The Teaching Experiment

I'm incredibly excited to have my post about TCFL's Project Day published in the Teachers Going Gradeless blog.

Interested in knowing more about how TCFL is empowering students with a move towards more integrated learning? Check it out at

Empowering Students through Project Day — Teachers Going Gradeless Carla Meyrink, co-founder and secondary director at The Community for Learning, explains how a biweekly Project Day has revolutionized her school by providing students with the freedom to explore and create, free from the pressure of grades. It has lowered stress levels, encouraged creativity, and p

Teaching students to ask strong, open-ended questions helps them become much better analytical thinkers and allows them to participate more meaningfully in class discussions. Although some kids naturally master this skill, others need to be explicitly taught.....

From Superficial to Substantial: Teaching Students to Ask Deeper Questions - The Teaching Experiment Student-led discussions such as socratic seminars, TQE’s or fishbowl discussions, help students take charge of their own learning. However, the quality of these debates depend on students' ability to move the discussion along with deep, thoughtful questions. In classes where enough students have s...

This! 💜💜💜

On a recent plane trip, as we were all disembarking, I walked past a mother and a child still seated. They were reading Blueberries for Sal.
I said, “Blueberries for Sal! I love that book. I remember my mother reading it to me.”
Mother and child both looked up. The mother smiled and said, “She wanted to hear the story just one more time. How could I refuse?”
“You couldn’t,” I said. “Thank goodness you didn’t.”
To everyone who reads a book aloud to a child “just one more time”—thank goodness for you.

Awesome ideas being shared here. Our students give me hope for the future!

View from my "office"

Wondering how to fit PBL into your already overloaded curriculum? Maguie Alexander, Dominican history teacher found that not only was it possible, but her Ss learned sooooo much more!

Check out this blog post to see how she did it.

Project-Based Learning: Giving Choice Within Curricular Boundaries - The Teaching Experiment Maguie Alexander, a secondary school Dominican history teacher, is passionate about the subject she teaches, but realizes students don’t always feel the same way. in order to change that, she decided to explore project-based learning. An important part of the 8th grade curriculum is the study of t...

not only empowers & motivates Ss but it also puts them in the driver's seat to take responsibility for their own learning. PBL helps Ss develop the competencies they need to become life-long learners.

Teaching Independence With Project-Based Learning - The Teaching Experiment Our 6th grade Language Arts (LA) teacher, Christina Perez, had always known that moving to 7th grade — and thus, the beginning of secondary school — was difficult for our students. But this year, when she herself began to teach 7th grade LA, she saw first-hand how stressful this change can be. T...

These words from The Book of Joy (p. 227) give me courage. Trying to make changes in education is scary because...What if it doesn't work? What if I fail? But if I can stop worrying about "success", then I liberate myself from fear & I can give it my all.

A reminder we probably need to hear often....

The Optimalist infographic, part 2

Love this infographic from The Optimalist. Handy, dandy reference tool.

Thanks for the reminder, Dr. Lee Ann Jung