4 Proven Management Strategies to Dominate Your Classroom

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Control of your classroom is a priority.  However, it is easier said than done.  The following article will outline how to get, and keep control of your classroom using body language alone.

Your body language is the foundation of your instruction: confidence, authority, comfort, and compassion are all communicated from your actions.  Here is how you walk the walk by investigating first impressions, body language to control your behavior, mirror neurons, and The Halo Effect.

Teaching Strategies to Make Your Lesson Multisensory

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"Oh my god, I literally love the way this stores smells.  I literally have to go in" screams every teenager as they pass Abercrombie & Fitch.  A & F approaches sales like most retail stores do: using image, sex, and stereotypes.  However, they also take advantage of psychology and hack into the systems that control our behavior.

A & F uses a multisensory approach to make shopping an enjoyable experience.  Walk into an A & F store and you're bombarded with the typical good looking, stereotypical model.  I want to look like them, I'll buy the clothes.  But you are also side-slapped with an overwhelming fragrance and lung thumping music.

Why?  There is science behind it.  And further, there are implications for education.

5 New Teaching Techniques To Make Your Lesson Antifragile

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As the characteristics of our learners change, teaching techniques must change too.  Below you'll learn new teaching techniques inspired by Nassim Taleb's newest book Antifragile.

My sister has fragile wrists.  At the age of eight, she fractured both of them at the same time.  Poor girl.  Later, because her wrist bones were weakened and more fragile by the initial breaks, she broke them again (at different times).

My sister's wrists would be the opposite of more fragile if after her initial breaks, they strengthened.  Being the opposite of fragile is antifragile.  Things that strengthen from stress and error are antifragile.

Today we salute Nassim Nicholas Taleb.  Taleb is not like the others.  The Pragmatic TV Teacher embraces unconventional ways to improve instruction.  For that reason we give Taleb a big ol' bear hug because he has a lot to teach teachers.

Antifragile is Taleb's most recent book and is a mind spinning mess worth your time.  Where as his other books had a refined focus, Antifragile is more of a wandering thought process.  For that reason, I found it more readable than his others.  It had more flavor and I felt more engaged.

Antifragile is about the complexities of life.  It defines how systems are strengthened through randomness, error, and uncertainty.  Let's apply his thoughts to education.

5 New Teaching Techniques To Make Your Lesson Antifragile is about strengthening your instruction by embracing the things that make us quesy: randomness, uncertainty, error, stress, and recovery.

5 Reasons Every Educator Should Read "On The Path To Equity"

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Young teachers want to leave teaching.  In short they (we), are overwhelmed.

"On The Path to Equity" is a powerful read for educators that addresses teacher attrition.  The subtitle, however, is misleading: "Improving The Effectiveness of Beginning Teachers."  Rather than best practices to promote the success of young teachers, the resource concerns itself with teacher attrition, the inequity of effective teacher distribution, and a Comprehensive Induction program aimed to help young teachers transition into the profession.

Every educator should read the resource for 5 reasons.

6 Ways To Lead Like A Stoic

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Leaders possess qualities that are difficult to define. Marcus Aurelius offers pragmatic leadership advice in Meditations. One of the most important and strait-forward pieces is found in Book 3.
(for more on Stoicism and leadership check out Shane Parrish at Farnam Street)

Aurelius writes:

" How to act: 

Never under compulsion, out of selfishness, without forethought, with misgivings. 

Don’t gussy up your thoughts. 

No surplus words or unnecessary actions. 

Let the spirit in you represent a man, an adult, a citizen, a Roman, a ruler. Taking up his post like a soldier and patiently awaiting his recall from life. Needing no oath or witness.

 Cheerfulness. Without requiring other people’s help. Or serenity supplied by others. 

To stand up straight—not straightened."

Aurelius gives us six important qualities of a leader.

To lead like a stoic, let's look at each phrase individually.