Mr Dewick

"Great men are forged in the fire. It is the privilege of lesser men to light the flame" - The War Doctor

[Mr Dewick @MrLDewick]

“The practice of adults expressing their ideas through fabricated quotes of their children is not only misleading, but also indicative of their lack of self confidence in their own ability to form critical thought” - Ezra, my son, age 8 months

[Thomas Nicewicz @tnicewicz]

Conscious Math
Part 1: The Mathematics of Consciousness

[Educator Supe @ShakinthatChalk]

The doorman fallacy.

Reminds me of teaching regarding the invisibility of the role expert veteran teacher play.

One headteacher on this platform sees it as extra salary for doing the same job.

An experienced ‘old salt’ brings more to the table than teaching.

[Tom Sherrington @teacherhead]

Five issues to address with routine classroom practice. https://t.co/Xfli5E32Xj via @teacherhead

[James Fitzgibbon @mrfitzhist]

We have big A Level numbers which is great but the mark load is HUGE. Whole class feedback sheets have been a game changer. Specific feedback strengths and weaknesses numbered for students, SPAG noted, highlighted mark scheme descriptors and specific reflection. #historyteacher

[Research Schools Network @rs_network]

Feedback is the engine room of adaptive teaching.

It’s not the mini whiteboard check that makes the difference - it’s what teachers do next.

Corinne Settle explores how in-the-moment decisions move learning forward.

Read 👇https://t.co/rkKzXm3bdO

#AdaptiveTeaching #Feedback

[Ashley Booth @MrBoothY6]

If you have teaching students, or ECTS & perhaps new mentors (or no brain space to think about setting targets), I made a bank of example targets linking to the teachers standards that might be useful. Obviously part 2 would only be used for concerns.

https://t.co/ETIUDPpTva

[Darren Leslie @dnleslie]

Direct Instruction is transformative. I taught Corrective Mathematics to a cohort in Scotland and every single pupil made at least four years of progress in just 6–7 months.

Laura’s Knowledge Building for Teachers is full of brilliant DI resources, insights and practical guidance. If you care about effective teaching, subscribe: you won’t regret it.

https://t.co/sz1V3g2u34

[Katharine Birbalsingh @Miss_Snuffy]

Sweat the small stuff.

Same in the classroom.

Same across a school.

Same with your kids at home.

That’s leadership.

That’s what success looks like. 👍

[Darren Leslie @dnleslie]

Active Observation transforms classrooms. Too many lessons are taught from behind a desk. When you get up and move, everything changes. Circulate with purpose, carry a model answer on a clipboard, spot who needs reteaching, and identify the work worth show-calling. It’s one of the simplest ways to raise attainment in real time and support every pupil in the room.

[Doug Lemov @Doug_Lemov]

Everyday classroom magic happens when you combine Cold Call and Wait Time....

https://t.co/FYYFuEta3b

[Adam Grant @AdamMGrant]

It's time to remove laptops from classrooms.

24 experiments: Students learn more and get better grades after taking notes by hand than typing. It's not just because they're less distracted—writing enables deeper processing and more images.

The pen is mightier than the keyboard.

[Darren Leslie @dnleslie]

Modelling only works when the teacher exposes the invisible cognitive steps that novices cannot yet take. The research on cognitive apprenticeship shows that experts must make their thinking public. Slowing down, narrating decisions and showing the process removes ambiguity.

Which part of today’s lesson needs a more deliberate, explicit model?

[Darren Leslie @dnleslie]

The I–We–You model works because it matches how the brain actually learns.

I → reduces cognitive load with clear modelling
We → builds strong mental models through guided practice
You → only then do students work independently with confidence

It’s not hand-holding. It’s cognitive science: novices need clarity before autonomy.

When we get the sequence right, students don’t just “get it” - they own it.

[SoL in the Wild @SoLInTheWild]

If a new teacher comes within your sphere of influence and they want to know the “secret” to great teaching, show them this clip and give them a copy of Rosenshine’s principles of instruction to read. That’s it. Start there and build your procedures and routines accordingly.

[Ms. Sam @SciInTheMaking]

It can be really challenging to teach students that are grade-levels behind. A few weeks ago, I discussed how important it is to ensure that students have mastered the foundational skills necessary to understand the day’s lesson. And a common concern came up… 🧵⬇️

[Wokal Distance @wokal_distance]

I despise the Groyper movement, but if you want to understand where Fuentes gets purchase with young men I will tell you how it happened by telling you about my experience at the orientation night when my son joined elementary school band:

My 11 year old son son joined the elementary school band, and so I went to the parents orientation night which was held at a local high-school. As the night went on it became obvious to me why young men rage against the larger social system.

The classrooms were inundated with DEI messages and trans pride flags. On the walls there were posters, stickers and various decorations that all invoked the various totems if diversity. Black lives matter messaging, decolonization messaging, LGBTQ+ messaging, and basically ever sort of race and gender social justice messaging you can imagine was present. The advertisements for post secondary opportunities featured social justice education prominently, including advertising a course on indigenous ways of knowing" as something grade 12 students should pursue upon graduation. Many of the teachers has "this is a safe space" sticker son their doors, and others had variations of "in this house" messaging on their doors or on the walls of the classroom.

The entire aesthetic which dominated the decoration of classrooms was the progressive leftist coded "in this house" and "be kind" aesthetic. As soon as you walked into a classroom there was no doubt as the the political leanings of whichever teacher occupied that classroom. The only way I can describe it is to say that progressive social justice activists have colonized the school and marked their territory.

A woman in a mask (who was in charge) got up and read a number of land acknowledgements before acknowledging the contribution of indigenous people to ways of knowing. Standard leftist land acknowledgement boilerplate. Additionally, every interaction was done in the style of HR style professionalism mixed with progressive leftist coded gentle parenting.

When it comes to how the teachers behaved I am going to draw on both that night and the other times I have been at my sons school in order to explain it. To begin, the boys are treated almost as though they are defective girls. The feminine modes of interaction and socialization are treated as though they are the only legitimate modes of interaction and serve as the taken for granted way to properly interact and navigate the world. Almost all the authority figures at my sons school are women with almost no exceptions. One day my son found out that the school had hired a single male education Assistant, and my son came home and told me, in wondrous amazement, that he saw a "boy teacher" at school. The level of wonderment and surprise he expressed was on par with what I would expect if he had walked into school and seen a triceratops walking the hallways.

My son often comes home from school and expresses utter frustration at the fact that his preferred way of communicating, as well as the things that are aligned with his temperament are treated as though they were somehow inferior. As he is 11 (and being assessed for autism) he lacks the correct technical language to describe this, so it generally shows up as him getting in trouble for being insufficiently "gentle" and "kind" in response to various passive aggressive power plays and instances of bullying carries out by his more socially developed (often) female peers.

To say that band night was feminine coded would be an understatement. It would be more accurate to say that feminized modes of behavior and communication were embedded in every single interaction. It was a totally alien environment for anyone who isn't well versed in navigating the social codes of progressive leftist institutional spaces. It was like the slogan "the future is female" was taken to be a command delivered from God Himself turned into an education program.

Now, I want you to imagine what it is like for an 11 year old boy to be saturated in that environment day after day. he is an alien in his own school who is treated essentially like a ticking time bomb who needs to be effectively managed rather than engaged with an taught, and he knows this is happening. It is hard to overstate the level of hostility towards boys that is floating around in the ambient culture of the school system. It isn’t so much that there is an explicit form of anti-male bigotry (although examples of that exist) it is more that there is an overall attitude of distaste for anything masculine and an utter indifference towards the interests, fortunes, and inner lives of young boys. The expectations, norms, rules, and standards of behavior cater to the sensibilities of girls and women.

This is the entire social system that a young boy goes through from when he is 6 years old all the way until he is graduated from university.

It’s an old trope on the right to say “imagine if the roles were reversed,” but that would be to miss the point. I know that many on the left will say that all of this is perfectly acceptable because of historical injustices and the pursuit of Social Justice. What I want to point out to you is how absurd the world must appear through the eyes of the average 11 year-old boy. He is basically told he has a host of social advantages (white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege, etc) that he has never experienced and will never benefit from, and this justifies the system which he is immersed in. And the worst part is, if young men point any of this out, the very people who are doing it will look them in the eye with a straight face and deny that any of this ever happened. Making matters worse these men begin to figure out that the institutions have been used to advance a leftist political agenda that scapegoated their group (young white men), and when they point this out everyone in authority calls them evil bigots.

And all this happens during their formative years.

Now, Imagine you are a young white male.

You graduate from the school system and are released into the world only to find that the feminine modes of socialization pushed on you are entirely unfit for purpose. That the social skills you were taught fail utterly in both the job markets young men tend towards (construction, engineering, building, landscaping, etc) and have no purchase in the dating market where highly agentic, masculine, wealthy men have a huge advantage over the passive, docile "nice boy." On top of that, imagine that a great deal of the job listings that you peruse make it clear that preference will be given to women and "diverse" candidates, and that the job interview itself is full of shibboleths, coded statements, and trap questions meant to elicit responses that allow the hiring party to exclude anyone who isn't sufficiently versed in and aligned with the priorities of the DEI/Woke/Social Justice paradigm.

On top of that, that if a you do get a job you will exposed to various sensitivity trainings, DEI trainings, and intersectionality workshops in which your group (straight white men) are repeatedly scapegoated as the source of all the worlds pathologies. Laid at your feet are patriarchy, colonialism, racism, sexism and a great number of other social evils for which you are taken to be complicit in and have a responsibility for fixing in virtue of being a white male.

While all this is going on a series of scandals (COVID, Men in womens' sports, trans kids, etc) reveal to you the degree to which the institutions that make up the society you live in have adopted an ideology that is actively hostile to you because you are a straight white male, and have been denying you opportunity while scapegoating you for all societies problems and treating you like you are a defective girl.

Once you understand this, the real question is not "why are some young men radicalizing?" the real question is "why are there any young men at all who have not been radicalized?"

None of this is to excuse any of the extremist radicals who are attempting to harness the resentment and anger of young men for their evil purposes. The point is to get you to understand why young men will attach themselves to any voice who is willing to stridently call for the obliteration of the social system and ideology which lied to them during their formative years and is currently doing things which rob them of opportunities for advancement and success.

The institutions have totally blown their credibility with young men, and have completely destroyed young men's trust in institutions. Young men view the current set of social institutions as ideologically corrupt and totally illegitimate, and they view the narratives that emerge from those institutions as being expressions of as nothing more then a story told to legitimize an ideology which seeks to hold them back. As such, the institutions and their narratives have absolutely no normative pull on young Gen Z men.

I am not saying the situation is hopeless, but unless you acknowledge what I have laid out here, and engage in a good faith attempt to understand what the school system, Universities, non-profits, HR departments, and other civic institutions have done to young men, you will never be able to gain their trust enough to lead them away from guys like Nick Fuentes, Andrew Tate, Andrew Torba, and other pathological influences.

/fin

[Robert Pondiscio @rpondiscio]

I’ve worked in the private sector most of my adult life; spent five years full-time in the classroom. Hardest job I’ve ever had *by far* and the highest stakes. The idea that you “only” work 182 days is nonsense. Done well and conscientiously, it’s all-consuming. And ass-kicking.

[Mark McCourt @EmathsUK]

Lots of people engaged with attempting to write new mathematics curricula at the moment.

A year ago, for a bit of fun, I wrote a new, full curriculum for mathematics covering early years to post 16.

If you're in the process of writing one, this might be useful...

[Dylan Wiliam @dylanwiliam]

Don't think I reposted this in 2019, so I am addressing this oversight now!