This is not the typical season when many or most of us set aside time to watch the classic movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. Yet, its message is important for our reflection as the school year approaches its end. George Bailey, the film’s protagonist, spent his life in Bedford Falls running a small family bank and serving his community. Sadly, he failed to see the important difference he was making in the lives of those around him. Then, though, he was visited by an aspiring angel who helped him to see how the small, everyday things he did changed lives, created opportunities, and opened doors for ..read more

Teachers,  During this nationally celebrated week of teacher appreciation, we at The Master Teacher wanted to extend a heartfelt thank-you to each and every single one of you who holds such an integral place in our society. In such a challenging profession, and in such challenging times, your continued efforts are not going unnoticed. Examination will reveal that whenever our country has faced a huge task, America has turned to the schools and all the people who work in them to get the job done.  In the last 120 years, we have had three different eras that required the country t ..read more

The end of the year can be an incredibly busy time, but failing to pause, reflect, and learn is a mistake. Some of your most important learning can happen now ..read more

The end of a school year is a good time to pause, reflect, and glean important learning from the past year’s experiences with students, instructional strategies, curricular challenges, and other aspects of our practice while they’re still fresh in our memories. Now is the best time to capture what we have experienced and turn that into learning.   We might think that having the experience is enough to build our learning. However, learning is not the result of experience. After all, experiences can be repeated endlessly and with little gain. Learning, on the other hand, results from r ..read more

Finding ways to engage students, increase learning efficiency, and extending recall of what students learn can be a constant quest. Fortunately, designing activities and employing strategies that release the flow of dopamine in our students’ brains can help us to meet this challenge, especially now ..read more

We might not think much about tapping our students’ brain chemicals to support learning. Yet, those chemicals play an important role and thus are worthy of our attention. Naturally produced by the brain, these chemicals serve a variety of purposes, from making us alert and keeping us safe to calming our nerves and helping us to feel pleasure. Dopamine is one of these brain-produced chemicals, found in the pleasure and reward center of the brain. Consequently, it can play a particularly helpful role in learning. Specifically, researchers have found that dopamine can have a positive impact on le ..read more

When we understand another person’s perspective, what they are thinking and feeling, we are better able to relate to them and understand their needs ..read more

In a world of complexity, diversity, and conflict, we need every tool available to navigate our relationships, find our way through conflict, and understand the people with whom we interact. Fortunately, there is a long-standing, “tried and true,” dependable tool available to us; yet it is often ignored or rejected as too threatening to closely held assumptions, judgments, and biases. That tool is perspective-taking. Perspective-taking is the ability to see things from other viewpoints, and it can help us to infer or otherwise understand another person’s feelings, thoughts, and views without h ..read more

For the parents and guardians who see their roles as constant monitors, managers, and even intervenors in the lives of their children, the growth in access to technology, social media, and instant communication has accelerated a troubling trend. Terms like “helicopter parenting” and “snowplow parenting” have been used to describe their ultra-high levels of involvement. Now, some parents and guardians are essentially accompanying their child virtually throughout the school day. Increasingly, teachers are reporting experiences where parents text their child frequently, even hourly, to check on t ..read more

It is true that slumps and ruts are part of life. They may be inevitable, but they do not have to be permanent ..read more