Malcolm Gladwell on Panicking and Choking: The Different Ways that Amateurs and Professionals Fail

Professionals, by definition, are more skilled than amateurs in any given field, but they both experience failure.  And to an average observer, they appear to fail in similar ways.   The practitioner is moving along nicely in carrying out his or her craft -- and then suddenly it all falls apart.  The golf ball flies off …

Schools Are at the Root of the Youth Mental Health Crisis

This post is an op-ed written by Deborah Malizia and me that was published on December 2 in the Mercury News.  Here's a link to the original.  It's about how the pressure for rigor and high academic achievement in American schools has been damaging the mental health of students.  Another example of schooling's role in …

Nabokov on Student Exam Essays

This post is a piece by Vladimir Nabokov in response to answers that students wrote for the mid-term exam in his 1957 Cornell literature class.  It appeared in Times Literary Supplement last month with an introduction by Eric Naiman.  Here's a link to the original.   It's fun to imaging the great Russian writer grading undergraduate …

Sermon on Educational Research

This is a piece I published in 2012 in Bildungsgeschichte: International Journal for the Historiography of Education.  It draws on my experience over the years working with doctoral students in education.  The advice, basically, is to approach your apprenticeship in educational research doing the opposite of what everyone else tells you to do.  Hope you like it. Sermon on Educational …

Steven Mintz — Most Kids Find K-12 Education Boring and Stressful

This post is a lovely essay by Steven Mintz, which was published in January in Inside Higher Ed.  Here's a link to the original.  It connects with a piece I posted here a couple weeks earlier, looking at the way schools turn off students and what college might do to improve their own ability to engage …

The Truth about the Imposter Syndrome

This post is a piece from Harvard Magazine about a chronic state of mind that arises among undergrads at elite universities, the Imposter Syndrome. Here's a link to the original. The Imposter Syndrome is a chronic feature of student culture at elite universities.  At core, it's the creeping sensation that you're out of your depth, …

Philip Jackson — The Daily Grind

This post is a classic essay by Philip Jackson from his 1974 book, Life in Classrooms.  Here's a link to the original. To me, it's the best piece that has ever been written about "the daily grind" that students experience in elementary classrooms, which I often used in my classes.  It's all about the hidden …

Willard Waller on the Power Struggle between Teachers and Students

In 1932, Willard Waller published his classic book, The Sociology of Teaching.  For years I used a chapter from it ("The Teacher-Pupil Relationship") as a way to get students to think about the problem that most frightens rookie teachers and that continues to haunt even the most experienced practitioners:  how to gain and maintain control …