School of Practice

5 Common Teacher Mistakes and How to Fix Them

Everyone makes mistakes—including teachers. While educators are quick to reframe student mistakes through a growth mindset lens, they’re less forgiving when it comes to

How Nicholas Ferroni is Rewiring His Classroom for Human Connection

Like a lot of other educators, Nicholas Ferroni is trying to find his way back to a time before technology was the default classroom mode. He thinks he was a better teach

Research: 5 Principles of Superb Classroom Design

Before there’s curriculum or calendars or lesson plans, there’s the classroom space itself, stripped of last year’s posters and anchor charts. Where should teachers begin

3 Outstanding Community-Building Activities for Back to School

How do you lay the foundation for real community in your classroom? Teachers know (and the research supports this) that when kids feel safe and connected in school, they’

How to Jumpstart Belonging in Your Classroom From Day One

Do you want to build a vibrant classroom community this year, but you’re not sure where to start? Research shows it’s well worth the effort—and the first week of school

11 Ways to Improve Teacher Well-Being

Teaching is hard (often draining) work, and educators’ instincts about what will bring relief are frequently wrong—just as they are for most people.  That’s because our

Rethinking Zeros in the Grade Book

What’s your take on eliminating zeros from the grade book? Does your school have a no-zeros grading policy? Even if it doesn’t, you probably have opinions about it.  Set

14 Excellent Ways to End the School Year

The end of the school year can feel like the best––and worst––of times.  On the one hand, it’s a great stretch because “the routines and procedures are set,” and the kid

One Task, Many Doors: A More Effective Way to Differentiate

It’s a mistake to assume that good differentiation always means splitting students up into small groups, says Michael McDowell, an author, coach, and former teacher.  A

Helping Students Overcome the Forgetting Curve

Have you ever delivered a lesson and felt your students were acing it, only to revisit the same information a week later and realize hardly any of the new content stuck?

How to Teach Students to Spot What’s Real, Fake—or Deepfake

Can your students spot what’s real and what’s AI-generated on TikTok and Instagram?  How about when they’re researching topics for humanities classes, gathering sources

How to Teach Deep Mathematical Thinking

Narrow, rigid math has “turned students off for generations,” says renowned researcher and Stanford mathematics professor Jo Boaler.  Yet teachers often don’t have much

Smart Strategies to Improve Your Scaffolding

Getting scaffolding right—amid the messy reality of teaching 30+ students at different skill levels—is one of the toughest challenges in teaching.  Done well, it looks l

Boosting Reading Comprehension for All Students

Maybe you’ve seen it in your classroom: Students who zip through chapters but then can’t tell you much about what they just read. To move those kids from fluency to sense

How to Use Formative Assessment Like an Expert Teacher

Have you ever been shocked when your students bomb a unit test after weeks of seemingly locked-in learning?  Veteran educator Jay McTighe has the ultimate research-backe

Handwriting Is Essential—Here’s How to Teach It

Did you know there’s a strong connection between the hand and the neural circuitry of the brain?  As students learn to write letters by hand, they also learn to recogniz

How to Talk About (and Normalize) Learning Accommodations

It’s a tricky (but very common) classroom dilemma: How do you talk about—and normalize—learning accommodations in class without singling anyone out in front of peers?  U

The Most Significant Education Research of 2025

Are you curious what the latest research reveals about everything from brain breaks to groundbreaking research on AI, cell phones, and handwriting in the classroom? Then

How To Improve Student Note-Taking in 3 Smart Steps

When students take notes during a lesson, research shows they get just about 30 to 45 percent of the important information right on the first try.  High school teacher B

Converting ‘Fast Finishers’ Into Self-Directed Learners

“I’m done, what’s next?” In every classroom, a handful of students will finish the work at warp speed. While the rest of the class is still mid-task, teachers must quickl