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 riot act. John brings his own version from the other end, scaling Microlab protocol down from 60 seconds to 30 because his seventh graders simply cannot do 60 yet, and that is fine. We also get into Portal Kombat -- Fabian's Civil War summative where students research historical figures and battles, claim their fighter in a draft system, and then argue why their fighter mattered more than their opponent's. Fabian also built a custom app to run it, which is either brilliant or over-engineered, possibly both. In our ever popular segment “What’cha been playin’...?” we close with Fire Tower, a two-player tug-of-war card game that John loved, bought the deluxe upgrade for, and now cannot bring himself to play because it has too many mechanics. There is a lesson in there somewhere.

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Instagram: @rebelteacheralliance BlueSky: @rtalliance.bsky.social TikTok: @rebelteacheralliance Fabian: @hofmannedu.bsky.social Jamie: @jedijamie.bsky.social John: @meehanedu.bsky.social

Things mentioned on the episode:

• EMC2 Learning -- https://emc2learning.com

• Portal Kombat (EMC2) --https://emc2learning.com/portal-combat/

• Fire Tower board game -- https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WDNFQ8G