Today, I recorded a podcast for Nabeel Ahmad, Partner at Rose Rock Dynamics, planned a Webinar for alumni at Teacher’s College, Columbia University, and booked an in-person workshop for independent school Trustees. Though each lesson will be similar — focused on the teaching mindset documented in Make Yourself Clear — each classroom is very different.

Which means that, in each classroom, if I want to teach well, I have to ask myself some simple questions:

In the time and place that I’m meeting with these particular students, what can only happen then and there and in the way in which we’re assembled? What affordances exist in each context, and how can I make full use of them?

Obviously, the answer is very different if I’m doing a Webinar that will only serve a live audience vs. a Webinar that will serve both a live audience and an audience that listens to the recording at a later time. And the answer will again by different if I’m working with a face-to-face group. Or teaching with Reshan Richards, which happens to be the case for all the scenarios described in the first paragraph of this post.

Teaching now is amazing in that it happens in so many places and ways — it’s been untethered from its brick and mortar origins. But for the teacher who really wants each class to be special, there’s a lot (more) to consider. I like this challenge . . . or I guess I wouldn’t still be teaching as much as I do.