Teach Different

What's the best way to use questions? Not all questions are the same. Some challenge authority, break rules and send people down new pathways of thinking. Other questions take the safer road and are designed to gather new information. Regardless of how they are used, questions are the heart of student engagement. The more questions our students ask, the bettter critical thinkers they become. Join...

What does it take to be a good leader? Sometimes leadership means control and enforcement of rules. The leader must demand compliance from followers. At other times leaders must empower their people to be the best at what they do. In this way, leaders become helpers who put their own needs behind their followers for the betterment of the organization. Knowing when to embrace each of these roles at...

What is the mark of an educated mind?  When we hear a new idea, our first instinct is to accept the idea without question, either because we have intuition that it is true or we simply trust the messenger. Accepting truth in this way is comforting for it requires very little work and gives us permission to stop thinking. It's also dangerous. Sometimes new ideas must be met with delay and smar...

Should we tell the truth? Everybody hates to be lied to. When that happens, we feel anger and dissapointment. There is a sense of betrayal, a loss of trust, and enemies are created. But, there is another kind of hate we feel when somebody tells us the truth, especially when it is a truth that we don't want to hear. It's that feeling we get when a teacher calls us out for not trying our best, or wh...

Do we have control over our own success?   There are few things more frustrating than having to wait for other people to decide your future, whether it be waiting for college admission, that lead role in the play, or making the baseball team. In all of these cases, somebody else has control over your future. Rather than live a life of waiting for the approval of others (which may never come),...

How should you show confidence? The only thing worse than being afraid is for others to see you that way. Fear diminishes a person's ability to lead others. It causes hesitantcy, doubt, and an inability to make decisions when they matter most. Courage, on the other hand, inspires the opposite - faith, hope and an unbreakable will to overcome setbacks. But, maybe revealing our fears and being vulne...

Should we strive for success? We often think of success in life as being tied up with the external rewards we get like money, fame or power. Life is viewed as a race to achieve these rewards. But, maybe we are running the wrong race. Maybe we should pursue more internal rewards, like being a good person and doing the right thing. Aligning our life to the pursuit of moral values may not give us ric...

What is needed to change the world? Most agree that you can't change much in the world if you don't have the knowledge of what needs to be changed. With education comes understanding, perspective and a keen awareness of how to bring change into reality. Education is a powerful weapon indeed. But action in the form of protest and self-advocacy are also vital tools to effect change, and they don't r...

How should we act when we are angry? Anger is one of those emotions that we say is inherently dangerous and unpredictable. When we're angry, we are told to walk away or breathe to allow the intense feelings to pass. Yet, sometimes getting angry is actually a wise strategy, especially if we feel that we or our loved ones are in danger. Quick action is the better remedy. Our students should learn ho...

How do you know when you should stand up for yourself? Children are taught from a young age that when they want something they should wait their turn until they are granted permission. Waiting cultivates patience. It shows good manners. This attitude works in some settings but when it comes to gaining respect from others, the whole idea of waiting becomes burdensome and futile, especially when oth...

Does power reveal our true character? Being a good person is hard enough. It's even harder when we occupy positions of authority. Authority gives us leeway to deal with others in whatever way we want, and carry through with punishments of our design. How we execute our power reveals our true values, because we have the power to choose otherwise. Yet, adversity and hardship test our values too, and...

Can our imagination make us happy? Happiness is something that everyone wants. Sometimes, though, our imaginations create anxiety and actually prevent us from experiencing happiness. We make things worse than they actually are because of what we create in our minds. Yet, at other times, it is our actual experiences that create our suffering and our imaginations play no role. The power of the imagi...

Do you need to fail to learn? From a young age we are taught the value of learning from our mistakes. The logic goes something like this, when we make mistakes we see opportunities for improvement and learning. Failure makes us wise. Yet, we also learn through our successes. It is through them that we discover what we did right and what we should continue to do next time. Failure and success are b...

How do we know when the cautious approach is the right one? Students sometimes rush into decision-making without forethought. They do it with term papers, for class projects, and even in their relationships. This approach may cause more heartache and work in the long run. There is much to be said about careful, slow planning to avoid mistakes, but there's also an inherent danger in taking the caut...

How do you know when hard work is worth it? Students are always being told to do their best and that there is intrinsic value to putting in a hard day of work, regardless of whether they achieve what they set out to do. Students are also expected to achieve results from their work. After all, there seems to be little value in working so hard if goals aren't met in the end. All students must balanc...

How do we know when self-discipline is in our best interest? Self-discipline is hard for students. It requires that they shut out distractions, develop routines and exercise impulse control. Authority figures tell students that self-discipline is worth it, that at the end of the day their work will be rewarded. But it doesn’t feel that way sometimes because the pay off is way down the road. Join S...

Is failure necessary for success? Student success is often determined by achievements, like getting a job, acing a test, or winning a competition. Failure is seen as the opposite of success, and something to avoid at all costs. What if failure is necessary for success? Is it possible that without failure we can't achieve greatness? The relationship between success and failure is a complicated one...

Should you ever use anger to solve problems? Students must learn how to solve all kinds of problems. Some problems are academic; others are emotional. Perhaps the hardest problems involve communication and the navigation of complex human relationships. What makes these types of problems even more difficult is that anger often intervenes. Anger is a wild variable that can either diminish or enhance...

How do you know when you should change your values? Of the many elements of a strong character, none is more important than a person having a strong system of values. A person who has strong values stands for something, has a stable guide for behavior, and prevents him/herself from being taken advantage of. But, if a person is too rigid in their values, then that person becomes resistant to new id...

How do we know when to give up on change? We're always telling children that it's important not to complain about things and that it's always better to be part of the solution, rather than the problem. If you don't like your situation, then change it. We also tell children that it's important to know when you can't change things and to accept the world the way it is. In those situations it is our...

What’s the best way to lead a happy life? When kids talk about strategies for living a happy life, they often talk about goals, like getting a great job or becoming famous. If they reach that goal, then that's clear evidence of success and deep satisfaction for having pursued something to completion. But, what about the relationships we build? They also shape our happiness in a meaningful way. Sor...

Can we decide to be free? Freedom is an often used yet really complex concept. Many consider freedom something that is granted to them, something they don't have to work for. Others see freedom as something denied, and something that must be fought for. These different conceptions of freedom spring from different life experiences which are in turn shaped by a person's gender, race, and ethnicity....

What makes one person more powerful than another? We constantly compare ourselves to others, often concluding that they have it much better than we do. We spend much of life idolizing people, and in the process, give them power over us. Yet, what's lost here is the stark truth that other people have just as many insecurities and problems as we do and we probably would do better to focus on ourselv...

What is the best way to overcome your enemies? Enemies have a way of bringing out the worst in us. They make us act and think in mean ways. When we mimic the behaviors of our enemies we get revenge on them and feel a fleeting sense of accomplishment. But, maybe resisting anger is a better way to respond. That way we maintain self-control and draw attention to our enemies' negative behavior, and in...

Is fighting the best way to get what you want? Conflict consumes people of all ages. What makes conflict so taxing is the uncertainty in knowing how to deal with it in healthy ways. The simplest way to think about resolving conflict with other people is to choose domination through force and confrontation and, in dramatic cases, violence. That action carries dramatic consequences. Then, there's th...