Every educator wants to nurture "lifelong readers". This often means developing students who not only can  read but choose  to read in...

When a third grader says, “I can’t do it!”  the words may sound simple and you might want to respond with care and patience, but...

Today was the first day my students truly experienced what a self-directed classroom can feel like. For the past two months, I’ve been...

These past six weeks have been lively, humbling, and genuinely encouraging, leaving me with a lot of which to reflect. I returned to the...

In 2019, I wrote an article on compliance versus social-emotional learning. I am revisiting that article and exploring the tension...

At some point in nearly every elementary classroom, a group of students will push the limits of safety during recess. Games escalate....

Our work is not to check off needs one tier at a time, but to create overlapping supports across school and home so children can develop fluidly among all tiers without losing ground. The most powerful way to do this is by intentionally weaving together school strategies and home strategies to create a bridge between them.

As educators, our choices in the classroom are rarely as simple as “because it works” or “because I have to.” More often, we’re driven by a complex web of motivations; some obvious, some hidden, some we might not even realize until we really stop and reflect.

The secular triad is composed of three interdependent forces: Thought, Response, and Meaning. Together, they represent a dynamic system—one that mirrors the complexity of human experience, much like the famed three-body problem in physics, in which three entities in motion continuously affect each other in unpredictable ways.

I asked ChatGPT 4.1: "what is the difference between the capacity of students to respond to teacher-assigned tasks and prompts at each DOK Level 1, 2, 3, and 4, and the capacity of AI to respond to user-assigned tasks and prompts?" I found its response illuminating. My thoughts about this response are below. Here is the ChatGPT 4.1 response (with zero edits).

The deeper point of this quadrant model (and any other Core Values quadrant model) is not to claim that individuals live permanently in one quadrant. Instead, it provides a map of orientations that people may default to, shift between, or consciously choose depending on factors such as the relationship in question, the setting (formal vs. informal, public vs. private), the stakes (high-pressure vs. low-pressure situations), and any relevant cultural expectations.

Community as a Core Value reflects more than just how well people get along. It speaks to the deeper, structural interdependence of individuals within a group. The concept of "community" is to bind individuals into relationships of shared purpose, shared belonging, and shared responsibility.

If schools aspire to nurture lifelong learners who take ownership of their growth, they must go beyond equipping students with individual skills. They must design school cultures and systems that develop agency at all levels—students, educators, and leadership—through structures that reward collective growth, collaboration, and purposeful autonomy.

Integrity is often described as “doing what’s right when nobody is looking.”  In schools, it means staying true to what we believe is...

The Five Foundations turn everyday lessons into launchpads for self-directed growth. Learn how planning, tracking, resourcefulness, collaboration, and flexible mastery make agency teachable—and measurable.

Trust as a Core Value is more than the belief that someone will keep a promise. At its foundation, Trust is built on three core...

A few weeks ago, a veteran teacher stopped me outside her room, eyes wide with frustration. “My eighth-graders are constantly  butting...

In this article, I’m digging into that bigger condition of how our current school model quietly creates the demand for endless tutoring and what we could do instead of always having to run to the store for more band-aids.

I’ve found that a common reaction to the phrase “self-directed”  involves the following presupposition: letting students fend for...

Responsibility as a Core Value is more than checking off tasks. It is the place where accountability (answering for outcomes) intersects with priorities (deciding what matters most). Two perpendicular dimensions can effectively map that intersection.