Some teaching practices are like well-worn paths through a garden.
You have walked them so often that your steps know where to go. Your students do too.
Maybe it's how you greet students at the door and the room settles because of it.
Maybe it's the way you transition to independent work and students know exactly what to do.
Maybe it's a question you ask during a lesson that gets students thinking every single time.
You keep using these practices for one simple reason: they work. You can see their impact. Students respond. The room shifts. Something clicks. They keep working, day after day.
What's working in your classroom is not random. There is something underneath it, a structure, a principle, a pattern, that research keeps pointing back to. When you know why it works, you start seeing the pattern which points you towards where to go next.
Last week, you saw the Teaching Structure (the four components that organize a complete learning block).
This week, I want you to look at your own day through that lens.
Next week, I’ll be sharing a webinar teaching the structure that makes effective teaching a reality in any subject, any grade level, and any class.
This week, I invite you to notice:
“Where in my teaching do I feel confident and clear? Which practices in my teaching have a well-worn path because I see their impact time and time again?
And then notice:
“Where do I feel uncertain? Where am I not sure what to do next, or whether what I'm doing is actually moving students forward?”
Your reflection this week will prepare you for the webinar. Where you’ll see where your strongest practices already live, and where one small shift at a time, rooted in research, will unlock even more for your teaching.
When you know why your best teaching works, you can do more of it on purpose.
See you soon,
Gail
P.S. The practices already working in your classroom are not random. Next Friday you'll see exactly where they live and what you can build from there.
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