If AI Can Do the Assignment in 30 Seconds, That’s Not a Cheating Problem

I was inspired to write this piece after seeing an Instagram post from my friend Jacob Carr (Mr. Carr On The Web)... Most of the conversation around AI and cheating is focused on the wrong thing. We keep asking how to catch it, prevent it, or design around it. But there is a more honest question underneath all of that. If a student can open a chatbot, type a prompt, and have a finished product in under a minute, what does that tell us about what we were actually measuring?

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The Week That Was in 103

This week was about staying grounded in what actually matters. We are heading into spring break, and it would have been easy to rush through content and give a test just to say we did. I am not doing that. I am not going to move on just to check a box. I would rather students actually understand what we are doing and have something to build on when we get back.

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What Country Music Taught Me

I want to start off and say I have always been fond of country music. The sound. Te history, The stories. Yesterday, I was watching Ken Burns' Country Music documentary on PBS, and Episode 7 kept sticking with me because of how much was happening at the same time in the Country genre. You had Nashville continuing to push a polished, commercial sound built around strings, production, and crossover appeal.

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The Week That Was In 103

Monday: Making Thinking Visible We finished our unit on the early republic with hexagonal thinking, and it turned into one of those moments where you can really see student thinking come to life. Students connected hexagons across topics like the Whiskey Rebellion, the National Bank, political parties, and foreign policy, each one representing a different test of the Constitution and the new government.

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The Week That Was In 103

This week was all about putting learning into action. Instead of just moving through content, we focused on activities that helped students think, discuss, and make sense of ideas. From analyzing perspectives on the War of 1812, to building an understanding of sectionalism, to predicting the Monroe Doctrine through images, and finally connecting everything through hexagonal thinking, each activity pushed students to do something with what they were learning.

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The Week That Was in 103

This week in Room 103 felt like a good reminder that not every lesson needs to chase coverage. Sometimes the better move is slowing down and letting one big idea carry the work. We stayed in the Early Republic all week, but each day asked students to look at the young nation from a different angle. One day it was freedom of speech and constitutional limits under John Adams.

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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 future of education. The problem is that most of these takes ignore something really simple.

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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 Square EduProtocol. The video added something important to the lesson because it highlighted Hamilton’s early life, his rise, and the beliefs that shaped how he viewed the future of the United States.

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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 ideas visible. Archetype Four Square to push evidence-based thinking. Building Thinking Classrooms to rank, justify, and disagree. EdPuzzle to anchor content before diving deeper.

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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 her keynote, Sarah Ward had us build a word cloud around executive functioning. The room filled it fast. Words like....

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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 federalism, each lesson was designed to move ideas from abstract definitions to real situations students experience every day.

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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 eventually to applying them. By the end of the week, it was clear that slowing down, naming the big ideas, and letting students wrestle with them made a real difference.

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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, we had a shortened, stop-and-start week right as we were beginning our Constitution unit. Not ideal timing, but sometimes you just roll with what you get and adjust on the fly.

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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 irony is obvious once you actually read the words. The warnings are sitting right there in plain English.

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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 94%. I will take that. We are trending up and holding onto content.

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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 try to use our class time wisely.

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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. I’m just tired. As my friend Dr. Scott Petri used to say, “Moler, your worst days of teaching and lessons are someone’s best day.” Some days I remind myself of that, just to get perspective.

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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, which led to concussion symptoms. Headache and dizziness lingered into Monday and Tuesday, so I missed school on Tuesday.

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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 Declaration itself. I told the story of Thomas Jefferson writing it. Jefferson was a quiet, soft spoken individual, not someone who demanded attention, but someone who could write like no one else.

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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, perspective, and context. And honestly? Monday delivered. A Documentary Hook We opened with a three minute clip from the brand-new Ken Burns…

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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 and almost zero strange schedules. This year I’m teaching 40 to 45 minute classes.

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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 short video from the American Battlefield Trust that covered the Boston Tea Party and the punishments that followed.

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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 assessment for our Road to the Revolution unit. It is an argumentative one pager answering the question, “Why did loyal colonists begin fighting against their own government?”

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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 favors. My old approach was pretty typical: start with some vocab, squeeze in the French and Indian War, sprint through every tax over 2–3 days, toss in salutary neglect somewhere, then protests, then the Boston Massacre as a one-off, then the Tea Party and Intolerable Acts, and finally the Declaration and natural rights.

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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 protocols kept things tight and focused. Students were constantly reading, creating, discussing, and explaining.

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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 lean on multiple-choice tests, short answers, and essays. I rarely do. My students spend more time creating, connecting, and explaining.

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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, Snorkl for instant writing feedback, SWBST Sketch and Tell to help students visualize and summarize key events, Map and Tell to analyze spatial change, and Twelve-Topic Stitch-Up to review and connect ideas across multiple units.

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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, and on tennis courts. There’s some country in me. I love country music, I work hard, and I’m not afraid to roll up my sleeves and get after it.

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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 opportunity and inequality in the 13 colonies? Starting with Context We began with an Annotate and Tell that served two purposes.

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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 deeper analysis and discussion, setting the stage for our new compelling question: Was colonial America a land of opportunity or inequality?

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