School of Practice

You release students to work on an in-class assignment, and then you walk around the room. A pencil hovers. A conversation stalls. An unexpected idea takes shape. But are you noticing these clues—and do you know what to do with them?

In this episode of School of Practice, educator and K-12 district leader Amir Taron Ayres shares his strategies for circulating through the classroom with purpose. We’ll talk through how to spot misconceptions, prepare students to share their thinking, and adjust instruction in real time. Along the way, we’ll explore what your path through the room reveals about who gets your attention—and whose ideas you might be missing.

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• What Purposefully Circulating Through the Classroom Looks Like
• Student Engagement as an Aspect of Classroom Management
• Video: A Versatile Seating Arrangement That Really Works
• Research: Teachers’ Gaze over Space and Time in a Real-World Classroom

It started with a student writing a joke on a sticky note: “I hope we have no tests this year.”

Five years later, high school teacher Jodie Deinhammer’s science classroom remains test-free—and her students are still learning and retaining the content at a fast clip.

In this episode, host Kristin Leong talks with Jodie about why and how she replaced high-stakes testing with projects, labs, open-note checks, and daily formative assessments. She’ll offer advice on handling this major shift with parents, and explain why she listens closely to her students’ feedback. Plus, she’s got deeply vetted takeaways for teachers who are ready to rethink their approach to grading—while keeping rigor high and stress low.

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• A Year of No Tests
• Will Students Engage if there are No Grades? A Review of the Evidence
• The Proven Benefits of Grading Less
• The Evidence-Backed Grader
• Do No Harm: Flexible and Smart Grading Practices
• Why Teachers Should Grade Less Frequently
• When Grading Harms Student Learning

Have you ever had a lesson get derailed by a power struggle with a student? Or is there a student in your class who you got off on the wrong foot with, and you’re not sure of the best way to repair the relationship?

In this episode of School of Practice, ELA teacher Tyler Rablin shares some of his favorite classroom management strategies—and they’re ones that you probably didn’t learn in teacher prep. From a simple change involving a squat, to three magic words that aren’t the ones you’d expect, Tyler breaks down how to shift a chaotic classroom to a calm one. And the good news? These strategies work across grade levels and subjects. And you can start using them tomorrow—no extensive prep or fancy incentives required.

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• 11 Classroom Management Tweaks You Don’t Learn in Teacher Prep
• How Novice and Expert Teachers Approach Classroom Management Differently
• 7 Classroom Management Mistakes—and the Research on How to Fix Them
• Video: 4 Subtle Shifts for Better Classroom Management
• Research: Cultivating Positive Teacher–Student Relationships: Preliminary Evaluation of the Establish–Maintain–Restore (EMR) Method
• Research: Foundations for Proactive & Respectful Practice in Elementary Classrooms
• Literature Review: I’ve Got the Power: The Effects of Physical Positioning in the K-12 Classroom on Power Dynamics

Did you know that drawing can be a learning superpower—even for students who claim they’re not good at it?

Research shows that when kids attentively sketch something they’re learning about, they tap into the visual, kinesthetic, and linguistic parts of their brains. This generates rich connections across the brain’s neural network and encodes learning more deeply compared to passive learning tasks like reading or listening to a lecture.

We revisit our 2025 conversation with science educator Selim Tlili to uncover how drawing to learn works across grade levels and subjects. Plus, he’s got special tips for engaging even the most reluctant sketch artists.

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• How Sketching Supports Learning in Science
• Using Drawing as a Powerful Learning Tool
• The Science of Drawing and Memory
• Research: The Surprisingly Powerful Influence of Drawing on Memory
• 5 Popular Education Beliefs That Aren’t Backed by Research
• Sketching for Science

Everyone makes mistakes—including teachers.

While educators are quick to reframe student mistakes through a growth mindset lens, they’re less forgiving when it comes to their own slipups. But teacher errors often follow familiar patterns and can be a source of exceptional personal and professional growth.

In this episode of School of Practice, ELA teacher and instructional specialist Miriam Plotinsky digs into the most common teacher mistakes and identifies key strategies for quick, effective resets that get learning back on track. We’ll also hear from a few classroom teachers about their own missteps, and examine the research about how students benefit when teachers address their own mistakes head-on.

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• 6 Common Teacher Mistakes—And How To Avoid Them
• Teachers’ Intellectual Humility Benefits Adolescents’ Interest and Learning
• PEW: How K-12 Teachers Manage Their Workload
• A Simple Way to Self-Monitor for Bias
• 5 Steps to Leveraging Background Knowledge in Lessons
• Using Formative Assessment to Measure Student Progress
• How to Engage Students the Moment They Enter the Classroom
• 29 High-Impact Formative Assessment Strategies
• How to Avoid Rushing—a Pitfall for Even the Most Experienced Teachers

Like a lot of other educators, Nicholas Ferroni is trying to find his way back to a time before technology was the default classroom mode. He thinks he was a better teacher back then—and kids acted more like kids.

Last year, Nick published a viral Instagram post in which he pledged to go back to basics in his teaching, back to “more paper, more writing, more eye contact, more conversations.” In this episode, Nick tells us how he turned the clock back, what he thinks his students have gained from less tech time, and why he’s not giving up on classroom tech completely.

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• Should Laptops Really Go the Way of Cell Phones?
• Tech-Free January
• What Happened When Our School Went Tech-Free for the Day?
• 7 Tech Routines for Balanced Usage

Before there’s curriculum or calendars or lesson plans, there’s the classroom space itself, stripped of last year’s posters and anchor charts. Where should teachers begin? We’ve got the answers.

In this back-to-school episode, editors Youki Terada and Steve Merrill review over 30 high-quality studies on classroom design and boil them down to five big takeaways, from how to use wall decoration to maximize student attention to why potted plants can alter student perceptions of the classroom—and the teacher, too!

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• The Science of Classroom Design
• Flexible Classrooms: Research Is Scarce but Promising
• Designing the Ideal Classroom Space
• The Impact of Classroom Design on Pupils’ Learning: Final Results of a Holistic, Multi-level Analysis
• The Sweet Spot for Classroom Decorations
• Telling the Story of Learning In Displays of Student Work
• Making the Most of Your Classroom Walls

How do you lay the foundation for real community in your classroom? Teachers know (and the research supports this) that when kids feel safe and connected in school, they’re better equipped to focus on learning. The start of a new school year is a crucial time for this type of work – and it goes beyond icebreakers.

In this episode of School of Practice, we’ll hear from three educators who’ve developed powerful activities for building robust classroom cultures, including a strategy for co-creating classroom norms, an exercise that gets students discovering what they have in common, and a memorable 60-second trust-building activity. Together, these activities go beyond typical icebreakers – and set the stage for a classroom where students feel they belong.

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• Building Classroom Community Through Daily Dedications (video)
• A Daily Ritual That Builds Trust and Community Among Students
• Establishing Connections in a New Classroom Community (video)
• Fostering Belonging With Classroom Norms (video)
• Research: Impact of School-Based Interventions for Building School Belonging in Adolescence: a Systematic Review
• Research: Teacher–Student Relationships and Student Outcomes: A Systematic Second-Order Meta-Analytic Review.
• Not Light, but Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom
• Child’s Play in Action
• WMPG’s Blunt Youth Radio

Do you want to build a vibrant classroom community this year, but you’re not sure where to start?

Research shows it’s well worth the effort—and the first week of school is the perfect time to lay that foundation. When students feel a strong sense of belonging at school, they tend to be more motivated to learn and achieve higher academic outcomes.

In this first back-to-school episode from School of Practice, teacher Marcus Luther shares a simple activity that helps him get to know his students from day one, and sets the tone for the year ahead. Then, he shares two easy strategies for keeping that feedback practice going, so you can continue to build belonging and engagement all year long.

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• A First-Week Survey That Fits on an Index Card
• Collecting and Using Student Feedback Throughout the Year
• Monthly Pulse-Check Template: Ask Your Students How Class is Going
• Creating a Cycle of Student Feedback
• Making Schoolwide Use of Student Surveys
• The Value of Soliciting Student Feedback
• Improving Teaching with Expert Feedback – From Students
• Research: Strengthening School Connectedness to Increase Student Success
• Research: The relationships between school belonging and students’ motivational, social-emotional, behavioural, and academic outcomes in secondary education: a meta-analytic review

Teaching is hard (often draining) work, and educators’ instincts about what will bring relief are frequently wrong—just as they are for most people.

That’s because our minds deceive us, says cognitive scientist and Yale professor Laurie Santos, one of the world’s leading researchers on well-being and happiness. “One of the most annoying features of the mind is the fact that we all have these intuitions about the kinds of things we should be doing to feel better. But the research shows that many of those intuitions are just incorrect.”

In this episode of School of Practice, Dr. Santos joins host Kristin Leong to debunk some of the most popular and persistent myths about happiness—more money *mostly* doesn’t buy more happiness, for example, and a values mismatch at work may be more consequential for burnout than you think—and shares a set of evidence-based tools teachers can begin to apply right away to reclaim a sense of balance.

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• The Research on Protecting Teacher Well-Being
• Coursera: The Science of Well-Being
• The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos
• Yale’s Happiness Professor Says Anxiety Is Destroying Her Students
• What a New Survey Says About Teachers’ Plans to Leave Their Jobs
• The Burnout Challenge
• No, You Don’t Always Have to Confront Your Feelings Right Away
• Ross Gay on Finding Everyday Delights
• Research: Exploring the Ripple Effect of ‘Always On’ Digital Work Culture in Secondary Education Settings (2021)
• Research: Time Confetti and the Broken Promise of Leisure (2020)
• Research: Buying Time Promotes Happiness (2017)
• Research: Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself (2015)
• Research: High Income Improves Evaluation of Life but Not Emotional Well-Being (2010)
• Research: Toward a Durable Happiness (2008)
• Research: Achieving Sustainable Gains in Happiness: Change Your Actions, not Your Circumstances (2006)
• Research: Counting Blessings versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life (2003)

What’s your take on eliminating zeros from the grade book? Does your school have a no-zeros grading policy? Even if it doesn’t, you probably have opinions about it.

Setting 50% as the minimum grading threshold is a well-meaning effort to more accurately assess student learning, but it can also create new—and frustrating—challenges for teachers and students.

In this episode of School of Practice, teacher and instructional coach Tyler Rablin explores the tradeoffs of eliminating zeros from the grade book. We’ll hear from teachers in our community with firsthand experience navigating the policy, and discuss exceptional strategies for building motivation and accountability without relying on numerical penalties.

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• Getting Rid of Zeros Won’t Fix the Grade Book
• Template: Tyler Rablin’s Late Work Contract
• Do No-Zero Policies Help or Hurt Students?
• Why the 100-Point Grading Scale is a Stacked Deck
• The Case Against Zeros in Grading
• How to Help Students Focus on What They’re Learning, Not the Grade
• Why Teachers Should Grade Less Frequently
• Research: “Equitable” Grading Through the Eyes of Teachers
• Research: Can We Trust the Transcript? Recognizing Student Potential Through More Accurate Grading

The end of the school year can feel like the best––and worst––of times.

On the one hand, it’s a great stretch because “the routines and procedures are set,” and the kids have their sights set on summer vacation, says Kansas City-based middle school ELA teacher Jeremiah Kim. But the workload for teachers closing out the year can be intense. “We all just want to be done, but we still have these boxes to check,” he says.

In this episode of School of Practice, Kim joins host Kristin Leong to explore a toolkit of low-lift, delightful, teacher-tested activities that inject celebration, meaningful reflection, and even some review into the last few weeks of class.

Hang in there, teachers, summer break is just around the corner!

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• 19 Highly Engaging End-of-Year Activities
• Wrapping Up the School Year in English Language Arts
• Meaningful Learning to End the Year Strong
• Finishing Strong in Elementary School
• 4 Meaningful Activities to Mark the End of School
• How to Celebrate the End of the Year in Elementary School
• 8 Epic Ideas for Ending the School Year
• Research: Reappraising Academic and Social Adversity Improves Middle School Students’ Academic Achievement, Behavior, and Well-Being

It’s a mistake to assume that good differentiation always means splitting students up into small groups, says Michael McDowell, an author, coach, and former teacher.

A more effective approach, he says, is to design rigorous learning routines that unite the whole class—from fast finishers to kids who need extra support—with shared strategies, structures, and thinking moves.

Think: Same surface, different deep problems, much more time in the “we do” space, and a big emphasis on high-quality classroom discussion.

In this episode of School of Practice, McDowell breaks down three low-prep differentiation strategies, explains how and when small groups fit into the picture, and makes the case for basketball over ping-pong question protocols.

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• How to Differentiate Without Splitting Students Up
• Teaching a Class With Big Ability Differences
• AI Tool Demo: Differentiating Class Materials With Diffit (video)
• A Starter Kit for Differentiated Instruction
• 4 Research-Backed Ways to Differentiate Instruction
• Actionable Assessment: A Step-by-Step Guide to Responsive Teaching and Student Growth

Have you ever delivered a lesson and felt your students were acing it, only to revisit the same information a week later and realize hardly any of the new content stuck? You just came up against the forgetting curve—and lost.

Our brains are hardwired to forget things unless we take active steps to remember. According to research, nearly half of new information—if not used right away—is forgotten within an hour of exposure. And if you wait a week, up to 90 percent fades into the mist.

But that’s not inevitable. In this critical episode of School of Practice, high school teacher Cathleen Beachboard shares her top three strategies to help students remember what she’s just taught them. We’ll ask her how she weaves these strategies directly into the learning process as she works to “flatten the forgetting curve.”

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• 3 Ways to Help Students Overcome the Forgetting Curve
• How to Engage Elementary and Middle School Students’ Memory Processes to Improve Learning
• Why Students Forget—and What You Can Do About It
• Making Retrieval Practice a Classroom Routine (video)
• Connecting Science to Problem-Solving in the Real World (video)
• Finding the Retrieval ‘Sweet Spot’ for Students
• Research: A New Look at Memory Retention and Forgetting

Can your students spot what’s real and what’s AI-generated on TikTok and Instagram?

How about when they’re researching topics for humanities classes, gathering sources in social studies, and preparing for math assessments?

In this super-engaging lesson developed by science teacher Katie Coppens and researcher and former STEM teacher Andy Zucker, students become digital detectives, analyzing a set of videos and websites to determine what’s real, what’s been altered, and what’s just pure misinformation. ⁠

The catch? They can’t just guess. They have to be able to defend their conclusions with evidence. ⁠

Join us for this unmissable episode of School of Practice, we’ll walk through detailed lesson instructions, explore the best strategies for zeroing in on digital misinformation, and share all the resources you’ll need to teach this 60-minute lesson in your own classroom.

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• Real, Fake, or Deepfake? This Lesson Helps Students Decide
• 5 Ways to Build Critical Literacy in the Age of AI
• What Fact-Checkers Know About Media Literacy—and Students Should, Too
• Teaching Students to Evaluate Websites
• Helping Students Find the Truth in Social Media
• Teaching Students to Analyze Fake News
• Giving Students the Skills to Spot Fake News (video)
• Evaluating Primary Sources Through a See, Think, Wonder (video)
• New Perspectives on Combating Misinformation
• Research: People are More Susceptible to Misinformation with Realistic AI-Synthesized Images that Provide Strong Evidence to Headlines (2025)
• Research: Lateral Reading on the Open Internet: A District-Wide Field Study in High School Government Classes (2022)
• Research: Students’ Civic Online Reasoning: A National Portrait (2021)
• http://www.katiecoppens.com
• http://improvethengss.org
• Video clip: Bobsled and Snowboarder
• Video clip: Deepfake Newscasters
• Video clip: Waterskiing Squirrel

Narrow, rigid math has “turned students off for generations,” says renowned researcher and Stanford mathematics professor Jo Boaler.

Yet teachers often don’t have much choice when it comes to math curriculum—what’s mandated by a school or district is what they need to teach.

That’s where *rich tasks* can be transformative, Boaler argues, because they invite the type of reasoning and problem-solving that get kids digging in and taking risks.

In this episode of School of Practice, we’ll chat with Boaler—who’s spent decades studying math teaching—about how to choose, adapt, and improve math tasks; the power of reasoning and visualizing math questions; and the impact of tiny tweaks, like asking students: “Can you prove it to me visually?”

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• 5 Ways to Encourage Deep Mathematical Thinking
• Are We Teaching the Math Kids Need?
• Rough Draft Thinking Can Make Math Class More Inclusive
• Should More Time Be Spent Learning Math Facts?
• 7 Ways to Balance Joy With Rigor in Math Class
• If You’re Not Failing, You’re Not Learning
• Research: Productive Failure in Learning Math (2014)
• How to Build a Healthy Math Identity (video)
• 6 Unproductive Ways to Learn Math Basics—and What to Do Instead
• Math-ish
• YouCubed: Moving from Maths Anxiety (video)
• YouCubed: Math-ish in the Classroom
• YouCubed: Jo Teaching a Visual Dot Card Number Talk
• YouCubed: Fluency without Fear
• YouCubed: Wise Investments, Big Returns: Prioritizing Teachers for Districtwide Mathematics Success

Getting scaffolding right—amid the messy reality of teaching 30+ students at different skill levels—is one of the toughest challenges in teaching.

Done well, it looks like tactical magic: teachers seamlessly know how and when to support kids, then step back at just the right moment, building independence by removing the training wheels.

In this episode of School of Practice, we get into it with Beck Alber, a former high school ELA teacher and UCLA School of Education instructor. She unpacks the evidence-based essentials of smart, timely scaffolding—both for new teachers, as well as classroom veterans (have you changed up your routines lately? No? Alber’s got suggestions for that). We’ll chat about how to determine if your scaffolds are working, what to do if they’re not, and what a strong scaffolding toolbox looks like.

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• 6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students
• Empowering Middle School Students to Create Their Own Scaffolds
• Scaffolding Like a Pro: Powerful Ways to Support Learning
• 6 Foundational Ways to Scaffold Student Learning
• Frayer Model (downloadable)
• Fishbowl Method (downloadable)
• 60-Second Strategy: Fishbowl Discussion (video)
• Choosing Words to Teach
• Research: Benefits of Interactive Graphic Organizers in Online Learning: Evidence for Generative Learning Theory (2021)
• Research: The Early History of the Scaffolding Metaphor: Bernstein, Luria, Vygotsky, and Before (2019)

Maybe you’ve seen it in your classroom: Students who zip through chapters but then can’t tell you much about what they just read. To move those kids from fluency to sense-making, you’ve got to teach them the habits of good independent readers.

In this episode of School of Practice, educator and literacy specialist Nina Parrish walks us through evidence-based strategies that keep kids focused as they tackle challenging texts—from pre-reading tactics that make vocabulary stick and activate prior knowledge, to active reading protocols that turn kids into engaged, metacognitive readers who are always asking themselves, “Did I really understand that?”

Related resources:

• Learn more about this episode
• 5 Ways to Support Students Who Struggle With Reading Comprehension
• 5 Research-Backed Ways to Build Better Readers
• 4 Reading Strategies to Retire This Year (Plus 6 to Try Out!)
• How to Move From the ‘Main Idea’ to ‘Background Knowledge’
• Slowing Down the Reading Process to Build Students’ Comprehension Skills
• Aiding Reading Comprehension With Post-its
• 4 Ways to Teach Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension
• Sweeping Round Robin Reading Out of Your Classroom
• Research: Promoting Fluency Through Challenge: Repeated Reading With Texts of Varying Complexity
• Research: A Longitudinal Randomized Trial of a Sustained Content Literacy Intervention from First to Second Grade: Transfer Effects on Students’ Reading Comprehension
• Research: Effects of a Read Aloud Intervention on First Grade Student Vocabulary, Listening Comprehension, and Language Proficiency
• Research: Understanding Specific Reading Comprehension Deficit: A Review
• Research: The Effect of Mandatory Reading Logs on Children’s Motivation to Read

Have you ever been shocked when your students bomb a unit test after weeks of seemingly locked-in learning?

Veteran educator Jay McTighe has the ultimate research-backed solution: formative assessment. In the best-case scenario, it’s frequent, quick, and highly attuned to the content and your students.

“You don’t want to wait till the end to find out, ‘Gosh, I didn’t realize the kids never understood this concept or had this continued skill error,’” says McTighe, an author and assessment expert. “Whatever you’re teaching, you should always be doing very quick checks to see how it’s working.”

Frequent pulse checks midstream are “potentially one of a classroom educator’s most powerful tools to enhance student learning,” according to David Marzano, a leading researcher. They’re also important tools for students to gauge their own progress. The key to getting the best outcomes is *how* you deploy them.

In this episode of School of Practice, we chat with McTighe about how to get the most out of formative assessments, how to choose the right technique for your content and students, how to insert them seamlessly into the flow of instruction, and whether or not they should be graded. Plus, Jay shares his “Vagoo Rule,” a mysterious yet very important tip that you won’t want to miss.

Related resources:

• 8 Quick Checks for Understanding
• Building SEL Skills Through Formative Assessment
• 7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment
• 13 Super-Quick Formative Assessments
• Research: The Impact of Formative Assessment on K-12 Learning: A Meta-Analysis
• Assessing Student Learning by Design: Principles and Practices for Teachers and School Leaders
• Research: The Effectiveness and Features of Formative Assessment in US K-12 Education: A Systematic Review
• Seven Keys to Effective Feedback
• Research: Formative Assessment Is an Essential Component of Classroom Work and Can Raise Student Achievement
• Hacking Student Motivation
• The 10 Minute Teacher Podcast

Did you know there’s a strong connection between the hand and the neural circuitry of the brain?

As students learn to write letters by hand, they also learn to recognize them more fluently. This letter recognition leads to greater letter-writing fluency, which leads to stronger overall reading development. Handwriting, the research reveals, is in fact a foundational tool for literacy. And as kids get older, the benefits continue, deepening how they process new material and encode learning.

Meanwhile, good handwriting instruction doesn’t require a huge time investment: Brief instructional lessons followed by frequent modeling and feedback for students can slip into all areas of the curriculum throughout the school day, says Brooke MacKenzie, a former elementary teacher and certified reading specialist. “Handwriting practice can and should be quick and dirty,” she says. “It’s not like you need a 20-minute lesson on how to hold your pencil.”

In this episode of School of Practice, MacKenzie chats with us about four fundamental handwriting skills. Plus, she shares her top instructional secrets—from using cursive to help students struggling with print to why Kindergarteners should “talk to their pencils.”

Related resources:

• How to Teach Handwriting—and Why It Matters
• The Power of Multimodal Learning (in 5 Charts)
• Neuroscientists Say Don’t Write Off Handwriting
• The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2025
• Research: The Impact of Handwriting and Typing Practice in Children’s Letter and Word Learning: Implications for Literacy Development (2025)
• Research: Handwriting But Not Typewriting Leads to Widespread Brain Connectivity: A High-Density EEG Study with Implications for the Classroom (2024)
• Research: The Importance of Cursive Handwriting Over Typewriting for Learning in the Classroom: A High-Density EEG Study of 12-Year-Old Children and Young Adults (2020)
• Research: The Effects of Handwriting Experience on Functional Brain Development in Pre-literate Children (2012)
• Ghost Games (2022)