In results that didn’t surprise a single teacher in the United States, a new survey finds that we’re spending a fair amount of money each year to feed our students.

Here’s an excerpt from Education Week’s new article, Teachers Spend Hundreds of Dollars to Help Feed Students Who Are Hungry:

I’m adding it to The Best Data On How Much Money Teachers Pay Out Of Their Own Pocket – What Do You Spend?

The Benefits of Saying Nice Things About Your Colleagues is a new article in the Harvard Business Review that offers a lot of good advice about how we talk about, and to, our colleagues and our students.

Here’s an excerpt:

I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning How To Best Give Feedback To Students.

I’ve written three books and countless blog posts (see Best Posts On “Motivating” Students) about the importance of encouraging intrinsic motivation, and how the extrinsic kind will not get us what we want.

There are countless studies backing up this perspective, but researchers keep going back for more.

Today, The Washington Post wrote about another and headlined it They offered to pay people to go to the gym. Guess what happened?

Here’s an excerpt:

In The Best Posts & Articles About Asking Good Questions — Help Me Find More and in one of my books, I talk about a lesson I do with students to promote question-asking.  One part of it includes a class discussion about who they would rather go on a date with – someone who talks about his/herself a lot, or someone who shows interest in them by asking questions.  Everybody always chooses the latter.

A new study confirms this result.  It’s titled “It Doesn’t Hurt to Ask: Question-Asking Increases Liking.” (you can also read a summary at The Science of Us).

Here’s an excerpt:

Just one more good piece of information to include in my lesson…

Learning The Language over at Education Week has just posted about a new study on grit and English Language Learners.

Here’s an excerpt from their summary of the research:

The study itself, Individual Versus Peer Grit: Influence on Later Individual Literacy Achievement of Dual Language Learners, is NOT behind a paywall.

I have several concerns about the research, including issues about accurately measuring peer behavior on individual students (see the Brookings Report The problem with measuring effects of delinquent peers in education—and how to get around it and the fact that this study uses student self-report to make its determinations (see Brookings Report The Limitations of Self-Report Measures of Non-cognitive Skills).

Nevertheless, I will certainly be telling my English Language Learner students about the results of this study (along with saying, as I do most of the time that I share research summaries, that there’s not a guarantee of accuracy). Basically, it seems to me to mean that if everybody in the class works hard, then individual achievement increases more for everybody. Even people who would ordinarily work hard learn more if everybody else works hard, too.

Its conclusions support the big push I started late last year about how everyone’s actions not only affect themselves, but others (see “Everyone Is A Teacher” Is A New Engagement Strategy I’m Using & It Seems To Be Working).

In June, a study was published finding that thinking of our impact on others can have a major impact on strengthening our motivation to complete a task (see Intriguing Research On How To Increase Intrinsic Motivation).  That finding reinforces that effort, which I began in April.

And, just last week another study came out with the same theme related to classroom management (see Focusing On The Impact Classroom Disruptions Have On Others, Not On The Students Doing The Disrupting).

This new grit study is “icing on the cake.” I’m looking forward to putting it all together in one lesson for the fall. Of course, I will share what I do and its results in a future post.

I’m going to add this info to The Best Resources For Learning About The Importance Of “Grit”