August 28, 2026 My copy of Berlin’s classic essay On foxes and hedgehogs Hi there, I hope you are doing well, and thank you for subscribing to The Coaching Letter. You are amazing. This Coaching Letter concerns the challenge of trying to discern and preserve the complexities that comprise the science of learning (or anything else, actually) as we currently understand it. This topic was prompted by my encountering several pieces lately that flatten many of these complexities
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August 24, 2026 Last gratuitous snap of the summer, for the Pink Floyd fans… On reading the citations Hello, how are you, and thank you for subscribing to The Coaching Letter. You rock. It is surprisingly cool here in New England today; at my house right now it’s trying to decide whether to rain or not—this is a state my mother would have called “swithering”. I know that many people reading this are preparing to start school again,
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August 4, 2026 Just an excuse to post a photo of Edinburgh Castle On "Making the Ask" Hello and thank you for subscribing to The Coaching Letter. You rock. This post, too, comes to you from Northern Europe. This trip has included, so far, several flights, a 6 hour ferry plus some smaller boat trips, and two long train rides plus another one on Thursday. Most Coaching Letters sit on my computer in draft form for several weeks;
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July 28, 2026 Stavanger Harbor, which has nothing to do with this post On coaching and systems Hi there! Thank you for subscribing to The Coaching Letter. You rock! I’m writing this in Stavanger, Norway, where it’s 57 degrees and rainy. Bliss. For those of you who have received emails from me at weird hours, this should explain a lot. Wherever you are, I hope you are well and happy. This Coaching Letter has two purposes: to convince
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July 20, 2026 Andrew’s note to me, April 8, 2026 An apology to high school teachers TL;DR: This Coaching Letter is an apology for assuming that high school teachers are difficult. The first year of the HS NIC taught me how wrong I was. People do not automatically resist change because they are stubborn or set in their ways. They make predictions about what will happen next based on their priors. I have argued for years that behavior
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July 11, 2026 Yet more on Building Thinking Classrooms At the end of June, we hosted a conference about Building Thinking Classrooms, which was a huge success and very fun and the list of people I am grateful to is a whole Oscar speech by itself. My personal highlight was Rydell’s keynote—Rydell Harrison is my colleague, my co-author, and a brilliant human—and you can, and should, watch the speech here. Every conference should have a Rydell keynote. One of my jobs was
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June 26 , 2026 The first Connecticut NIC meeting, June 2021 On scaling as strategy Hello, I hope you’re doing well. Almost all schools in the northeast are out for the summer, so you’ve got more time to read... That’s great! I hope you’ll have time for this book! We are busy getting ready for the Building Thinking Classrooms National Conference that we are hosting in New Haven in the next few days—hope to see many of you there!
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May 23, 2026 Scaling, part the fifth Hi, how are you? Thank you for subscribing to the Coaching Letter. You rock. Yes, I know, another CL about scaling, I’m sorry about that. But the previous ones have got me so much mileage and interaction with folks, and knowing how way leads on to way, I find myself committed to finishing up the series, and I’m kind of on the clock, so I’m working my way through them as fast as
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May 17, 2026 Scaling, part the fourth Hi, I hope you’re doing well. Thank you for subscribing to the Coaching Letter. You rock. Thank you for the responses to the posts on scaling—they have been super useful. Dina, this is your response. Marta, I’m really grateful for your information about failure modes and you’ll see those in the next Coaching Letter… This Coaching Letter continues the theme of scaling (#231, #222, #233); this time, what does it mean to scale something that is deeply human,
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May 10, 2026 How aviation instructors go about illustrating form and function Scaling, part the third Friends, I hope this finds you well. Thank you for subscribing to the Coaching Letter—you rock. I was out of town last week, so lots of time to write while sitting on airplanes and waiting for things to happen. This work on scale has taken on a life of its own, so here is the next layer. If you want to read
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