Mattrkay

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You make fantastic points

Appreciate you!

A post worth reading

Are We Giving “Pros” the Respect They Deserve? If we want to keep our best educators, let’s treat them like the professionals they are.

My latest column for EL Magazine ❤️
"We can’t have it both ways: School systems can’t both retain and infantilize expert teachers." ascd.org/el/articles/...
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It’s so helpful for teachers to have a *pre-fussing* gear that’s not hostile.

“Hey! Now LOOK at you. I wrapped up all this pretty work time and gave you a gift and you just THREW it away! I’m CRYING over here.” 🤪

In other words, “Do your work, freshman.”

really should be a celebration animation that plays when you get to the end of a class of grading

cmon canvas hype me up

On a commercial, I just heard “Speak with a *real* therapist , NOT AI!” as a selling point (yikes!)

… and I’m wondering how common/ effective/crucial that claim will become for a brand.

Be taught by a *real* teacher!
Listen to a *real* band!
Written by a *real* author!

Build, Don’t Burn The problem with building a thing is that, once it’s built, folks will try to burn it down. Burning down seems to be in vogue these days. We are seeing, in real time, institutions that have i…

This year I’m only about grown-up conversations (like this) about public schools. No time - or energy - for temper tantrums. practicaltheory.org/blog/2025/08...

Thank you! It was a great chat!! 💯

YouTube video by Broken Copier Talking About What Matters with Matt Kay

If you have 5 minutes this weekend, listen to this clip of @mattrkay.bsky.social walking through his guidance towards teachers who are hesitant about facilitating more-challenging discussions in their classroom.

(Also: this is why we need to listen to teachers.)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx8p...

"We're there to be humans in the room with other humans talking about ideas"

The case by @mattrkay.bsky.social in this conversation: never more than now have classroom discussions been needed, in both quantity and quality.

(And that quantity and quality? Not an easy thing.)

"Everything I love about teaching is represented in coaching."

Cannot wait for this conversation to come out tomorrow! So much of what @mattrkay.bsky.social said resonated with me (example: teaching as a type of coaching!) but also pushed me to imagine better for the upcoming year 🙏

Is this the year that ELA teachers need to authentically plan for a post-essay world?

School in a year (or so):

watching our computers talk to each other, then hopefully asking kids what they’ve learned from the exchange.

Enjoy!

Aw I appreciate that!

Hope you find it useful!

"Prompting Deeper Discussions" by Matthew R. Kay

1. This book is one of those rare education books that almost immediately became transferable to my classroom practices (Like: immediately!)

2. I was super fortunate to be able to pick @mattrkay.bsky.social's thinking, too—cannot wait for that conversation to come out in a couple weeks!

The voting on squid game feels like last november

End the game or play the game. It’s on the nose

I can't believe this book has been out in the world for two years. I will be forever grateful to @mattrkay.bsky.social for inviting me into this work and for sharing all of his wisdom and the energy he'd put into Not Light, But Fire.

Confronting Inequity / Getting the Endings Right A psychological theory on the power of endings offers lessons for educators, especially this year.

As we end another school year, here’s a gentle reminder that the way things end (that last sweet conversation, that last snarky quip) matters. A lot.

Let’s agree to let each other go out easy plz www.ascd.org/el/articles/...

“If you were more interesting, little boys wouldn’t turn into sudden incel murderers” is… a leap

We just tryna teach, man. C’mon. Every failure in society ain’t us.

I mean… I know what they were going for… but I feel like you coulda had *one* classroom in Adolescence that wasn’t an abomination.

“All they do is show movies.”

Not sure why teachers had to catch strays. What WE do?

Hey thanks!

Again, I can’t imagine giving up the joy - and in this case, the agony - of reading authentic student work.

My god 😢

“We haven’t broken / We are learning how to bend.”
Ok kid!

Idk how any teacher would willingly give up authentically reading students’ work. That instinctive happy grunt, that “oooh,” that “oh I see you.” Why would we *ever* give that up?

Keep schools human.