In 6 Words, More Teaching Advice (Opinion)

In 6 Words, More Teaching Advice

By Larry Ferlazzo — June 13, 2022 2 min read

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Larry Ferlazzo

Opinion Contributor, Education Week

Larry Ferlazzo is a former award-winning high school English and social studies teacher of more than two decades. He is currently a volunteer tutor to English-learner newcomers at a local school and to youth in juvenile hall.

(This is the final post in a two-part series. You can see Part One here.)

The new question-of-the-week is:

Six-word stories are very popular. In six words, please share an education-related story that you experienced and/or advice you would offer other educators.

I shared 19 teacher stories of seven or less words in Part One. Here are a few more:

Denise Fawcett Facey was a classroom teacher for more than two decades and now writes on education issues:

Just be yourself. Students value authenticity.

Remember, you teach students, not content.

Want respect? Respect your students first.

Become a student of your students.

Challenging student? Show him he’s valued.

Forget students’ pasts. Start over daily.

Relationships matter. Students know what’s real.

Students work harder for caring teachers.

Love your students. Love transforms lives.

Students’ self-efficacy, not academics, measures success.

Rocio del Castillo serves as the assistant superintendent for special services in Huntley Community School District 158 (Illinois) and as an adjunct professor:

The Equity Journey. An inexorable voyage.

Learning happens everywhere. Unfinished, Not Lost.

No Achievement Gap. It's Opportunity Gap.

Be Brave. Challenge the Status Quo.

Ishmael Robinson is an educator, administrator, and civic leader with a passion for tackling the opportunity gap, especially in the realm of mathematics:

Find time to invest in people.

Don’t be afraid to make a mistake.

Treat others as you treat yourself.

Presume positive intentions when it’s possible.

Joyce Kim is the teaching and learning facilitator at Prospect High School in Mount Prospect, Ill.:

Stop talking and listen for understanding.

Forgetting your why becomes game over.

Self-care. Happy teacher, happy students.

Make your schools a BIPOC respite.

Valentina Gonzalez is a former classroom teacher with over 20 years in education:

Literacy in any language is literacy.

Tanji Reed Marshall, Ph.D., is the director of P-12 practice at the Education Trust where she leads practice-focused national projects to address educational inequities:

Teach truth to change the world.

Thanks to everybody who contributed their thoughts!

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching.

Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email (The RSS feed for this blog, and for all Ed Week articles, has been changed by the new redesign—new ones are not yet available). And if you missed any of the highlights from the first 10 years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below.

I am also creating a Twitter list including all contributors to this column.

The opinions expressed in Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.