Positivity and the “Lost Year” of Education: Interview with Kim Morton

As we settle into our “new normal,” returning to in-person instruction, there is some lingering anxiety over what it will take to recover from the past school year and what disruptions might await us in the year ahead. Kim Morton is an elementary school principal at the Leadership Academy in Vista Unified School District, in […]

Students Must Wish to Be in School: Interview with Carlos Nascimento Jr.

One way Carlos Nascimento Jr., coordinator of grades 4-9 at the Concept School in Brazil, got through the challenging 2020-21 school year was by leveraging the Habits of Mind. “The Habits of Mind were very powerful during the pandemic,” Nascimento told Allison Zmuda during an interview, “because it helped us to bring students to the […]

4 Practical Examples Of How To Grow Self-Direction In Your Students

In the previous post, we outlined the three selfies — self-managing, self-monitoring, and self-modifying — to develop requisite behaviors for self-directed learning. Let’s now take a look at a few examples. Each example has a short description as well as annotated commentary on its connection to 16 Habits of Mind and 4 Attributes of Personalized Learning. Example […]

How To Encourage Self-Directed Practices In Our Students

Many teachers are desperate to see the active sense-making when students feel more ownership and responsibility for their learning. How might we move students from needing to be spoon-fed to developing their capacity to become more self-directed? It starts with a candid reflection on what you are seeing in their behaviors and actions and how […]