Rebel Teacher Alliance

Welcome back to a new episode of Rebel Teacher Alliance! This week we have an absolute treat: Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games joins us to talk about what happens when great game design and great teaching collide. We get into how Wingspan almost went in a completely different direction, why Scythe is basically a global politics class in a box, how the best games and the best lessons both start...

Welcome back to a new episode of Rebel Teacher Alliance! End of year energy is high and we are feeling all the feelings. This week Fabian finally got to play Salem 1692 with his students -- and used NotebookLM to build a rule explainer slide deck straight from the rulebook PDF, which worked beautifully. Jamie's district is adopting a Building Thinking Classrooms-based math curriculum next year...

Welcome back to a new episode of Rebel Teacher Alliance! This week we are sitting down with Travis Hancock, founder of Facade Games -- the company behind Salem 1692, Tortuga 1667, Deadwood 1876, Bristol 1350, and the newly Kickstarted Roma XLI. Travis talks about how a slow college summer tweaking Mafia rules turned into a full-blown game company, why social deduction games pull emotions out of pe...

Welcome back to Rebel Teacher Alliance -- just Fabian and John this time, Jamie had somewhere else to be. Fabian's turn-in rate was 23.5% and he is not okay. What followed was one of the more honest conversations on the pod -- about grade-less classrooms, students triaging their workload like professionals, and what it looks like to slow down and have the hard talk instead of reading kids the...

Welcome back to Rebel Teacher Alliance. Fabian is back from scuba diving with students -- five sea turtles, one octopus, one Insta360 camera, zero regrets. Jamie's class has hit their magical end-of-year stride. John is three days into teaching seventh graders for the first time and already knows every kid's name. Then Fabian asks Claude for assessment ideas and gets two words back: "...

Welcome back to Rebel Teacher Alliance -- all three of us this time. We open with updates: Hawaii is slowly drying out, the California teacher strikes have resolved,  and John survived a travel nightmare involving a five-hour airport delay, a missing rental car, and someone else's 5:30am alarm. Then John drops his big news -- he's back in a school building full time as a staff development...

Welcome back to Rebel Teacher Alliance -- just Fabian and Jamie this time, John's off traveling. Fabian opens with Hawaii survival mode: the Kona Low brought flooding, snapped coconut trees, and a power outage he fixed with a tarp and a pizza. Jamie brings the California teacher strike saga -- 800 kids in her husband’s district without a permanent teacher, superintendent salaries pushing $700K...

Welcome back to a new episode of Rebel Teacher Alliance! This week we sit down with Dr. John Spencer, fresh off his keynote at the Learning and the Brain Conference in San Francisco. We talk about why slowing down is actually the move in a world that keeps telling us to go faster, how to use AI as a study tool without letting it do all the thinking, and what it even means to teach for depth when y...

Welcome back to a new episode of Rebel Teacher Alliance! This week we sit down with Jenny Chan, founder of Pacific Atrocities Education, to talk about the history most Western classrooms still barely touch: World War II in Asia and the Pacific. Jenny shares how her grandma’s reaction to Japanese anime led her into archives, denialist comment sections, and a mission to make “never again” mean somet...

Welcome back to Rebel Teacher Alliance! Today we pick up where the last episode left off, then get practical. We revisit key takeaways from our conversation with Sheri Schmidt, then jump into Fabian’s Articles of Confederation lesson flow: AI-made explainer with NotebookLM, image generation in Gemini’s Nano Banana, and a simple prompt-tracking organizer students actually complete. From there we bu...

Welcome back to a new episode of Rebel Teacher Alliance! This week we get practical about teaching in the age of online radicalization. With guest educator Dr. Sheri Schmidt, we unpack how memes become on-ramps, the “entertain, envelop, escalate” pipeline, why curiosity beats zero-tolerance, and how to build school and home guardrails that actually work. We talk gaming platforms, algorithm rabbit...

Welcome back to a new episode of Rebel Teacher Alliance! This week, the crew closes the year with games, grit, and some heresy about AI. We talk why conferences got stuck on AI instead of pedagogy, Jamie’s analog win with Snowball Swap, and Fabian’s new classroom app build that replaces Glide with a clean Base 44 setup students actually use. John teases EMC2’s upcoming Faction Clash and we run our...

Welcome back to a new episode of Rebel Teacher Alliance! This week, John Meehan officially joins as our co-host and we get practical about teaching in the age of AI. We unpack why “if AI can do the task, fix the task,” swap in EMC2 protocols that force real thinking, and show how QFT on vertical whiteboards sharpens research questions. Plus Tier List warm-ups, Micro Lab and Big Picture Pinpoint in...

Welcome back to a new episode of Rebel Teacher Alliance! This week, John Meehan returns to talk UDL and playful learning. We dig into his upcoming book Playing with Purpose with Michael Matera, EMC2’s seasonal drops like 12 Days of Chaos and Egg Dash, why “flow state” matters more than Kahoots, and how to stage lessons so students stay in the pocket. Plus new-dad life, CrossFit jokes, and in “What...

Welcome back to a new episode of Rebel Teacher Alliance! This week we kick off at Jamie’s intro and tease a mystery “permanent sub” joining the crew soon. Fabian recaps Schools of the Future with some honest takeaways, from a sharp student-led AI panel to a sobering session on online radicalization, plus hanging with Dr. Merv and walking out with a Renaissance swag haul. Jamie brings highlights fr...

Welcome back everyone! This episode Fabian had the opportunity to hang out with Dr. Mervin Jenkins at the Schools of the Future conference in Honolulu. Mervin talked to Fabian about his involvement with Flocabulary, what you can do with it and why it is one of the best literacy tools out there. Join ⁠@hofmannedu.bsky.socia⁠ l ⁠ ⁠ and ⁠ @jedijamie.bsky.social⁠ ⁠ ⁠ each week by subscribing and by ra...

Welcome back to a new episode! This time we dive into a rich, real talk with school psychologist  Stephanie Kennedy  (28 years in the work). We unpack what kids are bringing to school right now—and what actually helps. From phones and executive function to nervous-system regulation, tea rituals, and purposeful talk moves, this one’s packed with classroom-ready ideas and a big dose of hope. We clos...

A rocky mic check, a quick update on Scott, and a refreshed plan for the pod. In class, Fabian kicks off the year with a Salem Witch Trials “history mystery” and blackout poems; Jamie dials in summary writing with  The Wild Robot  and a write-first/map-after tweak to Uncharted Territories. We both talk about guarding contract hours (and sanity). And in our ever popular segment "Whatcha been p...

Welcome back to a new episode—and our season finale! This week, we’re trading in lesson plans for cutting boards and chaos, as graduation vibes take over the pod. From black widow smackdowns to woodworking mishaps involving boiling wax and laser gloves (yes, really), we’re limping joyfully to the finish line. Fabian’s room smells like a bakery, Jamie’s managing three checklists and a Darth Vader t...

Welcome back to a new episode of Rebel Teacher Alliance! This week we talk about end-of-year weirdness, testing room tension, and chairs that have seen too many farts. Fabian shares the awkward silence of proctoring IB exams and the suspicious capabilities of student calculators. Jamie goes analog with a Mystery Box twist after a tech hiccup, and Scott plots XP-based booth time while squeezing in...

In honor of Dr. Scott Petri's passing, we are re-publishing the interview we did with him on our sidepod for EduProtocols. Please enjoy this wonderful episode in which you will learn all about Re-Tell in Rhyme. ----- On this episode of the EDUProtocols Podcast we have the honor of talking to Dr. Scott Petri, one of the authors of The EduProtocols Field Guide: Social Studies Edition. He tells us al...

Welcome back to a new episode! This time, we’re knee-deep in the chaos of end-of-year madness. Scott, Jamie, and Fabian share their strategies (or survival tactics) for those strange final days when students and teachers alike are barely holding it together. Fabian talks about how he's using Ravine in his classroom to teach survival and resource management, while Scott shares his experiments with...

This week, we thought it would be a great idea to re-publish an episode of our side-pod "The EduProtocols Podcast". In this episode we focus on Sketch and Tell. Dominic Helmstetter is an experienced educator, who shares his insights on making learning engaging and interactive. The discussion covers various ways to integrate visual aids, technology, and creativity into the classroom to enhance stud...

Welcome back to a new episode of Rebel Teacher Alliance! This week we dive oven-first into planning a gamified baking experience with our friend and culinary wizard, Tisha Richmond . Fabian shares his ambitious plan to teach sourdough in five days, and the crew tosses around creative ideas—from scratch-off mystery badges to Plinko-powered ramen challenges. We talk XP for cheese, classroom kitchens...

With Scott off washing his hair, Jamie and Fabian hold down the fort with end-of-year feels, new student chaos, and some big questions about next year’s game. Jamie shares how CuriPod is bringing fresh energy to test prep (and also meerkats with gelato), while Fabian gets into an AI vs. human writing challenge and contemplates whether to double down or pivot on his Star Wars-themed class game. The...