The Book I’ve Been Writing Since Second Grade
In second grade, I wrote my first skit. It involved Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and some sort of hamburger situation (the specifics are fuzzy, but the impulse was clear). I wrote the script, recruited a classmate to perform it with me, and we performed it for the class. It was a thrill (I still wonder if my teachers thought it was bizarre).
The skits eventually turned into elaborate show-and-tell demonstrations that were so involved my teacher used to have to put me on a timer. I'd build something interactive, always centered on Snoopy (I had a lot of Snoopy stuffed animals), and always designed to pull my classmates in and participate in some way. Two things were true from those early days of hamming it up: I loved to write, and I loved to bring people into the experience. I think that second thing was teaching, though I didn't have a name for it yet.
For years, I thought I'd grow up to be an artist and a writer. I spent my childhood painting, drawing, imagining worlds. What I didn't realize was that education would let me do both. Teaching is the art—the design of experiences, the assessing how things were going, and the responsive moves that make learning come alive. And writing is how I make sense of what I've learned, share what I've found in research, and build tools and frameworks that I hope are useful to others. I never became the visual artist I imagined, but I do love a good framework, a well-designed graphic organizer, and a slick slide deck that supports thinking rather than replacing it.
I'm sharing all of this because I’ve got a book coming out in September. And while I've had the privilege of co-authoring The PD Book and Integrating Educator Well-Being, Growth, and Evaluation—collaborations that shaped me—this one is different. The Science of Lesson Planning: High-Impact Practices That Deepen Student Learning is my first solo book. And it brings me back to that second-grade self who started alone with a script but whose whole purpose was to bring people in.
What the Science Tells Us About Lesson Planning
We often treat lesson planning as a logistical task, a sequence of activities we have created (or were handed) to fill time. Or we treat lesson planning as an art, something intuitive that great teachers “just know” how to do. But both framings sell the work short.
Cognitive science researchers like John Sweller, Judy Willis, and Annie Murphy Paul have shown us that how we design learning experiences has a profound impact on how—and whether—students actually learn. Cognitive load matters. The sequencing of challenge and support matters. The way we activate funds of knowledge, build in retrieval practice, and create conditions for transfer. All of it matters. And yet, for most educators, the science of how people learn, the neuroscience of safety and relevance, and the practice of planning instruction live in separate worlds.
This book brings these worlds together. This book is for the teacher who loves some good design time, and also for the teacher who, at 9PM on a Sunday night, needs something practical, grounded, and rooted in what the research says works and why.
Five Phases, One Design Framework
The heart of the book is a five-phase framework for designing learning experiences that I've been developing, testing, and refining with educators for years:
Phase 1: Center People and Purpose. Before we plan content, we plan for the humans in the room—who they are, what they bring, and what conditions they need to flourish.
Phase 2: Explore pathways to learning. Not every learner arrives at understanding the same way. This phase is about designing multiple ways of learning and expression so that the diversity of our classrooms becomes an asset in our design, not an obstacle to it.
Phase 3: Design the learning journey. This is where cognitive science meets craft—where we make intentional decisions about load, sequence, and engagement based on how the brain processes and retains information.
Phase 4: Implement and Adjust. This is where the idealism of the plan meets the reality of the classroom. This phase is about the responsive moves that distinguish thoughtful instruction from rigid delivery—and how to assess learning along the way.
Phase 5: Reflect and Refine. This is where we get “meta” and invite students (and ourselves) to celebrate accomplishments and reflect on lessons learned—doing this process as a built-in practice of professional growth.
If you've attended my workshops on transformative lesson planning, you've experienced pieces of this framework. The book brings it all together with research, classroom examples, and practical tools you can use immediately.
Why This Book Now
There's something vulnerable about putting a solo book into the world, especially one that represents decades of thinking. Writing with collaborators, you have someone to bounce ideas off, someone who catches what you miss, holds you accountable, and shares the intellectual (and emotional) heft of putting ideas out there. Writing alone, though, is just you and the page. You don’t know how things will land with your audience. This is perhaps why it feels so much like being back in second grade, writing that script and hoping the class would want to be part of it.
Here’s why I believe this book matters right now: teachers are being asked to do extraordinary things under increasingly difficult conditions. They're navigating larger class sizes, fewer resources, more mandates, and a political and chaotic global climate that often undermines the very communities they serve. In the midst of all that, they're still showing up every day trying to create meaningful learning experiences for young people.
This book is for teachers. It's my way of saying to teachers, “Your craft matters.” The science supports what many of you already intuit, and you deserve the research and tools that honor both the rigor of your work and the humanity of the people you teach.
It's also for the coaches, mentors, and leaders who support teachers. When we understand the science behind effective lesson design, our coaching and feedback become more precise, our professional learning becomes more purposeful, and our conversations about effective instruction get grounded in something deeper than opinion or preference.
Until September…
I'll be sharing more in the coming months, about the book, the ideas inside it, and how you can be part of the conversation. For now, I want to say thank you. Many of you have been part of this journey, through workshops, feedback, and/or the questions you've asked that pushed my thinking further than I could have gone alone. This is a solo book, but it has your fingerprints all over it. Just like those second-grade skits. I may have written the script, but it was never really a one-person show.
The Science of Lesson Planning: High-Impact Practices That Deepen Student Learning will be available September 2026 from ISTE+ASCD. Stay tuned for pre-order information, a book study, workshops, and ways to engage together.
Imagine what's possible when every teacher has access to the science behind their craft and the tools to put it into practice every day.
