“Ultimately, sustainability in teaching came down to discussions about energy budgets. Teachers’ energy reserves are finite, and concerns about teacher agency, endless cycles of curriculum adoption, and limited time and resources wear on these energy reserves. Conversely, solutions like bolstering learner agency, creating collectivist school cultures where teachers collaborate regularly, and incorporating minimalist planning practices […]
“This is really your intern. What it is worth using it for will be different for everyone, and the value will vary by task. Different people with different preferences may find very different uses. If you are a strong writer with a particular voice, you may never want to use AI for writing. If you […]
“When we place too high a priority on the speed of our email replies, we destroy our ability to focus. Interruptions derail our train of thought and wreak havoc on our progress. When you know you don’t have to reply to emails right away, you can actually find flow and dedicate your full attention where […]
“Last month, a new study in Nature revealed a key predictor of economic mobility: connectedness. Specifically, researchers at Opportunity Insights found that relationships with higher-income students dramatically improved low-income students’ chances of upward mobility in adulthood, even more than traditional success metrics like school quality.”
“Creating a place where all people can find love in their work means incorporating three principles in everything your business does: The people are the point. Employees, rather than customers or shareholders, are the most important stakeholders in your organization. One size fits one. Each of those employees is a unique person with distinct loves, interests, and skills. In trust […]
“What we can learn from reading about the schedules of people we admire is not what time to set our alarms or how many cups of coffee to drink, but that different types of work require different types of schedules.”
“Currently nearing the end of its second school year, this high school is the end product of a group of brave, forward-thinking educators who saw what education could be, and instead of trying to work within the system, asked themselves, “Why don’t we just build it?””
“Minimal manning—and with it, the replacement of specialized workers with problem-solving generalists—isn’t a particularly nautical concept. Indeed, it will sound familiar to anyone in an organization who’s been asked to “do more with less”—which, these days, seems to be just about everyone… In 20 years, we’ll know a lot more about the costs and benefits […]
We make countless choices to change how we interact with our job. Each of these choices influences how we feel about teaching. Psychologists call these choices job crafting. Job crafting, say psychologists Amy Wrzesniewski and Jane E. Dutton, is the actions employees take to redesign their work in order to foster engagement, satisfaction, resilience, and thriving. […]
Our research has repeatedly shown a concrete link between having a best friend at work and the amount of effort employees expend in their job. For example, women who strongly agree they have a best friend at work are more than twice as likely to be engaged (63%) compared with the women who say otherwise […]
“To find your people, you have to know how to signal your passions and interests and seek out theirs. But you can also search Google, or scan LinkedIn profiles and send “Connect with Me” notices. You can tweet links about what you’re interested in, or leave comments on an Instagram feed. Here is a brief taxonomy that identifies five […]
What I never imagined was that these kids would end up teaching me more than I could ever teach them. And it’s good that I never imagined that, because it hasn’t happened at all… I am an unstoppable teaching machine, whereas my students are like a different kind of machine that just happens to do […]
The debate started when Peter Bone, a Conservative MP, enquired as to why a tie-less MP had been allowed to ask a question the previous day. In days gone by, this would have been viewed as an impertinent… Watch the video above to see John Bercow, the Speaker of Britain’s House of Commons, wrangle with […]
A thick institution is not one that people use instrumentally, to get a degree or to earn a salary. A thick institution becomes part of a person’s identity and engages the whole person: head, hands, heart and soul.”
Apollo is a semester-long, four-hour block of classes—English, social studies, and art—all blended together and co-taught by three teachers, one from each subject area. Throughout the semester, students are responsible for designing and completing four major projects, each of which is aligned with standards in all three subject areas. Students set their own goals for […]
As we started our yearlong study, the evidence began piling up. Our research team found amazing changes were happening. Students were now awake the first hour of class, the principal reported fewer disciplinary incidents in the halls and lunchroom, and students reported less depression and feelings of greater efficacy. Over 92% of the parents said […]
The research asked teachers to complete a survey at the end of eight weeks – capturing their feelings before, during and after the Christmas break in 2013. It found that teachers who continued to worry about work during their holidays were less likely to recover from the demands of the term, while those who satisfied […]
A study published in the Review of Educational Research today suggests that school climate is something educators and communities should prioritize — especially as a way to bridge the elusive achievement gap. The authors analyzed more than 15 years of research on schools worldwide, and found that positive school climate had a significant impact on […]
Of course, not all conformity is bad. But to be successful and evolve, organizations need to strike a balance between adherence to the formal and informal rules that provide necessary structure and the freedom that helps employees do their best work… Let’s look at the three main, and interrelated, reasons why we so often conform […]
The rationales for these buildings are varied: Employers are dissatisfied with graduates’ preparation, students are unhappy with outdated teaching methods, and colleges want to attract students whose eyes are on postgrad venture capital and whose scalable ideas might come in handy on campus. And so universities of all sizes, both public (Wichita State, University of […]
“There’s a strain of thought that says an employee represents a company, and thus dress is not about personal expression, but company expression,” Professor Scafidi said. “But there’s a counterargument that believes because we identify so much with our careers, we should be able to be ourselves at work.” And that has led to all […]
In essence, this means that if one has no time, one has also lost oneself. Distracted by the obligations of everyday activities, we are no longer aware of ourselves. If we rush from one thing to another and don’t miss a single event scheduled for our free time, we will accumulate many experiences. Yet if […]
Now, several high schools across Massachusetts are exploring whether to follow suit. The push for later start times is emerging in such districts as Belmont, Boston, Masconomet, Mashpee, Newton, and Wayland. The state Legislature is considering a bill to study the issue statewide.”
The point is that relationships among employees can help disperse fear across an organization, rather than forcing individuals to carry those burdens alone. The encouragement and goodwill alone that those connections generate can improve employees’ mental, emotional, and even physical health. What’s more, the know-how and resources that come from associating with capable people help […]
A few studies suggest that introverted teachers—especially those who may have falsely envisioned teaching as a career involving calm lectures, one-on-one interactions, and grading papers quietly with a cup of tea—are at risk of burning out. And when these teachers leave for alternate careers, it comes at a cost to individual children and school districts […]
Amongst major factors contributing to teacher stress, the survey results cite the adoption of new initiatives without proper PD (71%) and the negative portrayal of educators in the media (55%) as the two biggest factors. The survey results also identified the top three ‘everyday stressors in the classroom’ as mandated curriculum, large class size, and […]
“The momentary pause in Beethoven’s fifth, periods of prolonged sleep, the wait time after a question: these are moments when we gather up the past [stimulus] and create a future [response] that belongs more to our imagination and critical thought and less to our instinct. Moments of pause bring creative insight, analytical acuity, vision.”
The added value is using these spaces for other purposes: workshops, seminars, symposiums, exhibits, showcases, media labs, meeting rooms, study rooms, group work rooms, tutoring rooms, and other activities. So there is a functional layer. We can teach more. We can teach differently. Other people can also teach more and differently as well. We can […]
If in classical modernity people could imagine their lives in intergenerational terms… in late capitalism, turnover is so accelerated that it becomes hard to imagine one’s life course even within a few years, let alone a few generations. This in turn drives a sense of the acceleration of the ‘pace of life,’ the psychological feeling […]
“When people were treated as though they were working together they: persisted 48 to 64 percent longer on a challenging task, reported more interest in the task, became less tired by having to persist on the task… became more engrossed in the task and performed better on it, and finally, when people were encouraged to […]
Many experiments have shown that after or during exercise, even very mild exertion, people perform better on tests of memory and attention. Walking on a regular basis also promotes new connections between brain cells, staves off the usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age, increases the volume of the hippocampus (a brain region […]
“Employees are vastly more satisfied and productive, it turns out, when four of their core needs are met: physical, through opportunities to regularly renew and recharge at work; emotional, by feeling valued and appreciated for their contributions; mental, when they have the opportunity to focus in an absorbed way on their most important tasks and […]
“It has long been known that various aspects of the built environment impact on people in buildings, but this is the first time a holistic assessment has been made that successfully links the overall impact directly to learning rates in schools”
“[They] help your team work better together. When you capture every decision and put it on the wall, you don’t have to wonder if everyone is on the same page. The room is the page. The more you put on the walls, the more shared understanding you build.”
“The report begins with a series of stage-setting adjectives, meant to capture SEAS faculty members’ aspirations for their new campus: ‘Open. Connected. Active. Transparent. Livable. Sunlit. Social. Flexible.’”
“When people really get a chance to think, to have the space… they can quite easily discern between the things that are essential to them and those that are not. The problem is not our ability to discern, it’s that we don’t have the space to take the time to discern.”
“[Three teachers] traveled across the country documenting noteworthy teaching practices at district public schools, charter, private, and parochial schools.
“Ms Mark’s research has found that people who stopped using email at work felt less stress and were more focused and productive.”
Prospecting and mining the past to gain a deep understanding of where things come from and why they exist is hugely important to creating meaningful new things.”
“First, let your last night before work still be vacation, or at least your personal time. Don’t open your email or check your voicemail. Unpack, do laundry, make your kids’ lunches if you have kids and they need lunches — but don’t get back to work until you’re back at work.”