Education & Teacher Conferences

Anna Abraham’s The Creative Brain: Myths and Truths didn’t necessarily introduce me to entirely new creativity myths—I’ve spent enough time around psychology, neuroscience, and education to already know the usual suspects. The “right-brained creative.” The tortured genius. But we may still be romanticized by ideas like psychedelics unlock some dormant creative capaci…

If you have a colleague who uses mini-whiteboards, you know the passion that these simple tools inspire. According to the fervent accounts I read on Twitter and hear at conferences, MWBs increase student participation, reduce teacher stress, and cure most cases of bursitis. (I might have made up that last one.) Up to now, I’ve […]

Should our students teach their peers? The obvious answer to this question is: “yes, of course.” Experience shows that teaching leads to greater understanding for the person who did the teaching. After all, when I figure out how to explain “tragedy” to my sophomores, I end up knowing more about tragedy than I did before. […]

Sleep is the wonder drug we can all afford. It reduces stress and depression, increases concentration and academic performance, lowers blood pressure, fosters self-regulation, and provides health benefits too numerous to mention. For all these reasons, we’re excited when we find strategies that reliably help students get more sleep. For instance, several months ago I […]

Can AI teach creativity? This question feels oddly self-contradictory. Creativity feels like the most human of human characteristics — how could a chatbot teach it? A recent study put that assumption to the test, and arrives at helpfully provocative conclusions. Here’s the story: How Many Ways Can You Use an Umbrella? “Creativity” poses a fascinating […]

When I hit the trigger words “Don’t be a victim” I knew I was not arriving to Rise Above in a neutral headspace. Anything that uses this phrase carries a certain weight—it’s one of those ideas that can either feel clarifying or quietly accusatory depending on the day you’re having, and if I’m being honest, […]

Research doesn’t often sound fun, so you can imagine my enthusiasm when I came across a study exploring Minecraft. Yes, that Minecraft – with the blocks and the digging and the building. And those fluffy animals that bound around the screen. Specifically, a research team in Ireland – led by Dr. Eadaoin Slattery – wondered […]

We teachers have LOTS to learn from cognitive science: No doubt, we want to pass many of these ideas on to our students. As they learn geometry and spelling and the atomic mass of carbon, they can also learn when to use retrieval practice. One specific example: we have many reasons to think that note-taking […]

Today’s book review is by Dr. Rob McEntarffer “Without… [a] mental model of how students learn, the teacher will not be able to identify the key elements of a teaching method or may implement it improperly.” During my first years teaching high school, I was anxious about whether I was teaching “right.” I often wondered […]

I spoke recently with an AWESOME group of primary school teachers. When our conversations turned to students’ attention, a hot-button topic emerged. They asked: “What does the research show about classroom seating arrangements? Should our students sit in rows or in clusters?” In my experience, many teachers have a strong emotional commitment to one answer […]