Welcome to an education blog dedicated to helping us connect to kids, and to all learners.

We all want kids to learn and to feel inspired. Ask them and they'll tell you: the surefire way to make elevated learning happen is to forge a meaningful human connection with them. Before we can address concepts such as math anxiety or other behavioral/learning/technological challenges we face, our foremost job is to connect to students as people. Then we all flourish.

These posts take a lot of time and effort to produce, thus they are not the most frequent in the history of blog-land. To receive new posts privately and securely to your email as soon as they're live, you're invited to join our mailing list at the bottom of the page. Enjoy!

Morsels of Inspired Instruction – On Praise

Robert Ahdoot

Feb 26, 2016
4 min

Morsels of Inspired Instruction – On Praise

(Singular, bite-sized morsels of inspired education strategies that aim to be juicy, yet easily digestible pieces of teaching wisdom. I have always believed that the supreme way to establish inspired learning comes from the strong human bonds educators create with their students. What follows is a menu of ideas to help you usher in those connections. Enjoy. This piece was picked up by ASCD Smartbrief Education.) On Praise. For some educational and parental context, please fir

473 views0 comments

Morsels of Inspired Instruction – Sarcasm RULES

Robert Ahdoot

Jan 25, 2016
3 min

Morsels of Inspired Instruction – Sarcasm RULES

(Singular, bite-sized morsels of inspired education strategies that aim to be juicy, yet easily digestible pieces of teaching wisdom. I have always believed that the supreme way to establish inspired learning comes from the strong human bonds educators create with their students. What follows is a menu of ideas to help you usher in those connections. Enjoy. This piece was picked up by ASCD Smartbrief Education.) Sarcasm RULES. As in, it doesn’t.Last week in all my classes, I

85 views0 comments

Morsels of Inspired Instruction – Silence is Golden

Robert Ahdoot

Nov 22, 2015
3 min

Morsels of Inspired Instruction – Silence is Golden

(A tasty morsel of ideas in line with Yay Math’s debut published book, on the art of inspired and effective individualized instruction, coming in January 2016.) Renowned educator and prolific author Parker Palmer, in his book, To Know As We Are Known, writes of a fascinating way a history teacher created the space for students to take ownership of their learning: “At the first class, the teacher gave a detailed lecture. At the end of that session, with the students bending un

61 views0 comments

Morsels of Inspired Instruction – "Let me" vs "May I?"

Robert Ahdoot

Nov 5, 2015
2 min

Morsels of Inspired Instruction – "Let me" vs "May I?"

(A tasty morsel of ideas in line with Yay Math’s debut published book, on the art of inspired and effective individualized instruction, coming in January 2016.) Any given educational exchange entails an exploration into power. Power, as in, is the teacher “in control” as the “authority” within the exchange? Yes, I used air-quotes to connote that what we traditionally know about power dynamics in the classroom is only somewhat correct. Master instructors improve upon this dyna

35 views0 comments