Here are this month’s best articles, analyses, and stories in education from across the web! This month you’ll learn about the Maker Monday Challenge (and how to increase creativity in the classroom), the importance of extending think time for students, and a number of new digital tools to try in 2018. We’re also sharing a Harvard Business Review piece to help school leaders remain disciplined in their pursuit of less!

Bringing Courage and Love to the Classroom with Verta Maloney (Thriving Schools)

What you’ll learn: “We discuss what teachers can do to personally prepare themselves [to have courageous conversations on race in the classroom], how to include diverse viewpoints in classroom discourse, and Verta’s excellent resource recommendations for reading and reflection.”

The Maker Monday Challenge: Begin Each Week on a Creative Note (John Spencer)

What you’ll learn: “Creativity is valuable, not just for a future job, but for the deeply human drive to make and build and tinker. It’s part of what makes us human. So, what if students began each week by making and designing and creating?”

8 Strategies to Help Students Ask Great Questions (Teach Thought)

What you’ll learn: “A good question can open minds, shift paradigms, and force the uncomfortable but transformational cognitive dissonance that can help create thinkers.”

How Freedom Prep’s Jasmine Howard Checks For Understanding (Teach Like A Champion)

What you’ll learn: “In the video below, Jasmine has added a question into her lesson just before independent practice specifically to assess whether students are ready to work productively on their own.”

Motivate Students by Answering These 4 Questions (Education Week)

What you’ll learn: “In being focused on asking students questions, we might be missing the questions they have of us that go unanswered every class period.”

Extending the Silence (Edutopia)

What you’ll learn: “According to work done by Mary Budd Rowe in 1972 and Robert Stahl in 1994, pausing for 3 or more seconds showed a noticeable positive impact on learning. Yet the average length that teachers pause was found to be 0.9 seconds.”

12 Digital Tools to Try in 2018 (Getting Smart)

What you’ll learn: “Here is a list of tools to try in 2018. Each of these offer multiple ways for students to create, connect, and engage in more authentic learning experiences.”

10 Meditation Apps for the Classroom (Teach Thought)

What you’ll learn: “Although it’s difficult to change the way the school operates, it is possible to adjust how you operate within the system. Introducing meditation and mindfulness techniques in the classroom not only allows you to create a calmer environment, the practice has proven to have verifiable benefits on the human brain.”

The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (Harvard Business Review)

What you’ll learn: “When we really have clarity or purpose, it leads to success. When we have success, it leads to more options and opportunities. When we have increased options and opportunities, it leads to diffused efforts. Diffused efforts undermine the very clarity that led to our success in the first place.”