Exploring the Core

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The hardest part of thinking isn’t finishing.
It’s starting.

Students develop stronger metacognitive and social-emotional skills when they practice initiating difficult thinking, not just continuing thinking already structured through scaffolds and repeated practice.

More nuance in the full article.
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https://open.substack.com/pub/exploringthecore/p/practicing-the-hardest-part-of-thinking

InstructionalDesign SelfDirectedLearning

I'm now on Substack! My first post there is my Master's Thesis for anyone interested in how culture, values, social emotional learning, Aristotelian virtues, and personally trait theory interconnect to explain who we are and how we learn in education. My handle is -- look me up and subscribe!

New on the blog: “The ‘Reference Student’: What Standardized Tests Actually Measure (and What They Don’t)” — a clear look at how tests are built around a hypothetical ‘average’ student and why that matters for fairness, design, and interpretation. Read the full piece and rethink what test scores really tell us: https://wix.to/QQbN2B1

The “Reference Student”: What Standardized Tests Actually Measure (and What They Don’t) In many fields, researchers have identified a design problem known as the “reference man.”For decades, systems in medicine, engineering, and public policy were often built around a statistical model of an average adult male body—sometimes defined as a 70-kilogram “reference man.” Drug dosa...

Our discipline systems lose credibility when they rely primarily on humiliation, exclusion without support, or responses that communicate that a student is “the problem.”

Accountability matters.

But discipline should do more than suppress behavior in the moment. It should help students understand the impact of their actions, repair harm where possible, and learn the skills needed to behave differently next time.

When that happens, discipline becomes part of the learning process rather than simply a reaction to misbehavior.

How does your school balance accountability and dignity in discipline?

I explore this idea further in a recent article on restorative justice across tiers of support. Read more -- https://www.exploringthecore.com/post/restorative-justice-across-tiers

Restorative Justice Across Tiers: Protecting Safety While Teaching Accountability Many of the concerns I've heard from staff and families (throughout my decade+ of teaching) come from an underlying belief that consequences must involve some degree of suffering in order to achieve a level of regret that can be taken seriously. (This is a very real understanding of justice that I e...

Our discipline systems lose credibility when they rely primarily on humiliation, exclusion without support, or responses that communicate that a student is “the problem.”

Accountability matters.

But discipline should do more than suppress behavior in the moment. It should help students understand the impact of their actions, repair harm where possible, and learn the skills needed to behave differently next time.

When that happens, discipline becomes part of the learning process rather than simply a reaction to misbehavior.

How does your school balance accountability and dignity in discipline?

I explore this idea further in a recent article on restorative justice across tiers of support. Read more -- https://www.exploringthecore.com/post/restorative-justice-across-tiers

New on the blog: From “I Don’t Want To” to “I Chose To”: How Neuroplasticity Supports the Development of Self-Directed Learners. Discover why choices in the classroom train the brain — and how fostering self-directedness changes learning for good. Read the full post: https://wix.to/VZtMaMM

From “I Don’t Want To” to “I Chose To”: How Neuroplasticity Supports the Development of Self-Directed Learners One of the biggest shifts in a self-directed classroom is that students are given real opportunities to choose: • Will I continue playing, or will I engage in something challenging right now? • Will I persist through the difficulty of learning something new, or avoid it? • How do my choices af...

I find myself returning today to this episode of my podcast, re: behavior change in education. Search YouTube "exploring the core podcast" for this episode!

https://youtu.be/Yh5NP1ernjY?si=KhAU2PMBYISkfaPX

Schools face real questions about safety, accountability, and fairness—especially when behavior challenges arise. This article explores how restorative practices across Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 supports can protect students, set firm boundaries, and teach accountability without sacrificing dignity. It’s not about being permissive. It’s about being intentional. Read more: https://wix.to/yJrB4yu

Restorative Justice Across Tiers: Protecting Safety While Teaching Accountability Many of the concerns I've heard from staff and families (throughout my decade+ of teaching) come from an underlying belief that consequences must involve some degree of suffering in order to achieve a level of regret that can be taken seriously. (This is a very real understanding of justice that I e...

Why do schools usually reproduce the world we already have instead of helping imagine a better one? In my new post I unpack how schooling prepares students for the version of society that communities and institutions deem legitimate — and what that means for change. Read more: https://wix.to/YbGFlqq

Why School Doesn’t Work the Way We Think It Does As a result, communities ask schools to “prepare students for the real world,” while resisting reforms that would require schools to model the different or more humane version of that world. In this way, schooling tends to lean towards reproducing society as it is, rather than helping imagine wh...

New on the blog: The Structural Contradiction Between Constructivist Learning and Direct Instruction — a clear look at why student-centered methods and direct teaching often run on different rules, and what that means for classroom practice. Read the full post: https://wix.to/RSfaYPl

Thoughts? Drop a comment and share with a colleague who’s balancing both approaches.

The Structural Contradiction Between Constructivist Learning and Direct Instruction Most teachers learn implicitly (if not told explicitly) that good teaching is a balance of direct instruction and student-centered learning. We're encouraged to keep one foot in each world by delivering direct, explicit instruction that simultaneously promotes student-centered learning experiences.I...