Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible is first up.

I’ve been putting off reading it for a while but am really looking forward to it.

Janet, I love that you mentioned “real-world activities.” I try to encourage/remind my students to keep a focus on THEIR research, which I describe to them as discovering the solutions to fix the problems they have experienced. That puts their education in a practical place, a place of service, that fuels their drive.

Kathleen, great advice and “bandwidth” is a nice way to put it. I have been careful to not over-organize my courses and leave some space for student adventures and deeper, more personalized learning to take place. This also leaves space for me to be a teacher and help students individually when they struggle to build a model for learning.

My mom once sent me a post card with something like the attached file on it. I have kept it in my desk all these years. Funny how an item like this can hold so much weight and provide such an anchor in one’s life.

I had a WONDERFUL student years ago one semester. I absolutely loved having her in class because in my descriptions of class content I would occasionally skip over an important piece of building the content model. Whenever I did, she would make a face. I’d call on her and ask her where my lecture went off the rails.

Everything needed to…

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Daily, self-graded, formative assessment exercise. I ask students to be their own teacher and annotate their papers as they work with thoughts from their metacognition. Provides clear evidence of their development, uncovers understanding deficiencies, places the responsibility for growth in the hands of the student, and takes care of…

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McMurtie: I like to hope that class assignments for university students demand more meaningful personalization than what A.I. could ever provide solely on its own. Class projects should be opportunities for students to express their autonomy. Being “seen” in the classroom is something that leads to a greater sense of personal…

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“Time Stand Still” by Rush.

I turn my back to the wind To catch my breath, Before I start off again….

Melissa, I would bet that teaching strategies that produce sticky knowledge involve the learning science working at least as an undercurrent if not fully intentional. Or perhaps, the student is using retrieval on their own in some less systematic or organized manner without guidance from the teacher.

If our assessments were designed to…

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Not sure if it has just been this year, but through implementation of learning science and seeing the first hand results, I have learned to trust the science. If you trust it and stay with it, it pays long-term benefits for students, producing the professional competence I expect. For example, after a comprehensive final exam, I asked a…

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Thank you Melissa. Yes, that is the point I am making. I’d like to see what the results would be if all aspects of teaching, and course and curriculum design for that matter, were informed by Make it Stick’s learning science. Practically speaking, if there are teaching strategies these teachers have been using that are not knitted to…

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That’s interesting, Meghan. But I wouldn’t think teaching would be the reason for the student’s retention of information. It would have to be that the students are retrieving the information and using it regularly. And that would point directly to the learning science (see Make it Stick). Perhaps the learning science is manifesting itself in…

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“higher student evaluations of course quality and teaching excellence.”

This is good news. But we are still not assessing long-term learning. Having so much emphasis on teaching, rewarding student compliance with course rubrics, and grade production removes the focus on student learning.

I can’t help but wonder what our teaching practices,…

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The chants of 12th century mystic Hildegard von Bingen. So beautiful, calming, reverent.