Sustainable Teaching is based on 12 specific principles and beliefs about learning that, together, address the major factor in learning—student motivation:

1. Students can become meaning-makers instead of receivers of meaning that teachers have made for them. Click to read more
2. The self of the student must be engaged for meaningful learning to occur. Click to read more
3. Thinking and emotion cannot be separated. Click to read more
4. Different students have differing profiles of cognitive strengths and weaknesses and recruit their strengths in order to solve problems; this means that people perceive problems differently and find different ways to solve them. Click to read more
5. Learning how to think is more important than learning what to think (so larger, cross-disciplinary skills receive greater emphasis than factual content). Click to read more
6. Students need to do the work of writers, historians, scientists (etc.) in order to think like writers, historians, scientists (etc.). 
7. Knowledge in the world outside schools is not departmentalized. 
8. Learning is a shared responsibility; teachers and students are natural partners. 
9. Teachers determine the essential intellectual skills so that students can understand and apply knowledge and learn how to create “new” knowledge; students take more control over content. Click to read more
10. Teachers’ and students’ understanding of intelligence affects the students’ ability to learn, their motivation and perseverance. 
11. Grades are often an impediment to learning, so if they cannot be eliminated, ways must be found to reduce their negative impact.
12. Education will improve as a result of discussion between teachers and brain researchers; new discoveries and theories will inform teaching and actual classroom reality will inform theory. Click to read more

Sustainable Teaching is also based on one assumption: All beliefs and principles about learning are subject to change and revision. Although we work with teachers from a base of the 12 principles, our goal is to help teachers develop their own principles, ones that they have internalized as a result of their experiences with students in the classroom.