Somewhere in America, there is a Walgreens missing a pharmacist — and one specific principal in Chicago is the reason why.
Kyera Bradley went to Howard to count pills for a living, then got one good look at the road ahead. "’The pharmacy track was pharmacy,’ as kids say, and I was just like, ‘yeah, no, I'm not doing this.’"
Instead, she remembered Mr. McGrath, the science teacher who never once let her turn in less than her best, and the whole plan fell apart in the best possible way. Kyera, once a kid from a single-parent household on Chicago's West Side, is now the principal of North Lawndale Prep.
This week, she explains what she calls the debt she's still paying forward, and she’s sharing Mr. McGrath’s rule that any teacher can borrow — free of charge.
Oh, one piece of housekeeping.... Welcome to something new: this is the very first issue of “On the Subject” that’s made just for teachers. Consider it the newsletter version of finally getting your own parking spot.
Here’s what’s on the dashboard this week:
Today’s Deep Dive: The McGrath rule, explained
Reading Rainbow: Teen brains, math gaps and the $20k win
From Our Desk: Bonuses and highlights
Watch of the Week: Fractions, beef and zero chill
Would You Rather: Fonts v. empty shelves
The McGrath Rule, Explained
Everything a spreadsheet knows about your year, it learned from test scores and attendance percentages.
What a spreadsheet will never know is which student walked out of your room in May believing something about themselves they didn't believe in September. Schools run on the first kind of data, but careers get rerouted by the second.
Kyera Bradley is the second kind. She grew up on Chicago's West Side with a mom working three jobs, and the adults at school became her village. One of them, a science teacher named Mr. McGrath, left such a mark that she now runs one of Chicago’s best preparatory schools based on a principle carrying his name.
She calls it “the McGrath Rule.” It’s three words that make up one simple tenet: Never cut corners.
Here, Kyera shares how you can live by the rule via three habits any teacher can run in their classroom by tomorrow:
Hold the line. The next time a student turns in 60% effort on a Friday afternoon, the redo is the actual kindness. Waving it through is what you do for a kid you've quietly stopped expecting anything from.
Say the sentence out loud. Whatever you believe about a student's potential, it does nothing sitting in your head. Say it to their face, specifically and by name, the way you'd want someone to have said it to you. Kids remember direct words for decades. They forget subtext by lunch.
Spend what you've got. Every teacher walked into this job carrying something: a mentor, a lucky break, a household that worked three jobs to get them here. None of it was meant to stay yours. Hand it down to the student who needs it most this year.
C’mon, we all need to face and call out the brutal truth about education: Most of the adults in a student's school years fade fast, the way a substitute's name disappears by winter break.
But one name always survives the blur. Somewhere in your classroom is a kid who's going to remember a teacher’s name long after every grade you gave has stopped mattering.
Make it yours.
Get the whole McGrath Rule, habit by habit:
Then hit play here and hear the story that built the McGrath Rule.
Jude Julien helped launch the city's only fully virtual high school and took home Math for America's Muller Award for making STEM work for kids who couldn't thrive in a traditional building. His plan for the money is refreshingly human: pay some bills, then book a trip he actually wants to take.
Your instructions are clearer to you than to your students
New research on instruction-giving finds most teachers overestimate how well their directions land, and trained teachers who broke tasks into short, specific steps saw way less of that blank-stare-and-do-nothing routine. Turns out "cut the potato in half" beats "so now we're going to take our potato, which we looked at earlier" every single time.Teenagers aren't broken, their brains are just doing their job
A high school teacher breaks down how the teenage brain's four big shifts, emotional intensity, social pull, novelty-seeking and creative risk, can be designed for instead of fought against. Turns out gamifying a lesson works better than lecturing a room full of kids whose brains are basically running on dopamine and vibes.Mind the gap: Black students make up 15% of public school enrollment and just 6% of AP math classes
A new report traces the gap back to blocked access to algebra as early as eighth grade, with ripple effects that follow students straight into the workforce. The numbers are stark enough that "gatekeeping" barely covers it.100 teenagers wrote their own AI rulebook, and adults weren't invited to edit it
Students from all 50 states gathered to debate and vote on an AI Bill of Rights for schools, and the discourse got heated enough that one student compared the draft to a block of Swiss cheese. It still passed. Somewhere a teenager is more organized about AI policy than most school boards.
Our pick of the week: The Bear
Why We’re Obsessed: A brilliant, overworked professional chef inherits a chaotic institution held together by duct tape and loyalty, then tries to raise standards while everyone screams. If that premise sounds suspiciously familiar, congratulations on surviving another faculty meeting. Carmy runs his kitchen the way Mr. McGrath ran his classroom, by refusing to let anyone settle, and the show is a masterclass in what "every second counts" looks like when someone actually means it.
Recommended lesson integration:
Fraction Math, But Make It Beef: Teach fraction scaling by having students resize a recipe built for 4 to feed the whole class. Half the class will finish early and the other half will accidentally invent a stew that violates several laws of physics.
Should The Beef Have Stayed The Beef? Explore small business economics through the restaurant's finances and have students argue whether the rebrand was worth it. Somewhere a kid is about to write a shockingly aggressive persuasive essay defending a sandwich shop's honor.
The Anatomy of a Redo: Students study Carmy as a case in relentless standards, then write about a moment someone refused to let them turn in their half-hearted work. At least one essay will accidentally turn into a thank-you note and nobody will be emotionally prepared for it.
One Take, Zero Chill: Analyze the pacing and sound design of the episode "Review," then storyboard a one-take scene of the most stressful day the student has ever had at school. Fire alarms, pop quizzes and lost hall passes will all be treated with the gravity of a Michelin inspection.
Debate: Does Carmy Build People or Just Burn Them Out? Students argue both sides using evidence from the show, extra credit if they connect it to their college essay. Guaranteed at least one student will cry, blame the show and still turn in the best paragraph of their semester.
Introducing our new weekly (and obviously, completely scientific) poll series. Vote and we'll share the results in the next issue:
Thank you for joining us for another edition of On The Subject. We’ll see you again in a week, with more stories from the hallways.
The Subject Team
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