Category: Quick Thoughts

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. At least once a week one of them gets chopped to 30 minutes. Some days I don’t see certain groups at all. And I’m working with a 173 day schedule.

I’m sharing this for any teacher who feels that pressure creeping in. I refuse to water down what I teach just to say I “covered it.” If I’m going to teach something, I’m going to do a good job and give kids an experience they actually learn from. Eighth grade social studies is important. It shapes how students understand this country and the ideas that built it. I’m proud to teach it and I refuse to cheapen it just because the clock is tight.

So if you feel behind, you’re fine. We all are in some way. Do what you can and don’t shortchange students. Bring the stories to life. Connect the past to their community and their world. You can’t do that by rushing through a textbook and obsessing over a pacing guide. Quality matters more than speed, and the kids will remember the difference.

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?”

I mentioned that the one pager was their test for the unit, and one of the parents looked a little surprised. So I followed up with, “I am not a traditional teacher. To me, there is more to learning than circling A, B, or C. Learning should feel different. It should be ongoing. We always talk about wanting lifelong learners, and assessments like this actually allow for that. The best part is the conversations I get to have with kids while they work. They ask how to word things, how one idea connects to another, and why certain events mattered. Those moments are meaningful. That is real learning.”

She paused, thought about it, and said she agreed. It honestly felt like I opened her mind to something she had not considered before.

The funny part is that I had not really thought about it that way until the words came out of my mouth.

These one pagers, and any nontraditional assessment we have done this year whether the Netflix summaries, hexagonal webs, or annotated maps, naturally create conversations and questions. Kids stop, think, ask, revise, and explain. I love that. When I gave a traditional test at the start of the year, none of that happened.

I think we often view a summative assessment as the finish line. Here is what you should know, show it, and then we move on. But what if the assessment pushed back on that idea? What if it became part of the learning instead of the end of it?

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. It worked… but there was no flow. Too many disconnected parts. The cognitive load was just too much.

This year, I decided to take a completely different path.

I treated the French and Indian War as the ending to my 13 Colonies unit, framing it as a rivalry gone bad. Then, instead of opening the Road to Revolution with new content, I started with review of the consequences of that war and the breakdown of salutary neglect. I still taught vocabulary up front, but this time I wanted the unit to feel like a story told through the voices of the people who lived it.

We kicked things off with the Stamp Act by reading the actual wording. Kids debated fairness using the colonists’ own language. I even taught the difference between a pence, a shilling, and a pound because if you want them to understand the argument, you have to let them stand inside it.

From there, we looked at protests and reactions through the eyes of Samuel Adams and Thomas Hutchinson. Same people, same thread, same narrative. Then we moved into the Townshend Acts and Adams’ Massachusetts Circular Letter. That’s also when I introduced natural rights, not waiting until the Declaration of Independence. Life, liberty, and property were already shaping colonial arguments long before 1776.

When we got to the Boston Massacre, it finally clicked for them: “If natural rights include life… what happens when government ordered, British soldiers fire into a crowd?” The story built itself.

Then we hit the Tea Party and Intolerable Acts using a diary entry from John Adams where he basically predicts the crackdown and knows war is on the horizon. Finally, we closed the chapter with the First Continental Congress and their Declaration of Resolves. Background reading to primary source to short, purposeful chunks. As my friend and co-author Scott Petri always said: “Don’t make your class death by 1,000 primary sources.”

In the end, the kids didn’t just remember events, they followed a coherent story told by the people living it. And that made the culminating question feel earned:

Why did British subjects go from being loyal to fighting their own government?

This new approach felt clearer, more human, and honestly… more teachable. And watching students connect the dots on their own reminded me why I love this job.

I’ve had students complain.
I’ve had students defy.
I’ve had students look me straight in the eye and say, “I’m not doing this.”
I’ve even had kids tell me, “I hate school.”

That last one always sticks with me. Because hating school hasn’t always been a thing. Somewhere along the line, it starts.

For years, I’ve asked my 7th and 8th graders a simple question: “When did you start hating school?”
And you know what? About 95% of them say 4th or 5th grade. That’s not a coincidence.

Now that my daughter is in 4th grade, I’m starting to see why.

Take her latest assignment, a two-page book report.
She loves reading. She reads in the car, before bed, pretty much anywhere. She got to pick her book, which should have been awesome. But instead, it came with a mountain of a writing project. She’s never done anything like this before, and the directions weren’t chunked or scaffolded. It was just: “Choose a book and write this big report.”

So now, the kid who loves reading doesn’t.
She’s not thinking about the story anymore.

And to top it off, the two-page report template (from TPT) was emailed to me, and I had to print it because she lost her copy. So now, it’s not just her stress. It’s ours.

Here’s what I keep thinking:

1. Just have a few extra copies ready. Battling over a lost paper doesn’t teach responsibility. It just builds resentment.
2. Don’t hand a 4th grader a giant project with no warm-up. Start small. Build confidence.

What if instead of the classic book report, we tried something like BookaKucha?

Students create three slides about their book and talk for 20 seconds per slide. That’s it. One minute of presenting. It’s quick, creative, and authentic. They get to share what they love about a book, not just prove they read it.

When students recommend books to each other, it creates a reading culture. And culture beats compliance every time.

Because maybe the goal isn’t to make kids “do” reading.
Maybe it’s to make sure they don’t stop loving it.

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 day-to-day flow of your classroom, sometimes the truth is we’re not. Not in the way we imagine. Maybe we’ve done it once or twice, or a version of it, but not with purpose or consistency.

I’ve made a point to pause and ask myself: Why am I doing this? Am I doing it regularly? Does it actually make sense for my students? Those questions have helped me see what’s real versus what’s routine.

It’s easy to fall into the comfort of saying we “do” something because it feels right or sounds good. The harder part is being honest enough to admit when we’re not and then making the small adjustments that bring our intentions and actions back in line.

Teaching social studies in 2025 is not the same as it was even five years ago. My middle schoolers live in a world where AI can spit out an answer in less time than it takes them to find the question mark on the keyboard. That changes things.

But here is the key: it does not change why we teach social studies. It just changes how we help kids wrestle with information. If anything, AI has made the skills of questioning, sourcing, and perspective even more important.

Here are five things I want my students to get if they are going to actually learn social studies in an AI world:

1. Be the historian, not the robot

AI is good at telling kids what happened. Historians do the harder work of weighing evidence, building arguments, and arguing over perspective. I remind my students that the chatbot is not the historian, they are.

2. Sources are still the anchor

AI does not always make clear where its information comes from and sometimes it just makes things up. That is why my students keep coming back to the question: What is the source? If they cannot answer that, the information does not carry much weight.

3. Bias never goes away

This one is easy for kids to grasp. We have always shown them that newspapers, diaries, and speeches carry bias. Now we add AI to the list. Whose voice do you hear? Whose voice is missing? Once they see bias in one place, they start spotting it everywhere.

4. Question before you accept

This is where I have found AI to be the best teaching tool. It gives kids a polished looking answer that is not always perfect. Instead of saying “do not use it,” I give them my Fray-I template.

Students take an AI response and then “fray it apart”:

• What is the main point?
• Did it use evidence or just sound nice?
• What is missing?
• Would you trust this for an assignment?

The beauty of Fray-I is that it forces kids to do what historians do: summarize, critique, evaluate, and revise. AI is not a shortcut. It is raw material for real thinking. You can copy a Fray-I template here!

5. History is still human

At the end of the day, AI can generate timelines and definitions, but it cannot teach empathy or perspective. That is still our job. My students need to see the choices, struggles, and connections that make history matter. That is where the learning lives.

Final Thought

AI is here, and our students are going to use it. We can either fight it or teach with it. For me, the answer is clear: use it as a spark, then give students tools like Fray-I to push deeper. That is how they learn to think like historians in an AI world.

When ChatGPT dropped in November 2022, I jumped in shortly after. I started playing with it, wrote my first post about using it in education by January 2023 (here it is).

A few months later, I was presenting on AI locally and, eventually, across the country—showing teachers how it could actually make their lives easier. Somewhere along the way, I became an AI consultant. I gave about five presentations. After one of them, the head guy pulled me aside and told me I did an excellent job.

Me being me, I asked, “Are you serious or just being nice?”

He said, “I don’t say things I don’t mean. That was excellent.”

That moment stuck with me.

And then… silence.

No more calls. No more opportunities. I reached out—asked if I was fired. They said no. I asked if I needed to fix anything. They said no. I asked for feedback. Nothing.

Same story with job interviews. Get the call. Get told, “We went in another direction.” I ask for feedback, and get told, “You were great, but someone else rose to the top.” I get told, “The other candidate stood out.” No feedback. No real explanation.

And honestly?

It’s ridiculous.

We work in education. We preach feedback. We tell kids and teachers it’s the key to getting better. We build entire evaluation systems around it.

But when it comes time to give real feedback to each other? Crickets. Excuses. Vague compliments and generic rejections.

It’s cowardly. It’s bullshit. And it’s hypocritical.

We owe people better than that.

Especially if we actually believe half the stuff we say about growth, learning, and improvement.