Some cool teaching articles

• Chronicle Vitae: Are you assigning too much reading? Or just too much boring reading? This piece argues we should assign students readings that are fun and easily accessible. A short piece in journals like Smithsonian Magazine are more effective and engaging than a long, jargon-filled academic article, so students are more likely to actually complete the readings.
• Chronotope: How should students revise? A brief guide This piece provides study tools about how to encourage better memories and improved knowledge.
• Aeon: Schools love the idea of the growth mindset but does it help students learn? This thoughtful piece examines research on the effects of trying to use the growth mindset in schools. It argues that, in practice, the growth mindset is often misapplied, misunderstood, or over emphasized at the expensive of recognizing other factors like innate intelligences, learning differences, socio-economic status, and students’ actual work. Rather than convincing students that their brains are elastic and hoping for the best, the article argues for purposeful practice and praising the success after hard work (that will then convince students to have a growth mindset).
• Chronicle Vitae: How do we convince students that easier is not always better – what feels better and what helps us learn better do not always align
• The Atlantic: Teaching: Just like Performing Magic Penn, from Penn and Teller, explains how making your class entertaining and slightly uncomfortable for students can be good for them.
• Chronicle Vitae: What is ‘indoctrination’ and how do we avoid it? This piece responds to the idea that universities indoctrinate their students. It argues that, in order to prevent close-minded, intellectually servile students (i.e. indoctrinated students), we should model open-mindedness, acknowledge our own mistakes, and encourage students to follow arguments most in line with the evidence.
• Chronicle Vitae: Yes, we should teach character This piece says that an emphasis on grit as character development is too simplistic and can fall into old classist or racist stereotypes. Instead, we should focus on teaching students intellectual virtues: curiosity, intellectual humility, intellectual autonomy, attentiveness, intellectual carefulness, intellectual thoroughness, open-mindedness, intellectual courage, and intellectual tenacity. It also provides links to Jason Baehr’s articles and publications with suggestions about how to so.
• Chronicle Vitae: How I learned to stop worrying and trust students This piece argues that trust between you and your students helps everyone grow and benefits everyone. It lists many things that help encourage a culture of trust.
• EdSurge: Want to set students up for success? Make room for vulnerability A student’s reflection on the benefits of vulnerability, open-mindedness, empathy, and feedback for the learning process, especially with design-based learning.
• EdSurge: 4 tech-free ways to personalize learning This piece discuses building community and fostering the individual while encouraging learning.
• ChronicleVitae: How to help a student in a mental health crisis Even though we are not mental health professionals, we see our students daily and can follow these three steps to make sure hey get the help they need: notice, ask, refer.
• National Association of Independent Schools: Independent School Health Check Examines Teen Support Systems
• EdSurge: What is missing in edtech? Character education This post discusses how character education is different from learning a topic, like the history of Rome; and it advertises a podcast about how we can teach things like honesty, motivation, forgiveness.
• Chronotope: ‘Four Quarters Marking:’ A Workload Solution This article suggests that most of the feedback teachers give is unsuccessful at helping students improve. Much of it says what’s wrong and not enough about how to improve. The article suggests only grading part of the students’ work, having students grade their own and their peers’ work, and sharing good examples of essays or similar tasks with students so they have models to emulate. (cf. SE2R Narrative feedback method)
• Emily Style, “Curriculum as Windows and Mirrors” A nice piece on how students should have windows into the experiences of other peoples, and their own life experiences should be mirrored into the curriculum.  This should create empathy, acceptance, and a sense of affirmation.
• Carter Goodwin Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro
• The Atlantic: The problem with ‘Hey Guys’
• Greater Good Magazine: Why telling our story is so powerful for black Americans
• Chronicle Vitae: The ‘Realistic’ Research Paper – how to make papers more meaningful to students
• Chronicle Vitae: Dear New Instructor: It’s not all on you – on how students should feel a sense of community among themselves in order to learn and participate more
• Chronicle Vitae: All in favor of quitting? – a meditation on the positive attributes of quitting in general, and in terms of leaving academia
• EdSurge: What If Students Are the Biggest Barrier to Innovation?
• EdSurge: Stop Calling College Teachers ‘Professors.’ Try ‘Cognitive Coaches,” Says Goucher President – thoughts on where to go after the ‘sage on stage’ model of teaching
• Inside Higher Ed: Fear of Looking Stupid – A summary of anthropologist Lauren Herckis’s research on why teachers do not implement new teaching practices
• Inside Higher Ed: The Necessity of Looking Stupid – John Warner’s response to the previous article
• e-Literate: Fear itself – Lauren Herckis expands on and clarifies the thoughts in the Inside Higher Ed summary of her works
• Chronicle Vitae: Your syllabus doesn’t have to look like a contract
• Mindshift: How to ensure students are engaged and not just compliant
• EdSurge: The Value of Modern Social Studies in Cultivating Real world literacy
• Education Week: Formative Assessment: The right question at the right time This piece talks about how to better assess your students’ recall of recently taught knowledge at the beginning of a lesson.
• Catlin Tucker: Thesis statement throwdown
• Chronicle Vitae: ISO a better method to evaluate student participation The idea: a participation log submitted by students and checked against your own memory and/or records
• Chronicle Vitae: On Confidence – how confidence and competence are not always in sync, and what that may mean for your emotional well-being and work
• Chronicle Vitae: Learning more about active learning – We need to understand the reasons active learning is more successful than lecture in classes taught by education researchers.
• Chronicle Vitae: Is it ever ok to lecture?
• Chronicle Vitae: Why grades still matter in defense against grade inflation and easy
• Chronicle Vitae: What is the purpose of final exams anyways

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