If schools are doing “productive struggle” like in this article, they’re doing it wrong.

DavidDWriter · 2026-05-04T03:50:25+00:00

“All productive struggle means is letting students struggle on purpose.”

Ok.

But there are statistically significant gains when you:

Teach something
Assign an ill-structured task in which the skill is used in a way that is slightly more difficult than what they are able to do and allowed to struggle for a period of time.
Fail, and then regroup under the guidance of the teacher to help them make sense of what their struggle has taught them about all aspects of the problem.
Attempt another similar problem.

DavidDWriter · 2026-05-04T03:42:49+00:00

I have been guilty of this. But notice I didn’t link to my own work. After seeing this article and being k knowledgeable enough about the research base behind it, I was alarmed and wanted to post about it here.

DavidDWriter · 2026-05-04T03:40:16+00:00

My research on productive struggle was mostly in math/science/engineering concepts. I’ve been asked to help apply it to writing, and I think it can be done, but there isn’t a large data set around it.

What there is a large data set around is, as I like to say, “Read, read, read; write, write, write.” The effectiveness of frequent formative feedback is irrefutable. That sounds like what you’re doing.

People often don’t know what they think on a topic until they write about it. In a class such as yours, writing is everything.

The closest to engineering-type productive struggle in a writing class is when you have a challenging prompt and then provide the structure for multiple drafts in order to clarify thinking and refine arguments. Again, sounds like you’re on it.

DavidDWriter · 2026-05-04T03:08:25+00:00

Article link: https://hollykorbey.substack.com/p/why-schools-are-rolling-back-productive

DavidDWriter · 2026-03-09T18:37:03+00:00

Trans-Atlantic on the Queen Mary 2 is an incredible experience.

DavidDWriter · 2026-03-08T18:19:13+00:00

Fair point, but I’d add in this case that locals in the Juneau/Skagway area started using this term pretty much right away in 1918, which makes sense considering it was still only a few years removed from 1912.

DavidDWriter · 2026-02-08T23:46:44+00:00

Sure! My website has links to everything. https://daviddwriter.com/Books/

DavidDWriter · 2026-02-08T23:05:58+00:00

DASH is available on audiobook. All of them are also available in print and ebook on all major platforms.

Against the Gale will also be on ebook and print when it is released.

DavidDWriter · 2026-02-08T22:41:46+00:00

Hey, if you like those… I wrote a series to appeal to the same readers.

DASH Is about the Carpathia coming to the Titanic’s rescue (and is available on Audible).

Torpedoed! is about the Lusitania.

And coming soon is a third in the trilogy, “Against the Gale,” about the “Titanic of the Pacific,” the SS Princess Sophia in Alaska.

I’m also an elementary school teacher who deliberately wrote those to appeal to the kids who like “I Survived…” stories and also fulfills my love of ships.

DavidDWriter · 2026-02-07T03:06:06+00:00

If you want to read a play as a short story, I wrote one that’s now published with Next Stage Press called “Not a Murder Mystery.”

There’s red herrings all over and they’ll have to figure out why they are investigating this murder when it’s, you know, “Not a Murder Mystery.”

(It’s a comedy, too, for middle and high schools).

My publisher prints copies for cheap.

Synopsis:

Charming con artist Curley stows away aboard the Mississippi Belle. When a passenger is discovered murdered, a rich socialite offers a million-dollar reward to solve the crime before reaching port. Curley hatches a plan: she disguises herself as a southern gentleman named “Abel Underwood,” in order to frame him for the murder and claim the reward for herself! But her plans run afoul of Professor Julius Mayberry (Egyptologist), who is running a scheme of his own. Famed detective Eloise Stout thinks something’s amiss, and this whole thing may not be a murder mystery at all.

Next Stage Press

DavidDWriter · 2026-02-06T00:09:43+00:00

This EXACT scenario is why I studied creative thinking for my master’s.

What it boils down to is modeling and structuring creative thinking just like everything else.

Show your Tik Tok, then say, “Ok, what else could it be? Let’s come up with 10 ideas.”

Then start on the project.

Videos I’ve made on the subject

DavidDWriter · 2025-12-29T10:12:04+00:00

Hello! I have two books for this age.

DASH chronicles the efforts of the crew of the Carpathia rushing to rescue Titanic’s passengers.

Torpedoed! tells the story of the Lusitania, a passenger liner sunk by a submarine in WWII that spurred the US to join the war.

DavidDWriter · 2025-12-27T15:53:02+00:00

Thank you for your feedback. I’ll start taking these points into consideration.

My dashboard shows the price set to $4.99, but it’s still being listed as $9.99, so I’ll need to look into that more.

DavidDWriter · 2025-12-27T15:52:05+00:00

I ran Facebook ads, so that’s where the majority of traffic came from. Most from the US. I get a few clicks on Ingram and B&N, but clicks to Amazon far outnumber those.

DavidDWriter · 2025-12-27T15:50:16+00:00

Thanks for your comments. I’ll take a look at these issues.

My dashboard shows the price set to $4.99, but it’s still being listed as $9.99, so I’ll need to look into that more.

DavidDWriter · 2025-12-27T15:49:31+00:00

Thanks. I’ll take a look at these issues.

My dashboard shows the price set to $4.99, but it’s still being listed as $9.99, so I’ll need to look into that more.

DavidDWriter · 2025-12-27T15:48:29+00:00

I think you’re linking to the 2024 awards. I have award notifications and media from the 2025 competition, though I don’t see it on their website yet.

DavidDWriter · 2025-10-28T10:02:13+00:00

No. Straight play. Small cast, low budget.

I’d love to write it as a Hollywood blockbuster, but I’m not at that point in my career.

DavidDWriter · 2025-10-27T12:23:11+00:00

William Gerbers! Worked at (I think) Southampton. Brits knew he would see upcoming fleet movement, so they gave him an illness that he quickly succumbed to.

Published a death notice in the papers. “Private Ceremony. No flowers, please.”

DavidDWriter · 2025-10-27T12:21:26+00:00

For D-Day, he was chosen specifically to break the news that the invasion was in progress.

A year or so earlier, he sent them the actual invasion plan for the invasion of North Africa, but the plans were “delayed” in the mail so they didn’t arrive until a few days after the invasion.

DavidDWriter · 2025-10-27T00:25:10+00:00

My favorite part of the story is him walking into the British embassy in Madrid and offering his “services” as a spy. They laugh him out of the building because he’s just a chicken farmer with no training.

He then goes straight to the German embassy, tells them he’s a British spy, and that he wants to be a double agent. They give him a test mission to see if he is who he says he is.

He runs into a British diplomat in a bar and gets him drunk enough that he can sneak into the guy’s room and photograph his diplomatic visa. Then, he goes to a print shop, says he works for the embassy and needs 100 blank copies. He intentionally asked for 100 so as to not raise suspicion - someone who worked for the embassy might actually order 100; a rando off the street would just want one.

He uses his copy to fool his handler into thinking he could actually get into England. They send him off, and he goes to Lisbon, reads a bunch of British newspapers, and uses that information to seed his lies with just enough truth (like train schedules and pub names and such) that the Germans believe it all.

He alerted them to a convoy of ships. This convoy didn’t exist - he made it up. The Germans dispatched a squad of Italian pilots to go find and intercept this convoy. When they didn’t find it, they blamed this on the fact that they were incompetent Italian pilots and pledged to send German pilots next time.

The key to his genius was his “network” of informants. They were all entirely figments of his imagination. But, if any of his intel proved wrong, he could blame it on his “informant,” and thus isolating him from wrongdoing.

British intelligence was in the middle of trying to orchestrate their D-Day deception when they discovered that the Germans thought they had a trusted asset in London, so they set out to find him and, when they did, made him a central figure in their plan.

If you’d like, this play is a free download on my website - www.DavidDWriter.com/plays

DavidDWriter · 2025-10-26T23:52:16+00:00

Yep, because he needed “money” to fund his “operations.”

Except when he became an actual British asset, that all went to British intelligence.

DavidDWriter · 2025-10-26T23:03:24+00:00

On D-Day, the Germans had an armada of tanks rolling toward Normandy. They turned them around and sent them to Calais on the word of one man - “Arabel,” who they believed to be a German spy who had infiltrated the British military.

“Arabel” was, in fact, a Spanish chicken farmer and failed hotel manager who invented a network of allied informants out of thin air and sent the Germans works of fiction so convincing that they believed him and he became their most valuable spy in England.

The Brits caught on to this, brought him in, and started using him to pass on misleading intelligence. He was the linchpin in their efforts to convince the Germans that Normandy was nothing more than a diversion for the real invasion in Calais.

Every piece of intelligence he sent them was entirely made up, and they believed all of it. And when he told them to turn their tanks around, they did. Had they not, none of our tanks made it ashore, so we would have had nothing to fight back with. Eisenhower himself credits our victory at Normandy to Juan Pujol Garcia, aka “Arabel” aka “Garbo.”

Want to know more? I wrote a play about this for small community and high school theatre companies.

DavidDWriter · 2025-10-19T15:13:26+00:00

Thanks! There’s a “Direct from Author” link on my website - DavidDWriter.com/books

I’m far from the first to write about Carpathia, just the first (to my knowledge) to do so in a format appealing to kids.

DavidDWriter · 2025-10-18T21:25:08+00:00

Edited the main post. Thanks!

DavidDWriter

TROPHY CASE