Perfectionism is a tough topic. There are so many amazing human beings in education who are very much on the perfectionism spectrum. So before I say anything, let me be clear that I'm not picking on anyone or denigrating those of us with a special sense and expectation for excellence.

That said, let's begin with a definition.

Part I: What is perfectionism?

I like this one from the APA:

perfectionism. n. the tendency to demand of others or of oneself an extremely high or even flawless level of performance, in excess of what is required by the situation. It is associated with depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and other mental health problems.

There are a couple words in this definition that matter to you and me (folks who want to be good teachers while having good lives).

• Tendency — Perfectionism isn't a black and white deal. I think a lot of us have tendencies toward perfectionism given the right triggering circumstances. Labeling someone a perfectionist isn't helpful; it's something we have to realize about ourselves.
• Demand — Here's the core problem engine of perfectionism. It acts like a soul-level demand and can become a draconian taskmaster. It is not merciful or gracious. This is why it's often associated with depression, anxiety, and other mental health problems.
• Extremely high or flawless levels of performance, IN EXCESS OF WHAT IS REQUIRED BY THE SITUATION — (Ahem. Sorry for raising my voice on that last bit.) You might notice there that the latter phrase is what stands out to me. A central essence of my approach to teaching (and living) comes down to appraising a situation accurately, determining what is possible given that situation, and then deciding how much effort and energy I'm able to spend pushing toward (or beyond) what is possible in the given situation.

Part II: Real practically, what does perfectionism look like in teaching?

All kinds of things, like:

• Extremely high or even flawless standards for students
• Extremely high or even flawless standards for ourselves or our colleagues
• Extremely high or even flawless standards for our administrators
• Extremely high or even flawless standards for parents and guardians

These are problematic for lots of reasons:

• They create large amounts of pressure, on both the perfectionist and the object of their perfectionism. I need lots of things in a given day of teaching, but more pressure isn't one of them.
• They are unrealistic, humans being what they are. I think maybe in other careers, it's possible to be perfect. Maybe in computer programming. Or working at the post office. Or painting. I'm not sure about those areas — I just know that, in the area of teaching, the number of variables you're faced with makes perfection an unrealistic goal. 35 students X 4 sections X 8 years of prior education X etc. = a lot of variables. This is part of what makes teaching students a fearful and wonderful endeavor.
• They lead to drains on time and energy. I can still picture sitting with my assigned mentor as a first-year teacher in Baltimore. I had my to-do list out on the table between us, and I asked her, “How am I supposed to be able to do all these things I need to do?” I don't remember what she said, but it amounted to, “You're not. You have to decide.” Perfectionism blocks us from being able to separate the wheat from the chaff; perfectionism just whispers, “Nah, we'll make time. We'll do it all. We can.” (This is why satisficing is so important for teachers.)
• They increase our fear of taking risks. If I think of myself proudly as a perfectionist and I'm faced with a daunting task in which I lack total control (e.g., teaching), hoooooey am I going to find all kinds of ways to avoid taking risks because those risks threaten my sense of who I am.
• They harm relationships. Don't get me wrong in this article — high expectations are good, especially for ourselves and definitely for our students. But when I demand those expectations be met — either through my words or my actions — it places my relationships at risk. The relationship can become about performance (mine or theirs), not the human connection between us.
• They can make us miss opportunities for growth. I remember being the most unsuccessful student teacher in my cohort at the University of Michigan. I had intentionally sought a difficult student teaching placement, and I sure got one! The problem is, I wasn't up to the challenge. I failed like it was my job. But I hated the failure until one fateful evening when I was sitting at the Little Brown Jug downing a pitcher of Miller Lite with my fellow student teachers. After lamenting aloud to them about yet another failed exploit in the classroom, I muttered, “Well, at least I learned some things that DON'T work today.” And that sentiment really struck me; it's got to be the most profound realization I had in all of college. The perfectionistic side of me can't handle failure; but when I set him aside and give him a Miller Lite to soothe himself, the other part can turn even the worst failure into a means of growth.

So what can we do?

I'm no psychologist, colleague, but I can speak as someone who wrestles with a perfectionistic side from time to time. I find the following things helpful:

• Acknowledge that the perfectionism is there.
• Share it with someone you trust.
• Maybe throw in a Jedi mind trick or two (this article is an oldie but a goodie; it also has a much better telling of the Little Brown Jug Miller Lite story).
• Chuckle at yourself — after all, you don't want to be a perfectionist about not being a perfectionist, right?

You, colleague? You're lovable, just the way you are.

We all are.

Teaching right beside ya,

DSJR

P.S. I'm hosting a live session for school leaders on April 20 called “The Will to Teach.” It's about the Five Key Beliefs applied to teachers — and what leaders can do when the will to teach starts to erode. $29 for individuals, or $99 for a team. [Details and registration here.]

I came across four parent recommendations the other day from researchers Jonathan Haidt, Will Johnson, and Zach Rausch that I thought were worth sharing in case your role intersects with helping parents in our technological times. In their article “We Don't Have to Give In to Smartphones” for The New York Times (paywall), the trio explains that a majority of parents think their children's childhood would be better without a lot of the internet things us teachers see affecting student engagement. They celebrate this majority opinion that much of the screen-mediated engagement machines aren't in the best interest of our children.

And then they make the following recommendations, framing them as social norms this majority could team up and institute to change how things are going. “It’s hard for any one parent or school to act alone,” they argue, “but when families and schools act together, change becomes possible. These norms are meant to reinforce one another, and when combined, they offer a road map for reclaiming a healthier and more joyful childhood.”

Here they are:

1. Delay smartphones until high school. The poll the authors reference found that 2/3 of parents wanted to wait until at least age 14 for smartphones.
2. Delay social media access until 16. This age was favored by a strong 73 percent of parents in the poll.
3. Ban cell phones from bell to bell in schools — including lunch and recess. 63 percent of parents supported this idea. My own school's classroom-based “cell phone garages” aren't quite there, as students are allowed phones in the hallways and during lunch.
4. After school, get kids involved in activities other than app scrolling. The authors paint the ideal here as involving independence, free play, and responsibility in the real world. 40 percent of parents of kids ages 6-12 and 47 percent of parents of teens agreed with this goal.

As a parent of two teenagers myself, the authors are right: aiming at these goals as individual families is much more labor-intensive than doing so with a pod of parents. Social norms are powerful. This is why clear, consistent, and admin-led cell phone policies are critical in schools. But a lot of what the article authors recommend isn't school-based. It's home-based.

So, these may be worth sharing in your next parent newsletter or school/parent night. As you do so, be mindful that parenting is hard and that the polling data indicates these ideas are quite popular. Difficult, but popular.

And of course, if you have the ear of a legislator or two, make your voice heard. Laws are sporadically entering the books in states and countries around the world, but the rate of these laws passing is tortoise-like compared to the lighting speed of tech companies “filling our children's lives — and their classrooms — with more new and untested technologies.”

“The goal,” the authors conclude, “isn't just to limit screens. It's much bigger than that. The goal is to restore childhood.”

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

P.S. I'm hosting a live session for school leaders on April 20 called “The Will to Teach.” It's about the Five Key Beliefs applied to teachers — and what leaders can do when the will to teach starts to erode. $29 for individuals, and $99 for a team. [Details and registration here.]

In a recent post, I shared this JFK idea that truth is more threatened by myths than by lies. Today I want to share a related thought, not from a notable president, but from a notable Jedi: Mr. Obi Wan Kenobi.

In Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (hot take: the best of the nine episodes), Obi Wan Kenobi delivers a rhetorical light saber right into the newly dark heart of his former pupil, Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin: Don't make me kill you.

Obi Wan: Anakin, my allegiance is to the Republic, to democracy!

Anakin: If you're not with me, then you're my enemy.

Obi Wan: Only a Sith deals in absolutes. I will do what I must.

It's an epic line. (Just don't think about it too much.)

What is your point, Dave?

My point is that I often think about this line when I encounter the following kinds of beliefs about students:

• “He's just not AP material.”
• “She's a terrible student.”
• “That kid is lazy.”
• “Our administration is the worst.”

When we reduce students down to the problems they present us with, we're going further than reality will let us. Better instead to shift our beliefs to things like this:

• “He's not studying or asking questions or engaging in class activities. I need to have a conversation with him about the specific concerns I'm having and see what his thoughts are about the AP course he's signed up for.”
• “Right now, she's doing a lot of things that aren't helping her or others. She's distracting her peers. She makes loud comments before tests about how she's going to fail. I need to address these with her, document the behaviors, and see if a new tack might work better (e.g., maybe try a 2×10).”
• “I'm not seeing much effort out of ol' Johnny. Let's see what might be going on here. It could be something physiological (e.g., lack of sleep) or volitional (e.g., perhaps he thinks school is pointless, in which case I can target the Value belief).”
• “These recent admin decisions really bother me. Do I think it might be useful to let them know? If not, what else can I do? Do I need to quit? Do I need to reorient my perspective?”

In teaching and life, the “dark side of the force” tends to look like reducing people down into caricatures. We take the problems folks present us with and make it the totality of who they are in our hearts.

And we all know where that will take us: limbless and on fire beside a river of lava with our mentor screaming, “You were the chosen one!”

I'm goofing off a bit… but I'm serious, too.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

P.S. I'm hosting a live session for school leaders on April 20 called “The Will to Teach.” It's about the Five Key Beliefs applied to teachers — and what leaders can do when the will to teach starts to erode. $29 for individuals, and $99 for a team. [Details and registration here.]

P.P.S. The Student Motivation Starter Kit is my best tools reduced into teacher-focused one-pagers. These are the strategies that have proven to me that it's best to think of student capabilities/dispositions in shades of grey rather than in absolutes. [Get it here, pay what you want, and thank you for your support of my blog.]

• “I feel like school is pointless.”
• “I feel like my colleagues don't respect me.”
• “I feel like you're not listening to me.”

I feel like we say “I feel like” a lot. I remember a wise mentor who was coaching me to clearer thinking in my twenties giving the following counsel:

“From now on, I want you to use the word feel in an accurate way. If you have a feeling, such as anger or sadness or fear, express it. But if you have a thought or assumption, don't preface it with ‘I feel like.'”

It was good (but hard!) advice — and I had to chuckle when, years later, I came across a 2016 article in The New York Times titled, “Stop Saying ‘I Feel Like.'” Apparently the problem wasn't just me!

When we say “I feel like” in the manner described above, we're sowing seeds of confusion in at least three ways:

• First, saying “I feel like” tends to guide us toward not exploring the thought further; it creates this illusion inside ourselves that we've communicated something important and clear, when, in fact, we've not.
• Second, saying “I feel like” in a conversation or argument with someone else basically shuts the conversation down; if you disagree with me after I say that, you're dismissing my feelings and my experience.
• Third, we're mixing up two important but distinct parts of our souls: intellect and emotions. Both are important for life and communication, but both do different things. Communicating a thought, assumption, or belief as a feeling isn't aligned with how souls work (see Chapter 1 of The Will to Learn for more on that).

It's better, then, to do things like this:

• Switch out “I feel like” for something more accurate.
  • If you're sensing something, say so, and ask for clarity: “I'm sensing you're not listening to me. Is that true?”
  • If you have an opinion, say so: “I think this policy is not going to work. Here are my reasons.”
  • If you're scared or angry or sad, just say that. Communicating our emotions often lays the groundwork for relational breakthroughs.

To be a good teacher, you've got to be a good thinker. But a lot of times, the way we talk shapes the way we think, and vice versa. I hope this article acted like more than a pet-peeve rant and helped you out a bit in your work as a teacher and person.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

P.S. I'm hosting a live session for school leaders on April 20 called “The Will to Teach.” It's about the Five Key Beliefs applied to teachers — and what leaders can do when the will to teach starts to erode. $29 for individuals, and $99 for a team. [Details and registration here.]

In June I went on a PD adventure to BC High, an all-boys school in Boston. While I was there, I noticed the JFK Presidential Library was in walking distance and, having time to spare, I made the trip.

My favorite takeaways from the library were a couple JFK one-liners. I'll share one below, as I think it can help us elucidate the Everests of our classrooms and the work we're doing in building our own lives.

Here's the line, bolded within the context of JFK's remarks to student participants in a White House seminar on August 27, 1963:

I can assure you that there is no career which you will adopt when you leave college that will bring you a more and greater sense of satisfaction and a greater feeling of participation in a great effort than will your work here or in your state or in your community… [T]his generation of Americans — you here who will be in positions of responsibility for the rest of this century — will deal with the most difficult, sensitive, and dangerous problems that any society of people has ever dealt with at any age… The Greeks defined happiness as the full use of your powers along the lines of excellence, and I can imagine no place where you can use your powers more fully along lines more excellent in the 1960's than to be in the service of the United States.”

Happiness, according to JFK and the Greeks he's referencing, is “the full use of your powers along the lines of excellence.” That is basically what learning in any subject is about. That's the goal of my history courses this year, my government course this year, and the English courses I've taught throughout my career.

In my history class, I define Everest as follows:

Between lines of this Everest statement is an idea: seeking to grow one's knowledge, strength, and ability is a fundamentally enjoyable, meaningful, and joyful endeavor. There is a goodness one feels when being together with a group of people whose minds and hearts are set on such things.

(Everest Statements are one of six strategies in the Student Motivation Starter Kit. Check that out here.)

Sharing in case it may be helpful or encouraging to you, colleagues. Maybe in tomorrow's class, you kick it off with a JFK quote? You wouldn't be alone.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

P.S. I'm hosting a live session for school leaders on April 20 called “The Will to Teach.” It's about the Five Key Beliefs applied to teachers — and what leaders can do when the will to teach starts to erode. $29 for individuals, and $99 for a team. [Details and registration here.]

Sometimes I like to get my students to keep track of the quantity of work they're doing in my class. As I wrote about in ​These 6 Things​, the first step to improvement in an area like reading or writing or speaking is often quantification: what is our current quantity of work (e.g., articles we're reading, ​pop-up debates​ we're doing, words we're writing)? From there, quality can follow. But a lot of potential quality gains are lost in schools due to simple lack of quantity.

What my students and I quantify can vary based on which part of my practice I'm currently aiming my improvement efforts at. (I don't have many improvement areas that I pick from; just ​six​, really.)

Last school year, I created this printout (​Google Docs copy link​) for my students. Let me briefly explain why I selected these areas.

As I wrote about ​awhile ago​, I like to build writing capacity in my students by first getting them producing a lot of words in not a lot of time. When you do the kinds of warm-ups I described in that article, it's amazing how many words students end up producing in a given semester or year. The first section of the tracker lets them get a sense for the scope of the work they're doing, which is a reliable means for improving their ​Efficacy​. (It's hard to say, “I can't write” [anti-Efficacy] if you have written thousands of words over the past months. So much of Efficacy development in young people is about proving the student's ability to succeed.)

Similarly, I like having my students keep track of the number of textbook pages or ​articles​ they've read, and I like to make a big deal about how we read much more in my classroom than the curriculum calls for. When I mini-sermonize on this, I want them to get a sense of pleasure and satisfaction in having done so much reading.

The same idea goes for the ​Pop-Up Debate​ participations tracker. Whenever we do a PUD in my room, the requirement is that everyone participates at least once. (Recently, Edutopia did a feature article that explored pop-up debates; you can read that ​here​.) If the class is large or has multiple grand-standers in it, I also include a cap on the number of speeches they can give. But even in my largest classes of 35 students, 99% of the time I allow for two total speeches for students (with the second being optional). This gives extroverts a chance to get a little more floor time and those who wish to get more public speaking practice some additional space to do so.

Finally, in the tracker I've shared here, I have a line where students write down their personal ​Everest statements​. This helps remind them of what it is they're trying to do through this class and their time in school.

(By the way, Everest Statements are one of “one-pagers” I made in my new ​Student Motivation Starter Kit​. It's pay-what-you-want and directly supports my work. )

I'm sure more organized or systematic teachers will be able to take this simple “personal best tracker” and make it 100x better and more useful. I'm sharing it for those folks to leapfrog past my practice and enjoy the results.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

P.S. I'm hosting a live session for school leaders on April 20 called “The Will to Teach.” It's about the Five Key Beliefs applied to teachers — and what leaders can do when the will to teach starts to erode. $29 for individuals or $99 for a team. ​[Details and registration here.]

For years now, I've grappled with the difficulty of efficiently helping folks who are trying to get started with my work. I mean, imagine being at this point in the school year — still a week out from spring break for me — and needing *something* to help with teacher overwhelm and classroom issues and having to sift through the 1,100 blog articles I've written or my two main books.

Like, not happening. No thanks.

So, good news: as a much-needed break from the book-writing process, I finally made the set.

The Student Motivation Starter Kit is a set of six quick-reference sheets — one for each of the “greatest hits” strategies from The Will to Learn and These 6 Things that have the most enduring impact on my classroom:

• Everest Statements
• Moments of Genuine Connection
• Mini-Sermons
• Valued Within Exercises
• Woodenization
• Normalize Struggle

Each sheet gives you the what, the why, and the how. Scannable in two minutes, usable tomorrow. Made for sharing with colleagues.

It's pay-what-you-want. If you're a teacher, $1 is completely fine. If you're in a position to contribute, I'm grateful for whatever you can give to support my work.

[GET YOUR KIT HERE.]

I hope these sheets become some of the most useful pages in your teaching binder this year. (Or if you're like me, hopefully they stay near the top of the stack of papers on your desk.)

Your colleague,

Dave

P.S. There are still ~75 spots in the Will to Teach session I'm giving on April 20. Learn more here.

P.P.S. ‘Tis the season where schools are picking PD for next school year. Learn more about my offerings through this menu.

One year I made an off-handed comment to my students about the importance of retrieval practice: RP so you don't RIP. I didn't think much of it until the end of the school year when my student Ellie said it was the most important thing she learned in my class. I even made a poster of it in Ellie's honor.

Retrieval practice is a well-known method in education these days, thanks in large part to the popularity of Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel's 2014 book Make It Stick. (If you entered education after this book came out or missed it during the 2010s, I'd put it at the top of the reading list.)

The gist is, we remember what we practice remembering, and we can do this through class activities like low-stake quizzes. I use these a lot during my lessons, and one of my goals in doing so is to teach my students to learn how to quiz themselves.

I like to tell my students there are two levels of retrieval practice you want to work through in order to feel super confident coming into an assessment.

• Level 1 = the surface level. What do the words in this unit mean? What do they look like? Can you give an example of the concept?
• Level 2 = the elaborative level. This is where you talk out load to yourself while you're studying or you write out for yourself in a notebook how the words you've memorized at Level 1 connect to each other. How are they related? If you had to rank them in terms of importance, how would you do so?

Level 2 is called elaborative rehearsal in the research, and it makes the learner much more capable of handling an unfamiliar question with aplomb. This is because when you master Level 2, you know both what the words and concepts of the unit mean and how they connect to one another.

All of which is an effort to share with you how I try to teach these fundamental learning principles to my students (basically, I'm Woodenizing how to study).

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

P.S. I can't imagine teaching without a solid grasp of how learning works. It's so important to me, in fact, that I created an in-depth course about it called Principles of Learning.

• Individual licenses are $199 and can be purchased here.
• Group license are available by request — just reach out.

P.P.S. I'm hosting a live session for school leaders on April 20 called “The Will to Teach.” It's about the Five Key Beliefs applied to teachers — and what leaders can do when the will to teach starts to erode. $29 for individuals or $99 for teams. [Details and registration here.]

I'm writing a new book called The Will to Teach.

It's built on a simple idea: the same Five Key Beliefs that drive student motivation — Credibility, Value, Effort, Efficacy, Belonging — also drive teacher motivation. And when those beliefs erode in the adults, everything else in a school starts to unravel.

The book is for leaders — principals, coaches, department chairs — who want to understand what's happening beneath the surface when their teachers are losing heart and what they can do about it. But it's also for any teacher who wants to understand their own motivation on a deeper level.

As part of the writing process, I'm hosting a one-time live session:

The Will to Teach: A Live Session for School Leaders; Monday, April 20, at 7:00 PM ET on Zoom; $29 for individuals or $99 for a team (up to 10)

In 60 minutes, I'll walk through the Workload-Pressure Cycle, the Five Key Beliefs applied to teachers, and one high-leverage leadership move at each tier of the belief pyramid. Then, we'll do a live Q&A.

→ [Grab your spot here.]

If you're a school leader, I'd love to have you in the room. And if you're a classroom teacher reading this and thinking, “My admin needs to hear this” — please forward this email. Sometimes the most generous thing we can do for our leaders is hand them a framework that names what they're already sensing.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

I've got just a few thoughts for you today regarding how to be more Credible with students when treating matters related to AI. Just like you, my thinking on this area of our work is in development. As such, what follows is very much working draft thinking.

First, be real about the temptation. Secondary students are tempted to use AI to shortcut the work of learning because 1) the work of learning is hard, 2) most secondary students still receive way too much busywork in school, or 3) they are over-pressured (which, in light of the Yerkes-Dodson Law, is always going to lead to diminished performance and poorer decision-making). Speaking to these realities signals that you care about students and you're aware of their reality.

Second, you've gotta be relentless about communicating the WHY of learning. Most teachers give students speeches from time to time about how awesome their subject is. No teacher gives students enough of these kinds of messages though, and many teachers who do give these messages make them overly long. This is where mini-sermons come in (Strategy #4 in The Will to Learn). Brief, frequent, creative expressions of why learning is good.

Third, you've got to then take all that Value-cultivation you're doing with those mini-sermons and parlay it into how common student AI use cases are so harmful. Learning in all the subject areas is really good for lots of amazing reasons. But when you ask an AI to complete your homework for you or write the essay for you, you're missing out on all that goodness.

Fourth, it's very helpful to be acquainted with the tools yourself. Share positive use cases from your own life — situations where you're using it in a way that aids your learning without doing the hard work for you.

Fifth and finally, show students how to use AI in a way that helps with learning rather than shortcuts it. My go-to example here is giving an AI a study guide or a vocab list and asking it to quiz you. The tools are getting better and better at knowing how to help students learn (like a tutor) versus acting like mindless work completion machines.

Sharing those in case they are helpful to you as you seek to build Credibility in this area of AI.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

P.S. I'm hosting a live session for school leaders on April 20 called “The Will to Teach.” It's about the Five Key Beliefs applied to teachers — and what leaders can do when the will to teach starts to erode. $29 individual / $99 team. [Details and registration here.]