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Biola University School of Education The School of Education equips students with the wisdom to make an impact in classrooms and the world

pt. 10Ham radio operator. Triumph rider. Butterfly raiser. Chicken mom to Foxy Lady, Amelia Earhart, Eve, and Griselda...
10/20/2026

pt. 10

Ham radio operator. Triumph rider. Butterfly raiser. Chicken mom to Foxy Lady, Amelia Earhart, Eve, and Griselda. Meet Dr. Jenna Canillas, your Chair of Multilingual Multicultural Education.

A worksheet is the most efficient thing in the room. It's quiet, it's gradeable, and everyone finishes around the same t...
10/17/2026

A worksheet is the most efficient thing in the room. It's quiet, it's gradeable, and everyone finishes around the same time. That's exactly what makes it hard to give up.

But finishing isn't understanding. A completed worksheet tells you a student found the right box. It doesn't tell you they could do anything with what's in it.

Dr. Lorelei Coddington's case is that when students make something of their own, the work becomes the evidence. You can see the thinking in it, including where it went wrong, which is information a worksheet almost never gives you.

The honest trade is that this is harder. Meaningful work has to be designed in advance, and it takes longer than pulling a template. Worth naming, because that's the real reason it doesn't happen more often.

Dr. Lorelei Coddington is Liberal Studies Chair and Associate Professor at Biola University's School of Education.

10/14/2026

Teaching is hard, and the staff room exists for a reason. Anyone who tells you to never vent has not taught a full day recently.

But Dr. Ruby Lin draws a line worth holding onto: there's a difference between seeking wisdom and venting, and the difference is what you're asking for. Seeking wisdom sounds like a specific question to one person who can actually help. What did you try with a student like this? What am I missing here? Venting is telling the story to whoever's in the room, and the story usually needs the student to be the problem in order to work.

The cost is quiet. Once a student becomes a character in a story you tell, it gets harder to see them as anything else, and other people start seeing them that way too before they've met them. That's the part that outlasts the bad day.

Her standard is a good one. Don't discuss a student's situation beyond the people who need to know, and find the mentor who will help you protect their dignity while you figure it out.

Dr. Ruby Lin is an Associate Professor at Biola University's School of Education.

10/09/2026

All behavior is motivated behavior. That's from Richard LaVoie, who spent decades working with students with learning disabilities, and it reframes the whole problem. The student you're calling unmotivated has a motivation you haven't identified yet.

Which is why Dr. Dennis Eastman's four questions matter. Every student walks in asking them, and if you don't answer them on purpose, they'll answer them on their own.

DO I BELONG? Students engage more deeply when they know they are seen, valued, and accepted. Belonging is a powerful condition for learning.

AM I INTERESTED? Attention follows meaning and relevance. When students see a reason to care, engagement becomes more likely.

DOES THIS MATTER? Students need to see the connection between what they're learning and why it matters. Purpose turns compliance into engagement.

CAN I DO THIS? Students are more willing to persist when they believe success is possible. Confidence changes how students approach challenge.

The four questions come from education researcher Robert Marzano. What looks like disengagement is usually one of them going unanswered.

Motivation isn't force. It's something we cultivate.

Dr. Dennis Eastman is Professor and Director of Secondary Education at Biola University's School of Education.

10/06/2026

"Why does God value mathematics so much?" The kind of question Ivana gets to ask her professors here.

Ivana Samson is pursuing her Master of Arts in Teaching and her multiple subject credential at Biola. For her, that means being equipped to lead a classroom and being rooted in something deeper.

The hardest part of this story is not the student. It's the professor.Dr. Christie Curtis has been teaching for over fif...
10/02/2026

The hardest part of this story is not the student. It's the professor.

Dr. Christie Curtis has been teaching for over fifty years. When a struggling student, already talked out of dropping out once, came back and asked to be admitted to the master's program, Curtis's honest reaction was doubt. She says it plainly: she was stunned and negative.

That student now holds a doctorate.

The lesson she draws from it is not that struggling students always make it. It's that the person best positioned to close a door is often the one who knows the student's transcript best. Experience makes you good at predicting outcomes. It also makes you very confident about predictions that turn out to be wrong.

Fifty years in, the thing she teaches is the thing that once caught her.

Dr. Christie Curtis is Associate Dean, Graduate Chair, and Professor at Biola University's School of Education.

09/29/2026

Taking away recess is the fastest consequence available. It requires no paperwork, no phone call home, and it can be issued in four words while you keep teaching. That's why it's so common, and it has nothing to do with whether it works.

Dr. Ruby Lin's argument is that it backfires because it isn't connected to anything. A student who didn't finish their work now has less of the thing that helps them regulate, and the reason the work didn't get finished is still sitting there untouched. A consequence has to line up with the choice, or it's just a cost the student pays and learns nothing from.

The alternative is to start with who the student is rather than what they did. The example worth sitting with is the talkative one. Talking during instruction and leading a class discussion are the same capability, and only one of them is a problem. Most of what gets labeled misbehavior is a strength showing up at the wrong time.

Connection before correction is a Positive Discipline tool from Dr. Jane Nelsen, and it is a useful thing to have in your head before you reach for the easy consequence.

Dr. Ruby Lin is an Associate Professor at Biola University's School of Education.

Social Studies is usually the first thing to go. Not because anyone decided it doesn't matter, but because reading and m...
09/24/2026

Social Studies is usually the first thing to go. Not because anyone decided it doesn't matter, but because reading and math are what get tested, and the day only has so many minutes in it.

Dr. Lorelei Coddington's case for protecting it is that this is the subject where students learn what people are and how they treat each other. Kindness, stewardship, the worth of a human being. Those aren't a separate character unit you run in October. They're what history and civics are made of when they're taught well.

The other thing worth noticing in the scope and sequence is that it moves outward. Kindergarten starts with self and others, and by sixth grade students are looking at ancient civilizations. A child's sense of the world widens one ring at a time, and each year assumes the one before it. Skip a year and the next one has less to stand on.

Dr. Lorelei Coddington is Liberal Studies Chair and Associate Professor at Biola University's School of Education.

Every teacher has driven home replaying a moment. The lesson that fell apart, the thing you said too sharply, the kid yo...
09/19/2026

Every teacher has driven home replaying a moment. The lesson that fell apart, the thing you said too sharply, the kid you handled wrong.

The problem is what happens the next morning. You walk in still carrying it, and the student you were frustrated with walks in and gets met by yesterday's version of you.

Dr. Ruby Lin's fix is deliberately simple: forget faster. Not the lesson, the grudge. Learn from the mistake, then let the mistake go before it becomes the lens you teach through.

She's candid that this took her years. Her words: she wishes she had learned to let go of her own mistakes and forgive her students much sooner.

There's a second thing happening here too. Students are watching how you handle being wrong, and that's the actual lesson on resilience. It lands harder than anything you say about it.

Dr. Ruby Lin is Associate Professor and Director of CalTPA at Biola University's School of Education.

Jerry San Martin substitute taught across five districts before signing a contract as a teacher of record with the Los ...
09/18/2026



Jerry San Martin substitute taught across five districts before signing a contract as a teacher of record with the Los Angeles County Office of Education. He earned his bilingual authorization along the way, passing all three Spanish exams.

Today he teaches math and science at Camp Rockey High School, where his students are high school students attending a LACOE juvenile court school at Camp Rockey in San Dimas. His classes program micro:bit devices to work as thermometers, then use them to monitor conditions around plants and document growth over time. Math, science, engineering, and code in one project.

"I am especially proud that my students' mathematics scores have steadily increased since my arrival," he wrote. "It has been incredibly rewarding to witness their academic progress and growing confidence as they connect classroom learning with real-world applications and future possibilities."

Congratulations, Jerry. 🎓

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