This is the first post of a four-part series on making curriculum relevant, meaningful, and adaptable. This article focuses on the testing culture in education, what some of the research…
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Welp, here we are again in many parts of the United States, and around the world. Districts like my own kid’s school that were open in some type of hybrid…
This summer as many schools went from going back to school in-person, to virtual, to some mix in-between a lot of teachers were faced with a new reality: Teaching kids…
Note: I’ve broken this guide into three distinct parts. All of the resources shared in the examples section can be accessed for free, including those I used from NextLesson when…
James Clear recently shared this and I immediately started to think about our current situation. How many of us have been spending time in Zone 3 this past year? How…
In case you missed it last week, the podcast is back! We are calling this podcast, TALKING ABOUT PRACTICE – because every episode is focused on actual practical strategies, not just…
Blockbuster was doing everything right. They had a fantastic business. It was booming and growing each year. They would tweak something here or there. Improve customer service. Move to DVDs…
My daughter had been singing for almost two hours with no break. The song “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” from the Frozen soundtrack was on repeat, and my…
In the 15 years since diving headfirst into Project-Based Learning (PBL), I’ve connected with amazing educators doing some type of project-based learning and/or inquiry-based learning (whether it be Genius Hour, 20% Time, or any…
My first full year of teaching was as an eighth-grade language arts teacher. It was my dream job at the time. I loved the energy of middle school students, and…
When Khan Academy burst onto the scene my initial reaction was to laugh. What was so special about it? The more and more I thought about Khan Academy and the…
It is a blessing and a curse. Over the past 10-20 years, there have been numerous books, articles, and videos centered around the idea of cognitive science—or the science of…
Last year over 100,000 students from four different continents participated in our third annual Global Day of Design. The hashtag went viral as students and teachers shared and launched their creative projects all…
“I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.” — Charlie Munger It was early on in my…
There is a scene in the film, “Most Likely to Succeed”, that struck me to the core. You see, for years I wanted to be the challenging teacher. I wanted…
Let me try to paint this picture. We were sitting in our school conference room on a Skype call with a Norwegian company, First Scandinavian, who creates and runs Newton…
To be honest, I was lost. Elementary teaching was something so new to me when I took a job as a Technology Staff Developer. I taught middle school. I taught…
Listen to the podcast here or check it out on iTunes or the Google Play store. I was recently listening to a speaker (George Couros) talk about Ryan Gosling in his presentation. I…
I first met Angela Duckworth when our Student Innovation Lab kids toured her Character Lab facility down at the University of Pennsylvania campus. We weren’t sure she was going to…
I had the chance to interview New York Times bestselling author James Clear, for my new podcast, Scratch Your Itch. James is the author of Atomic Habits and has built…
“Everything begins with an idea.” – Earl Nightengale When I started on my Project-Based Learning journey, I always wondered what other teachers were already doing with PBL in classrooms around the…
Reminder: This year’s Global Day of Design is on May 6, 2019. We already have over 75,000 learners signed up to participate! When John and I wrote LAUNCH, one of…
Today I turn 35 years old. And I couldn’t be more excited than I am right now to share my new book, The PBL Playbook. Over the past few years I’ve…
Teaching is not always easy. And learning can be a struggle for many of our students. As educators, we are called to this back and forth process of teaching and…
If you haven’t heard of Genius Hour or 20% time in the classroom, the premise is simple: Give your students 20% of their class time (or an hour each week) to learn…
Last year over 60,000 students from 600+ schools, in over 12 countries and four different continents participated in our second annual Global Day of Design. The hashtag went viral as students and…
Three of my favorite Project-Based Learning experiences took shape in completely different ways and circumstances. My students and I created “Project: Global Inform” together, after tweaking the original assignment. My students…
It seems after all this research I’ve done on the current state of education and all the reading I’ve done on the future of learning, that one piece of information keeps…
Coming into student teaching I was really confident about my lesson planning abilities. I was a bit worried about classroom management, designing assessments, and handling the demands of a first-year teacher…but…
You’ve read the blog posts, tweets, and articles. Maybe you’ve even attended some conferences or seen someone speak live. They say, “Project-based learning changed my role as a teacher. I…
The preference for our society, if we really want to be effective, is to teach so that they learn, not merely present curriculum and document deficiencies or meeting standards or…
Both of my sons love playing soccer. I grew up watching football and only played soccer very briefly (at the youth level) before going all in on American football throughout…
The most successful teaching begins, therefore, with clarity about desired learning outcomes and about the evidence that will show that learning has occurred. Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, The Understanding by…
Note: This is the fourth post in a series on Project Based Learning. You can check out all of the other posts here. My first full year of teaching was…
Note: This is the third post in a series focused on practical ways to do PBL in every subject and grade level. Read the first and second here. It was…
In our last post, we dove into a three-step system to get students to do the talking. Getting them to open up and do the majority of talking (and learning)…
I remember the first time I heard the phrase “student-centered classroom” and I almost chuckled. I had always believed my classroom was about the students, they were the reason we…
I sensed the anticipation as soon as I entered the classroom. Groups of students were huddled together flipping through notes and documentation. A few were going back and forth about…
Note: I’m running a free webinar on this topic where I dive into the strategies, research, and resources that can make innovation come alive in your classroom and school with…
“We are a school on an audacious mission. And our ‘why’ drives the teaching and learning here at Mount Vernon Presbyterian School (MVPS),” said Bo Adams in a recent interview…
Ahh, summer is coming to an end. For some of us, school has already started, for others, we still have a few weeks left before the doors flood open with…
It was towards the middle of my first year teaching (8th grade) when it hit me: My class was spinning out of control, and it was all my fault. I…
A few years ago, during the school year, my students and I had a similar problem: There wasn’t an opportunity for me to find out what they really enjoyed doing,…
“Yea, but what does it look like?” This is the question I hear and see most frequently online and at conferences when someone mentions the phrase empower students. As someone who…
As I work with students and teachers there is one common thread that the “stand-out” classrooms share: They take risks. Not only do these students and teachers take learning risks,…
“Is this real, Mr. J?” The question came from the back of the room. Todd rarely spoke up in class, but today he seemed visibly upset. “Yes, it is real….
Daniel Coyle, the author of The Talent Code, recently looked at a study on feedback from teachers. This study showed that one simple phrase could boost student effort by 40%. I was shocked…
“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off…
Many teachers have done the spaghetti and marshmallow challenge in the classroom and called it a STEM project. It’s a great activity, but is it really a STEM activity? Sure there’s…
This is a guest-post written by a middle school teacher in my district, Annemarie Catalano. This year has been a big push to create a “maker culture” within our district….
There is a scene in the film, “Most Likely to Succeed”, that struck me to the core. You see, for years I wanted to be the challenging teacher. I wanted…
Building a New Model Together Let’s stop fighting change. Instead, let’s build on the best practices we’ve developed over centuries as learners, and embrace next practices that reflect our world….
I distinctly remembering learning how to type. It was hard. I had been a hunt and peck perfectionist up until age 14 when my school provided a computer course focused…
When we look at what research says about becoming better at something, two pieces of evidence stand out. First, we must have clarity on what our goals are, and where…
Blogging can be a lot of things. It can be reflecting, it can be sharing, it can be planning, it can be a how-to, it can be a call to…
Each year after holiday break I told my students their writing would change forever. It was a simple statement, but most of them did not take it seriously. What ensued was…
I failed a lot this year (you can read about them all here in my failure report), but also had some amazing successes with teachers and students at our school….
Why are you using technology? Or more importantly, how are you using technology to better the learning in your classroom and/or school? If you are like me, then you’ve had…
Thanks to everyone for making our new book, LAUNCH: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity and Bring Out the Maker in Every Student, a #1 bestseller on Amazon this weekend!…
I recently wrote a post (ok, it was kind of a rant) about “innovation” in education and who get’s to decide what is innovative. The bottom line of my argument…
In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been asked the same question multiple times after speaking, “Do you still believe Genius Hour and 20% Projects are the best way to engage…
Note: This is the final article in a four-part series answering the question, “Does education really need to change?“. You can read the first, second, and third posts here. It…
You ever have one of those moments where you wonder what you are doing with your life? I mean, at the very least, you are like me and have had…
Remember waiting? We used to wait for our favorite song on the radio. We used to wait for a TV show to come on and watch simultaneously with millions of…
I cringe when people ask me, “Are you handy?” Partly because I don’t consider myself to be the best with tools, but also because it is asking me to judge whether…
It’s almost here! TEDxPennsburgED is finally happening in one week, and we’ll be broadcasting it live to the world (at Upper Perkiomen High School) on May 7th from 12:30-4:30pm (EST)….
What is flow? It is a term and concept you’ve probably heard before. It’s also a feeling or state that you’ve had many times in your life. We often call…
I am by habit a bibliophile. I read at least 25 pages of a book per day which usually turns in to 40-60 books per year. I’ve written a few…
