Justin Cerenzia

'What Do You Need Wednesday?'—The Builders Edition (Still) "...every tiny thing by one percent..."

New WDYN: The Builders Edition 🔨

February is a good time to recover some time. We're sharing ways to find what you've saved, borrow from good curation, and build the small tools your classroom actually needs.

I’ve been online long enough to remember when Brian retired the “Danger Guerrero” moniker—almost a decade ago I think.

And this Michael J. Fox episode of Shrinking is something else. I came close to a life-altering brain injury ten years ago, and it hit in a way I wasn’t fully prepared for.

Tell 'Em, Michael J. Fox I'm going to make this about me, eventually, but not before we talk about how cool this was.

My friend Brian wrote something really great and you should read it

Hmm…

Tough night for Drakes.

“MVP candidate Drake Maye…”

ALWAYS! And UW-Madison’s history department is LEGIT.

But now more than ever.

(And that halftime show RIPPED)

The dj on the MIT station just went on a gorgeous tangent about how this semester he’s taking all liberal arts classes, and instead of asking him to reproduce established knowledge (as in most MIT courses) they push him to think about how he thinks.

My Super Bowl MVP.

DID YOU KNOW: Last year, one team also entered halftime at the Super Bowl with zero points. (The other team was the Philadelphia Eagles.)

Take Five An Architecture for Mathemagenic Learning

In which I do a kind of 'Song Exploder' for teaching: not the lesson, but the thinking underneath it. If learning happens in student cognition, that’s where the design has to live.

'What Do You Need Wednesday?'—The 'What We Saw' Edition (Still) "...every tiny thing by one percent..."

Open Classroom Week reminded us that teaching is a full-contact sport. The movement. The language. The constant recalibration.

Most of what makes it work is invisible—until you really watch. This week's WDYN takes a closer look.

Re: Dan McQuade:

"He might be the reason Philly is the unofficial hometown of internet anarchists anywhere, since he was the best at channeling every strain of Philadelphia’s cheerful chaos.

A legend and a prince. Go Birds."

Well said.

we said all along that they wanted Gawker dead not because we embarrassed a pro wrestler but because the Epstein story is one Gawker was covering a decade before most other people caught up & was just one of many stories exposing powerful people and their misdeeds

He’s thinking about doing crimes.

Dan McQuade, 1983–2026 | Defector Dan McQuade, our friend and colleague, died this week at the age of 43. He is survived by his wife and young son. At the end of 2024, Dan was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer. The news of his diag...

I love Dan McQuade dearly and will miss him terribly. No one else like him. defector.com/dan-mcquade-...

“Shoresy is the best sports television show ever made”

Listen, I speak “hockey” fluently & this is unequivocally true. It’s crass, obscure, and soaked in jargon.

And yet, it makes a quick jump from Canadian niche to the cultural ideal people gesture at when they talk about Ted Lasso being good.

YouTube video by Berggruen Institute Can AI Prove It? Terence Tao on “Big Math” and Our Theoretical Future | The Futurology Podcast

Terence Tao gets it:

"AI is teaching us...our idea of what intelligence is is not really accurate"

"we were looking for some elusive intelligent way of of thinking and we don't see it in the tools that actually solve our goals...maybe it's actually because intelligence is not what we think it is"

Literally me watching the Eagles’ offense all season long.

A Seahawk is a bird.

And as it is and always shall be…..

…..Go Birds.

Human Mic

Dropped a lyric from this Talib Kweli song the other day in class (“You can have your own opinion, but not your own facts”) and a student knew the reference.

They get an A+ forever. The kids are alright.

'What Do You Need Wednesday?'—The Invisible Thinking Edition (Still) "...every tiny thing by one percent..."

Who’s doing the thinking?

This week’s WDYN looks at AI, judgment, and visibility—drawing on Paul Kirschner, using NotebookLM as a stress test, and linking it to Open Classroom Week as a forcing function for shared professional learning.

Delay of game to start a drive. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Cat Changing The Clock Changing The Time GIF ALT: Cat Changing The Clock Changing The Time GIF

We are firmly in Mario Cristobal clock management hours.

The app is good.

Sometimes you can see in real time that you are watching the most important player in the history of a sports organization

LINKEDIN SUPERMAN

'What Do You Need Wednesday?'—The Intersection Edition (Still) "...every tiny thing by one percent..."

WDYN—The Intersection Edition

Labs → classrooms → student lives
AI → assignments → intentions
Practice → fluency → thinking

The work isn’t replacing what works. It’s knowing what to build on.

Thought this was Cheburashka at first glance.

I’m going to throw a parade when (if?) they fire Patullo.

Everyone is invited.

Meanwhile, let’s check in on Kevin Patullo…