I learned something in my conversation with Bee Wilson (food writer and journalist for The Guardian), that I can't stop thinking about. She's developed sensory food education in classrooms across the UK, and she’s finding that many kids have completely lost their connection to real food. When Bee asks children where food comes from, they used to say "the supermarket." Now they say "mommy's iPad." That’s a profound shift: it indicates multiple layers of removal from the origins of what we eat....
11 days ago • 4 min read
The other day, I picked up my phone to check the time. Just the time. And twenty minutes later, I was still standing in my kitchen, having bounced from app to app through a chain of perfectly legitimate tasks that I never actually chose to do in that moment. I wasn't scrolling mindlessly. I was checking my steps, signing up for a yoga class, responding to my husband's text, following up on a bank alert. And I still lost the thread of my own day. That's what makes our relationship with phones...
18 days ago • 4 min read
You're in the final stretch of the school year, and I’m guessing you can feel every single one of those 180 days in your neck and shoulders. You can't remember the last time your mind was actually quiet or you could complete a thought or task without interruption. Every decision has been routed through what some child needs, what a parent needs, what an admin needs, or what your own family needs when you finally get home. You’ve been holding it together with caffeine and adrenaline, but your...
25 days ago • 5 min read
We’re heading into the final weeks of school in the United States, with some teachers having just another week or so left, and others (like us in New York) with another 5 or 6 weeks to go. But I think it’s safe to say ALL of us are mentally prepping–if not yet physically prepping–for the end-of-school-year classroom closeout process. There’s a LOT for teachers to do this time of year…and not necessarily a lot for students to do. That’s a problem. Kids know right away when we’ve given them...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
If you’re feeling unmotivated right now—whether it’s in your teaching, your personal life, or even just in getting through the day—you’re not alone. And I want you to know: it’s okay to feel this way. We often treat motivation like it’s the secret sauce for getting things done, as if it’s something we can just summon when we need it most. But here’s the truth: motivation is unpredictable. Some days, it shows up effortlessly. Other days, it’s nowhere to be found. So, what do you do on those...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Megan Faherty has nearly 20 years of classroom experience at the secondary level. After years of struggling to stay on top of assessment, she made some transformative mindset shifts, and wrote about them for our Truth for Teachers writers collective. She shares: I used to procrastinate on grading anything until there was a deadline (like the end of a grading period or approaching parent conferences). Then I had to sort through my grading folders to list everything I had to grade – and those...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
I spent most of my teaching career thinking my job was to get information into kids' heads. And when students couldn't focus or were fidgety or seemed emotionally dysregulated, I thought the solution was better classroom management or clearer expectations and more inclusive accommodations. I never once thought, "Maybe their bodies are trying to tell them something." Recently I talked with Caroline Williams, a science journalist who's spent years researching the mind-body connection, and the...
2 months ago • 3 min read
As a teacher, I had to be at work at 7:30 a.m. The kids arrived at 7:45 a.m. And if you're like me, you are not realllllllly at your best first thing after waking. Compound that issue with the switch to daylight savings in spring, and you're suddenly going to work in the dark again? No thank you. I would set my alarm for the latest possible second, and then rush around trying to make sure I wasn’t late. Any unexpected interruption or disruption became a big problem. Because I left myself no...
3 months ago • 3 min read
In November, I launched what's probably the most innovative and powerful resource I've ever attempted to create. It was also the most personal thing I've ever created, because I built it for people like me. Motivation Lab is a coaching app designed around neuroscience and powered by AI, to help you stop fighting against your brain and work with your natural tendencies for getting stuff done. To my delight, over the past few months, hundreds of people have been trying the app out, and the...
3 months ago • 3 min read