Banner with colorful hammock in California backyard and hashtags #BuyInSwitcheroo and #MakeLemonade

Finding the Buy-In Switcheroo

I’m all about improving teaching and learning without creating more work for anybody. The most recent pair of videos in the Tuned-In Teacher Mantra series addresses two of my favorite techniques for doing just that—in both face-to-face and virtual teaching. I’ve described the Buy-In Switcheroo and Making Lemonade before (in this post), but I believe […]

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New Calming Audio in Simple Spanish and Latin

My sleep and general well-being have benefited from guided meditation and other calming audio in several languages for quite some time. I quickly came to find it also incredibly useful for language learning and teaching, for a whole lot of reasons. This week I released samples of calming audio in simple Spanish (recorded with Abigail […]

Bitmoji of JSB skateboarding with a racoon and saying ¡TÚ PUEDES!

2019 Reflections — Goal 4: Positivity

This is part 4 of my self-evaluations of my “Four Things to Be Relentless about in 2019,” which were Inclusion, Reality, Collaboration, and Positivity. You can read part 1 here, part 2 here, and part 3 here. This is how I summarized Thing 4: Positivity I’ve long had a mantra by which I remind myself […]

JSB with colleagues and adult students at a bar in Mérida, Spain

2019 Reflections — Goal 3: Collaboration

This is part 3 of my self-evaluations of my “Four Things to Be Relentless about in 2019,” which were Inclusion, Reality, Collaboration, and Positivity. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here. This is how I summarized Thing 3: Collaboration I was the kid who hated group work because it made everything take longer. […]

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2019 Reflections — Goal 2: Reality

This is part 2 of my self-evaluations of my “Four Things to Be Relentless about in 2019,” which were Inclusion, Reality, Collaboration, and Positivity. You can read part 1 here. This is how I summarized Thing 2: Reality Practically no one’s actual situation is remotely close to ideal: curricular requirements issued from on high, tests […]

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2019 Reflections — Goal 1: Inclusion

I’ve begun reflecting on the year a bit earlier than usual. Starting today, I’ll publish a self-evaluation each week for one of my “Four Things to Be Relentless about in 2019.” My four things were Inclusion, Reality, Collaboration, and Positivity. This is how I summarized Thing 1: Inclusion Many areas that my work touches—pedagogy at […]

Justin Slocum Bailey listening to the waves on a rocky beach in Boston

3 Mantras for Calm Presence in the Classroom

How students perceive our presence in the classroom has a huge impact on everything from their trust in us to their ability to learn efficiently. This is partly due to mirror neurons and partly because how we feel (or act like we feel) affects our communication, our enthusiasm, our attention to students’ needs, and even […]

Honoring curiosity & risk while keeping class on track

It’s great when students are curious. It’s exciting when students aim high. It’s rewarding when students make connections. It’s thrilling when students take risks. But what about those times when one of these can get the class too far off track, or when satisfying one student’s curiosity would lose the rest, or when a student […]

Do You Really Care about Human Beings?

Nothing is as important as human beings. Not ideas, not subjects, not institutions, not goals, not lessons, not information, nothing. This hit me harder than usual in the past week during some fraught threads on social media. I realized that I was drawn to some views more than others not just because of the overall […]