I'll never forget the moment when I realized that some of my students hadn’t really understood much of anything in my chemistry class. Students had just completed an open-ended experiential lab-based project at the end of the course, and I decided to interview each student to see what they had learned from the project and the course. When talking with one group, my spirit was crushed. I asked them some rudimentary questions about what we had learned throughout the year, and they didn’t have a clue. It was as if they hadn’t been in the class all year. I felt dejected and didn’t know what to do ..read more

Teaching is fundamentally relational; nothing tells students that they matter more than knowing their names.  When I started teaching in 1986, I was so busy worrying about what I would teach that I neglected to learn who I would be teaching.  During those first few years of teaching, learning all of my students' names seemed to take forever.  I even remember coming to a parent-teacher conference, and there were a few kids' names that I still hadn’t learned.  I was embarrassed and needed to change. It was then that I realized that I needed to make this a priority in my ..read more

I start my 36th year in education (28 as a classroom teacher). Below are the lessons I have learned hanging out with teenagers for so many years. Here are my 36 rules for my 36 yrs Learning their names early matters. They know if you care. They have very fine-tuned BS detectors. They don’t care what you know until they know you care. Have fun - Being a teenager is hard - very hard -  Give much grace because being a teen is hard But still, hold them accountable to standards - Though they may complain - if you hold them to a high standard, they will thank you for it later - really! Li ..read more

If you are following the script on Mastery Learning, one of the key principles is that if a student doesn’t master the material, they need to re-test until they achieve mastery. One of the biggest challenges of Mastery Learning is that you have to give students multiple opportunities to master the curriculum. If they don’t demonstrate mastery on your first assessment, you need to provide a new assessment that tests the same material. Logistically, this is a huge challenge for teachers. How many versions of the summative assessment can they create? And what about the amount of grading required ..read more

Have you ever been in a class where you had to work in a group and you did all of the work? Have you assigned group work and seen students letting others do the work for them? Collaborative groups sound like a good idea, but we all know that things can go south pretty fast if students don’t or won’t work effectively in teams. It turns out that Mastery Learning classrooms are ideally suited for students working together effectively.  When done well, collaborative groups can be magical and amazing. In this article, we will learn how to ensure that your students work well together and h ..read more

It's hard to believe that school starts in six days. If you are like me, you wonder where the summer went. The past eighteen months have been like no other. Yet the more I think about education and the more I chat with educators from around the world, the more convinced I am that one of the great needs in education is to move to a Mastery/Competency Based learning model. So many of our students will return with some gaps in their knowledge and they will all show up in my class this coming Monday. To that end I will be spending the first week of class teaching my students how to learn via a Fli ..read more

If you are following the script on Mastery Learning, one of the key principles is that if a student doesn’t master the material, they need to re-test until they achieve mastery. One of the biggest challenges of Mastery Learning is that you have to give students multiple opportunities to master the curriculum. If they don’t demonstrate mastery on your first assessment, you need to provide a new assessment that tests the same material. Logistically, this is a huge challenge for teachers. How many versions of the summative assessment can they create? And what about the amount of grading required ..read more

Like many of you, I finished up what arguably is one of the most challenging and chaotic years of teaching. I started teaching in 1986, and I have worked in education for thirty-five years. First as a teacher (24 years), then a director of technology (2 years), an author and consultant (7 years - and still doing that), and then back in the classroom again (2 years and counting). And I don’t see myself leaving the classroom again unless it is to retire.  As I survey my empty room with the chairs up, I see it as the natural progression to what hopefully will be a summer of regeneration, ref ..read more

Have you ever sat in a  PD session and the presenter talked about how you should differentiate, but you said in your head… No Way! They are crazy! It all sounds well and good, but… I am only one person. I can’t teach two, three, or four different things at the same time. It is impossible to do that with my students. During the pandemic, I tried this, and well… it didn’t work.  I can’t prepare that many different assignments. I can’t be in two places at once. In fact, during the pandemic, I felt like it wasn’t even that effective. I can’t do that and maintain my sanity.  What if ..read more

Are you worried that students will be in vastly different "places" when they return to school this fall? Some students will be on grade level while others will be far behind. How will you teach in light of this new reality? Jon presented at a conference sponsored by Harvard University about how to teach in a post-pandemic world. This thirty-minute video will give you an overview of how Mastery Learning can help us post-pandemic ..read more