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I was a senior in high school in the fall of 2001. The internet's influence was growing. Google was becoming more mainstream. And the adults in charge of education were absolutely losing their minds about it. Which one of those kids is me, Senior Year, 2002? The concern, stated with full sincerity by serious people in serious publications , was that students would simply Google everything, copy and paste their way through school, and render the entire enterprise of educatio

We are four posts into this series now, and I want to take a second to zoom out. Post One was about giving students the tools to recognize that they're already thinking. Post Two was about teaching them to slow down and notice things... really notice them, the way you notice a piece of art differently on the second look than the first. Post Three was about helping students find their words ; about the gap between having a thought and being able to actually say it out l

Let me tell you something about my office. It is covered in Funko Pops. Floor to ceiling, shelf to shelf, every available surface. I have lost count of how many I own, but the number is somewhere north of embarrassing and south of intervention. My classroom alone has roughly thirty of them staring at my students every single day — a silent, big-eyed audience for every lesson I teach. My office in February, before my recent reorganization, there are now more, and it looks craz

Will Ferrell once played legendary Cubs announcer Harry Caray on SNL. If you've never seen it, the bit is basically: Harry Caray is a man completely unmoored from social norms, asking the most unfiltered, bizarre questions imaginable: to scientists, to astronauts, to anyone fortunate enough to sit across from him, with zero apology and maximum enthusiasm. At one point, Harry says, completely unprompted: " I'm curious like a cat. My friends call me Whiskers. " And here's the t

How many of us can relate to the following situation? Last year, I was teaching a unit on the Civil Rights Movement, and we had just finished reading a primary source, a firsthand account from a Freedom Rider. Heavy stuff. Important stuff. The kind of stuff that you want students to genuinely sit with. So I asked the class what they thought. Silence . Not the good kind of silence. Not the "I am processing something profound" silence. The "I have not been given a single tool t

I owe you an apology and an explanation. Back in February, I announced the launch of Vibe Coding for Educators , my 20-part YouTube series designed to take teachers from "I have never touched a line of code in my life" to "I just built my students a custom French Revolution simulator, and I cannot be stopped." I laid out the whole plan. Two tracks. Twenty episodes. Five minutes each. Pure pedagogy meets pure chaos. And then... the new World of Warcraft expansion Midnight dro

Let me tell you something that will either deeply resonate with you or make you close this tab immediately. I think about thinking. Like... a lot. Embarrassingly a lot. From reading philosophy and psychology texts, to staring into the void and wondering why my silly "lizard brain" likes to do things. It's all thinking about thinking (think-ception!?!?!?!?). My thinking about thinking runs so wild that when I'm in the middle of the grocery store buying soup, it becomes a whole

About a month ago , I shared some social media templates both inspired by and missing from the epic collection amassed at Matt Miller's Ditch That Textbook Website . If you missed that post, there's a dating profile template, a Nextdoor template, and an Instagram profile page, all free and fully editable to use with your students! As I was looking through my collection of templates I've used to simulate group conversation...I noticed a void that existed. I think finding a w

In 2008, American rock band Vampire Weekend shook the world by asking one simple question... " Who gives a F$%K about an Oxford Comma?" and my brain immediately thought two things: I do... What does the Oxford Comma feel about this song? I cannot be the only person who asks hard-hitting questions like this. I definitely know that I'm not the only one who has conversations with inanimate objects frequently. Do you think I sound a little crazy? If you've ever bumped into a pie

Some of ya'll may remember the game, but not the amazing commercial. As someone who's obsessed with communication and language, one of my classroom staples has always been the physical game Taboo! The premise is simple. Get your teammates to guess a word or concept, but you cannot say any of the words on the card you've drawn. It's always a fun watch because you have to instantly watch someone rethink how to explain a word or phrase without using the most commonly associated

Created with Nano Banana We are in the middle of our 2nd day back from Spring Break, and getting the kids to re-engage is a struggle. How do we take them from 9 days of freedom and lock them back into the rigors and routines of a school day? If my students spent any part of their break as I did, I had plenty of lengthy doomscrolling sessions on social media, because the algorithm is locked into what my brain craves. Even if you're not dealing with the post-vacation slump, we'

On Monday, we explored the concept of the unessay . In short, the unessay is an assignment concept forwarded by Daniel Paul O'Donnell in 2012 . O'Donnell used unessays to question the overall role that formalized academic essays had played in education throughout the history of the system. Specifically, he argued that traditional essays are a "static and rule-bound monster" that forces students to comply rather than explore and showcase their intellectual passions. The g

Since the dawn of the assigned essay, educators throughout time have been chasing their white whale. An essay assignment that students cannot find a way to cheat on, regardless of how the assignment is constructed. Image generated using Google's Nano Banana 2.0 From students copying encyclopedia pages at their local library, to copy/pasting in full Wikipedia pages and forgetting to remove the hyperlinks, to now AI, teachers just want to get their students to write, without ch

So, the vibes at school are very weird today. Students know that after today, they only have four days until break. The weather is supposed to be stormy this morning, beautiful this afternoon, and stormy again after dinner. There's also a lot of buzz surrounding our Girls' Basketball team making it to the next round of the playoffs, and they play tonight. So an idea with very little context popped into my head during my planning period, so I embraced the chaos and weird vibe

If you've ever met me in person, you know I'm a strange guy. I'm also authentically strange. The me you see online, in public, presenting at a conference...that's me baby! My weirdness is probably biological (the woman dyed her hair vibrant colors until the day she died). My academic weirdness stems to a core memory from my senior year of high school (class of '02 baby). I tried to find one of my senior pictures, and this was the best I could do. Also, 2026 me is jealous of h

I've made it no secret that I'm a huge Ditch That Textbook fanboy. Heck, I'm wearing my Ditch... hoodie today! One of my favorite tools that I've ever taken from Matt's massive collection of templates is the Mock Social Media templates ! During ISTE last summer, I was joking around with the illustrious Lunch Lady (aka Kat Crawford ) about some templates that Matt was missing, after she made an epic Myspace throwback (those were the days....). I joked about the lack of a N

We’ve all been there. You just finished explaining a concept, laying out a brilliant plan, or sharing an exciting new idea. You pause, look out at your audience (whether that’s a classroom of students, your kids at the dinner table, or your team at work), and you get… blank stares. It’s frustrating! We spend so much time focusing on the stuff we are sharing, but we rarely stop to think about the hidden gears turning—or completely stalled out—in the minds of the people listen

Quick update today (Don't worry, I've got meatier posts ready for Wednesday/Friday). Videos 4-6 of the Canva unit have been published to my YouTube channel this morning! You can learn to create: an interactive story map, math manipulatives, and a calming timer for your own classroom! Videos 4-6 of the Gemini unit should be up by mid-day Tuesday, if not tonight. Had to get my computer fixed by my fine IT person at school! I need to remember that cloud storage is my friend! If

On Friday, I released the first wave of materials for my Vibe Coding for Educators course ! On my YouTube channel , you can find the "What is Vibe Coding?" video in addition to the first three lessons in both the Canva and Google Gemini units. Each video gets you from the prompt through the first iteration of your idea in 5 minutes or less! This week, on Wednesday, videos 4-6 will be released in both courses; with 7-9 hopefully coming by Friday! If you want the eBook and my

Happy Monday! After returning home from TCEA, I dealt with not just 1 but all three of my kiddos getting sick with a crud being passed around their school. But don't you fret! While they were taking some cold medicine-induced naps and getting better, my brain was stirring, and I was motivated to bottle up some of my post-conference energy! In today's Monday-MegaPost, you'll find three quick things to add some play to your day! Updates to the App/Game Arcade A NEW Youtube Ser