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A student opened her PowerSchool account, saw a 95, and came to ask what she could do to raise it.

I knew I didn't turn my poker face on fast enough.

That moment lives rent-free in my brain next to two others: the Kleenex boxes we hand out points for (no educational value, just transaction), and the year-long Standards Based Grading book study where nobody, including the facilitator, had actually read the book.

Three neighboring sections of my brain that knocked down the walls to build a penthouse apartment of absurdity.

Here's something that should change how you think about every grade you've ever given or received: the modern grading system is barely over a century old, and it was never built to tell you what a student knows. It was built to sort students efficiently during the Industrial Revolution. In 1913 — over a hundred years ago — a researcher called it "an absolutely uncalibrated instrument."

We are still using essentially the same system today.

This week's post covers:

👉 The actual history of why we grade the way we do
👉 What happens when a grade becomes a measure of self-worth (the research is sobering)
👉 Why I believe in Standards Based Grading — and the institutional fear keeping it from happening
👉 What we can actually do, even without overhauling the whole system

A 95% was never the problem. Link in bio.

#teachersplaiground #grading #standardsbasedgrading #teacherwellbeing #studentmentalhealth #edtech #teaching #educators #teacherlife

A student opened her PowerSchool account, saw a 95, and came to ask what she could do to raise it.

I knew I didn't turn my poker face on fast enough.

That moment lives rent-free in my brain next to two others: the Kleenex boxes we hand out points for (no educational value, just transaction), and the year-long Standards Based Grading book study where nobody, including the facilitator, had actually read the book.

Three neighboring sections of my brain that knocked down the walls to build a penthouse apartment of absurdity.

Here's something that should change how you think about every grade you've ever given or received: the modern grading system is barely over a century old, and it was never built to tell you what a student knows. It was built to sort students efficiently during the Industrial Revolution. In 1913 — over a hundred years ago — a researcher called it "an absolutely uncalibrated instrument."

We are still using essentially the same system today.

This week's post covers:

👉 The actual history of why we grade the way we do
👉 What happens when a grade becomes a measure of self-worth (the research is sobering)
👉 Why I believe in Standards Based Grading — and the institutional fear keeping it from happening
👉 What we can actually do, even without overhauling the whole system

A 95% was never the problem. Link in bio.

#teachersplaiground #grading #standardsbasedgrading #teacherwellbeing #studentmentalhealth #edtech #teaching #educators #teacherlife

Stand up. Walk to one side of the room.

I'm serious. Pick something you have a strong opinion about and physically move toward it.

Something just happened, didn't it? A slight straightening. A feeling of readiness. The particular alertness that comes from declaring yourself — even to an empty room.

That's not nothing. That's your body participating in your thinking.

Post 10 in my thinking routines series is built around exactly this idea: that how students position themselves physically and temporally in a discussion changes what they think — not just how they express it.

Two strategies:

🙏 Philosophical Chairs — students physically move to agree or disagree sides of the room based on a statement, discuss, and can switch sides when their thinking changes. The walk across the room IS the changed mind made visible. Developed through the AVID program.

🃏 Save the Last Word for Me — students choose a passage from a text, write their private response on the back of an index card, share the passage with their group WITHOUT explaining why they chose it, listen while others respond, and only then get the last word. The wait is the whole strategy. Developed by Short, Harste & Burke.

Both come with full templates. This is also the first post in the series that steps outside of Project Zero — because great thinking routines live everywhere, and these two deserve a spotlight.

Links in bio. ✨

#VisibleThinking #PhilosophicalChairs #SaveTheLastWord #TeachersOfInstagram #CriticalThinking #AVIDstrategy #FacingHistory #TeacherBlogger #TeachersPlAIground #DiscussionStrategies

Stand up. Walk to one side of the room.

I'm serious. Pick something you have a strong opinion about and physically move toward it.

Something just happened, didn't it? A slight straightening. A feeling of readiness. The particular alertness that comes from declaring yourself — even to an empty room.

That's not nothing. That's your body participating in your thinking.

Post 10 in my thinking routines series is built around exactly this idea: that how students position themselves physically and temporally in a discussion changes what they think — not just how they express it.

Two strategies:

🙏 Philosophical Chairs — students physically move to agree or disagree sides of the room based on a statement, discuss, and can switch sides when their thinking changes. The walk across the room IS the changed mind made visible. Developed through the AVID program.

🃏 Save the Last Word for Me — students choose a passage from a text, write their private response on the back of an index card, share the passage with their group WITHOUT explaining why they chose it, listen while others respond, and only then get the last word. The wait is the whole strategy. Developed by Short, Harste & Burke.

Both come with full templates. This is also the first post in the series that steps outside of Project Zero — because great thinking routines live everywhere, and these two deserve a spotlight.

Links in bio. ✨

#VisibleThinking #PhilosophicalChairs #SaveTheLastWord #TeachersOfInstagram #CriticalThinking #AVIDstrategy #FacingHistory #TeacherBlogger #TeachersPlAIground #DiscussionStrategies

Merging my love of the @fifaworldcup, my passion for teaching, and an epic prompt by @aiwithaileen, I've finally created my #TechTshirtTuesday inspired trading card!

Merging my love of the @fifaworldcup, my passion for teaching, and an epic prompt by @aiwithaileen, I've finally created my #TechTshirtTuesday inspired trading card!

I have a therapist. She is wonderful. She is patient. She spent several years trying to get me to find my mind palace.

I sat through every session with the energy of someone being asked to enjoy a vegetable they have never liked.

But here’s the thing about therapy I didn’t appreciate until I was deep in it: the intake form is where everything starts. You have to know what’s wrong, where it came from, and what better looks like. In two pages or less.

That is an extraordinarily sophisticated cognitive task.

And then I thought, what if my students had to fill one out? Not for themselves. For Napoleon. For Pluto. For the imaginary number. For the Oxford comma, which has been experiencing significant professional invalidation and would like to talk about it.

This week’s Monday template is the Therapy Session Intake Form — a classroom activity that asks students to inhabit their subject from the inside, identify presenting problems, trace causes, articulate goals, and write a therapist’s note.

It looks like a therapy meme. It is secretly one of the most rigorous perspective-taking and synthesis activities I’ve ever built.

It also has an unexpected bonus: research on bibliotherapy suggests that students who practice naming presenting problems, identifying causes, and articulating goals are quietly learning the language of self-reflection. That’s not nothing.

Free template linked in bio. Napoleon’s exemplar is fully written. Pluto’s is devastating. The Oxford comma’s is… personal.

Tag me when your students fill one out. 🛋️

#teachersplaiground #therapysession #edtech #teaching #playfulpedagogy #creativeclassroom #educators #historyteacher #ELA #scienceteacher #oxfordcomma #napoleon #pluto

I have a therapist. She is wonderful. She is patient. She spent several years trying to get me to find my mind palace.

I sat through every session with the energy of someone being asked to enjoy a vegetable they have never liked.

But here’s the thing about therapy I didn’t appreciate until I was deep in it: the intake form is where everything starts. You have to know what’s wrong, where it came from, and what better looks like. In two pages or less.

That is an extraordinarily sophisticated cognitive task.

And then I thought, what if my students had to fill one out? Not for themselves. For Napoleon. For Pluto. For the imaginary number. For the Oxford comma, which has been experiencing significant professional invalidation and would like to talk about it.

This week’s Monday template is the Therapy Session Intake Form — a classroom activity that asks students to inhabit their subject from the inside, identify presenting problems, trace causes, articulate goals, and write a therapist’s note.

It looks like a therapy meme. It is secretly one of the most rigorous perspective-taking and synthesis activities I’ve ever built.

It also has an unexpected bonus: research on bibliotherapy suggests that students who practice naming presenting problems, identifying causes, and articulating goals are quietly learning the language of self-reflection. That’s not nothing.

Free template linked in bio. Napoleon’s exemplar is fully written. Pluto’s is devastating. The Oxford comma’s is… personal.

Tag me when your students fill one out. 🛋️

#teachersplaiground #therapysession #edtech #teaching #playfulpedagogy #creativeclassroom #educators #historyteacher #ELA #scienceteacher #oxfordcomma #napoleon #pluto

Today’s post on the grading trap (I promise, it’s a riveting weekend read!) will come out either tonight or tomorrow! Someone forgot to schedule the post (spoiler alert, it’s me!) and I’ve been in a van since 6 am, I’ve joined the Firebirds on the way to @speechanddebate nationals!

Today’s post on the grading trap (I promise, it’s a riveting weekend read!) will come out either tonight or tomorrow! Someone forgot to schedule the post (spoiler alert, it’s me!) and I’ve been in a van since 6 am, I’ve joined the Firebirds on the way to @speechanddebate nationals!

Since 1998, policy debate tournaments have been a large part of my life. Argument construction is my identity. Arguments are the air I breathe.

Debate rewires you. It makes you see every claim as something that needs support, every position as something that has a counter, every conversation as a map of competing interests that each deserve to be understood before you decide what you think.

The problem? I teach mostly non-debate students who haven't been rewired.

And I'm ashamed to admit — I forget that sometimes. I walk into discussions assuming a baseline of argumentative sophistication my students haven't had thirty years of debate rounds to develop. And then I wonder why the conversation stays shallow.

Post 9 in my @projectzerohgse Thinking Routines series is about fixing that. Two routines that compress decades of debate training into a structure any student can use:

🌀 Circle of Viewpoints — students don't just acknowledge other perspectives, they inhabit them. They speak from inside a viewpoint they might not hold, find the questions that viewpoint still has, and argue it as if they mean it. That's not perspective-tolerating. That's perspective-understanding.

🔍 What Makes You Say That? — two questions that change everything. What do you think? What makes you say that? Every interpretation has to be grounded in evidence. Right now. Not later. The moment students try to answer that second question and realize they have nothing solid to point to is one of the most valuable things that can happen in a classroom.

Free templates for both are linked in bio. And yes — these two routines made a brief appearance in Post 1. This is the deep dive.

#ProjectZero #VisibleThinking #ThinkingRoutines #TeachersOfInstagram #CriticalThinking #HarvardProjectZero #TeacherBlogger #TeachersPlAIground #PolicyDebate #ArgumentationSkills

Since 1998, policy debate tournaments have been a large part of my life. Argument construction is my identity. Arguments are the air I breathe.

Debate rewires you. It makes you see every claim as something that needs support, every position as something that has a counter, every conversation as a map of competing interests that each deserve to be understood before you decide what you think.

The problem? I teach mostly non-debate students who haven't been rewired.

And I'm ashamed to admit — I forget that sometimes. I walk into discussions assuming a baseline of argumentative sophistication my students haven't had thirty years of debate rounds to develop. And then I wonder why the conversation stays shallow.

Post 9 in my @projectzerohgse Thinking Routines series is about fixing that. Two routines that compress decades of debate training into a structure any student can use:

🌀 Circle of Viewpoints — students don't just acknowledge other perspectives, they inhabit them. They speak from inside a viewpoint they might not hold, find the questions that viewpoint still has, and argue it as if they mean it. That's not perspective-tolerating. That's perspective-understanding.

🔍 What Makes You Say That? — two questions that change everything. What do you think? What makes you say that? Every interpretation has to be grounded in evidence. Right now. Not later. The moment students try to answer that second question and realize they have nothing solid to point to is one of the most valuable things that can happen in a classroom.

Free templates for both are linked in bio. And yes — these two routines made a brief appearance in Post 1. This is the deep dive.

#ProjectZero #VisibleThinking #ThinkingRoutines #TeachersOfInstagram #CriticalThinking #HarvardProjectZero #TeacherBlogger #TeachersPlAIground #PolicyDebate #ArgumentationSkills

The kids wanted to put together a lemonade stand and after they patiently waited for me to finish mowing, they were open and ready to go. Let’s see if we have a bunch of people who heed @matthew_x_joseph’s call to always stop!!

The kids wanted to put together a lemonade stand and after they patiently waited for me to finish mowing, they were open and ready to go. Let’s see if we have a bunch of people who heed @matthew_x_joseph’s call to always stop!!

I have been teaching for almost twenty years.

Next year I am going back to the social studies classroom. US History. World History. The full return.

And I am treating it like Year Zero.

Not because the old stuff was bad. Some of it was genuinely good. But because I am not the same teacher who built it — and my students deserve the version of me that knows what I know now about play, creativity, curiosity, and what learning actually looks like when it is working.

So I am starting from the district’s standards and pacing guide and building everything else from scratch. Every unit. Every lesson. Every activity. Built around play, technology, and the kind of weird instructional choices this blog has been arguing for all year.

And everything I build gets shared here.

Two dedicated resource pages — one for US History, one for World History — updated as the year goes on. Not a highlight reel of the things that worked perfectly. Everything.

I have been teaching for almost twenty years.

Next year I am going back to the social studies classroom. US History. World History. The full return.

And I am treating it like Year Zero.

Not because the old stuff was bad. Some of it was genuinely good. But because I am not the same teacher who built it — and my students deserve the version of me that knows what I know now about play, creativity, curiosity, and what learning actually looks like when it is working.

So I am starting from the district’s standards and pacing guide and building everything else from scratch. Every unit. Every lesson. Every activity. Built around play, technology, and the kind of weird instructional choices this blog has been arguing for all year.

And everything I build gets shared here.

Two dedicated resource pages — one for US History, one for World History — updated as the year goes on. Not a highlight reel of the things that worked perfectly. Everything.

Let me tell you about three professional development experiences from my career.

My very first PD as a new teacher was a video about working with special education students that used language considered outdated for years. Nobody flagged it. We signed the attendance sheet and moved on.

A few years later I sat through a session on depositing in emotional banks. The concept is real. The session never told me how to make a deposit. I have never once thought about emotional bank deposits while actually teaching a human child.

And then there was the year-long Standards Based Grading book study where it was abundantly, painfully, almost impressively clear that nobody in the room had read the book.

These are not horror stories from a uniquely dysfunctional district.

These are typical.

Districts spend $18,000 per teacher per year on professional development. 30% of teachers improve substantially as a result. The system does not need PD to work. It needs PD to happen.

This Friday’s post is about why that’s broken — and more importantly, what you can actually do about it. Because the good stuff is out there. You just have to find it yourself.

Link in bio.

#teachersplaiground #teacherpd #professionaldevelopment #teacherwellbeing #edtech #teaching #educators #teacherlife #EdCamp #ditchthattextbook #GoldEDU

Let me tell you about three professional development experiences from my career.

My very first PD as a new teacher was a video about working with special education students that used language considered outdated for years. Nobody flagged it. We signed the attendance sheet and moved on.

A few years later I sat through a session on depositing in emotional banks. The concept is real. The session never told me how to make a deposit. I have never once thought about emotional bank deposits while actually teaching a human child.

And then there was the year-long Standards Based Grading book study where it was abundantly, painfully, almost impressively clear that nobody in the room had read the book.

These are not horror stories from a uniquely dysfunctional district.

These are typical.

Districts spend $18,000 per teacher per year on professional development. 30% of teachers improve substantially as a result. The system does not need PD to work. It needs PD to happen.

This Friday’s post is about why that’s broken — and more importantly, what you can actually do about it. Because the good stuff is out there. You just have to find it yourself.

Link in bio.

#teachersplaiground #teacherpd #professionaldevelopment #teacherwellbeing #edtech #teaching #educators #teacherlife #EdCamp #ditchthattextbook #GoldEDU

Eight posts into this series. Twenty-something thinking routines. A Costco parking lot, a Tonic deep cut, This Old House, and one very passionate argument about the Oxford comma.

And across all of it, I've been assuming something I want to name directly for the first time:

I've been assuming the routines reach everyone.

They don't. Not automatically.

In most classrooms, most of the time, the same students talk. Not because the quiet ones don't have thoughts, but because traditional discussion systematically advantages the fast, the loud, and the verbally confident. The students who have been told their whole lives that what they have to say is worth saying.

Post 8 is about fixing that. Two @projectzerohgse routines:

🤫 Chalk Talk — an entirely silent discussion. Students respond to prompts in writing on shared paper, building on each other's ideas without anyone speaking. The silence removes the social performance of discussion. The student who processes slowly has exactly as much time as the student who processes quickly. (I also built an interactive Figma version for device-based classrooms — but if you can do it on paper, do it on paper.)

📝 Word, Phrase, Sentence — before any discussion begins, every student identifies a word, a phrase, and a sentence from the text that captured their attention. Nobody arrives empty-handed. The explanation of WHY they chose each one is where the real thinking lives.

Free templates for both are linked in bio. And if you've been following along — Parts 1 through 7 are there too.

The thinking is already there. These routines just make it impossible to keep quiet. ✨

#ProjectZero #VisibleThinking #ThinkingRoutines #TeachersOfInstagram #CriticalThinking #HarvardProjectZero #TeacherBlogger #TeachersPlAIground #ChalkTalk #SilentDiscussion

Eight posts into this series. Twenty-something thinking routines. A Costco parking lot, a Tonic deep cut, This Old House, and one very passionate argument about the Oxford comma.

And across all of it, I've been assuming something I want to name directly for the first time:

I've been assuming the routines reach everyone.

They don't. Not automatically.

In most classrooms, most of the time, the same students talk. Not because the quiet ones don't have thoughts, but because traditional discussion systematically advantages the fast, the loud, and the verbally confident. The students who have been told their whole lives that what they have to say is worth saying.

Post 8 is about fixing that. Two @projectzerohgse routines:

🤫 Chalk Talk — an entirely silent discussion. Students respond to prompts in writing on shared paper, building on each other's ideas without anyone speaking. The silence removes the social performance of discussion. The student who processes slowly has exactly as much time as the student who processes quickly. (I also built an interactive Figma version for device-based classrooms — but if you can do it on paper, do it on paper.)

📝 Word, Phrase, Sentence — before any discussion begins, every student identifies a word, a phrase, and a sentence from the text that captured their attention. Nobody arrives empty-handed. The explanation of WHY they chose each one is where the real thinking lives.

Free templates for both are linked in bio. And if you've been following along — Parts 1 through 7 are there too.

The thinking is already there. These routines just make it impossible to keep quiet. ✨

#ProjectZero #VisibleThinking #ThinkingRoutines #TeachersOfInstagram #CriticalThinking #HarvardProjectZero #TeacherBlogger #TeachersPlAIground #ChalkTalk #SilentDiscussion

Long before Property Brothers, before Fixer Upper, before every HGTV show that promises a transformation in 47 minutes here was @thisoldhouse on @pbs

My dad and I watched every season. He collected the books. The plans. The gear. TOH would take an ENTIRE SEASON to show you a single renovation. And the reveal still hit the same.

Because the reveal only means something when you saw the before. When you saw the linoleum. The drop ceiling. The cabinet doors that didn't quite close.

I think about this constantly in the context of learning.

We show students the finished kitchen. We test them on the finished kitchen. We grade them on the finished kitchen. But we rarely document the linoleum.

Post 7 in my @projectzerohgse Thinking Routines series is about exactly this. Two routines that together form the most complete learning arc in the whole toolbox:

🧠 Think, Puzzle, Explore — the unit launch that surfaces what students actually think, what they're genuinely curious about, and how they'd pursue it. A pre-assessment that doesn't feel like a pre-assessment.

🔄 I Used to Think... Now I Think... — the end-of-unit routine that makes growth visible. Students trace exactly how their thinking traveled. The before and the after, right there on the page.

Run them together and you have the whole renovation on record.

Free templates for both are linked in bio. ✨

#ProjectZero #VisibleThinking #ThinkingRoutines #TeachersOfInstagram #CriticalThinking #HarvardProjectZero #TeacherBlogger #TeachersPlAIground #ThisOldHouse #BeforeAndAfter

Long before Property Brothers, before Fixer Upper, before every HGTV show that promises a transformation in 47 minutes here was @thisoldhouse on @pbs

My dad and I watched every season. He collected the books. The plans. The gear. TOH would take an ENTIRE SEASON to show you a single renovation. And the reveal still hit the same.

Because the reveal only means something when you saw the before. When you saw the linoleum. The drop ceiling. The cabinet doors that didn't quite close.

I think about this constantly in the context of learning.

We show students the finished kitchen. We test them on the finished kitchen. We grade them on the finished kitchen. But we rarely document the linoleum.

Post 7 in my @projectzerohgse Thinking Routines series is about exactly this. Two routines that together form the most complete learning arc in the whole toolbox:

🧠 Think, Puzzle, Explore — the unit launch that surfaces what students actually think, what they're genuinely curious about, and how they'd pursue it. A pre-assessment that doesn't feel like a pre-assessment.

🔄 I Used to Think... Now I Think... — the end-of-unit routine that makes growth visible. Students trace exactly how their thinking traveled. The before and the after, right there on the page.

Run them together and you have the whole renovation on record.

Free templates for both are linked in bio. ✨

#ProjectZero #VisibleThinking #ThinkingRoutines #TeachersOfInstagram #CriticalThinking #HarvardProjectZero #TeacherBlogger #TeachersPlAIground #ThisOldHouse #BeforeAndAfter

Who knew it would be the right weather with 2.5 days left in the school year for my new @retroreport Educator 1/4 zip, but I won’t complain!!!!!

Who knew it would be the right weather with 2.5 days left in the school year for my new @retroreport Educator 1/4 zip, but I won’t complain!!!!!

Have you ever actually read a flight safety card?

Not the panicked skim when the flight attendant gives you the look. Really read one.

It is a masterpiece of compression. Every word earned its place. Every stick figure was a decision.

And it made me think about the student who writes everything down. The one with four pages of notes for a one-page review sheet. The one whose highlighter has touched every sentence in the chapter. The one who freezes when you ask “what’s the most important thing here?”

That student isn’t struggling with the content. They’re struggling with compression.

Compression — identifying what is essential, discarding what is peripheral, and organizing what remains into a form that works under pressure — is one of the most sophisticated thinking skills we ask of students. And one of the ones we teach least explicitly.

So I built a template.

The Flight Safety Card activity works across every subject area and every grade level. History, Science, ELA, Economics, Math, World Languages — if it has conditions, consequences, and a way out, it has a card.

And yes, the section headers are all airplane puns. I am serious. Don’t call me Shirley.

Free template linked in bio. Tag me when your students make one. ✈️

#teachersplaiground #flightsafetycard #edtech #teaching #playfulpedagogy #creativeclassroom #educators #compression #criticalthinking #historyteacher #ELA #scienceteacher

Have you ever actually read a flight safety card?

Not the panicked skim when the flight attendant gives you the look. Really read one.

It is a masterpiece of compression. Every word earned its place. Every stick figure was a decision.

And it made me think about the student who writes everything down. The one with four pages of notes for a one-page review sheet. The one whose highlighter has touched every sentence in the chapter. The one who freezes when you ask “what’s the most important thing here?”

That student isn’t struggling with the content. They’re struggling with compression.

Compression — identifying what is essential, discarding what is peripheral, and organizing what remains into a form that works under pressure — is one of the most sophisticated thinking skills we ask of students. And one of the ones we teach least explicitly.

So I built a template.

The Flight Safety Card activity works across every subject area and every grade level. History, Science, ELA, Economics, Math, World Languages — if it has conditions, consequences, and a way out, it has a card.

And yes, the section headers are all airplane puns. I am serious. Don’t call me Shirley.

Free template linked in bio. Tag me when your students make one. ✈️

#teachersplaiground #flightsafetycard #edtech #teaching #playfulpedagogy #creativeclassroom #educators #compression #criticalthinking #historyteacher #ELA #scienceteacher

There is a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercial that has lived rent-free in my brain for years.

Two people. One has chocolate. One has peanut butter. They collide. The result is the greatest food combination in the history of human civilization.

It is, when you think about it, a missed connection that actually connected. A what-if that became a what-is.

And it made me think about all of the things in history, literature, and science that almost connected and didn’t.

What if the United States had joined the League of Nations?
What if Gatsby had actually gotten Daisy?
What if the supply had found the demand before the market collapsed?

Those are not idle questions. Those are some of the most rigorous cognitive moves a student can make. And it turns out there is a format perfectly designed to help them make those moves.

Welcome to the Craigslist Missed Connections activity. Population: every subject area you have ever taught.

This week’s post covers:

👉 What counterfactual thinking actually is and why Kahneman and Tversky spent decades studying it
👉 Why asking “what if?” makes students more curious (yes, the research says this)
👉 What the Craigslist format does that a traditional essay prompt cannot
👉 Examples across History, ELA, Science, Economics, Math, World Languages, Art, and Music
👉 A free template AND a fully written exemplar — the US and the League of Nations, written by the League itself, with a reply from Henry Cabot Lodge who has thoughts

The exemplar includes a reply from Henry Cabot Lodge. He is not wrong, exactly. And that is the whole point.

Free template linked in bio. Tag me when your students write one. I want to read every single missed connection they didn’t know they needed to write. 💔

#teachersplaiground #craigslist #missedconnections #counterfactualthinking #historyteacher #ELA #edtech #teaching #educators #creativeclassroom #playfulpedagogy #whatif

There is a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercial that has lived rent-free in my brain for years.

Two people. One has chocolate. One has peanut butter. They collide. The result is the greatest food combination in the history of human civilization.

It is, when you think about it, a missed connection that actually connected. A what-if that became a what-is.

And it made me think about all of the things in history, literature, and science that almost connected and didn’t.

What if the United States had joined the League of Nations?
What if Gatsby had actually gotten Daisy?
What if the supply had found the demand before the market collapsed?

Those are not idle questions. Those are some of the most rigorous cognitive moves a student can make. And it turns out there is a format perfectly designed to help them make those moves.

Welcome to the Craigslist Missed Connections activity. Population: every subject area you have ever taught.

This week’s post covers:

👉 What counterfactual thinking actually is and why Kahneman and Tversky spent decades studying it
👉 Why asking “what if?” makes students more curious (yes, the research says this)
👉 What the Craigslist format does that a traditional essay prompt cannot
👉 Examples across History, ELA, Science, Economics, Math, World Languages, Art, and Music
👉 A free template AND a fully written exemplar — the US and the League of Nations, written by the League itself, with a reply from Henry Cabot Lodge who has thoughts

The exemplar includes a reply from Henry Cabot Lodge. He is not wrong, exactly. And that is the whole point.

Free template linked in bio. Tag me when your students write one. I want to read every single missed connection they didn’t know they needed to write. 💔

#teachersplaiground #craigslist #missedconnections #counterfactualthinking #historyteacher #ELA #edtech #teaching #educators #creativeclassroom #playfulpedagogy #whatif

Looks like I get to let the dogs out at ISTE baby!!!!

Looks like I get to let the dogs out at ISTE baby!!!!

Almost forgot to take my #TechTshirtTuesday photo rocking my new @knowtteacher #KnowtKnights shirt.

Also #RIPmyVoice

No more smiles, I’m going to sleep, I feel like crap. In lieu of flowers you can cashapp me for ice cream, milkshakes, and other cold and soft treats.

Almost forgot to take my #TechTshirtTuesday photo rocking my new @knowtteacher #KnowtKnights shirt.

Also #RIPmyVoice

No more smiles, I’m going to sleep, I feel like crap. In lieu of flowers you can cashapp me for ice cream, milkshakes, and other cold and soft treats.

I have seen a lot of edtech demos. I have nodded politely at a lot of tools that were essentially slight variations on something that already existed. I have smiled, taken the tote bag, and moved on.

I did not move on from @getknowt

What I watched at their @tcea_org booth was the moment I realized that Quizlet had stopped, high-fived each other, and called it done — while the team at Knowt looked at everything Quizlet built, said "hold my beer," and kept going.

I got so excited that I applied to become a Knowt Knight — their inaugural ambassador cohort. Not because someone paid me to. Because I have watched this tool work.

Here’s what makes it different:

👉 Notes from literally anything — PDFs, YouTube videos, recorded lectures, Google Docs, websites
👉 A lecture recording feature that saves your voice as a summary note for students who missed class
👉 Multiple study modes all built on a spaced repetition engine
👉 An AP library that would have changed how I taught APUSH and AP Gov
👉 Kai — an AI study companion that generates personalized podcasts from study material AND calls students on their devices for an interactive conversation about what they’re studying

That last one made me stop walking at the demo booth.

New post covers the neuroscience of retrieval practice, why spaced repetition actually works, and how I use Knowt both as a teacher and to teach students to use it independently.

Oh, and it’s free to get started. Which still surprises me every time I say it.

Link in bio.

#teachersplaiground #knowt #knowtknights #edtech #retrievalpractice #spacedrepetition #AIinEducation #teaching #educators #studytools #APexam

I have seen a lot of edtech demos. I have nodded politely at a lot of tools that were essentially slight variations on something that already existed. I have smiled, taken the tote bag, and moved on.

I did not move on from @getknowt

What I watched at their @tcea_org booth was the moment I realized that Quizlet had stopped, high-fived each other, and called it done — while the team at Knowt looked at everything Quizlet built, said "hold my beer," and kept going.

I got so excited that I applied to become a Knowt Knight — their inaugural ambassador cohort. Not because someone paid me to. Because I have watched this tool work.

Here’s what makes it different:

👉 Notes from literally anything — PDFs, YouTube videos, recorded lectures, Google Docs, websites
👉 A lecture recording feature that saves your voice as a summary note for students who missed class
👉 Multiple study modes all built on a spaced repetition engine
👉 An AP library that would have changed how I taught APUSH and AP Gov
👉 Kai — an AI study companion that generates personalized podcasts from study material AND calls students on their devices for an interactive conversation about what they’re studying

That last one made me stop walking at the demo booth.

New post covers the neuroscience of retrieval practice, why spaced repetition actually works, and how I use Knowt both as a teacher and to teach students to use it independently.

Oh, and it’s free to get started. Which still surprises me every time I say it.

Link in bio.

#teachersplaiground #knowt #knowtknights #edtech #retrievalpractice #spacedrepetition #AIinEducation #teaching #educators #studytools #APexam

Before the kids these days started talking about vibes, I was already vibe-aware.

I always feel like Steve Buscemi when I hear them say it. But my inner Spicoli? He gets it.

Because I have stopped a lesson mid-activity because the vibes were off. I have sent a backchannel message to a kid in the middle of class — a quiet "hey, you okay?" through Google Classroom — because something told me to. Not a data point. Not a dashboard alert. Something I couldn’t fully articulate but couldn’t ignore.

Every teacher reading this knows exactly what I’m talking about.

It has a name, your teacher spidey-sense, or as researchers call it, teacher intuition. And it is one of the most sophisticated things a human being can do.

This week’s Friday post is the third in a series I’ve been building all month, and it’s the one that connects everything:

👉 What pedagogical tact actually is and why it’s not just a feeling
👉 Why the data-driven decision-making movement has quietly told teachers their gut doesn’t count
👉 Why AI will never have a Spicoli mode, no matter how advanced it gets
👉 Why you’ve been running vibe checks since before the kids had a name for it

And yours are backed by neuroscience.

Link in bio. This one’s for every teacher who has ever known something was wrong before they could explain why.

#teachersplaiground #teacherwellbeing #teacherintuition #pedagogicaltact #AIinEducation #teaching #educators #teacherlife #vibecheck #teacherspidysense

Before the kids these days started talking about vibes, I was already vibe-aware.

I always feel like Steve Buscemi when I hear them say it. But my inner Spicoli? He gets it.

Because I have stopped a lesson mid-activity because the vibes were off. I have sent a backchannel message to a kid in the middle of class — a quiet "hey, you okay?" through Google Classroom — because something told me to. Not a data point. Not a dashboard alert. Something I couldn’t fully articulate but couldn’t ignore.

Every teacher reading this knows exactly what I’m talking about.

It has a name, your teacher spidey-sense, or as researchers call it, teacher intuition. And it is one of the most sophisticated things a human being can do.

This week’s Friday post is the third in a series I’ve been building all month, and it’s the one that connects everything:

👉 What pedagogical tact actually is and why it’s not just a feeling
👉 Why the data-driven decision-making movement has quietly told teachers their gut doesn’t count
👉 Why AI will never have a Spicoli mode, no matter how advanced it gets
👉 Why you’ve been running vibe checks since before the kids had a name for it

And yours are backed by neuroscience.

Link in bio. This one’s for every teacher who has ever known something was wrong before they could explain why.

#teachersplaiground #teacherwellbeing #teacherintuition #pedagogicaltact #AIinEducation #teaching #educators #teacherlife #vibecheck #teacherspidysense

Almost 30 years ago, @tonicbandofficial released "If You Could Only See" and created a core musical memory for me.

I also found a way to connect it to education because, of course, I did. YOU CAN BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR.

Here's the thing: we ask students to claim and support things constantly. It's baked into every writing structure we teach. Paragraph structure. Essay structure. Lab reports. All of it.

What do we rarely do? Ask them to question.

Not "do you have any questions" at the end of class. The harder thing: asking students to look at their OWN argument and find what it doesn't explain. The gap. The thing a reasonable person would push back on.

That's Claim, Support, Question — and it's the first routine in Post 6 of my @projectzerohgse series.

Then we swing the other way entirely with the See, Think, Wonder family:

👁️ See, Think, Wonder — the most widely known routine that a surprising number of teachers are using slightly wrong (the separation of those three moves is the whole game)
🔗 See, Wonder, Connect — swaps Think for Connect, asking students to link what they see to prior knowledge and other disciplines
🎨 See, Think, Make, Discuss — developed for civic art, adds a making step between thinking and discussing

Free templates for all four are linked in bio. And yes, I rewrote the Tonic lyrics at the end. No I will not be taking questions.

#ProjectZero #VisibleThinking #ThinkingRoutines #TeachersOfInstagram #CriticalThinking #HarvardProjectZero #TeacherBlogger #TeachersPlAIground #ClassroomTeacher #SeeThinkWonder

Almost 30 years ago, @tonicbandofficial released "If You Could Only See" and created a core musical memory for me.

I also found a way to connect it to education because, of course, I did. YOU CAN BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR.

Here's the thing: we ask students to claim and support things constantly. It's baked into every writing structure we teach. Paragraph structure. Essay structure. Lab reports. All of it.

What do we rarely do? Ask them to question.

Not "do you have any questions" at the end of class. The harder thing: asking students to look at their OWN argument and find what it doesn't explain. The gap. The thing a reasonable person would push back on.

That's Claim, Support, Question — and it's the first routine in Post 6 of my @projectzerohgse series.

Then we swing the other way entirely with the See, Think, Wonder family:

👁️ See, Think, Wonder — the most widely known routine that a surprising number of teachers are using slightly wrong (the separation of those three moves is the whole game)
🔗 See, Wonder, Connect — swaps Think for Connect, asking students to link what they see to prior knowledge and other disciplines
🎨 See, Think, Make, Discuss — developed for civic art, adds a making step between thinking and discussing

Free templates for all four are linked in bio. And yes, I rewrote the Tonic lyrics at the end. No I will not be taking questions.

#ProjectZero #VisibleThinking #ThinkingRoutines #TeachersOfInstagram #CriticalThinking #HarvardProjectZero #TeacherBlogger #TeachersPlAIground #ClassroomTeacher #SeeThinkWonder

What are you doing at noon Eastern today? Come hang out with some amazing folks @genially_official on their YouTube channel and learn about the NEW AI builder mode!

https://www.youtube.com/live/sPP2EBOvg_w

What are you doing at noon Eastern today? Come hang out with some amazing folks @genially_official on their YouTube channel and learn about the NEW AI builder mode!

https://www.youtube.com/live/sPP2EBOvg_w

Last Monday, I shared the GoFundMe activity with the @ditchthattextbook community.

I expected some nice engagement. What I did not expect was for the community to hand me two more ideas before the week was out. 🤯

That is the thing about sharing your work publicly. You think you are giving something away. What actually happens is the people you share it with make it better, bigger, and more interesting than you could have made it alone.

So this week: Jumpstarter and Teacheon.

Jumpstarter is our classroom version of Kickstarter — a one-time campaign with tiered rewards. Students don’t just make an emotional appeal. They have to think like entrepreneurs and ask: what does my subject actually offer, and what can I give someone in exchange for their belief in it?

Teacheon is our classroom version of Patreon — an ongoing subscription model where supporters get exclusive access over time. Students have to think about their subject not as a single moment but as an ongoing story with continuing value.

Together with last week’s GoFundMe, these three templates cover a full progression of persuasive and economic thinking:

👉 GoFundMe: why should someone care?
👉 Jumpstarter: what do they get in return for a one-time investment?
👉 Teacheon: what do they get from sustained investment over time?

Any subject. Any grade. Two free templates linked in bio.

And if the community hands me a fourth idea before next Monday — apparently that’s how this works now. 😂

#teachersplaiground #kickstarter #patreon #edtech #teaching #playfulpedagogy #creativeclassroom #educators #historyteacher #ELA #scienceteacher

Last Monday, I shared the GoFundMe activity with the @ditchthattextbook community.

I expected some nice engagement. What I did not expect was for the community to hand me two more ideas before the week was out. 🤯

That is the thing about sharing your work publicly. You think you are giving something away. What actually happens is the people you share it with make it better, bigger, and more interesting than you could have made it alone.

So this week: Jumpstarter and Teacheon.

Jumpstarter is our classroom version of Kickstarter — a one-time campaign with tiered rewards. Students don’t just make an emotional appeal. They have to think like entrepreneurs and ask: what does my subject actually offer, and what can I give someone in exchange for their belief in it?

Teacheon is our classroom version of Patreon — an ongoing subscription model where supporters get exclusive access over time. Students have to think about their subject not as a single moment but as an ongoing story with continuing value.

Together with last week’s GoFundMe, these three templates cover a full progression of persuasive and economic thinking:

👉 GoFundMe: why should someone care?
👉 Jumpstarter: what do they get in return for a one-time investment?
👉 Teacheon: what do they get from sustained investment over time?

Any subject. Any grade. Two free templates linked in bio.

And if the community hands me a fourth idea before next Monday — apparently that’s how this works now. 😂

#teachersplaiground #kickstarter #patreon #edtech #teaching #playfulpedagogy #creativeclassroom #educators #historyteacher #ELA #scienceteacher

Some mornings, I tape a sign to my board before my students arrive.

It started on a large Post-it pad on a wheeled easel. It tells my students where to find their assignments. That loud or unexpected noises are a trigger for me today. That I can't focus on more than one person talking at a time.

I have an anxiety and panic disorder. Some mornings the medication takes a while. Some mornings it doesn't kick in at all. And on those mornings, I still have a classroom full of students who need me to show up.

The bad morning sign is the system I built to make that possible.

What I'm doing on those mornings has a name. It's called emotional labor. And every teacher reading this is doing it every single day — whether they have a diagnosis or not.

This Friday's post is the most personal thing I've written on this blog. It covers:

👉 What emotional labor actually is and why teaching is one of the highest emotional labor professions that exists
👉 Why "remember your why" is not just inadequate — it's a convenient fiction that blames teachers instead of systems
👉 The difference between burnout and compassion fatigue, and why the distinction matters
👉 What the research says actually helps (spoiler: it's not a bubble bath)

You are not a vending machine. You are a person doing one of the hardest emotional jobs that exists.

Link in bio. This one's for you.

#teachersplaiground #teacherwellbeing #emotionallabor #compassionfatigue #teacherburnout #mentalhealth #educators #teaching #teacherlife #youarenotvendingmachine

Some mornings, I tape a sign to my board before my students arrive.

It started on a large Post-it pad on a wheeled easel. It tells my students where to find their assignments. That loud or unexpected noises are a trigger for me today. That I can't focus on more than one person talking at a time.

I have an anxiety and panic disorder. Some mornings the medication takes a while. Some mornings it doesn't kick in at all. And on those mornings, I still have a classroom full of students who need me to show up.

The bad morning sign is the system I built to make that possible.

What I'm doing on those mornings has a name. It's called emotional labor. And every teacher reading this is doing it every single day — whether they have a diagnosis or not.

This Friday's post is the most personal thing I've written on this blog. It covers:

👉 What emotional labor actually is and why teaching is one of the highest emotional labor professions that exists
👉 Why "remember your why" is not just inadequate — it's a convenient fiction that blames teachers instead of systems
👉 The difference between burnout and compassion fatigue, and why the distinction matters
👉 What the research says actually helps (spoiler: it's not a bubble bath)

You are not a vending machine. You are a person doing one of the hardest emotional jobs that exists.

Link in bio. This one's for you.

#teachersplaiground #teacherwellbeing #emotionallabor #compassionfatigue #teacherburnout #mentalhealth #educators #teaching #teacherlife #youarenotvendingmachine

My dad once spent 45 minutes at Thanksgiving dinner presenting a fully documented legal case about a Costco parking spot.

He had witnesses. He had a diagram. He had printed receipts.

He also wasn't entirely wrong. Neither was the other driver. And he absolutely could not handle that.

I think about that parking lot constantly when I think about what we're actually teaching students when we teach them to think.

Because most of the things worth thinking about don't resolve. And most of our students have never been explicitly taught to sit in that.

Post 5 in my @projectzerohgse Thinking Routines series is about exactly this. Two routines:

⚔️ Tug of War — a fairness dilemma on a rope. Students load reasons on both sides and weigh their strength. The goal isn't a winner. It's a map of the complexity. My uncle needed this routine desperately.

👁️ Beauty and Truth — four questions that teach students to look at something beautiful and ask what it might be hiding. In a world drowning in carefully constructed images designed to make us feel things and believe things, this might be the most important routine in the whole series.

Both come with free templates, linked in bio.

If you've been following along — Parts 1 through 4 are there too. We are not done yet.

#ProjectZero #VisibleThinking #ThinkingRoutines #TeachersOfInstagram #CriticalThinking #MediaLiteracy #HarvardProjectZero #TeacherBlogger #TeachersPlAIground #ClassroomTeacher

My dad once spent 45 minutes at Thanksgiving dinner presenting a fully documented legal case about a Costco parking spot.

He had witnesses. He had a diagram. He had printed receipts.

He also wasn't entirely wrong. Neither was the other driver. And he absolutely could not handle that.

I think about that parking lot constantly when I think about what we're actually teaching students when we teach them to think.

Because most of the things worth thinking about don't resolve. And most of our students have never been explicitly taught to sit in that.

Post 5 in my @projectzerohgse Thinking Routines series is about exactly this. Two routines:

⚔️ Tug of War — a fairness dilemma on a rope. Students load reasons on both sides and weigh their strength. The goal isn't a winner. It's a map of the complexity. My uncle needed this routine desperately.

👁️ Beauty and Truth — four questions that teach students to look at something beautiful and ask what it might be hiding. In a world drowning in carefully constructed images designed to make us feel things and believe things, this might be the most important routine in the whole series.

Both come with free templates, linked in bio.

If you've been following along — Parts 1 through 4 are there too. We are not done yet.

#ProjectZero #VisibleThinking #ThinkingRoutines #TeachersOfInstagram #CriticalThinking #MediaLiteracy #HarvardProjectZero #TeacherBlogger #TeachersPlAIground #ClassroomTeacher

@briskteaching just relaunched their Brisk AI Professional Certifications! Level 1 and Level 2 are live, self-paced, and free. A great deep dive for teachers looking for depth in your AI Education.

https://www.briskteaching.com/community#become-pro

If you don't take the classes, beware, spooky @imeddiejames is coming for you!

@briskteaching just relaunched their Brisk AI Professional Certifications! Level 1 and Level 2 are live, self-paced, and free. A great deep dive for teachers looking for depth in your AI Education.

https://www.briskteaching.com/community#become-pro

If you don't take the classes, beware, spooky @imeddiejames is coming for you!

I love to find different ways to use tech tools with my students! Some people wonder how I coached students participating in over 200 individual speech events? The answer is easy! Upload their performances for targeted feedback in @edpuzzle!

Getting them to think about their needs helps them think more critically about their performances!
@mannydiscotech

I love to find different ways to use tech tools with my students! Some people wonder how I coached students participating in over 200 individual speech events? The answer is easy! Upload their performances for targeted feedback in @edpuzzle!

Getting them to think about their needs helps them think more critically about their performances!
@mannydiscotech

I was brainstorming with Claude this morning and asked it to help me find culturally familiar formats that could work as disguised mastery checks in the classroom.

It threw out a list. And one stopped me cold. Something I would have never thought of in a billion years.

A GoFundMe page. 🤯

Here’s the thing, most students haven’t made one. But they’ve seen them. They’ve been tagged in them. They’ve watched them go viral. They know on a gut level what makes one compelling and what makes one easy to scroll past.

And the gap between “I have seen this” and “I have never made one” is exactly where learning lives.

So I built the template this morning and I’m handing it directly to you. I haven’t even used it in a classroom yet. Come experiment with me.

The activity works across every content area, History, ELA, Science, Economics, Civics, and asks students to identify stakes, establish an argument, quantify success, and write for a real audience. It looks like a meme. It’s secretly a rigorous thinking exercise.

Free template linked in bio. Tag me when your students make one. I will reshare every single one. 👀

#teachersplaiground #gofundme #edtech #teaching #playfulpedagogy #AIinEducation #educators #historyteacher #ELA #scienceteacher #socialstudies

I was brainstorming with Claude this morning and asked it to help me find culturally familiar formats that could work as disguised mastery checks in the classroom.

It threw out a list. And one stopped me cold. Something I would have never thought of in a billion years.

A GoFundMe page. 🤯

Here’s the thing, most students haven’t made one. But they’ve seen them. They’ve been tagged in them. They’ve watched them go viral. They know on a gut level what makes one compelling and what makes one easy to scroll past.

And the gap between “I have seen this” and “I have never made one” is exactly where learning lives.

So I built the template this morning and I’m handing it directly to you. I haven’t even used it in a classroom yet. Come experiment with me.

The activity works across every content area, History, ELA, Science, Economics, Civics, and asks students to identify stakes, establish an argument, quantify success, and write for a real audience. It looks like a meme. It’s secretly a rigorous thinking exercise.

Free template linked in bio. Tag me when your students make one. I will reshare every single one. 👀

#teachersplaiground #gofundme #edtech #teaching #playfulpedagogy #AIinEducation #educators #historyteacher #ELA #scienceteacher #socialstudies

In 2001, serious people in serious publications were losing their minds because students could Google things.

Sound familiar?

We did it with Google. We are doing it with AI. And three things I saw on my feed this week convinced me it's time to say that out loud.

This week's post is a reaction to posts from @theaieducator.io , @coachthomastech, and @give.spark — and it goes deep on something I think we've been avoiding.

The device was never the problem. The plan was.

We've had nearly a quarter-century post-Google to get intentional instructional design right. We've failed. Spectacularly. But the good news? We've learned this lesson before. And we can learn it again.

This one covers:
👉 Why AI didn't break school — it exposed it
👉 The Goldilocks problem of edtech (and what edtech minimalism gets right)
👉 What the AAP's new policy statement means for your classroom
👉 UDL, SAMR, and the crappy Google Doc that changed how I think about tech integration
👉 The one question that should guide every lesson you plan

Link in bio. This one's worth your time.

#teachersplaiground #AIinEducation #instructionaldesign #edtech #SAMR #UDL #teaching #educators #edtechminimalism #intentionalteaching

In 2001, serious people in serious publications were losing their minds because students could Google things.

Sound familiar?

We did it with Google. We are doing it with AI. And three things I saw on my feed this week convinced me it's time to say that out loud.

This week's post is a reaction to posts from @theaieducator.io , @coachthomastech, and @give.spark — and it goes deep on something I think we've been avoiding.

The device was never the problem. The plan was.

We've had nearly a quarter-century post-Google to get intentional instructional design right. We've failed. Spectacularly. But the good news? We've learned this lesson before. And we can learn it again.

This one covers:
👉 Why AI didn't break school — it exposed it
👉 The Goldilocks problem of edtech (and what edtech minimalism gets right)
👉 What the AAP's new policy statement means for your classroom
👉 UDL, SAMR, and the crappy Google Doc that changed how I think about tech integration
👉 The one question that should guide every lesson you plan

Link in bio. This one's worth your time.

#teachersplaiground #AIinEducation #instructionaldesign #edtech #SAMR #UDL #teaching #educators #edtechminimalism #intentionalteaching

This is what they made @adobeexpress for right? To make @ditchthattextbook Yoda memes?

This is what they made @adobeexpress for right? To make @ditchthattextbook Yoda memes?

Hot take: the first answer a student gives you is almost never their best thinking.

Not because they're wrong. Because thinking, real thinking, the kind that actually changes how you see something, almost never lives on the surface.

Part 4 of my @projectzerohgse Thinking Routines series is about exactly this. Three routines that refuse to let students stop at the first thought:

🌀 Step In, Step Out, Step Back: move through three lenses: inside the experience, outside looking in, zoomed all the way back. (This one comes straight from my 20+ years in competitive speech and debate. It's the routine I wish someone had handed me at 14.)

🎨 Colors, Shapes, Lines: students respond to content not in words but in pure visual metaphor. Then they explain their choices. 'Why broken lines? Why upward triangles?' is where the magic lives.

🗂️ The Elaboration Game: four students build one collaborative description of one section of an artwork. Nobody is allowed to say what it means until the very end. Observation before interpretation. Every time.

Free templates for all three are linked in bio. And if you've been following along — Parts 1, 2, and 3 are there too.

The first thought is just the beginning. ✨

#ProjectZero #VisibleThinking #ThinkingRoutines #TeachersOfInstagram #CriticalThinking #HarvardProjectZero #TeacherBlogger #TeachersPlAIground #ClassroomTeacher #EdTech

Hot take: the first answer a student gives you is almost never their best thinking.

Not because they're wrong. Because thinking, real thinking, the kind that actually changes how you see something, almost never lives on the surface.

Part 4 of my @projectzerohgse Thinking Routines series is about exactly this. Three routines that refuse to let students stop at the first thought:

🌀 Step In, Step Out, Step Back: move through three lenses: inside the experience, outside looking in, zoomed all the way back. (This one comes straight from my 20+ years in competitive speech and debate. It's the routine I wish someone had handed me at 14.)

🎨 Colors, Shapes, Lines: students respond to content not in words but in pure visual metaphor. Then they explain their choices. 'Why broken lines? Why upward triangles?' is where the magic lives.

🗂️ The Elaboration Game: four students build one collaborative description of one section of an artwork. Nobody is allowed to say what it means until the very end. Observation before interpretation. Every time.

Free templates for all three are linked in bio. And if you've been following along — Parts 1, 2, and 3 are there too.

The first thought is just the beginning. ✨

#ProjectZero #VisibleThinking #ThinkingRoutines #TeachersOfInstagram #CriticalThinking #HarvardProjectZero #TeacherBlogger #TeachersPlAIground #ClassroomTeacher #EdTech

Looks like I need to head to @hottopic in 2003 before teaching this morning!

Looks like I need to head to @hottopic in 2003 before teaching this morning!

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