Quick Thought: Hot Takes
I’m getting tired of teacher hot takes. You see them everywhere. Someone declares that a certain strategy is the only way to teach. Another says something should never be done in a classroom again. A thread blows up online about how one practice is terrible and another is…
The Week That Was in 103
Monday: Hamilton, Jefferson, and the Constitution in Real Time We started the week by continuing our work with Hamilton’s financial plan, which really began last Friday. On Friday, students watched an EdPuzzle on Alexander Hamilton and paired it with the Archetype Four…
The Week That Was In 103
This week was built around a simple idea: use clear EduProtocols to help students think deeply about how power works. We used Frayers to activate prior knowledge. CyberSandwich to frame historical tension. My Short Answer to sharpen explanations. Sketch and Tell to make…
Quick Thought: Executive Functioning Is Simulation
Last Friday I presented EduProtocols at Springer School and Center in Cincinnati. Springer is known for its work with students who have ADHD and executive functioning challenges. I went to share ideas. I left rethinking some of my own. Early in…
The Week That Was In 103
This week in Room 103 was about helping students see how government systems actually work. Instead of rushing from topic to topic, we focused on sequencing ideas, revisiting concepts, and using familiar routines to build understanding over time. From checks and balances to…
The Week That Was In 103
This week marked the start of our new unit on the Principles of the Constitution. The focus was not on racing through content, but on building understanding step by step. Each lesson was intentionally designed to move from identifying ideas, to comparing them, and…
The Week That Was in 103
This post is going to look a little different because, well… the week looked a little different. About 12 inches of snow different. Monday and Tuesday disappeared thanks to winter weather, and Wednesday through Friday were all late starts. So instead of our usual rhythm,…
Primary Sources, Forgotten Warnings, and Why I Keep Posting Old Quotes
Lately I have been posting quotes from the Founders and early American history. Not to sound smart and not to start a fight. I do it because there is a clear line between what they wrote then and what we are living through now.…
The Week That Was In 103
Tuesday After a long weekend, we jumped back into our Text Quest and focused on the Three-fifths Compromise and the compromise over the Atlantic slave trade. To check what stuck from last week, we opened with a Quizizz. Class averages came in at 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, and…
The Week That Was In 103
"Hey, send me a picture of the homework that you finished when you get home." That was a text I overheard this week and it hit me. Sometimes I feel the pressure in my new school to give homework. I was told it is an expectation. But I do not always give homework because I…
The Week That Was In 103
This was our first week back from winter break, and I’m going to be honest. There are days where I feel exhausted and stuck in a rut. Some days it feels like I’m doing stuff just to do it, and other days it feels purposeful. Some days I feel like I’m lacking creativity.…
The Week That Was In 103
This week was a weird one heading into winter break. Monday started as a two-hour delay, but the cold did not play nicely with the salt. Roads iced over, conditions got worse, and the day was eventually called off. Over the weekend, I had a freak accident and hit my head,…
The Week That Was in 103
Monday Setting the Stage for the Declaration Monday was all about setting the stage for the Declaration of Independence. This was not the deep dive yet. It was about building background knowledge and telling the story behind the document. We started with an image of the…
The Week That Was In 103
Monday We kicked off the week by jumping straight into one of the most confusing and debated moments in early American history, the Battle of Lexington. The goal wasn’t just to learn what happened, but to help students build their own interpretations using evidence,…
Quick Thought: If You Feel Behind, You’re Not Alone
I was scrolling through my own blog the other day, looking back at what I did at this time last year, and it hit me. I am four full weeks behind where I was. Last year I had 65 minute classes. I had 180 school days. I had far fewer interruptions…
The Week That Was In 103
Monday Monday was one of those keep the storyline going days. We are still building the Road to the Revolution, but instead of dumping vocab or giving kids a list of causes, I am trying to tell it like an actual unfolding story through the people who lived it. I pulled a…
Quick Thought – More Than A, B, C, or D
I never really thought about this until I had a brief conversation with two parents this afternoon. They were touring the school, thinking about sending their child here next year, and they stopped by my room. My students were working on their summative…
Rethinking How I Teach the Road to the Revolution
I’ve been watching Ken Burns’ new documentary, The American Revolution, and it hit me just how much is packed into this era. Abstract ideas. Complicated politics. Dozens of events. And honestly, the way I used to teach it wasn’t doing anyone any…
The Week That Was in 103
This week in 103 was all about building a bigger story. We moved from Samuel Adams to the Stamp Act protests, into the Townshend Acts, and finally circled back to the Boston Massacre with fresh eyes. Even though we had shortened classes on a few days, the structure of the…
The Week That Was in 103
Monday and Tuesday Monday and Tuesday were all about performance-based assessments. I’ve been wrestling with a question that probably crosses a lot of teachers’ minds at some point: Am I doing enough to prepare my students for what comes next? Most social studies classes…
The Week That Was In 103
This week in 103 was packed with movement, discussion, and meaningful writing. The lessons built on each other, using EduProtocols that pushed students to analyze, connect, and create rather than memorize. We used CyberSandwich for deep reading and partner discussion,…
Things That Shaped Me: Simple, Not Simpler
Sometimes I feel like I’ve lived a few different lives.My parents are divorced, so I grew up splitting time between two worlds, a suburban neighborhood and stretches of country backroads. I’ve been on tractors, in tobacco fields, in college classrooms,…
The Week That Was in 103
Monday - Mercantilism Rack and Stack Tuesday and Wednesday - Stations, Questions Friday - Colonial Government Vocab, Finish the Drawing Monday The Question That Drove the Lesson This week’s focus was one word with a big question behind it: How did mercantilism shape…
The Week That Was In 103
This week we wrapped up our last unit and began a new one. The transition brought a nice mix of reflection and fresh energy as students finished their Netflix series projects and shifted into our study of the 13 Colonies. We moved from storytelling and creative thinking to…
How I Actually Use ChatGPT To Build a Unit
The 13 Colonies Inquiry Unit Link The Common Mistake A lot of people open ChatGPT, type “make me a lesson plan,” and press go. It spits out something that looks ready to teach, but it doesn’t know your room. It doesn’t know your pacing, your standards,…
Using ChatGPT to Make Quizzes (Without Losing Your Mind)
AI can be a real time saver when it comes to making quizzes. I’ve used ChatGPT plenty of times to build question banks I can plug right into Gimkit or Quizizz. It’s fast, it’s flexible, and it gets you about 80% of the way there. But if you…
The Week That Was In 103 (Unit Plan Edition)
This unit started with a question that actually mattered:If you lived in England in the 1600s, would you have left and risked it all? That single question framed the entire unit. Every activity, reading, and discussion tied back to it. When students…
The Things We Think We’re Doing
This has been on my mind lately. Teachers (myself included) often say we’re doing certain practices like retrieval, inquiry, student choice, feedback cycles, or collaboration. We believe we are. We even tell others we are. But when you really stop and look at the…
The Week That Was In 103
I’m going to frame this week’s post around the beginning, middle, and end of the week. Once again, our rhythm was shaped by shortened schedules and shadow days, which meant adjusting plans and finding ways to keep learning moving forward. To work around the interruptions,…
The Week That Was In 103
I’m learning quickly that my school has a rhythm all its own—one filled with odd schedules, unexpected interruptions, and lots of moving parts. Some days it feels like just when I find my teaching groove, the bell schedule changes or half the class disappears for a shadow…
