Began the day by thinking about two questions:

if you believe that school is like real life, what traps do you run into?

if you believe that school is not like real life, what traps do you run into?

There were a number of great student responses (see below).

Two issues I like focusing on:

If you believe that school is like real life, how do you help students work in ways that emulate historians or playwrights or craftsmen? They aren’t experts (yet) and you can’t demand that they work to those standards. Scaffolding the work so that students can be successful as they travel towards expertise is a critical part of the teaching process.

If you believe that school is not real life, then you believe that people have an on-off switch, as if they can make a choice when they feel like it. I’ve written a lot about this (link) — it’s a natural state of adolescence — but it’s an idea that I try and approach with kids as often as possible. If you never go all-in on something, it’s hard to know what that feels like.