In the modern classroom, it is easy for students to fall into a cycle of “academic compliance.” We see it often: students moving from task to task, completing worksheets and taking assessments not because they are curious, but because they are told to. To break this cycle, we must shift the focus from the “grade” to the “growth.” One of …
Best Practices in Writing Instruction Writing Like Readers, Reading Like Writers Nicole Godard · HCSS Best Practices Over the last decade, I have tried every trick in the book to help demystify the complex work of writing for my students. Graphic organizers, sentence frames, miscellaneous acronyms… I’ve tried them all. Students would dutifully attempt to give me what I asked …
By Suleyman Demirhan March 2026 | Education & Equity In my last post, I wrote about Belonging — the quiet but powerful belief that makes students try, persist, and grow. I explored how students who feel like they don’t belong pull away from learning, and how we as educators can send signals every day that say: you are home here. …
From Belonging to Breaking Through: Supercharging Intervention for Struggling Learners Read More »
Rethinking Cheating and Integrity in the Age of AI Reflections on Cult of Pedagogy Podcast #251 As educators, we’ve all asked the question lately: How do we help students learn authentically when AI is just a click away? In Episode 251 of the Cult of Pedagogy podcast, Jennifer Gonzalez interviews Dr. Tony Frontier, whose insights helped me reframe this issue …
Rethinking Cheating and Integrity in the Age of AI Read More »
If you’ve ever spent any time trying to get students to read complex texts, whether it’s a poem, a novel, a primary source document, or an informational article, you’ve probably run into the same frustrating truth: it’s not just about understanding what the text says. It’s about what the text means, and to figure that out, the students need to …
To Read Well, Students Have to Know Things: Why Prior Knowledge Matters Read More »
Last year, in a writing conference conducted over Zoom, a student confessed in her college essay draft that she’s “always been afraid to tell people about where [she] lives.” She went on to reveal that she lived in a trailer park, a fact that she had managed to conceal for most of her life until the pandemic brought her classroom …
Note: The following blog post follows the design elements of Jim Burke’s ideal assignment sheets. For examples of assignment sheets written in this format, feel free to email me! The 6 Academic Writing Assignments, Jim Burke Overview Jim Burke’s most recent book focuses on reconceptualizing writing assignments from a different point of view, one that takes into account not only our …
The 6 Academic Writing Assignments – And Assignment Sheets that Make Sense Read More »