One of the hardest things that students go through are periods where they just want to give up. Throw in the towel. Buy an essay. Cheat on a test. Give up.

It's important to stick with it and continue to work hard. But you also have to be smart to deal with the challeng...

"What Did you put for number 9?"

It is so easy to get overwhelmed with stress AFTER you take a test. After all, many students rush to compare their answers with others, but if you do this, you know it’s a double edged sword. To begin with, it’s only reassuring when you...

Bottom-up learning is all about trial-and-error. What’s useful about that? Simple: feedback. Direct, meaningful, applicable feedback. Top-down learning is about theory or expert-mediated knowledge — often without feedback. What’s useful about that? Well, you don’t have...

This is a continuation of the previous post.

It should come as no surprise to scientists to find that many people, who have received poor science educations, should be pretty “skeptical” about some scientific conclusions or observations. After all, I have never seen a b...

Sometimes I feel there is nothing more misunderstood in education today than science.

And I don’t mean that too few kids are learning about atoms and electrons. More people are learning about science today than ever before. But even among science’s proponents, the purpo...

We all know that we change as we get older. But often times, we are happy to be blissfully unaware of where we have changed, until something happens to make us notice.

Sometimes we also fear change. We fear what we don’t know, and change, by definition, involves some un...

When I work with students as a tutor, I see that one of the things that people struggle with the most is learning to trust themselves.

The educational system is set up such that as a student, you have to look to your teacher, your grader, your evaluation to know whether...

(Repost from conversationswithduckie October 23, 2012)

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

I stumbled upon this quote from H. D. Thoreau almost 10 years ago and it instantly became one of my favorites.  Of course, this was mostly because I had a ten...