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I talk a lot about being intentional. About deliberate practice, deliberate design, deliberate teaching.

And then I struggled to book flights for the Adobe Education Summit and accidentally had the most unintentionally intentional six days of travel I had never dreamed of.

A summer that included NSDA Nationals in Richmond, ISTE in Orlando, and the Adobe Education Summit in San Jose ended with five trains, two connecting buses, and the American West rolling past my window at sixty miles an hour.

Henry David Thoreau went to Walden Pond to live deliberately. I bought a train ticket because I forgot to book a flight. And somewhere between San Jose and home, I understood something about what he was after.

The train strips you of control entirely. The rails go where they go. The schedule is what the schedule is. You do not negotiate with the train. You surrender to it.

And surrender, it turns out, is exactly what I needed.

With less than fourteen hours left in my journey, I can tell you that I am bouncing back focused. Not because I pushed through. Not because I couldn’t hang and found the door. Because I stopped.

New post on what the rails taught me about slowing down — and why I am taking the train to TCEA in February. #RimmeyOnTheRails

Link in bio. 🚂

#teachersplaiground #RimmeyOnTheRails #teacherwellbeing #teacherburnout #mentalhealth #neurodivergent #Thoreau #traintravel #deliberateliving #ISTE2026 #AdobeEDU #YearZero

I talk a lot about being intentional. About deliberate practice, deliberate design, deliberate teaching.

And then I struggled to book flights for the Adobe Education Summit and accidentally had the most unintentionally intentional six days of travel I had never dreamed of.

A summer that included NSDA Nationals in Richmond, ISTE in Orlando, and the Adobe Education Summit in San Jose ended with five trains, two connecting buses, and the American West rolling past my window at sixty miles an hour.

Henry David Thoreau went to Walden Pond to live deliberately. I bought a train ticket because I forgot to book a flight. And somewhere between San Jose and home, I understood something about what he was after.

The train strips you of control entirely. The rails go where they go. The schedule is what the schedule is. You do not negotiate with the train. You surrender to it.

And surrender, it turns out, is exactly what I needed.

With less than fourteen hours left in my journey, I can tell you that I am bouncing back focused. Not because I pushed through. Not because I couldn’t hang and found the door. Because I stopped.

New post on what the rails taught me about slowing down — and why I am taking the train to TCEA in February. #RimmeyOnTheRails

Link in bio. 🚂

#teachersplaiground #RimmeyOnTheRails #teacherwellbeing #teacherburnout #mentalhealth #neurodivergent #Thoreau #traintravel #deliberateliving #ISTE2026 #AdobeEDU #YearZero

The @Amtrak train to Bakersfield was almost 50 minutes late. Luckily the bus driver has announced that we will still get to union station about 10 til 4. So crossing me fingies! I still haven’t eaten anything yet today, so we will see if I hulk out while in LA #RimmeyOnTheRails

The @Amtrak train to Bakersfield was almost 50 minutes late. Luckily the bus driver has announced that we will still get to union station about 10 til 4. So crossing me fingies! I still haven’t eaten anything yet today, so we will see if I hulk out while in LA #RimmeyOnTheRails

The second leg of #RimmeyOnTheRails begins! Today’s journey takes me from San Jose to Merced via bus, Merced to Bakersfield via train and then Bakersfield to LA via bus again to then hop on the Southwest Chief to make the 2 day jaunt back to Lawrence! At some point this afternoon, I’ll post my reflection on the #AdobeEduCreative #AdobeSummit!

The second leg of #RimmeyOnTheRails begins! Today’s journey takes me from San Jose to Merced via bus, Merced to Bakersfield via train and then Bakersfield to LA via bus again to then hop on the Southwest Chief to make the 2 day jaunt back to Lawrence! At some point this afternoon, I’ll post my reflection on the #AdobeEduCreative #AdobeSummit!

Day 1 of the #AdobeSummit is in the books and getting to tour parts of @adobeforedu @adobe really turned my world upside down!!

Day 1 of the #AdobeSummit is in the books and getting to tour parts of @adobeforedu @adobe really turned my world upside down!!

STOP THINKING ABOUT DRAWING AS AN ARTISTIC PROCESS. IT IS A THINKING PROCESS.

Manuel Herrera (@manuelherrera33) said it at ISTE 2026. I wrote it in all caps in my notebook because it deserved all caps.

I have never been a confident drawer. I have never thought of myself as someone who uses visual thinking as a pedagogical tool.

I left that session planning to change both of those things.

Here is what Joe Merrill (@themerrillsedu) and Manuel Herrera taught a room full of educators at ISTE 2026:

Drawing is not about artistic skill. It is about identifying what makes something recognizable. What are the essential elements? What does the thing actually need to read as the thing it is?

That is not an art question. That is a thinking question.

The session built around two modes: concrete drawing using simple shapes for visible things, and abstract drawing for feelings, thoughts, and emotions — anchored by the New York Times bestselling book Invisible Things by Andy J. Pizza and Sophie Miller, which asks what hope looks like, what shape gratitude is, and what you would see if you could see an itch.

And then — the part that made the room audibly react — students bring their hand-drawn characters to life using AI animation tools in Adobe Express and Canva.

The student’s hand is still the first instrument. The AI is what makes the hand’s work move.

Post 13 in my ISTE 2026 series. Video of the finished result linked in bio — you need to see it to believe it. ✏️

#teachersplaiground #ISTE2026 #visualthinking #sketchnoting #drawing #AdobeExpress #Canva #edtech #teaching #educators #TheMerrillsEDU #ManuelHerrera #InvisibleThings

STOP THINKING ABOUT DRAWING AS AN ARTISTIC PROCESS. IT IS A THINKING PROCESS.

Manuel Herrera (@manuelherrera33) said it at ISTE 2026. I wrote it in all caps in my notebook because it deserved all caps.

I have never been a confident drawer. I have never thought of myself as someone who uses visual thinking as a pedagogical tool.

I left that session planning to change both of those things.

Here is what Joe Merrill (@themerrillsedu) and Manuel Herrera taught a room full of educators at ISTE 2026:

Drawing is not about artistic skill. It is about identifying what makes something recognizable. What are the essential elements? What does the thing actually need to read as the thing it is?

That is not an art question. That is a thinking question.

The session built around two modes: concrete drawing using simple shapes for visible things, and abstract drawing for feelings, thoughts, and emotions — anchored by the New York Times bestselling book Invisible Things by Andy J. Pizza and Sophie Miller, which asks what hope looks like, what shape gratitude is, and what you would see if you could see an itch.

And then — the part that made the room audibly react — students bring their hand-drawn characters to life using AI animation tools in Adobe Express and Canva.

The student’s hand is still the first instrument. The AI is what makes the hand’s work move.

Post 13 in my ISTE 2026 series. Video of the finished result linked in bio — you need to see it to believe it. ✏️

#teachersplaiground #ISTE2026 #visualthinking #sketchnoting #drawing #AdobeExpress #Canva #edtech #teaching #educators #TheMerrillsEDU #ManuelHerrera #InvisibleThings

We ready? WE BRING THE NOISE, WE BRING THE RUCKUS #USA #LFK #ScoreLawrence #worldcup2026

We ready? WE BRING THE NOISE, WE BRING THE RUCKUS #USA #LFK #ScoreLawrence #worldcup2026

There is a phrase that kept appearing across multiple sessions at ISTE 2026, so consistently that it started to feel less like a talking point and more like a genuine shift in how the education technology industry is thinking about AI.

From shortcut to scaffold.

@microsoftedu made it the title of their session. Anoo Padha from Microsoft and @beckykeeneedu from Phygital Labs, whose book The AI Optimist I have been a fan of for a while, spent their time making an argument I have been making on this blog all year: the goal is not to stop students from using AI. The goal is to redesign how AI is used so that it strengthens thinking rather than replacing it.

At ISTE 2026 Microsoft announced new and/or updateds to two tools worth knowing about:

Study and Learn — a Copilot-powered AI agent that works from your own course materials rather than the open internet. Summaries, flashcards, quizzes. The quizzes don’t send scores to the teacher. They are true self-checks — private, formative, designed to show students where their understanding has gaps before the real assessment. Available to all users.

Copilot Notebooks — Microsoft’s answer to NotebookLM. Bring all your course materials together, generate a multi-page interactive study guide grounded entirely in those sources, with editable Loop pages students can personalize and make their own. The AI does the organizational heavy lifting. The student takes ownership of the result.

That is the scaffold. Not the shortcut.

Full post, including notes about what is gated, linked in bio.

#teachersplaiground #ISTE2026 #Microsoft #CopilotNotebooks #StudyAndLearn #AIinEducation #edtech #teaching #educators #MicrosoftEDU

There is a phrase that kept appearing across multiple sessions at ISTE 2026, so consistently that it started to feel less like a talking point and more like a genuine shift in how the education technology industry is thinking about AI.

From shortcut to scaffold.

@microsoftedu made it the title of their session. Anoo Padha from Microsoft and @beckykeeneedu from Phygital Labs, whose book The AI Optimist I have been a fan of for a while, spent their time making an argument I have been making on this blog all year: the goal is not to stop students from using AI. The goal is to redesign how AI is used so that it strengthens thinking rather than replacing it.

At ISTE 2026 Microsoft announced new and/or updateds to two tools worth knowing about:

Study and Learn — a Copilot-powered AI agent that works from your own course materials rather than the open internet. Summaries, flashcards, quizzes. The quizzes don’t send scores to the teacher. They are true self-checks — private, formative, designed to show students where their understanding has gaps before the real assessment. Available to all users.

Copilot Notebooks — Microsoft’s answer to NotebookLM. Bring all your course materials together, generate a multi-page interactive study guide grounded entirely in those sources, with editable Loop pages students can personalize and make their own. The AI does the organizational heavy lifting. The student takes ownership of the result.

That is the scaffold. Not the shortcut.

Full post, including notes about what is gated, linked in bio.

#teachersplaiground #ISTE2026 #Microsoft #CopilotNotebooks #StudyAndLearn #AIinEducation #edtech #teaching #educators #MicrosoftEDU

There is a particular kind of excitement that happens when a tool you already trust announces something new.

It is more like watching a favorite restaurant add a dish to their menu that you did not know you needed until you saw it — and then immediately understanding that it has always belonged there.

I am a @kamiapp user. Have been for a while. At ISTE 2026, Kami announced Kami Coach — an AI-powered coaching tool that guides students through math problems with hints and check-ins, and simultaneously gives teachers real-time insight into student understanding, misconceptions, and progress.

Not after the test. Not when the homework comes in. Right now, while the thinking is happening.

But here is the part that hit me hardest: last year I was an academic interventionist with a Social Studies background trying to support students in math. I could see when a student was stuck. I could recognize the shutdown. What I could not always do was identify precisely where the mathematical thinking had broken down.

Kami Coach would have changed that year for me.

Interventionists. Special education teachers. Paraprofessionals. Reading coaches pulled into math support. Every one of them has sat next to a student with a math problem and wished they had more than their instincts to work with.

Coach gives them something to work with.

Currently in beta for math. Sign up link in the post. Link in bio.

#teachersplaiground #ISTE2026 #KamiCoach #Kami #mathcoach #AIinEducation #edtech #teaching #educators #interventionist #specialeducation

There is a particular kind of excitement that happens when a tool you already trust announces something new.

It is more like watching a favorite restaurant add a dish to their menu that you did not know you needed until you saw it — and then immediately understanding that it has always belonged there.

I am a @kamiapp user. Have been for a while. At ISTE 2026, Kami announced Kami Coach — an AI-powered coaching tool that guides students through math problems with hints and check-ins, and simultaneously gives teachers real-time insight into student understanding, misconceptions, and progress.

Not after the test. Not when the homework comes in. Right now, while the thinking is happening.

But here is the part that hit me hardest: last year I was an academic interventionist with a Social Studies background trying to support students in math. I could see when a student was stuck. I could recognize the shutdown. What I could not always do was identify precisely where the mathematical thinking had broken down.

Kami Coach would have changed that year for me.

Interventionists. Special education teachers. Paraprofessionals. Reading coaches pulled into math support. Every one of them has sat next to a student with a math problem and wished they had more than their instincts to work with.

Coach gives them something to work with.

Currently in beta for math. Sign up link in the post. Link in bio.

#teachersplaiground #ISTE2026 #KamiCoach #Kami #mathcoach #AIinEducation #edtech #teaching #educators #interventionist #specialeducation

I teach a series called Vibe Coding for Educators.

I present sessions arguing that AI has fundamentally lowered the barrier to building classroom tools and that teachers do not need to know how to code to create something functional and useful.

I believe all of that. I am not walking any of it back.

But at ISTE 2026, I sat in a @codeorg classroom for 45 minutes and built a website with a Socratic AI partner that refused to just do it for me. Every time I was about to receive an answer, I received a question instead.

I asked for a navigation bar. The AI asked me what a navigation bar needs to do.

I asked for a color change. The AI explained what a hex code is and asked what I thought the code might look like.

By the end of 45 minutes I had a website. But more importantly, I understood why it worked.

The criticism of vibe coding is not wrong about the risk. If students use AI to generate code without understanding what it does, they are not developing computational thinking. The question is whether the answer is removing AI from the coding process or designing the AI’s role so that understanding is built in rather than bypassed.

Code AI’s answer is the second one. And it is the right one.

Post 6 in my ISTE 2026 series. Link in bio. 💻

#teachersplaiground #ISTE2026 #CodeAI #vibecoding #coding #edtech #teaching #educators #AIinEducation #computationalthinking #cseducation

I teach a series called Vibe Coding for Educators.

I present sessions arguing that AI has fundamentally lowered the barrier to building classroom tools and that teachers do not need to know how to code to create something functional and useful.

I believe all of that. I am not walking any of it back.

But at ISTE 2026, I sat in a @codeorg classroom for 45 minutes and built a website with a Socratic AI partner that refused to just do it for me. Every time I was about to receive an answer, I received a question instead.

I asked for a navigation bar. The AI asked me what a navigation bar needs to do.

I asked for a color change. The AI explained what a hex code is and asked what I thought the code might look like.

By the end of 45 minutes I had a website. But more importantly, I understood why it worked.

The criticism of vibe coding is not wrong about the risk. If students use AI to generate code without understanding what it does, they are not developing computational thinking. The question is whether the answer is removing AI from the coding process or designing the AI’s role so that understanding is built in rather than bypassed.

Code AI’s answer is the second one. And it is the right one.

Post 6 in my ISTE 2026 series. Link in bio. 💻

#teachersplaiground #ISTE2026 #CodeAI #vibecoding #coding #edtech #teaching #educators #AIinEducation #computationalthinking #cseducation

I just want to say that
@nothingnowhere had a @spotify cover of Replay land on my "Release Radar" playlist for today, and I may or may not have loudly yelled "AYYYYYYY" in the middle of a @bahamabreezeislandgrille at
@flymco. Am I embarrassed? NO BECAUSE BOTH TRACKS ARE BANGERS!!!!

I just want to say that
@nothingnowhere had a @spotify cover of Replay land on my "Release Radar" playlist for today, and I may or may not have loudly yelled "AYYYYYYY" in the middle of a @bahamabreezeislandgrille at
@flymco. Am I embarrassed? NO BECAUSE BOTH TRACKS ARE BANGERS!!!!

I stopped at this booth for every student I have ever taught with dyslexia.

Past and present. The ones who sat in the back and pretended the worksheet wasn’t defeating them. The ones who worked twice as hard as everyone else to produce half as much on paper and knew it.

I stopped because I saw the word dyslexia on a small booth at the edge of the expo hall. And what was there was MYdys.

Here’s what it does: a student points their phone camera at any text — a textbook page, a restaurant menu, a museum sign, a job application — and MYdys hands it back transformed. Font size. Letter spacing. Word spacing. Background color. The letters most commonly confused by dyslexic readers highlighted or color-coded so they stop moving. Built-in audio so the text can be listened to instead of read. Instant translation into 70 languages.

Every single adjustment made by the student. Not pre-set by a teacher. Not locked by a system. Their font. Their colors. Their pace. Their terms.

That is not accommodation. That is autonomy.

MYdys works on any text, anywhere — not just in school, not just on a testing day, not just when an IEP is in hand. It works at the restaurant. At the museum. At the kitchen table at nineteen years old filling out a job application alone.

Post 4 in my ISTE 2026 periphery series. This one is the one I most needed to write.

Link in bio. 📲

I stopped at this booth for every student I have ever taught with dyslexia.

Past and present. The ones who sat in the back and pretended the worksheet wasn’t defeating them. The ones who worked twice as hard as everyone else to produce half as much on paper and knew it.

I stopped because I saw the word dyslexia on a small booth at the edge of the expo hall. And what was there was MYdys.

Here’s what it does: a student points their phone camera at any text — a textbook page, a restaurant menu, a museum sign, a job application — and MYdys hands it back transformed. Font size. Letter spacing. Word spacing. Background color. The letters most commonly confused by dyslexic readers highlighted or color-coded so they stop moving. Built-in audio so the text can be listened to instead of read. Instant translation into 70 languages.

Every single adjustment made by the student. Not pre-set by a teacher. Not locked by a system. Their font. Their colors. Their pace. Their terms.

That is not accommodation. That is autonomy.

MYdys works on any text, anywhere — not just in school, not just on a testing day, not just when an IEP is in hand. It works at the restaurant. At the museum. At the kitchen table at nineteen years old filling out a job application alone.

Post 4 in my ISTE 2026 periphery series. This one is the one I most needed to write.

Link in bio. 📲

Where in the #ISTE is Rimmey today? Aside from trying to catch the @codeorg classroom experience, you can find me sharing how I'm planning for Year Zero at the @briskteaching booth at 10:30 and my love of @eduprotocols at the @genially_official booth at 11:30!

Where in the #ISTE is Rimmey today? Aside from trying to catch the @codeorg classroom experience, you can find me sharing how I'm planning for Year Zero at the @briskteaching booth at 10:30 and my love of @eduprotocols at the @genially_official booth at 11:30!

Wondering where in the #ISTE, now known as #ISTE I'll be today?

I'm also excited to do a podcast recording with @edtechbites and I'm going to try to interview a couple of community managers from some of my Edtech favorites throughout the day!

All of my resources for the first 3 days of the conference are LIVE at: https://www.teachersplaiground.com/iste-2026

Wondering where in the #ISTE, now known as #ISTE I'll be today?

I'm also excited to do a podcast recording with @edtechbites and I'm going to try to interview a couple of community managers from some of my Edtech favorites throughout the day!

All of my resources for the first 3 days of the conference are LIVE at: https://www.teachersplaiground.com/iste-2026

My #ISTELive begins tomorrow, and if you wonder where you can find me, I'll be spending most of my day in the Microsoft Elevate for Educators Community Summit.

I do get to sneak away for an hour in an epic session with my friends @baconedtech, @dramatickat , @mannydiscotech, @DavidHinrichs, and so many more, showcasing how you can leverage short-form debates in your classroom!

@MicrosoftEDU @MicrosoftAISkills #MicrosoftElevateforEducators

My #ISTELive begins tomorrow, and if you wonder where you can find me, I'll be spending most of my day in the Microsoft Elevate for Educators Community Summit.

I do get to sneak away for an hour in an epic session with my friends @baconedtech, @dramatickat , @mannydiscotech, @DavidHinrichs, and so many more, showcasing how you can leverage short-form debates in your classroom!

@MicrosoftEDU @MicrosoftAISkills #MicrosoftElevateforEducators

I have finally made it to my hotel, and this was a nice surprise after a long day @marriottbonvoy

I have finally made it to my hotel, and this was a nice surprise after a long day @marriottbonvoy

Well, for the next 2 hours on loop it’ll be “welcome to Atlanta where the players play”

Well, for the next 2 hours on loop it’ll be “welcome to Atlanta where the players play”

Pack the sunscreen. Charge the laptop. Tell the family I'll see them in a week. ✨

ISTE 2026 starts virtually tomorrow and lands in Orlando on Sunday — and I have been looking forward to this since I booked my flights approximately five minutes after finding out I was accepted to present.

Here's the honest version of what this week looks like: five scheduled sessions, five expo hall booths, three sessions being recorded and streamed by ISTE for distribution to their broader membership.

It is, by any reasonable measure, a busy week.

But being busy at a conference is not the same as being present at one. The plan is to present with everything I have and then sit in someone else's session and remember what it feels like to be the person in the audience.

Here's what you can expect from me this week:

👉 Session recaps after each day
👉 Tool and idea spotlights when something stops me cold
👉 Honest reflections — not highlight reel content

Oh, and I'm hoping to drop the very first issue of my newsletter by end of day Monday. If you've been waiting for a reason to subscribe, a newsletter from the middle of ISTE feels like a pretty good one.

Link in bio for the full preview. Let's go. ✈️

#teachersplaiground #ISTE2026 #Orlando #edtech #AIinEducation #teaching #educators #teacherlife #conference #professionaldevelopment

Pack the sunscreen. Charge the laptop. Tell the family I'll see them in a week. ✨

ISTE 2026 starts virtually tomorrow and lands in Orlando on Sunday — and I have been looking forward to this since I booked my flights approximately five minutes after finding out I was accepted to present.

Here's the honest version of what this week looks like: five scheduled sessions, five expo hall booths, three sessions being recorded and streamed by ISTE for distribution to their broader membership.

It is, by any reasonable measure, a busy week.

But being busy at a conference is not the same as being present at one. The plan is to present with everything I have and then sit in someone else's session and remember what it feels like to be the person in the audience.

Here's what you can expect from me this week:

👉 Session recaps after each day
👉 Tool and idea spotlights when something stops me cold
👉 Honest reflections — not highlight reel content

Oh, and I'm hoping to drop the very first issue of my newsletter by end of day Monday. If you've been waiting for a reason to subscribe, a newsletter from the middle of ISTE feels like a pretty good one.

Link in bio for the full preview. Let's go. ✈️

#teachersplaiground #ISTE2026 #Orlando #edtech #AIinEducation #teaching #educators #teacherlife #conference #professionaldevelopment

Every year, approximately two million high school seniors sit down to answer one of the most absurd questions in American education.

In 650 words or fewer, tell us who you are, what has shaped you, what you have learned from your greatest challenge, and why you are worth our investment.

You have until January.

Strip away the anxiety and the stakes and the Common App portal that crashes every November, and what you have is one of the most sophisticated writing tasks we ever ask of anyone. It requires self-knowledge, narrative construction, thematic awareness, and the ability to make a stranger care about your specific, weird, irreplaceable experience in the time it takes them to drink half a cup of coffee.

So I asked myself: what if the subject doing the applying wasn’t a seventeen-year-old?

What if it was the Louisiana Purchase, making the case for why 828,000 square miles of itself deserves admission to the United States?

What if it was Zero, finally applying for recognition from a mathematical community that spent centuries pretending it didn’t exist?

What if it was the Oxford comma, applying for mandatory status in the AP Style Guide?

Welcome to the College Application Essay activity. Population: every subject, concept, figure, and phenomenon that has ever deserved more credit than it received.

Free template + two fully written exemplars linked in bio. The Louisiana Purchase’s essay is genuinely moving. Zero’s is righteous. The Oxford comma’s is… a lot.

Tag me when your students apply. 🎓

#teachersplaiground #collegeapplication #commonapp #edtech #teaching #playfulpedagogy #creativeclassroom #educators #historyteacher #ELA #mathteacher #oxfordcomma

Every year, approximately two million high school seniors sit down to answer one of the most absurd questions in American education.

In 650 words or fewer, tell us who you are, what has shaped you, what you have learned from your greatest challenge, and why you are worth our investment.

You have until January.

Strip away the anxiety and the stakes and the Common App portal that crashes every November, and what you have is one of the most sophisticated writing tasks we ever ask of anyone. It requires self-knowledge, narrative construction, thematic awareness, and the ability to make a stranger care about your specific, weird, irreplaceable experience in the time it takes them to drink half a cup of coffee.

So I asked myself: what if the subject doing the applying wasn’t a seventeen-year-old?

What if it was the Louisiana Purchase, making the case for why 828,000 square miles of itself deserves admission to the United States?

What if it was Zero, finally applying for recognition from a mathematical community that spent centuries pretending it didn’t exist?

What if it was the Oxford comma, applying for mandatory status in the AP Style Guide?

Welcome to the College Application Essay activity. Population: every subject, concept, figure, and phenomenon that has ever deserved more credit than it received.

Free template + two fully written exemplars linked in bio. The Louisiana Purchase’s essay is genuinely moving. Zero’s is righteous. The Oxford comma’s is… a lot.

Tag me when your students apply. 🎓

#teachersplaiground #collegeapplication #commonapp #edtech #teaching #playfulpedagogy #creativeclassroom #educators #historyteacher #ELA #mathteacher #oxfordcomma

I think my schedule of presentations, booth sessions, and volunteering for @isteconnects 2026 is now complete! Want to know where I'm going to be, when I'm not lurking in the audience and making my brain grow? Check it out!

I think my schedule of presentations, booth sessions, and volunteering for @isteconnects 2026 is now complete! Want to know where I'm going to be, when I'm not lurking in the audience and making my brain grow? Check it out!

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

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