3 with Bri

Empowering teachers to transform drained classrooms into dynamic spaces of risk, energy, and renewed joy.

11/01/2026

Happy Halloween from my family and the 80s!

10/01/2026

The school year has started and you’re a bit resigned to some of the dynamics that have already settled in. Or, you’re searching for a new idea or solution to get your quiet students comfortable and off task students opting in. Check out our engagement webinars offered this month! They are free and live to ensure your context is considered! Get the registration link when you comment WEBINAR.

09/23/2026

Here’s a question worth bringing to your next PLC:
Who is carrying the cognitive work?
Teacher engagement and student engagement are not the same thing.
A teacher can be animated, asking great questions, explaining clearly, making connections, and working incredibly hard...
while students remain mostly observers.
So audit one lesson:
→ Who’s talking more—me or my students? → Where am I answering a question I could instead ask? → Is there a structure for participation, or am I hoping engagement happens organically? → Could every student—not just the fastest hands—access this thinking?
The goal isn’t teacher silence.
Excellent teaching absolutely includes modeling, explaining, questioning, storytelling, demonstrating, and direct instruction.
The question is what happens after that.
Where have we designed space for students to wrestle with the ideas themselves?
That’s cognitive ownership.
And it’s one of the things I work on with teachers through The Engagement Reset and my professional development work with schools.
📌 Save this and audit one lesson this week.
👥 School leaders: try these four questions during a PLC or instructional conversation.
And if your staff is ready to dig deeper into engagement design, send me PD and let’s talk.

09/17/2026

Quiet teachers can have deeply engaged classrooms. High-energy teachers can have disengaged students. Engagement is something we design, not perform.
Comment WEBINAR for the registration link to my next free training on design elements that build student engagement.

09/15/2026

Maybe we’re not supposed to carry it all. A parking-lot moment, a hidden curriculum, and a case for sharing the load — at home and in the classroom. 🎒📝 Episode 37 live now!
What’s one thing on your plate that was never actually supposed to be yours alone?

09/12/2026

Teachers, we’re far enough into the school year that we’re starting to see it.
The patterns.
The students who jump in. The students who disappear. The time of day that hum. And the lessons where it feels like we’re dragging the learning uphill ourselves.
That’s why I’m talking about engagement design.
Not engagement as entertainment.
Not another list of “fun activities.”
And definitely not asking teachers to work harder.
We’re going to look at how the way we design learning can:
→ reduce unnecessary social risk → increase cognitive ownership → create meaningful participation → get more students doing the thinking → and maybe give teachers a little energy back, too.
Because teachers shouldn’t have to be the most interesting thing in the room every minute of every day.
School leaders: follow along, too. These are the same conversations I love facilitating with teacher teams through professional development and engagement-design workshops.
📌 Save this series for your next PLC conversation.
And share this reel with an educator who might want to join us.

09/07/2026

🍎 THIS ONE CHANGED MY TEACHING.
Cooper wasn’t a puzzle I eventually “solved.”
He changed the questions I asked.
It’s incredibly easy — especially when we’re exhausted — to explain engagement through student characteristics:
“He doesn’t care.”
“She isn’t motivated.”
“They just don’t want to work.”
Sometimes students absolutely make choices we cannot control.
Engagement design isn’t magic.
But labeling the student doesn’t give me much instructional agency.
So I learned to ask different questions:
What is the entry point?
Where is the risk?
Who is doing the thinking?
Does the student have evidence that they can be successful?
Is the task intellectually meaningful?
Is there a pathway into participation?
What happens here when someone struggles?
Those questions don’t guarantee engagement.
They give me somewhere to ACT.
And that’s why I believe so strongly:
Engagement isn’t something we demand from students. It’s something we design for.
Tomorrow, get curious about ONE student who isn’t leaning into learning yet.
Not: “What’s wrong with them?”
Try: “What might their response be telling me?”
That question might change your year.

Want the framework for designing engagement instead of diagnosing disengagement? Comment WEBINAR and I’ll send you the registration link to the next live free training.

09/07/2026

I thought rest meant sleeping in.
Then we got a puppy. 😂
And somewhere along the way, my body apparently decided early mornings were happening whether I agreed to them or not.

So this summer, rest changed shape.
It looked like caffeine in the backyard before the house woke up.
It looked like good friends, good food, and family gathered together.
Renewal looked like finding fringe hours to build something I care deeply about.
And rejoicing looked like watching my kids become more fully themselves—chasing their own interests, finding their strengths, and needing me a little differently than they used to.

That’s the thing I’m carrying into Season 2 of 3 with Bri:
Renew. Rest. Rejoice.
They aren’t destinations we finally figure out. They change as our lives change.

Some seasons take something away and hand you something else instead.
This one did. ❤️

🎙️ Season 2, Episode 1: The 3 Rs of Summer
On Spotify & Apple Podcasts - link in profile

As you look back on your summer:
What did you renew?
How did you rest?
And with whom did you rejoice?

I’d love to hear one of your 3 Rs in the comments.

And send this episode to a friend who’s learning to recognize rest in a new shape, too.

09/05/2026

Choice ≠ Agency
Choice can support motivation.
But not all choices carry equal weight.
Consider the difference:
🟡 “Choose your font.”
versus
🟢 “Choose which of these three questions you want to investigate.”
One changes the appearance.
The other gives students some ownership over their intellectual path.

Meaningful choice might involve:
• topic • strategy • sequence • question • partner or role when appropriate • evidence • method • product • position
And we don’t need unlimited choice.
In fact, too many options can create another barrier.
We can design bounded autonomy:
“Here are three meaningful pathways. Choose the one that makes sense for you.”
Structure AND agency.

Tomorrow, look at the choices in your lesson.
Ask: Does this choice change the student’s thinking — or just the packaging?
Comment 🟢 or 🟡 — was your last “choice” meaningful, or just packaging?

SAVE this for planning. Tag a teacher who will hold you accountable to rethink one choice this week.

09/02/2026

WHO is doing the cognitive thinking?
This is a humbling question.
Because teachers work HARD.
We explain. We model. We clarify. We prompt. We question. We scaffold.
All of those things can be excellent teaching.
But sometimes our desire to help means we’re doing intellectual work students could be doing.
So here’s a tiny teacher audit:
After you ask a question, pay attention to what YOU do next.
Do you:
➡️ answer it? ➡️ rephrase it immediately? ➡️ give another hint? ➡️ call on the fastest hand? ➡️ fill the silence?
Or do students actually get enough space to wrestle with it?
The goal isn’t less teaching.
The goal is making sure our teaching creates MORE student thinking rather than replacing it.
Tomorrow, choose ONE part of your lesson and ask:
“Where am I answering a question I could instead ask?”
That’s a small shift.
But it changes who owns the thinking.
SAVE this for your lesson-planning audit.

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