It all began the year I taught sixth grade ELL. I had the same group of students all day in a class that, by law, had to be hyper-structured (we had a four-hour block of reading, writing, oral language, and grammar). On Tuesday, we didn’t…
In this article and podcast, we explore what it means to shift from a focus on learning disabilities to focusing on learning differences. What does it mean to embrace neurodiversity and help students find their hidden potential connected to their neurological diversity? How can we…
In 2014, Microsoft launched a hugely successful A.I. bot named Xiaoice in China. With over forty million conversations, users often described feeling as though they were interacting with a real human. Microsoft founder Bill Gates described it this way, “’Xiaoice has attracted 45 million followers…
Back in December, I showed ChatGPT to a friend of mine who is also a professor. “I’m not worried about AI in my humanities courses,” she said. “Not at all?” She shook her head. “I know of colleagues who are going back to the blue…
Three years ago, I stood in a high-tech lab at a technical university and stared at the giant flat screen monitor. The professor asked me, “Can you tell me which of these samples was generated via Artificial Intelligence?” At the top, a student had asked…
When we think of choice-based reading, we often imagine silent reading with novels. However, we can take a student-centered, choice-based approach to non-fiction as well. In this article, we explore nine different areas of student empowerment within informational text reading. Listen to the Podcast If…
This is the first article I’m doing in a summer series on Empowering Readers. If you want to take a deeper dive into the topic, I also have the Empowered Readers self-paced course that I co-created with literacy expert Bonnie Hamer. It officially launches today….
The future is unpredictable. We know that. So, when we try to design learning experiences that “prepare students for the future,” we have to recognize that we don’t always know what they’ll need. In this article, I explore the counterintuitive reality that the best way…
When I was in middle school, one of my teachers called the entire class up to the front of the room. He held up a shiny golden disc in wild excitement. “This will change education forever,” he said, eyes gleaming. “Someday, you’ll be able to…
We’ve all been there before. You’re working with a few other people and everything just seems to click. It might be on a ballfield or court. Or it might be in a jam session or a rehearsal for live theater. If you’re lucky, it might…
