motivate their students, experts say, but teaching on intuition alone can lead to missteps in student engagement.

A study released in May by the Mindset Scholars Network, a collaborative of researchers who study student motivation, found most teacher education programs nationwide do not include explicit training for teachers on the science of how to motivate students.

That’s why some teacher education programs are exploring ways to help teachers learn how to engage their students in deeper ways.

Only recently have I figured out how powerful my self-talk can be, how much the stories we tell ourselves about our lives can actually shape them.

I learned this from Angela Watson’s new book, Unshakeable: 20 Ways to Enjoy Teaching Every Day…No Matter What. In the book, Watson provides simple, practical strategies individual teachers can use to make their work less stressful and more enjoyable, without moving to a new district or changing anything that’s required of them.

Number 19 is “Rewrite the Story You Tell Yourself About Teaching.” Picking up where she left off in her 2011 book, Awakened: Change Your Mindset to Transform Your Teaching, Watson describes how we can actually change the way we experience challenges if we can recognize the stories we tell ourselves, then replace them with new ones.

While every teacher is unique and brings their own personality, experiences and methods to the classroom, the following ideas can enhance your already effective lineup of teaching skills.

I was speaking (tweeting) with Mark Barnes tonight, and he mentioned the idea of challenging existing forms and practices. And then someone tweeted the above image–a quote attributed to Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, according to the image source globalnerdy.com–and I was happy and favorited and saved and blogged.


The most dangerous phrase in the language is “we’ve always done it this way.” Which applies to education, too.

Teaching is an exhausting gig and when teachers take the time to rest during the summer, they able to find a place of renewal and restoration. Research has demonstrated that rest is vital for maintaining our passion and reaching our creative potential. However, it’s easy to go through the summer without finding any true restoration. In this article and podcast, we explore what it looks like to make rest a priority in the summer.

I’ve been thinking about this, and there really is a life cycle to teaching.

Not every teacher will experience every stage–or every stage to the same degrees, anyway. Some may notice very little of this at all. And while the sequence may be more or less universal, the duration of each stage may not be. Some teachers may even get stuck in one stage and never develop any further. So take this all with a grain of salt.

Have a look and see what you think.

Four simple ways to model and promote compassion, which is especially important for students with adverse childhood experiences.

Teaching is both an art and science.

Teaching is conceptual and intellectual, abstract and concrete, creative and sequential. It’s about people but framed through ideas. It’s about content, hearts, minds, the past, the future–whatever we can imagine, teaching and learning are both causes and effects.

With that in mind, we’ve collected some of the more famous quotes about teaching, doing our best to include a wide range of perspectives, cultures, nationalities, races, spiritualities–many of the things that make ‘us’ different, we tried to somehow use to curate the quotes. In that way, some will be familiar, some way will be about formal education, some will be sourced from old proverbs, etc.

The premise is simple enough and the format explains itself, so see below for our newest collection of quotes–50 of the best quotes about teaching.

Untangling education research can often feel overwhelming, which may be why many research-based practices take a long time to show up in real classrooms. It could also be one reason John Hattie’s work and book, Visible Learning, appeals to so many educators. Rather than focusing on one aspect of teaching, Hattie synthesizes education research done all over the world in a variety of settings into meta analyses, trying to understand what works in classrooms.

He has calculated the effect sizes of every teaching technique from outlining to project-based learning, which often tempts people to believe the strategies with low effect sizes don’t work and the ones with large effect sizes do. But Hattie — who is director of the Melbourne Educational Research Institute at the University of Melbourne — is the first to disavow this interpretation of his work. Instead, he and colleague Gregory Donoghue have developed a model of learning that proposes why different strategies may be effective at different stages of the learning cycle.

Innovative ideas – projects, processes, curricula, and more – that are transforming how we teach and learn.

o one is perfect. Not one of us. But if we're not careful, we can fall into the trap of thinking we have to act perfect. 

I find it puzzling how students sometimes have the idea that teachers/principals/educators are somehow above making mistake or should be above making mistakes. 

I remember when I was teaching 9th grade English how students would jump at the chance to point it out if I misspelled a word on the white board, as if I was suddenly an incompetent teacher. They would express shock and dismay that I would make such a mistake.

But without question, I made my fair share of mistakes, and I learned that it was best to admit them and help dispel the myth that teachers don't make mistakes.

We interviewed educators with decades of experience in teaching ELLs and tapped a network of experts and observers to find the strategies that work.

An evidence-based program teaches mindfulness to educators. Research suggests it can reduce their stress and improve their teaching.

Anchor charts are a great way to make thinking visible as you record strategies, processes, cues, guidelines and other content during the learning process. Here are 25 of our favorite anchor charts for teaching writing.

Teaching through projects, interrogating the value of grades, attempting to make learning more meaningful and connected to young people’s lives and interests, thoughtful ways of using technology to amplify and share student work. These are just some of the ways teaching and learning are changing. But moving to these kinds of learning environments is a big shift for many teachers, schools, and districts; it’s hard to sustain change once the shiny newness wears off. That’s when people tend to slip back into old habits, relying on what they know best. The transformation requires a leader who understands how to manage the change process.

“Sustained modes of change can be incredibly meaningful and yield for your community in huge ways, but you have to be incredibly intentional in order to make space for these things to happen,” said Diana Laufenberg at an EduCon 2018 session about how to lead through change. Laufenberg is the executive director of Inquiry Schools, a nonprofit working with schools around the country to make these shifts. She has come to the conclusion that there are five pillars to sustaining change: permission, support, community engagement, accountability and staying the course.

Memory underpins learning. And yet, as a profession, we talk about it so rarely. What gives? Here are 7 books to kindle that conversation:

I recently wrote about my journey toward empowering students through ownership. It began with a “throw away” week during state-wide testing when I felt the freedom to do something different. From there, I ultimately embraced this idea of student empowerment. However, I was afraid along the way.