Guess who's on the Chalk & Talk podcast tomorrow! I'm so excited to release this episode! Craig Barton

I’ve finally launched my Substack with a piece that reflects a concern I’m no longer willing to soften. Building Sinking Classrooms takes a hard look at Building Thinking Classrooms and the widening gap between instructional popularity and instructional evidence. I believe this

Love this diagram.

Mme Lockhart This is the difference between data-driven decision-making and decision-driven data collection. Collect data only if you know what you are going to do with it.

François Chollet Which is why smart science teachers emphasize science as model-based reasoning, and the bulk of their curriculum is equipping students with a repertoire of models that help them think more powerfully: teaching things to think with rather than just teaching thinking.

1/3💡The problem with "productive" struggle. For kids good at math struggle can be fun because they're successful at the end. For many others, struggle is associated with failure, because they're not successful at the end, and it reinforces for them that they can't do math.

A teacher recently told me a good one: she wrote right triangles on the board like this 📐for weeks - until one day she randomly wrote one facing the other way and said, “what kind of triangle is this?” and a kid said, “a left triangle?”

If “progressive” education went by any other name — contemporary, post-modern, impressionist — it likely would already be dead. The presumed and mistaken correlation with progressive politics helps sustain it, even as it disadvantages the kids progressives most want to help.

James A. Furey Most implementations of multi-tiered systems of support that I have seen spend way too much of their energy on tiers 2 and 3 and not enough time on tier 1. Do we want a fence at the top of the cliff or an ambulance at the bottom?

How do they keep getting away with this? 💀

Vocabulary isn’t “extra.” It’s knowledge. “When students have the words to describe ideas, their ability to see, discriminate, and think critically changes.” — Doug Lemov In our recent webinar, he explained why knowledge starts with words. 🎥: bit.ly/40i7WB7

The persistent and seductive appeal of discovery learning, despite its limitations and failures, reflects a mix of cognitive biases, ideological commitments, and cultural narratives rather than any strong empirical support. kirschnered.nl/2025/03/30/the…

Students who are years behind need intensive instruction, not be told to color until intervention time starts up. Students who are years ahead need intensive instruction, not be told to act as peer tutors and wait until college for real challenge to begin.

“Why are students today being taught the same way their parents were? Look at how much everything else has advanced.” First of all, they’re not being taught the same way as their parents. Which is why they’re so behind.