What can be done to help the mental health of our youth? You see advertisements for mental health services everywhere. Commercials tell us help is available. Social media campaigns encourage us to speak up and seek support. Schools promote mental health awareness, and communities organize initiatives to reduce stigma. Looking at all of this, you might think we have this situation handled. We don't. This past year was the hardest year our family has ever experienced. My youngest child, a...

We are now at the end of this blog series. We have talked about building a culture of high standards, differentiating in your classroom, giving useful feedback, and making learning relevant. Once all of those pieces are in place, you only have one more thing to do to completely raise that bar in your class, CELEBRATE! Celebrating your students is the best part of all of this and really helps fuel your own fire for why you chose this amazing profession. Celebrate your students in front of...

In our last blog , we dove into feedback. However, feedback loses its impact if the students aren't invested in their learning. For our fourth blog, we will talk about getting students to take ownership of their learning. If students don’t find relevance in the work they are doing, they will not “buy in” to the experience. So how do we get students to “buy in”? Establish a “Why?” Students are not so interested in “what” they are doing, but “why” they are doing it. Just like us, they want to...