Tra Hall

Most curriculum experts like to say they believe in fluency but interleaving is not what their products do. Rather, they have scope and sequences aligned over grades. This is not interleaving to ensure fluency, simply a progression of skills. Interleaving is the Gold! #nifdi

It’s time to go back to paper and pencil standardized testing, so the cart doesn’t drag the horse. Students learn better and test better on paper, period. #education #teachersoftiktok #edleadership #principalsoftiktok #testing

⚠️ POOR PROXIES FOR LEARNING! A new 6-part ⚗️DistillED series kicks off this week. Based on Professor Rob Coe's research, this series examines the classroom signals that look like evidence of learning — but don't guarantee it: busy students, engaged students, calm rooms, feedback given, a few hands up with the right answer. 📘 To go alongside the series I've put together this NEW Poor Proxies for Learning Playbook — a printed booklet bringing all six chapters together in one place. Six proxies. Six editions. Subscribe for free to stay updated: 👉 newsletter.jamieleeclark.com

Learning styles not proven by research!

This is a must read. It should be placed in every educators school mailbox tomorrow morning. I am honored to be included.

"She ate lunch alone for 730 days straight. What this 16-year-old built from that pain now protects millions of kids worldwide. Seventh grade. Natalie Hampton carried her tray through a packed cafeteria and felt it — that specific, suffocating dread of not knowing where to go. She'd already learned what happened when you approached the wrong table. The silence. The turned backs. The whispered laughter that followed you all the way to the empty table by the wall. The one everyone could see. The one that said: nobody wants her. For two full years — 730 consecutive lunches — that table was hers. Alone. The bullying went further than whispers. She was shoved into lockers. Four physical attacks in two weeks. She came home with scratches and bruises. When she finally reported it, school administrators sent her to counseling — to find out what she was doing wrong. The isolation grew so heavy she was hospitalized for anxiety. Then ninth grade came. A new school. And almost overnight — everything changed. Students welcomed her. She made friends within weeks. She finally knew what safe felt like. But she couldn't stop thinking about the kids still sitting at the wall table. Right now. Today. She remembered what she'd needed most during all those lunches. Not a teacher. Not a pamphlet. Just one person saying: "You can sit with us." So at 16 — with zero coding experience and "a lot of enthusiasm," as she put it — Natalie built exactly that. She called it Sit With Us. The idea was simple and genius: students sign up as "ambassadors," keeping their table open. Other kids privately browse available tables on their phones before ever walking into the cafeteria — and show up knowing they're already welcome. No public rejection. No moment of judgment. Just a guaranteed seat. Within 7 days of launching: 10,000 downloads. Then the world found her. NPR. The Washington Post. CBS News. Messages from Morocco, Australia, the Philippines, France — kids who'd been eating alone for years, finally finding a place to belong. Sit With Us now operates in 30 countries. "Even if it helps one person," Natalie said quietly, "it was worth building." She turned 730 lunches of loneliness into a lifeline for millions. That's not just survival. That's transformation." * Kindly Therapy

We need instructional design - no, instructional engineering - now more than ever educationrickshaw.com/2026/01/31/wha…

The importance of clearing Allostatic load throughout the day. The work habits of administrators and teachers are destroying their health.

So Tim Conway's pretending to be a cop. Then real cops show up and think he's a mental case! He has to tell them, "No, I'm just pretending… and I'm Tim Conway."🤣

He literally teaches you how to efficiently work for hours without burning out.

The lawsuits against Meta hinge on a key question: is social media addictive, and did Meta know it? My team has aggregated 31 studies done by Meta itself. Several show that they knew it, they studied the vulnerabilities of teen brains, yet they continued to maximize for "engagement". Read their own words about it at: metasinternalresearch.org

The Illusion of Multitasking and its Impact on Learning How is the illusion of multitasking negatively impacting students' learning? theeffortfuleducator.com/2020/01/21/the…

Fuchs, Gilmour, and Wanzek argue that special education debates focus too much on classroom location. Their research shows what matters most is *how* teachers instruct students—using intensive, specialized methods. While general classrooms work for some, students with significant learning challenges benefit from focused, small-group instruction often provided separately. Effective teaching methods, not placement alone, determine success. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39930601/

Nice parent-facing blog about working memory and The Pomodoro Technique by @AustinScholar open.substack.com/pub/austinscho…

🚨 GLOBALISM JUST DIED IN DAVOS Howard Lutnick just walked into the lion’s den — and told the World Economic Forum exactly what they didn’t want to hear. “Globalism has failed.” Not whispered. Not softened. Declared — on their own stage. He dismantled the entire WEF doctrine in minutes: • Offshoring hollowed out the West • Cheap labor destroyed innovation • Net Zero made Europe dependent on China • Sovereignty begins with borders • Nations must control their industry, energy, and medicine Then came the line that shook the room: “Why would Europe agree to Net Zero when they don’t even make a battery?” That’s the truth globalists can’t answer. Green agendas without industry. Climate pledges without sovereignty. Moral posturing while outsourcing power to Beijing. America First isn’t isolation. It’s independence. And Lutnick made it crystal clear: The old model is finished. The globalist experiment has failed. And the future belongs to nations that put their people first. Davos just heard the obituary — live.

Mel Blanc created the voices of the main Looney Tunes characters. In this video, he performs all of them at once. x.com/Todd_Spence/st…

The UK is at least 5 years ahead of the US in figuring this out and acting on it

K-8 math taught badly ➡️ struggling high school students. Enter fake math classes, labelled "data science." "Its proliferation means more students taking less math." 🔥 Excellent article from Bloomberg bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

🧩 WORKED EXAMPLES! In this week’s edition of ⚗️DistillED, I unpack what worked examples are, why they reduce cognitive load, and how they help students move from watching expert thinking to applying it independently in the classroom. Have a read: newsletter.jamieleeclark.com/p/worked-examp…

Ian Bauckham is right. Written papers are still the gold standard. Plus, schools should strain every sinew to avoid habituating students into screen dependency. Handwritten exams are the purest, says watchdog thetimes.com/article/e7605e…