ABOUT GLEN COLEMAN

I started looking at the world differently when I failed first grade. The following eight grades of deep failure also kept my view askew, as I could not read what I wrote, nor could I sit still. But my mom and dad, especially my mom, were gifted at asking questions, at creating conversation around the dinner table. They stoked my curiosity as I “failed” my way through public school – a C student until high school.

Long after college, I decided to become a teacher. The dinner conversations of my youth I wanted to recreate. I trusted that asking basic questions like “What do you think?” “What should we do?” and “How do you know?” could ignite powerful conversations.

But that changed in 2006. My school issued each student a laptop. Flummoxed, I wondered how I would create conversation when everyone looked at their screens instead of each other?

Thus began my renaissance. Divergent thoughts on teaching percolated. I enrolled in a doctoral program to research, “How do I teach with laptop computers? How can colleagues help each other adapt?” What resulted was a dissertation with distinction. I would become an HP Teaching Fellow for innovative instructional practices. (One of just 26 selected throughout the U.S. and Canada in the inaugural year of that program.) Commissioners of education have praised my pedagogy as innovative. In addition to books and articles on teaching in today’s world, my research (and that of my students) on students' views of AI in the classroom was recently featured in The New York Times.

Now I’m focused on facilitating conversations with teachers and concerned citizens on how to teach (or do anything) in our chaotic new normal. As a social studies teacher of 28 years, I know this present moment is unique. Exponential technological growth, deepening polarization, and worsening mental health – in addition to other challenges — make this moment uniquely disruptive and difficult to navigate. We need each other – no matter our political views — to get through our chaotic new normal. That’s why I wrote my new book, Teaching in The New Crazy: On Thriving in an Overwhelming, Politicized, and Complicated World.

Tell me what you think and let’s get in touch.