Revisiting The Strategic Teacher: Or, How AI Can Make the Promise of High-Impact Strategies a Reality in Every Classroom

|  by Tr. Harvey F. Silver  |  June 25, 2026  |

Way back in 2007 we wrote The Strategic Teacher with two goals in mind:

1) To help every educator build a repertoire of high-impact instructional techniques

2) To enhance instructional decision making so that teachers and teams could select the best instructional strategies to address their goals and students’ needs

What stands out to me twenty years later is that these strategies (e.g., Concept Attainment, Reading for Meaning, Inductive Learning, Graduated Difficulty) have more than stood the test of time. Indeed, as new waves of research, cognitive science, and the science of learning help us pinpoint how to engage learners’ minds so that learning sticks, the effectiveness of these strategies only becomes clearer.

And yet . . . Something else stands out, too.

As powerful as these strategies are, they have not found their way into classrooms with the frequency we would hope for. Too often, instruction is still teacher-centered. Students sit passively. Thinking remains shallow.

This reality was affirmed in a study by Harvard researchers Jal Mehta and Sarah Fine (2019), who visited high schools that proudly claimed a commitment to deeper learning. The authors began their investigation with optimism, but they ended with disappointment. What they observed was what we call the “Three Too’s”: Too much teacher talk, too much busy work, too little student thinking.

In my session at the 2026 ASCD annual conference, I am excited to talk about how we can change this pattern once and for all. I’m looking forward to sharing my newest thinking on strategies and how, when used well, they ensure that students are actively engaged in making meaning for themselves. Most of all, I am eager to demonstrate how we can leverage the power of AI to help teachers integrate these high-impact strategies into their lessons, units, and everyday practice.

I look forward to seeing you in Orlando (or online).

–Tr. Harvey