Get caught by a ghost in Pac-Man and the game hands you another life. Flop a lesson in third period and you’ll replay it in the shower for three days.
Our founder and CEO Michael Vilardo raised that exact problem on a podcast episode with Diana Gebe and Ali del Castillo, instructional leaders at Tustin Unified School District. Kids can retry a level without a second thought, but teachers often feel like one rough lesson goes on their permanent record.
Diana and Ali want more teachers to hit the retry button anyway. They coach teachers to try new things and to say so out loud, even when the plan wobbles.
“I don’t have all the answers, but we can figure it out together,” Diana suggests telling students.
Respawning starts now.
Here’s what’s on the dashboard this week:
Today’s Deep Dive: Choose your lesson planning character
Reading Rainbow: Free teaching degrees + the “yellow zone”
From Our Desk: Gala gowns and football jerseys
Watch of the Week: Bring camp half-blood to class
Choose your character: Find out which Mario Kart racer plans your lessons
In Mario Kart, falling off Rainbow Road is a rite of passage. Lakitu fishes you out with his little fishing pole, and you’re racing again in seconds.
Diana Gebe and Ali del Castillo, instructional leaders at Tustin Unified, want teachers to get that same respawn, so they coach them to try new things and tell somebody how it went.
Which Mario Kart Racer Are You?
1. A lesson idea hits you Sunday night.
A) Park it until it’s perfect
B) Race it Monday, tell nobody
C) Race it Monday, report back at lunch
2. An activity spins out like you hit a banana peel.
A) Never run that track again
B) Fix it solo
C) Ask the class what went wrong
3. A student asks something you can’t answer.
A) Promise to look it up
B) Bluff a little
C) Tell them you’ll figure it out together
4. Team meeting share-out.
A) Share a win
B) Share nothing
C) Share the lesson that fell off Rainbow Road
Character Selected:
Mostly A’s: The 50cc Cruiser. Your laps are spotless. Try one new shortcut this week.
Mostly B’s: The Secret Shortcut Finder. You know every hidden path and keep them to yourself. Tell one coworker how it went.
Mostly C’s: The Rainbow Road Racer. You pick the hardest track and tell everybody when you fall off. Pull a colleague in for take two.
See how Diana and Ali help teachers set down the pressure to be perfect in the full playbook.
Teachers picked up a second job (same building): A new RAND study found teachers spend about eight hours a week on student behavior and mental health supports, and the more of it they do, the higher their own burnout risk. That’s an extra school day every week, and nobody got a second lanyard.
Executive function, one student at a time: Edutopia lays out a one-on-one coaching plan to help high schoolers with ADHD build better executive function habits. It turns out “just use your planner” has the same success rate as “just relax.”
Find the ‘Yellow Zone’: An NYU professor says students grow most in the “yellow zone” of productive discomfort, somewhere between too easy and totally overwhelming. She suggests starting with small, low-stakes risks early in the year, which is great news for anyone whose kids still panic at the phrase “pop quiz.”
Free college for future teachers (seriously): Four former National Teachers of the Year helped design the new Educators Institute, which offers free online courses toward a bachelor’s degree plus at least a year of mentoring from a local instructional coach. If it gets accredited, future teachers could save $20,000 to $90,000 and skip the three-jobs-while-student-teaching era entirely.
“But we already learned this” has met its match: Experts told K-12 Dive that asking “why” questions Socratic-style helps students see the limits of what they think they know. It’s the classroom version of asking a know-it-all uncle to explain how the internet works.
Wow, AI gave teachers some time back: Nearly two-thirds of educators who use AI say it frees up time for the parts of the job they care about most, like talking with students. Just under half say they got zero guidance on using it for assignments, which tracks for any tech that shows up before the training does.
We’d love to meet you on the road! See here for a preview of the vibe at our Subject Conferences for educators and district leaders.
From a gala to the football field, Team Subject can hang in just about any venue. Go behind-the-scenes here.
Our VP of Marketing walked past a conference room and saw WHAT!?
Watch of the Week: Percy Jackson & the Olympians
Why we’re obsessed: Season 3 of the Disney+ series premieres November 20 and adapts The Titan’s Curse, which means Percy spends part of it literally holding up the sky. We know a few teachers who can relate, and the first two seasons are already streaming if your class needs some catch-up homework.
Recommended lesson integrations:
Monster Mash: Students invent a mythical creature and give it one silly weakness, like a minotaur who’s terrified of glitter. Bonus points for drawings that get a little messy.
Quest Map: Students chart Percy’s quest on a map with a stop for every monster, then plan their own quest across the school, with the cafeteria as the final boss.
Myth Makeover: Compare an original Greek myth with how the show retells it. Students vote on whether Medusa deserved a better publicist.
Book vs. Show: Read a chapter of The Titan’s Curse, then watch the matching scene when Season 3 drops. Students argue about what the adaptation changed, which is basically what the internet does anyway.
Superpower Spotlight: In the books, Percy has ADHD and dyslexia, and Camp Half-Blood frames both as part of what makes him a great demigod. Students write about a time something that felt hard turned out to be a strength.
Call the Oracle: The Oracle of Delphi was a real place. Students research how ancient Greeks actually used it, then write a prophecy for the next school year in confusing riddle form.
Atlas Math: Students estimate the mass of Earth’s atmosphere and calculate whether any Titan could hold it up. Atlas’s lower back would like a word.
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That’s it from Subject this week! Go try something new this week and let it get a little messy. If it flops, congratulations, you’ve got a blooper reel and a great story for lunch duty.
The Subject Team
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