Biggest takeaway from Week 1 of teaching this year: how absolutely divorced the conversation around education is from what actually takes place in the classroom. Too many folks not in the classroom talking loudly about a classroom that they no longer (or never did) understand...

I remember back to the good old days of like 2 weeks ago when infographics were cool and thoughtful.

LIVE from the 2025 @ASH_hematology Annual Meeting: Doris Hansen, MD, shares results from a large multi-center study of patients treated with cilta-cel showing that functional high-risk disease and adapted IMS-IMWG high-risk genetics independently predict early relapse.

Giving feedback on student writing has the potential to be so much more than just generic explanations of the rubric—you can build confidence, develop rapport, and be part of the student's writing journey. It's an absolute privilege. (Who would want to forfeit that?)

I'll stop here, but my point is: this was a long and difficult week but all these things still happened and I never want to get to the point where the "long and difficult" keeps me from seeing them happen. end thread 🍎 (but...what good things happened in your classroom?)

another student (!!!) asked if I could read and give feedback on their book project they are doing on their own a student walked into the room with a late pass while I was asking a question and raised their hand to answer before sitting down (they were right, btw)

a student told me mid-class they were struggling to communicate aloud with me so they created a Google Doc so I could read their thoughts and add comments to work on finding a solution to support them a student having a tough year jumped at the chance to lead a class project

a student was wandering the room trying to find a partner and another student saw them wandering and crossed the room to partner with them a student from last year's AP class walked into this year's AP class at the perfect time to quiz them on a sentence I had them memorize

a student won our mid-class rock-paper-scissors tournament but then claimed "I didn't even try" to make it seem like they didn't care (they did) another student, after signing our competition crown for their rock-paper-scissors victory, wore it for the rest of the class

a student, a very quiet student, laughed out loud as we were reading the initial pages of a book we'll spend a unit with—and I cannot wait to hear them keep laughing as we go a student made me laugh (this happened many, many times, by the way)

a student who had been stressed about their grade for months learned they had knocked the most recent essay out of the park and walked in with true swagger a student found something in a poem that I've taught for over a decade that I've never heard before

a student who had been really struggling came in on their own time to not only make-up work, but open up about why they had been really struggling a student emailed me about a book project they are doing outside of school, asking for feedback

a student raised their hand to volunteer an answer without being called on for the first time all year—and oh my, what an answer it was a student used the last five minutes of class to conduct a precarious "stacking experiment" with pens and mini-whiteboards

some good things that happened this week in the classroom (just a reminder that these things do happen, amidst all other things that also do happen) a (somewhat?) brief thread 🍎🧵

I wonder how many words we acquire through in context vs being explicitly taught And what the implications are for vocabulary instruction 🤔😉

I tried to capture more of what this conversation was like along with my own reflections here—along with where I wish it would shift: https://t.co/Y8YLrJmdpe

"Getting an A means...?" Students had A LOT of answers. What's your definition?

"What level of obligation does _____ have?" Not going to lie: this bellringer knocked it out of the park today—both in terms of students immediately locking in and in laying a foundation for the rest of class. (Building off one of our unit-long essential questions, too!)

Gave my HS juniors the following sentence to finish: "getting an A in a class means..." Then students started sharing out and I started writing down what they said: 👀

Student: "Mr. Luther, looks like you've had a long day." Me, after long pause: "It's getting there." (Monday after Thanksgiving is quite a day, right?)

Full conversation here: https://t.co/N4csZiyPwy

The upcoming battle in education, I think: "Get Chromebooks out of the classroom ASAP!" versus "AI is inevitable, we need to prepare students for the future!" Oh, and teachers, as per usual? Probably once again eating popcorn on the sidelines watching it all happen