Bryan Slater is an experienced classroom teacher and has spent the last 15 years teaching high school Social Studies in Tacoma, WA, Lagos, Nigeria, and Sumner, WA. He currently teaches IB 20th Century Topics and Theory of Knowledge to 9-12th graders at Sumner High School. We talk with Bryan about how he uses a weekly temperature check to get a pulse on how his students are doing. Bryan shares how this low burden, high impact strategy has influenced his teaching practice and helped him connect relationally with his students while also infusing social emotional learning like empathy throughout his classes.