In The Will to Learn, I introduced a strategy called Tracking Attempted Moments of Genuine Connection (MGCs). I've covered MGCs extensively elsewhere on the blog (the most comprehensive treatment can be found here), so today I won't repeat that work. Instead, I'd like to share with you some practical things I've noticed this year as I begin to use the strategy with my students.

• First of all, the initial task of a solid MGC game is building working mental models of each of your students. This model-building work — which starts with simply attaching names to faces and grows from there — is, to me, one of the primary sources of both exhaustion and pleasure during the first couple weeks of school. It's something I have to both work and play at.
• The way I track MGCs, even at the start of the year, is very simple. I'm going to include a shot of what my clipboard looks like right now just to prove what I'm saying. When I help schools launch MGC efforts through in-person workshops or keynotes, one of the most common obstacles they face is teachers making their MGC-tracking overly complicated. The more complex the system, the more likely it is to break down. For me, it must be kept simple.

• MGCs are both work and play, labor and love, authentic and routine. Sometimes folks complain that tracking attempted MGCs takes the magic out of building connections with students. But to me, tracking attempted MGCs just means I'm making regular, systematic room for lots of magic to take place.
• The point is the attempt, not the outcome. I spend exactly zero seconds wondering whether or not a given MGC “worked.” The fact is, MGCs will work when conducted often enough, so long as I make sure I'm working hard to genuinely value, know, and respect each of my students. And, make no mistake: it takes hard inner work for me to like some of my students in this way. But the work is worth it. So long as you're doing this, you don't need to worry about whether or not a student “felt” how you feel about them. Just keep at it; they're smart and receptive, and the signal will get through eventually.
• MGCs, like all 10 of the Will to Learn strategies, do lots of things simultaneously. They:
  • Cultivate Credibility by signaling that I care enough to take a moment to chat with them
  • Cultivate Belonging by creating a space in which students are being shown that they are valued, known, and respected
  • Form a relational base with my students from which I can build more difficult teaching efforts such as Woodenization (Strategy #7 in The Will to Learn), Valued Within exercises (Strategy #6), or Unpacking Outcomes, Good or Bad (Strategy #9).

So, these are some things I'm finding important as I go about the annual tradition of starting out my MGCs. I'd love to hear what you're learning in the comments.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

P.S. Today I'm stepping away from the classroom for a minute to speak with secondary educators in Traverse City, MI. This is my second visit to the school system, and our focus is (you guessed it) tracking attempted MGCs.

The other day, I received a text message from the ever-enthusiastic and always-growing educator Mr. David T. Reese. (He wrote a guest blog several years ago that you can read right here.)

David said,

I'm not the boss of you; however, I think it'd be pretty cool if you did an ‘all call' for what people want to Woodenize at the start of this school year. And maybe people can even share documents if they want.

Me? I'm trying to get kids to master what we do with the titles of texts in various genres. What do we put in quotes vs italics/underline?

I love this idea. Let me set it up.

What is Woodenization?

I've written about Woodenization at length elsewhere (Strategy #7 in The Will to Learn; this blog guide), but let me sum it up as follows.

Woodenization is first and foremost an attitude that says, “I assume that if I want my students to do something well, it's my job to be clear about how to do it.” The name comes from Coach John Wooden, who famously taught his collegiate athletes how to put on their socks and tie their shoes on the first day of practice each season.

When Woodenizing, teachers are wise to think in terms of two categories:

• Smallies — stuff that can be taught once, with total clarity, and then reinforced thereafter. Smallies are matters of habit. These are things you can reasonably expect students to have encountered in school before; nonetheless, you teach them clearly and then you reinforce them calmly and religiously.
  • E.g., how to enter the classroom, how to complete the lesson warm-up, how to find assignments on Canvas, how to use the cell phone garage
• Biggies — stuff that needs to be taught multiple times over a time period in order for students to better understand how to do it well. Biggies are matters of skill. These are things where it makes sense that the students you teach would need time, repetition, and modeling in order to improve.
  • E.g., how to take notes for learning, how to increase your writing stamina, how to study

The key question of the Woodenizer is this: what learning-conducive behaviors would I like all of my students to master? From there, pick a few smallies and one biggie that you most want your students to master, and start breaking them down with as much clarity and simplicity and power as you can.

So, what do you want to Woodenize to start this school year?

• Up above, David said he wants to Woodenize how to handle the names of texts in writing. I love this and would guess he'll probably approach it as a smallie: he can teach it once, and then the transformation in his students will come from how well he reinforces it.
• For me right now, I'm Woodenizing notes that facilitate learning (here's that link again for how I do that) and how to bring the power of retrieval practice into both classroom work and homework.

So how about you? Leave your answer in the comments.

Woodenizing right beside you,

DSJR

Tomorrow begins the 20th year of my teaching career, and as of this moment's rosters (sure to change still), I’ve got 153 human beings that I’ll be getting to know in the weeks to come. (One of them, it turns out, is the child of a former student. I knew the day was coming where a parent at orientation would have that “Wait, didn't I teach you?” familiarity to them, but I did not expect it to be this year.)

As I steel my introverted self for the serious labor of getting to know my students, I think of all the folks who helped me to be the teacher I am today.

• I think of Mrs. Donna VonderHoff, who taught me computer science in high school. (I'm teaching an AP Computer Science Principles course this year and am truly terrified .)
• I think of my mom, who gave me feedback on my high school English essays before I turned them in, and what a privilege it is to get to do some of that for students each year.
• I think of Jim Burke, such a mentor and friend, whose life as a classroom teacher/author continues to inspire and encourage me.
• I think of Malcolm X, whose autobiography shifted something inside of me over 20 years ago in my college dormitory as I witnessed how an education transformed a mind and, thereby, a life.
• I think of my colleagues here at Cedar Springs High School, who absolutely spurred me on to becoming better each year, just by them being them.
• I think of my grandfather, who taught me to be lazy in a manner befitting wisdom.

20 years in, heading into a school year still feels daunting. It's that whole, “Wait, do I actually know how to do this?” thing. And so it’s good for me to take a minute to settle my mind and heart on the folks who’ve brought me to this moment. If it were all up to me — just Dave Stuart, all by himself — I'd be doomed.

But it’s not. The teacher my students will meet tomorrow is, in fact, propped up by a massive conspiracy of people who have worked together to make me the guy for the job.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

• I give a prompt. E.g.:
  • What was the most interesting thing we studied in Unit 3?
  • Who is the most underrated character in the novel we just read?
• Students spend a few minutes writing about it.
• Once we start the debate:
  • Every student has to speak at least one time. (I keep track on my clipboard and call on students who haven't spoken yet if there's a lull.)
  • No student may speak more than twice (unless I say otherwise).
  • My job is to listen, to coach, and to make notes regarding what I learn about my students, their knowledge, and their skills.
• After the debate, I ask for student feedback on two questions:
  • What did we do well as a class during this Pop-Up Debate?
  • What could we do better next time?

I take what I learn and pick a new skill to teach or model during the next Pop-Up Debate.

There is nothing else that I do with students that produces as much obvious growth over the course of the school year than this simple public speaking ritual. And obviously, I'm bringing over a decade of hard-earned craftsmanship, overlapping mastery objectives, and heart to the strategy as I facilitate. But once upon a time, the simple bullet points above are all I had.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

P.S. Digging Deeper Into Pop-Up Debates

What follows is a list of articles I've written on Pop-Up Debates; see also Chapter 4 of These 6 Things.

• The Complete Guide to Pop-Up Debates
• Beyond the Fear of Public Speaking: Making the First Pop-Up Debate a Success for All Students
• Pop-Up Debate Problem: What Do You Do When Students Aren’t Yielding the Floor Well?
• What If a Student Has an Accommodation that Prohibits Speaking in Whole-Class Discussions?
• The Best Pop-Up Debate Prompt in My Repertoire (Valued Within Exercise)
• Tips for Starting Pop-Up Debates Well
• How to Resolve Pop-Up Debate Power Struggles Where a Student Refuses to Speak
• Pop-Up Debates as Comprehension Improvement? Apparently, Yes!
• A Pop-Up Debate for Helping Students Value Writing
• Two Very Different Pop-Up Debates on the Same Day
• 10 Tips for Motivating Students Toward Full Engagement in Pop-Up Debates
• Improving Pop-Up Debates: Better Prompts
• Improving Pop-Up Debates: Tracking the Argument
• Fulkersonian Argument: The Mixture of Debate and Discussion Toward Which Pop-Up Debates Strive

With high schoolers, when I'm introducing my rule about needing to raise your hand before speaking, I just ask them, “Who has ever been in a classroom where the same few students take up all the air time? Or where a few students just keep getting away with blurting out and disrupting the lesson?”

Every hand goes up.

“Okay, now keep your hand up if you've ever found that to be annoying or frustrating.”

Most hands stay up.

“Okay. Look around. That's why I've got this rule here. Not because I'm a control freak, not because I don't want to hear everything you have to say, but because in a room full of thirty-five students, there's got to be a way to protect an enjoyable and productive experience. Being annoyed or frustrated because of undisciplined speaking? Not enjoyable. Not productive.”

Though there's plenty more to classroom management (see below), the master move is to frame it in a way that's desirable to most teachers and students alike.

Because it turns out that most of us just want to have an enjoyable and productive day.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

P.S. Digging Deeper Into Classroom Management

What follows is a list of articles I've written on classroom management; see also this mini-course and this truly comprehensive and world-class course by Lynsay Mills Fabio.

• A Complete Classroom Management Guide for an Enjoyable and Productive Learning Environment
• Is Classroom Management Icky? And Does It Even Matter for This Fall?
• The Best Articles on Classroom Management
• CARE: Four Underlying Principles of Classroom Management

Is it special? Of course.

Should you over-stress about it? For sure not.

99% of the power of your first day of school comes down to how well you execute on it for the remainder of the school year.

• Should you establish some rules of the road? Absolutely.
• Get students doing the kind of work you'll expect of them all year? Yessir. (For me, that's writing.)
• Give 'em a taste of who you are and what brought you to this classroom today? Yes, please. (Just keep the autobiography brief because our classes aren't about us!)

So plan some of those kinds of things, and then, if you're going to put stress on yourself to do something, just focus on getting good at teaching. Not too much stress, but yeah — some. Because that's what we're trying to do this year. Get better, get good.

The first day's just an experiment toward that.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

P.S. Digging Deeper Into the First Day(s) of School

What follows is a list of articles I've written on the first days of school.

• Everything You Need (and Nothing You Don’t) to Start the School Year Well
• Freaked Out About the First Day of School? Three Quick Things That Help
• The Power of the Humdrum: Why Your First Day of School Isn’t Going to Make or Break Your School Year
• Cures for First Day of School Overwhelm
• Simple Questions on the First Day of School That Teach Purpose
• A First Day of School Activity That Teaches Argument, Which Teaches Thinking (Updated)
• A Simple, Powerful Tweak on the First Day of School Index Card Activity
• First Days of School Writing Prompts
• 42 Prompts to Get Students Speaking or Writing at the Start of the School Year
• The Four Pillars: Defining Success at the Start of the Year (and Often Thereafter)

• Long-term flourishing is WHY we do what we do.
• Movement toward mastery is WHAT we do, day to day, in every lesson.

That is literally it.

Don't lose the forest for the trees. It'll drive ya nuts.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR

P.S.

Oh — hi there! Remember me? I'm still alive over here.

I hope you enjoyed your summer.

In the weeks to come, I'll be keeping my articles short and focused, just like above. Instead of a normal DSJR cup of coffee, these'll be more like espresso shots.

And then beneath each of these little shots, I'll link to a Dig Deeper guide I've made on the topic.

Today's post is all about clarity of purpose, which is nonnegotiable if you and me have a shot at staying sane this year. To dig deeper into clarity of purpose, check out this article from the archives. And while I'm at it, let me share a few more:

• We Lack Clarity, Not Strategies
• The #1 Problem With New Years Life-Changey Stuff: Clarity of Purpose
• Video: My Five-Minute “Defining Everest” Ignite Talk (younger Dave in action!)
• A Collaborative Approach for Crafting Everest Statements With Your Students
• Everest Statements in Elementary School?
• How an 8th Grade Teacher Made an Everest Statement for Reading and Had Her Students Make One for Writing

P.P.S.

As this post hits the e-waves, I'll be taking the stage for an extended keynote to our colleagues in the Mitchell, SD, area on the topic of student motivation. If you'd like me to head to your school this school year, gimme a shout.

If you've been trying to access my website during the last 10 days or so, chances are it's been spotty. Sometimes folks ask me, “Dave, how do you do it all?” And my answer is always “Um, I don't.” I'm really good at a couple things, but average or below at most things.

One of those “most things” is the realm of managing the technology my website is built upon. So whether it's a band of AI raiders or aging plug-in infrastructure or whatever else, the short of it is that my site needs some love this summer and quite possibly a new, less-tech-knowhow-needed home. Thankfully, my summer vacation has begun, and I can start to attend to this.

So, that's the bad surprise. Doing website stuff was not on my summer bucket list. Please bear with me as I get after this so that you (and I!) can access the rich archives of ideas and encouragements you've helped me build over the past 14 (!) years of blogging.

BUT that's enough on the bad surprise spectrum. Let's end with a good surprise.

In the final few weeks of school, I saw a remarkable maturation in my students' Pop-Up Debates. On one particular day, I remember being blown away by third hour's debate — like near tears at the beauty and whimsy and grandeur — and then deeply frustrated by fourth hour's. But then the next day, fourth hour showed depth and wisdom, too. And it just reminded me that, 20 years into teaching, I can still be surprised by the things that happen on a given day of school. There are just so many factors at play in any moment in the classroom — all the past lessons, all the life lived by students in the moments we're not together — that you just can't accurately predict what's going to happen when you do something like open up the floor for a Pop-Up Debate.

Their PUD progress this year was more like a maze than a line. But by the time we got to Pop-Up Toasts, man…life on the other side of that maze had whiffs of the dancing trees of Narnia. And it's just nice to be surprised by this work and to leave for summer knowing that more surprises are in store.

Some of the surprises will be bad, yes. But even reminding myself of that can help me to be less surprised when it happens. It can be less, “OMG THE WORLD IS FALLING!” and more, “Yeah. That's all part of it.”

I know you, dear reading colleague, have had your share of ups and downs this year. Me too. But may we don’t let the downs keep us down.

Entering summer right beside you,

DSJR

I'm writing today to recommend the blog of UK-based educator Peps Mccrea. I've been reading his work for a year or two, and I find him to be the most efficient connection point between myself and the research on how learning works.

Here are some of my favorite Peps pieces from this past school year:

• Pushing For Mastery, in which Peps argues there is a small list of things effective teachers tend to emphasize, and one of the most important is that the pursuit of mastery is what our classes are for. (I've long been in love with the language of mastery for working with students, so obviously hearing a smart guy say that's a good thing = music to me.)
• Common Mis(Interventions), in which Peps shares a paper unpacking 10 commonly-used interventions in UK schools and what the evidence actually says. (I was surprised by the findings regarding universally delivered mindfulness curricula as having null effects overall and potentially harmful effects to the students most needing help.)
• Authoritative Schooling, in which Peps connects the research on the bad-sounding-but-actually-quite-lovely authoritative parenting to how the best kinds of schools look and feel.

I could keep digging back in his archives but c'mon — who has time at the end of a school year? (My students and I finish up next Thursday.)

Just wanted to share in case you might like to subscribe to Peps and enjoy exploring his work this summer.

Teaching and learning right beside you,

DSJR

P.S. I'll be keynoting at the SDCTE virtual conference on June 8, and SDCTE will also be using the keynote as a kickoff to a summer book study of The Will to Learn. You can find all the details here; attending my talk costs as little as $10. Special thanks to the amazing team of South Dakotan educators putting on this conference.

Dear colleague,

Last week, I shared Mandy from Brooklyn's adaptation of my work into her new setting, and some of you asked for more details on her “School: Why Bother?” mini-unit to start the school year. In the unit, her goals were:

• 1) To collaboratively construct Everest statements for each class period
• 2) To guide students in independently constructing their own Everest statements for the school year

Already when I read that, I'm pretty pumped. Though I've not done this exact kind of thing in my classroom, what Mandy's tapping into here is lots of Value, Efficacy, and Belonging juice.

• As students spend time thinking about and articulating their view of the peak, that's strong soil for Efficacy growth. Most of our students who struggle with Efficacy do so because success is a vague and unexplored idea. This is why “Define Success: Wisely, Early, and Often” is one of the 10 focal strategies in The Will to Learn.
• The entire mini-unit is essentially an exploration of the apologetics for school. Good apologetics start with a simple foundation: skepticism is a reasonable and respectable point of view. And as Mandy guides her students to come up with their Everest language, she's tapping into the power of the most underestimated strategy in my book: Valued Within.
• And finally, all this work quickly signals to students that their thinking and words and voices are important parts of the class they enter each day, which cultivates Belonging.

So, how did it go?

Here's what I heard from Mandy as the school year progressed:

Hi Dave! Thanks for checking in. I've been meaning to send you an update about my Mission Statement mini-unit.

I'm really glad I started the year this project. It set the tone for the class in surprising ways. I teach two sections of 10th grade English, and their different outcomes and levels of buy-in really became clear when we co-created our class mission statements, five days into the school year.

After all our readings, I took notes on the board while students engaged in a pop-up discussion about our driving questions.

Here's the idea board for my Period 1 class:

Here's their final mission statement (in the box on the right side of the board), on the poster I created:

This has become the class I most look forward to teaching every day – they are willing to wrestle with big ideas, to be vulnerable, and to take risks.

My 4th period class required a lot more prompting. Here is their idea board:

And here is the final poster:

I have found that this class is more guarded and less willing to take chances. They want to get their work done, but they're less interested in engaging with it.

I'm definitely going to keep incorporating this mini-unit into my beginning-of-year curriculum, and next year I think I will expand and combine it with a project I have done for the past two years and have students *also* co-create a class AI policy (or just class policies, period) at the same time.

Thanks for your work, Dave! It has really been meaningful for my practice.

Something to try next year?

Perhaps this is something more of us can try next year.

Teaching right beside you,

DSJR