Author: Terry Heick

by Terry Heick Before the ideas, let me preface this by acknowledging that many of these–if not most–aren’t feasible in most classrooms and schools. I taught for years and tried to shoehorn ideas like this into my teaching, and it was rewarding but exhausting and ultimately resulted in my becoming a pariah in my own school/district. I didn’t intend on ‘not being a team player,’ but that’s exactly how ideas like these look to–well, to some people. I’ll leave it at that. (See also Teaching Disruptively.) Since I’m not going to explain how to accomplish these kinds of shifts (that’d…

by Terry Heick My biggest takeaway from college was learning what I didn’t know. So many passionate, crazy-smart people–teachers and students–that modeled learning and curiosity as I hadn’t seen it before. Entire courses on single ideas I wouldn’t have given a second thought without someone pointing it out for me. It was mind-boggling. In high school, my academic interactions were based almost entirely in trying to figure out what the teacher wanted, and then doing my best to give it. There was creativity and curiosity and rigor, but it was almost always obscured by my desire to ‘do well in school,’…

(Arguably) The Most Important Step Of The Writing Process by Terry Heick If you only teach your students one thing about writing, you could do worse than to teach them how to effectively pre-write. Of course, there’s more to it. The writing process is a sequence of objectives (also with a purpose of their own), each with its own application, utility, and nuance. Clarifying the purpose of a piece of writing–what it is intended to accomplish–is probably the beginning of most writing, whether an assignment in a classroom or something in the ‘real world.’ And it all starts with effective…

November 16, 2025 | Updated November 17, 2025 What’s the definition of a ‘good question’? We often say to one another, ‘That’s a good question,’ by which we usually mean, ‘I don’t know the answer’ or ‘I had not yet thought to ask that but it seems worth asking.’ We can begin to define a good question by taking a look at its opposite. A question can be ‘bad’ for a number of reasons. A question is only a strategy (for inquiry) and must therefore have a purpose or intention if we want to evaluate its quality. (I’ve wondered…

November 14, 2025 | Updated November 13, 2025 12 Common Reasons Students Don’t Read & What You Can Do About It by Terry Heick Why don’t students read more? Digital distractions? No books at home? Too much testing? Kim Kardashian? It depends on the student. It depends on illiteracy vs aliteracy. It depends on how you define reading (does reading long-winded character dialogues in Square Enix games count?) So below, I’ve gathered some of the most common reasons students don’t read and provided some ways you can begin to address that issue. 12 Common Reasons Students Don’t Read &…

The Things That Linger After They’ve Forgotten Everything You Taught by Terry Heick Learning has little to do with content. If we’re talking about learning as a personal manifestation of some kind–the two-way flow of referential schema in a fluid act of recognition and sense-making–then learning is something that happens completely inside the mind, and is its own kind of illusion. In education, we try to make this learning visible through assessment, observation, dialogue, and other cognitively jarring acts meant to shatter that privacy. But ultimately learning is about the learner themselves. Content never changes as a result of the…

Failure is a part of life, if for no other reason than the sheer number of attempts we make in our lives to do almost anything at all.We ‘do’ and we ‘try’ almost imperceptibly, but tend to notice when we fail rather than when we achieve. Growth mindset is more than believing you can improve — it’s a daily practice of resilience, curiosity, and humility. It’s about learning from mistakes, valuing effort, and seeing potential in progress rather than perfection. Below are 50 of the best quotes that capture this spirit across cultures, experiences, and time. by TeachThought Staff Failure…

by Terry Heick You care but it’s a tired cliche–limps out of your mouth, barely alive: “How was school?” You might use a slight variation like, “What’d you learn in school today?” but in a single sentence, all that is wrong with ‘school.’ First, the detachment–you literally have no idea what they’re learning or why. (You leave that up to school because that’s what school’s for, right?) This means you know very little about what your children are coming to understand about the world, only able to speak about it in vague terms of content areas (e.g., math, history). Then,…

contributed by Jean Miller, Ph.D. & Sharon Hastings, Ed.D, addendum by TeachThought Staff How about some mental health tips for teachers? Today, the role of teachers is expanding to include more duties and responsibilities than ever before, including building emotionally strong and healthy students. However, society often neglects to address or even discuss the mental and emotional well-being of teachers themselves. This neglect has led to two major issues – teacher burn-out and a lack of skilled teachers available as a result. See also 5 Mistakes I Made As A New Teacher Given their expanded duties, growing numbers of educators are…

by Terry Heick Critical reading is reading with the purpose of critical examination of the text and its ideas. To add a bit more to that definition, we might say, “Critical reading is reading with the purpose of critical examination of the text and its implicit and explicit themes and ideas.” What is Critical Reading? To expand on the simple definition above, critical reading is the close, careful reading of a text to understand it fully and assess its merits. It is not simply a matter of skimming a text or reading for plot points; rather, critical reading requires that…