School of Practice – Details, episodes & analysis

It’s a powerful, non-verbal classroom management tool designed to curb off-task behavior without breaking the flow of learning. Here’s how to use it across grade levels.

Crystal Frommert has been using “the look” in her classroom for 20 years. She says the tactic—a skeptical glance and an arched eyebrow directed at a chronic whisperer, for example—is almost universal among teachers, despite recent debates about whether the practice has run its course.

Frommert, who has taught math at the middle and high school levels, explains why she thinks “the look” still works; how it fits in with other classroom management tools; and what she does to adapt it for students who may not pick up on non-verbal cues. Plus, we ask what’s on everyone’s mind: Can it actually work on teenagers?

Related resources:

• New Teachers: How to Develop ‘The Look’
• 8 Small But Impactful Classroom Management Shifts
• Research: A mobile eye-tracking study on teachers’ responses to students’ norm-violating behaviors
• 4 Subtle Shifts for Better Classroom Management
• 8 Proactive Classroom Management Tips
• 11 Research-Based Classroom Management Strategies

School of Practice, the first podcast from the team at Edutopia, brings you ready-to-use strategies to improve your teaching today. Join us for 15-minute episodes filled with smart, pedagogy-shifting advice—backed by research and test-driven by teachers just like you.

Humans are social creatures, hardwired to take cues from others. If students don’t see classmates asking for help, they assume they should avoid it too. But when help-seeking becomes visible in the classroom, it starts to feel natural.

In this episode of School of Practice, high school teacher Cathleen Beachboard explains how she rewrote the script with her students to make asking for help not just acceptable but expected. Bonus: Once this shift happens, students won’t just ask more questions, they’ll start answering them, too.

Related resources:

• Why Students Don’t Ask for Help—and How to Change That
• Building Problem-Solving Skills Through ‘Speed Dating’
• Why Kids Are Afraid to Ask for Help
• Pint-Sized Public Relations: The Development of Reputation Management
• “Why didn’t you just ask?” Underestimating the discomfort of help-seeking
• The School of Hope

After trying numerous seating arrangements—including rows, blocks, and U shapes—educator Jay Schauer stumbled on a desk layout that outperformed them all. Edutopia’s community took notice.

In this episode of School of Practice, Schauer walks listeners through the many benefits of arranging desks in L-shaped groups, including better communication, greater flexibility, and improved learning outcomes for students. Plus, we ask him how to adapt the setup for testing, tiny rooms, and a range of other real classroom challenges.

Related resources:

• A Desk Layout Alternative to Rows and Circles
• A Strategic Approach to Seating Arrangements in High School
• 11 Smart Student Desk Layouts
• Research: Learning With Jigsaw: A Systematic Review Gathering All the Pieces of the Puzzle More Than 40 Years Later
• Boosting Student Belonging With the Jigsaw Technique

Did you know that drawing can be a learning superpower—even for students who claim they’re not good at it? 

When kids attentively sketch something they’re learning about, they tap into the visual, kinesthetic, and linguistic parts of the brain, research shows. This generates abundant connections across the brain’s neural network and encodes learning even more deeply than more passive learning tasks, like reading or listening to a lecture. 

In this episode of School of Practice, high school biology and chemistry teacher Selim Tlili delves into how drawing to learn works across grade levels and subjects, as well as how he sets up and grades the practice in his classroom. Plus, he’s got special tips for engaging even the most reluctant sketch artists.

Related resources:

• How Sketching Supports Learning in Science
• Using Drawing as a Powerful Learning Tool
• The Science of Drawing and Memory
• Research: The Surprisingly Powerful Influence of Drawing on Memory
• 5 Popular Education Beliefs That Aren’t Backed by Research
• Sketching for Science

The idea that you’re not a writer unless you stare down a blank page and produce text—that’s about to change, says high school teacher Jen Roberts.

In her classroom, AI is not the enemy. It’s a tool she uses to help students become better writers. And yes, she sets guardrails. “You can be a real writer who started with an AI-generated outline,” she says. “You can have an AI thought partner who helps you plot out your story.” Yet for this to work in classrooms, “we need to readjust our expectations about student writing—and what we’re going to allow them to do and not do.”

In this episode of School of Practice, we dive into this radical pedagogical shift with Roberts, and examine the strategies she’s developed to weave AI into the writing process to deliver thoughtful, authentic student writing.

Related resources:

• Authentic Writing in the Age of AI
• Proactively Limiting the Use of AI in the Classroom
• When Students Use AI in Ways They Shouldn’t
• What ELA Teachers Should Know About AI Detectors
• Research: Generative AI Can Harm Learning
• Research: Cheating in the age of generative AI: A high school survey study of cheating behaviors before and after the release of ChatGPT
• Lit & Tech blog

“I’m done, what’s next?” In every classroom, a handful of students will finish the work at warp speed. While the rest of the class is still mid-task, teachers must quickly pivot to keep the fast finishers busy, without missing an instructional beat.

Former K-12 teacher Todd Finley argues this challenge presents a golden opportunity. “Instead of asking the question: ‘How do I keep fast finishers busy?’ the question should be: ‘Am I providing them with activities that are really meaningful?’” he says.

In this episode of School of Practice, Finley, a professor of English education at East Carolina University, shares flexible, low-prep strategies for keeping speed racers engaged in meaningful work that’s immersive and challenging. Plus: Logistical tips for busy classrooms, and pointers for aligning tasks to classroom objectives.

Related resources:

• Your Student Finished Early—Now What?
• Early Finisher Activities Your Students Will Love
• The Representation of Semantic Information Across Human Cerebral Cortex During Listening Versus Reading Is Invariant to Stimulus Modality
• We Drastically Underestimate the Importance of Brain Breaks
• Classroom Cheat Codes: Effective Teaching Strategies to Power-Up Engagement

When students take notes during a lesson, research shows they get just about 30 to 45 percent of the important information right on the first try. 

High school teacher Benjamin Barbour discovered this disturbing problem after taking a quick peek at his students’ notes midway through whole-group instruction. What he saw stopped him in his tracks. 

“While some students had terrific notes, others had a big list of facts from the lecture or from the book,” Barbour says. “There was no rhyme or reason. Maybe there was a date but no information attached. And I realized: My students can’t even use these notes.”

In this episode of School of Practice, we take a look at Barbour’s three-step process for teaching better note-taking and substantially improving study skills. Just a few minutes of practice each day, Barbour says, can yield big gains for student learning. Plus, he explains the brilliant strategy he uses to incentivize better note-taking and study habits in his classroom.

Related resources:

• Teaching Students What to Do With the Notes They Take 
• How Testing Students Twice Can Improve Note-Taking Skills 
• Neuroscientists Say Don’t Write Off Handwriting 
• Research: Typed Versus Handwritten Lecture Notes and College Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis 
• Research: The Importance of Cursive Handwriting Over Typewriting for Learning in the Classroom: A High-Density EEG Study of 12-Year-Old Children and Young Adults
• Research: Revising lecture notes: how revision, pauses, and partners affect note taking and achievement 
• Research: The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking

Are you curious what the latest research reveals about everything from brain breaks to groundbreaking research on AI, cell phones, and handwriting in the classroom? Then you won’t want to miss this special year-end bonus episode based on one of our most popular feature articles of the year. 

In the latest episode of School of Practice, Edutopia’s research editor Youki Terada and editor-in-chief Stephen Merrill walk us through the latest research on the impact of cell phone bans on classroom learning, why more recess time is critical for learning, how adept problem solvers tackle thorny math word problems, and how microbreaks powerfully impact focus and attention. Plus, we’ll share practical tips for bringing these findings right into classrooms today. 

Related resources:

• The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2025
• Sustaining Student Concentration: The Effectiveness of Micro-Breaks in a Classroom Setting (2025) 
• Highlight, Write, Elaborate: Note-Taking Strategies to Master Reality-Based Mathematical Tasks (2025) 
• The Impact of Cellphone Bans in Schools on Student Outcomes: Evidence from Florida (2025) 
• Removing Phones from Classrooms Improves Academic Performance (2025) 
• Ill Communication: Technology, distraction & student performance (2016)
• The Impact of Recess on Chronic Stress Levels in Elementary School Children (2025) 
• The Impact of Handwriting and Typing Practice in Children’s Letter and Word Learning: Implications for Literacy Development (2025) 
• Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task (2025) 
• Generative AI Can Harm Learning (2024)
• IEPs in the Age of AI: Examining IEP Goals Written with and Without ChatGPT (2025)

Did you know there’s a strong connection between the hand and the neural circuitry of the brain? 

As students learn to write letters by hand, they also learn to recognize them more fluently. This letter recognition leads to greater letter-writing fluency, which leads to stronger overall reading development. Handwriting, the research reveals, is in fact a foundational tool for literacy. And as kids get older, the benefits continue, deepening how they process new material and encode learning.

Meanwhile, good handwriting instruction doesn’t require a huge time investment: Brief instructional lessons followed by frequent modeling and feedback for students can slip into all areas of the curriculum throughout the school day, says Brooke MacKenzie, a former elementary teacher and certified reading specialist. “Handwriting practice can and should be quick and dirty,” she says. “It’s not like you need a 20-minute lesson on how to hold your pencil.”

In this episode of School of Practice, MacKenzie chats with us about four fundamental handwriting skills. Plus, she shares her top instructional secrets—from using cursive to help students struggling with print to why Kindergarteners should “talk to their pencils.”

Related resources:

• How to Teach Handwriting—and Why It Matters 
• The Power of Multimodal Learning (in 5 Charts)
• Neuroscientists Say Don’t Write Off Handwriting
• The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2025
• Research: The Impact of Handwriting and Typing Practice in Children’s Letter and Word Learning: Implications for Literacy Development (2025)
• Research: Handwriting But Not Typewriting Leads to Widespread Brain Connectivity: A High-Density EEG Study with Implications for the Classroom (2024)
• Research: The Importance of Cursive Handwriting Over Typewriting for Learning in the Classroom: A High-Density EEG Study of 12-Year-Old Children and Young Adults (2020)
• Research: The Effects of Handwriting Experience on Functional Brain Development in Pre-literate Children (2012)
• Ghost Games (2022)