Category: Motivation
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Stepping Off Our Stress Box
There’s no question that today’s young adults are feeling intense levels of stress. 31% of all teens report feeling overwhelmed, depressed or sad as a result of stress 36% of teens report fatigue or feeling tired 23% report skipping a meal due to stress 2x as many students report their stress is getting worse compared…
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A Call to Help Students Find Purpose
The simplified story is that one of my students cried after I made her pick up garbage for a day. The real story goes more like this: Each trimester, I take my students on a service learning field trip. We spend a morning volunteering at a local homeless shelter. In the afternoon, students pick up…
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Free eBook: G Words – 20 Strategies for Fostering Grit and Growth Mindset
Hi all, After months of drafting, adding, and re-writing, I’ve finally finished a collection of strategies I’ve used to help cultivate grit and growth mindset in thousands of students. This beefy 60 pager is free for anyone, no strings attached. Just click on the link below (or the “free ebook” menu option). Below the image is…
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Empowering Students to Change the World
It’s a bittersweet snow day today. It’s sweet because . . . well because it’s a snow day. It’s bitter though because my Positive Psychology class’s planned service field trip will have to be cancelled. Empowering students to value altruism is central to my philosophy of education, so to help overcome this snow day bummer, I thought I…
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[VIDEO] Is Teaching Worth It?
For all the great educators I’ve met, including those who are soon to lend their passion and talents to the field. Please share this with an educator you know! Huge gratitude to Kevin Romeo, Daniel Juan Martinez and the whole RHINO MEDIA PRODUCTIONS team, as my student volunteers.
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Why I have faith in American educators: I see America teaching
Traveling always strengthens and reaffirms my faith in teachers across America. Read on for a reflection I wrote for WeAreTeachers during a recent stint to work with a small village in Alaska. For years I’ve been teaching. For these same years I’ve been exposed to conversations about teachers in America. Each day I hear people talk about what…
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To Make Change This School Year, It’s All About the Benjamins
Some critics of education quip that teachers need to change, as if we don’t face change on a weekly, a daily, a minute-to-minute basis. Think about all the changes you were expected to make in just the last year of your teaching. Ten. That’s the number – a conservative estimate – of changes we faced as a…
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What Kills Student Motivation? We Asked Them.
“What are your thoughts on student motivation?” my principal recently asked. Knowing that I have an interest in motivation, as well as a love of working with at-risk students, he wanted to know my thoughts on why our achievement gap wasn’t narrowing. As a teacher, I of course had many thoughts. But, the many thoughts…
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A Graduation that Taught Me About Student Resilience
My favorite event of the school year is graduation. But it’s not the graduation you are picturing. I love the graduation ceremony of our local alternative high school, the kind of school at which many teachers scoff. You know the one: filled with the “problems” and misfits that weren’t smart enough, motivated enough, good enough…
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7 Ninja Moves for Increasing Academic Risk-Taking
We sometimes find ourselves in a culture of product-based praise. The A’s, the high test scores, the right answers: These are our educational celebrities. But we lose sight of the process, the effort, the risk it takes learners to achieve those great scores and grade point averages. In doing so, the message is sent: The product is…
Chase Mielke 