From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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As we plan the year ahead, planning those projects is vital. Gold-standard project based learning gives us a framework and guideline. And the free resources at PBLWorks can help teachers who are planning those big projects for the year. Today, Lisa Mireles takes us into gold standard PBL. She shares what it is, what it isn't, some tips and tricks for leading effective PBL, and lots of ideas.

Mark Wagner on last week's Fab Idea Friday talked about space and mentioned some PBL approaches. That would be a good companion in terms of the thinking modes we need as we look at PBL. While you can't do PBL every day for everything you're teaching, some well-selected projects at several points in your year can bring in student interest, drive learning, and help students learn to collaborate and build those emotional intelligence skills that are so important today.

“I want to disrupt the notion that coverage is enough.”

Lisa Mireles, Ed.D.

Managing Director of Digital Curriculum, PBLWorks

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Start a project wall with what you already have. Put your driving question at the top of a bulletin board or a section of whiteboard, and underneath it start a running “need to know” list your students add to. Nothing to buy, nothing to approve — and it turns the question into the thing the room organizes itself around.

One more thing worth sitting with: Lisa's point about literacy. In a PBL project, students aren't just reading. They're writing, speaking, and listening too — which means literacy stops being a block on the schedule and becomes an all-day practice. That reframe alone is worth the ten minutes.

Lisa Mireles, Ed.D., is the Senior Director of Design and Innovation and Special Advisor to the CEO at PBLWorks (formerly Buck Institute for Education), the leading organization supporting teachers, schools, and districts in implementing high-quality Project Based Learning (PBL) in K-12 education.

A seasoned educator and school and district leader, Lisa champions learner-centered ecosystems that honor the identities and strengths of students, teachers, and leaders. Her work emphasizes the powerful intersection of leadership, project based learning, and technology. She helped to found the Hawai'i Society of Technology in Education, organizes and facilitates the annual Leading Schools of the Future conference in Hawai'i, and launched Edcamp Kaua'i and the Kaua'i Educational Leadership Alliance.

Lisa started her career teaching bilingual students at Channel Islands High School in Oxnard, California. These students sparked her commitment to constructivism and PBL as tools for cultural and linguistic democracy. Since then, she has served as a classroom teacher, IB coordinator, principal, assistant superintendent, adjunct professor, and district school improvement specialist in public, charter, independent, and international schools across the U.S., Indonesia, and India.

As principal of Kaua'i Pacific School, Lisa led the school to receive the Arts in Excellence award from the Hawaii Academy of the Arts, and it was selected as a School of the Future by the Hawai'i Association of Independent Schools and Hawai'i Community Foundation. In 2018, Lisa was recognized as the HIDOE Kaua'i Complex Educational Officer of the Year.

Originally from Southern California, and now lives on Kaua'i and enjoys family time, the ocean, and the arts. Lisa holds a B.A. in Political Science/International Relations and an M.Ed. from UCLA, and a doctorate in Learning Technologies from Pepperdine University.

Editor's note: Lisa's bio above is printed as she provided it. Her current title at PBLWorks is Managing Director of Digital Curriculum, which is how she is introduced in this episode. Since the bio was written, she has also co-authored Project Based Learning for All: A Leader's Guide with Bob Lenz for ASCD. There was a lag from the date I interviewed her and when the interview was posted, thus, some great things happened in that time for her.

If this episode helped you think differently about fitting projects into your year, share it with a teacher who says they don't have time for PBL.

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Vicki Davis: I had somebody argue with me the other day on X how project-based learning doesn't work and we should never use it. Well, I beg to differ. I think that several well-selected projects in a school year can truly make a difference using something called gold standard project-based learning. And that's topic of today's show for Thought Leader Thursday.

Announcer: This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: Today on the show, we're joined by Dr. Lisa Mireles, a longtime educator who has worked in California, Indonesia, India, and helped start the Hawaii Society of Technology and Education and has won so many awards as an educator in Hawaii. She is now the Managing Director of Digital Curriculum at PBLWorks, which is formerly the Buck Institute of Education. They are the leading organization that helps us educators implement high-quality, project-based learning. We call that PBL, in K-12 education. So, Lisa, thanks for coming on the show. So how do you define gold standard project-based learning and what makes it different from just doing a, quote, fun project?

Lisa Mireles: Well, project-based learning, it's a pedagogical approach in which students learn by actively engaging in real world and personally meaningful projects. PBLWorks has developed the gold standard framework, which has two parts to it. We have two wheels and one is related to project design. We call those our seven essential design elements, because you have to have a high quality project in order to be able to implement a written project or developed project, as you would say. The other are project based teaching practices. And there's seven of those. Those are outline techniques — some of the moves teachers have to make in order to do PBL well in the classroom. So there's two parts to our gold standard framework.

Vicki Davis: Let's try to visualize PBL. When you pick your classroom following gold standard PBL, what will you see and hear in a gold standard PBL classroom?

Lisa Mireles: The first thing you're going to experience when you walk into a gold standard PBL classroom is sort of this productive buzz. You're going to hear kids talking to each other. You're going to see the student, the teacher, moving around, facilitating, coaching. We call that Engage and Coach, the teaching practice. I hope you'll see a project wall that has the challenging problem or question they're exploring on the wall, the milestones that students are going to be going through in order to create a product that demonstrates their answer to what I think the heart of the PBL is: a really good driving question. So we have an excellent driving question, challenging problem or question. Students are engaged in inquiry. So they're asking questions, they're researching, they're finding the answers to their own questions, but they're also applying what they're learning to the products that they're going to share with the world, usually an individual major product and then a team major product to sort of help them share and demonstrate their answer to the driving question.

Lisa Mireles: They're always going back to those need-to-knows. I want them to be like, what do we need to know? How are we going to find that out? We learned it. Now, what does that mean for our product and how does that change our answer to the driving question? Sometimes you'll see kids working with experts. You'll see artifacts on the wall. You might see some kind of timeline, a Trello board, a Kanban board showing individual and group project. Students engage in thinking routines. Students using rubrics and exemplars to guide them, students self-assessing, students giving each other feedback using really high-quality critique and revision protocols. And the teacher is constantly assessing, engaging and coaching, scaffolding as needed, building a culture, supporting kids with project management. It's a dynamic, vibrant, exciting place.

Vicki Davis: It's so much fun. In my early days of adopting the method, way back when PBLWorks was called the Buck Institute, it was called the Flat Classroom Project — my big, huge project that we did that was in Thomas Friedman's book The World Is Flat, which is an eight-week project with all these standards and so many things that we were learning.

Vicki Davis: The classroom does have a buzz and it is loud. This is teaching. It's not standing at the front of the room. And the interesting thing, you mentioned Trello, Kanban board. My son now works with me. And when I hired him and brought him on, we were talking about systems. He said, “Hey, well, can't we use a Kanban board like we did in that project when you taught me in 10th grade?” Like, I didn't know when I was teaching him all of these things in project-based learning that I was preparing him for the project of creating a radio and TV show that hundreds of thousands of people listen to every week. Translated directly to the real world. Isn't that so exciting?

Lisa Mireles: For me, it's everything. That is the magic. I have a similar story. I was in the car with my kids. We're listening to an ad on the radio and she starts naming all the techniques that the company is using. “How do you know all about that?” She goes, “Fifth grade advertising unit.” So that's the thing. We want it to be deep and we want kids to learn skills and transferability. Of course, we want them to have the content level learning goals. That's central to any project. That's at the center of both of our frameworks, actually, is key knowledge, understanding, and what we call success skills — what a lot of people call 21st century skills, graduate profile skills. We've got five sort of defined with evidence-based rubrics that people can find on our website, around communication, around creativity, around self-directed learning, which is a really important one to help students.

Lisa Mireles: And that's a really important part for teachers to understand: that you're developing the set of skills. And the process is just as important as the product of what they're creating. Students are reflecting on that. Reflection is one of our design elements. What am I learning? How am I learning it? How am I shifting as a learner? How's my thinking changing? How am I showing up for my group? How am I growing in that area? Those kinds of reflections are really critical for students to be having about their learning. There's a lot of opportunity for that in PBL.

Vicki Davis: Well, an interesting thing — I do an app building project I've written on Edutopia. Invariably, I'll have students when I kick off that project to say, “But I don't know how to build an app.” And I'm like, that's what the project is about. We're learning as part of the project. It's not “I do all this and then I do a project at the end.” The learning is part of that process. How about the teachers who teach math or science or other subjects? Are there examples you can give me for some other subjects?

Lisa Mireles: One of my favorite high school science projects that is in our project library is a project called The Magic of Microgrids. So it's really, how can we design a microgrid to increase our community's energy resilience? Students are learning about microgrids, what they are, that they're one of many tools used in building energy resilience, and they identify a critical sector in their community and determine what's going to be involved in creating a self-sufficient microgrid that could connect to and disconnect from the larger electrical grid. Learning about power, they're hitting NGSS standards. They're also hitting some of those engineering and design standards that are subsumed within the NGSS, right?

Lisa Mireles: There's so many opportunities in science and in math. One of my favorite math projects is a middle school math project called Diamond in the Rough. Driving question for that is, how can we design a custom diamond that meets the wishes of our client? So students explore the geometry behind dazzling diamonds, explore cuts, angles, proportions. Then they apply the concepts — surface area, volume. They look at durability. They look at sparkle. Use their findings and their research to design a custom piece of jewelry for some client's needs. So they're really hitting spatial reasoning. And they're also hitting: how does math help us shape beauty?

Lisa Mireles: They're hitting some of the more enduring beautiful things about the discipline, that makes the disciplines — like, I was a social studies teacher, there's so much exciting about that. And I know from teaching theory of knowledge in the IB that there's so much beauty in the discipline of science, and science for science's sake and math for math's sake. I think in PBL, we have this opportunity to bring that really alive for students, to see the application of it in a way that relates to how the world works.

Vicki Davis: How about elementary reading?

Lisa Mireles: It's such a big question in literacy development. For me, we call them equity levers in project-based learning: knowledge of students — PBL gives us an opportunity to know our students well. It gives us an opportunity to have cognitive demand. It's what every student deserves, what every student needs. Gives us an opportunity to address literacy, which is like this universal thing that students need to be able to be successful in our world. And it also fosters student agency. But you have to be intentional in the design.

Lisa Mireles: For us, every project that we support people in developing, we ask them to include literacy skills within that. They're reading, they're writing, they're speaking, they're listening. They're doing all of them, not just reading. We think of literacy as this one-dimensional thing. But literacy is actually very multi-dimensional, and you'll see students being able to practice literacy skills that they maybe don't always have the opportunity to do. You'll see them become better speakers. You'll see them become better listeners because they're working collaboratively with each other. You'll see them be better at critical thinking and evaluating resources, detecting bias.

Lisa Mireles: At the elementary level, what we really like teachers to do is to really think about what are the literacy skills. And you can have an ELA project-based learning project. You can have an ELA social studies. You can have interdisciplinary one. One of my favorites is What Makes Someone a Community Hero. It's a second grade project. I love this project. So they learn about well-known, second-grade, historical and present-day heroes. And they identify and discuss heroes in their local community. So they're doing a shared definition. They're understanding the characteristic. And they have to read. They have to interview. They have to come up with interview questions. They have to listen. Then they create an artistic portrait of that person. And then they write a paragraph explaining who the hero is. And they put together a gallery of heroes exhibit. It's really enhancing literacy. It's like saying, so we've got our reading program, whatever literacy program that we're using, but doing PBL allows you to sort of enhance literacy and make that an all-day thing, not just during literacy time in PBL.

Vicki Davis: That's wonderful. So a lot of us teachers feel squeezed for time. And a lot of times when I talk to people about gold standard project-based learning, the first thing they say is, “How am I going to fit it in? And how am I going to still hit all my standards and benchmarks?” What do I do? How do we shift that?

Lisa Mireles: I want to disrupt the notion that coverage is enough. I'm just going back to Grant Wiggins, right? The futility of trying to teach everything of importance. PBL is really about uncoverage, and about going deeper, and about having teachers identify what matters most. Which of my standards can I put together in an interesting unit? Which are the most important? A lot of districts do this for us. They have what we call power standards, or they have focus standards that you have to hit because everybody knows. I think I read somewhere that it would take three years to do all the fifth grade standards if you want to. You need the kids for three years.

Vicki Davis: Why do we even do that to ourselves?

Lisa Mireles: So we can't do that. So we're already always making a lot of choices about what matters most. So when you're trying to decide what's worthy of going deeper and doing deeper learning, you have to do a little bit of trust. You need your leaders on board. We do a lot of work with leaders in creating ecosystems that support teachers to do project-based learning well. And one of them is, can you give a little on the pacing guide? Can you give teachers freedom or permission to spend more time on something?

Lisa Mireles: I used to do curriculum mapping with Heidi Hayes Jacobs. One of the things that I did with my own teachers in my own school at that time, I was principal as well, was after a project-based learning unit. So they'd say, this is what we think we're going to teach. These are the standards. This is what we're designing this unit for. And then after, I'd say, now I want you to go back to your standards and say, what did you actually teach? What did you hit deep? Did you surface what was middle, what was deep? And it was always twice as much as they thought it was going to be. It's just a shift in mindset, and trusting the kids will remember more.

Lisa Mireles: When I was a social studies teacher, I'd be like: lecture Monday, chapter Tuesday, video Wednesday, chapter Thursday, test Friday. I mean, I was early 90s, right? Saturday, they forgot everything, even if they got an A. So it just wasn't good enough for me, right? Like, no, I want you to remember this. I want you to get it in your heart and your soul, important things that matter. But I think PBL lets you do that, allows you more opportunities to do that.

Lisa Mireles: There's a school here in Hawaii that does a really cool approach. It's called SEEQS, the School for Examining Essential Questions of Sustainability. It's run by my really good friend, Buffy Cushman-Patz. And so in hers, students pick what they call EQS time. So they have math, social studies, English, science — middle school. They have advisory. They have PE. They have art. And then I think it's four days a week they have EQS time. They will explore a topic with an interdisciplinary group of teachers with other students who want to study that. They get to do choice time and they started with field work. I might not be explaining it perfectly well — Buffy, forgive me if you're listening — but they share at the end of that trimester what they learned.

Lisa Mireles: We have over 100 project ideas on our teacher resource site, which is actually called my.pblworks.org. And so you can just click on projects and you can filter and search by grade or subject. One thing to know is that a lot of the projects can scale up or down. We call them Project Snapshots, to get you thinking and get your juices flowing.

Vicki Davis: So Lisa Mireles — she is with PBLWorks. We have a lot of great information we'll include in the show notes. They have a lot of great resources. You can go to their website and look at all the ideas they have for you. Gold Standard Project-Based Learning, I think, is more important than ever. Because we live in the world of AI, we need our students to be creating things that aren't already created.

Vicki Davis: Well, Lisa, thank you for coming on the show. This has been very informative, and we will have all this information in the show notes. So thanks for coming on.

Lisa Mireles: It was delightful. Thanks for having me, Vicki.

Vicki Davis: Thanks for tuning in to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. Watch the video version of this podcast and catch my new radio and TV show, Cool Cat Teacher Talk, on YouTube and a radio or TV station near you. Join my Cool Cat Teacher Classroom Matters newsletter at coolcatteacher.com forward slash newsletter. Leave a review if you found this helpful. See you later, educator.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post How to Do Gold Standard PBL Without Losing Class Time appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

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From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Nancy Frey is an expert on many things and now has taken that expertise and applied it to AI in the classroom.

Watch on YouTube and subscribe for new episodes every week.

Try This Tomorrow

On the next assignment where students may use AI, require two things instead of one: the finished work, and a link or screenshot of the conversation they had with the chatbot. Tell them you’ll be reading the questions they asked, not just the answer they got. It costs you one line on the assignment sheet and it changes what they pay attention to.

Carol Jago’s reflective questions are the other move worth borrowing from this conversation. At the end of an essay, ask:

Nancy Frey is a Professor in Educational Leadership at San Diego State and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College. She is a credentialed special educator, reading specialist, and administrator in California. She is a member of the International Literacy Association’s Literacy Research Panel. Her published titles include How Teams Work, Kids Come in All Languages, The Social-Emotional Learning Playbook, and How Feedback Works. She can be reached at [email protected].

Nancy’s bio above is the one she provided us. Her newest book came out after she wrote it: Teaching Students to Use AI Ethically & Responsibly: Exploring AI With Intentionality, Curiosity, and Care (Corwin), co-authored with Salman Khan, Douglas Fisher, James Marshall, and Meghan Hargrave — that’s the book we talk about in this episode.

Blog: fisherandfrey.com

If this episode gave you one thing to try, share it with the teacher down the hall.

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Vicki Davis (00:00): Happy Wonderful Classroom Wednesday. Today, we’re talking with education expert Nancy Frey about AI in the classroom, our struggles, our dilemmas, and some solutions she recommends. Let’s learn.

Announcer (00:14): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (00:18): Nancy Frey is a professor in educational leadership at San Diego State and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College. She is a member of the International Literacy Association’s Literacy Research Panel. She and her co-author, Douglas Fisher, can both be reached at fisherandfrey.com. She has co-authored with Douglas Fisher and Sal Khan in the book, Teaching Students to Use AI Ethically and Responsibly. Nancy, isn’t that the question of the moment right now?

Nancy Frey (00:53): It sure is, Vicki, as all of us are trying to figure out what are the best ways to be able to utilize this in ways that are practical, ethical, and will assist our students in being able to learn more.

Vicki Davis (01:07): I’ve got a big research project my ninth graders are doing on new technology. I required them to create a Google NotebookLM and to generate a certain number of podcasts and require 20 sources of information, including videos, and I wanted them to demonstrate their knowledge of how to use it. But then after that, the next assignment was, you’re going to sit at my desk and verbally, without notes, explain this particular technology to me.

And the pushback that, as I’ve talked about this on the show before, of the role of verbal assessment has just grown in our classroom. And I have designated at least three to four times per semester to have a one-on-one verbal interaction with my students. And it has required me to shift things. And the pushback is that’s not practical in every classroom. My classroom sizes are a little smaller than some would have. But is it practical that we do have to shift assessments? Because I don’t see any other way forward myself.

Nancy Frey (02:06): I totally agree with you. One of the things I was thinking about is, as you were describing that particular assignment, my guess is that wasn’t an assignment that you were doing 10 years ago.

Vicki Davis (02:17): Well, it was an assignment, but not how they researched. They researched totally differently.

Nancy Frey (02:20): There you go. Being responsive and being able to understand it’s a different landscape where students getting information is really important.

But let me talk about the verbal aspect of that, because I think that dialogue is so essential to understanding what it is that young people know. And one of the methods for doing so is exactly what you offered. Face-to-face, we’re going to have dialogue, we’re going to talk with one another. And you’re right, it’s not necessarily practical if you’ve got 180 students that are on your roster that you see across the day.

But there are other tools that help to accomplish those same kinds of things. I’ll give one example. Google Docs, which of course has been around for quite a while, has extensions that you can add where you get to — perhaps you’re reading something that a student has written, and you get to be able to ask questions verbally and have it posted right on that document. And then students have to respond back to you as well. So it’s not necessarily in real time, but you can foster some dialogue that way.

We can also foster dialogue by requiring students to turn in to us what was the dialogue that you had with the chatbot. I’m interested in the questions that you ask. I want to be able to see that particular transcript. It isn’t always just the final product. I want to see the dialogue that goes along with it. So I’m with you on this.

Vicki Davis (03:56): And coaching on prompts. I mean, you’ve hit on something that’s so important. I really like my students to use Perplexity. I’ve just found that the error rate is a little bit better. A lot of times I’ll have my students, they’ll generate their Perplexity report and they’ll go, “Oh, here it is.” And then I go, “Okay, now go back and calculate the error rate.” They’re not as much a fan of that one.

The depth of knowledge required to evaluate all those sources is just so much more, because then it’s about learning. And they realize they can’t park their brain at the door, that they’re going to be learning. And I find they’re more excited and more engaged. I really don’t think they want classes where they can copy and paste. I think they want to be engaged.

Nancy Frey (04:37): I don’t either. And I think that we’re starting to see some of that turn that is happening. When the internet was first invented, we as a society had to kind of figure out, how do we interact with this tool? And if you think back now to how it was that you performed a search, for example, in 2002, you would look at it now and you’d go, well, that was really simplistic, right? I mean, I’ve developed the skills to be able to do that.

We are, as a society, starting to engage with these tools in more sophisticated kinds of ways. We’re recalling at higher levels how very important it is to keep the human in the loop.

Vicki Davis (05:19): I’ve even seen some talks on the internet about people basically saying ChatGPT is my decision partner. And I think that’s where I balk a little bit, just because there is a randomness, a probability behind the words that are generated. And it doesn’t have a moral framework.

And so I caution my students just because of the young man that took his own life, started off using ChatGPT for homework and it didn’t correct his suicidal ideations. It really became a suicide coach for him. And that’s the part, Nancy, concerns me — is the safety guardrails don’t seem to be there yet with some of the major LLMs that a lot of people are using.

Nancy Frey (06:01): And there certainly are terrible things that are happening and misuses of all of that, which to me suggests even more so that we need to get in front of what these conversations are.

Vicki Davis (06:20): What are some strategies to identify bias in algorithms and to critically evaluate AI-generated information that you recommend?

Nancy Frey (06:29): Isn’t this a skill that has become even more important in an age of AI, but certainly also predates the development of AI? So, for example, the idea of informational literacy, the idea of data literacy are absolutely essential.

I’ll use as one example, and Sam Wineburg’s work with lateral reading is incredibly interesting. In other words, how do you read across documents? And not just inside of a single document. What we’ve done is we’ve taken that idea of lateral reading, which I think is brilliant, and now how do you interrogate that across AI-generated content?

What are those questions that you can pose to that AI chatbot to be able to verify? And that’s another one of those important literacy skills. How do you verify whether this information is correct or not? What are the limitations of what any AI chatbot can generate? For example, do students know that AI is not a good source whenever you’re talking about, like, current events — because the LLMs, they’re not as current, they’re not as up-to-date?

So really being able to think about what it is that you are asking for when it is appropriate to turn to AI. How will you interrogate, analyze what the content is so that you can make decisions about what is the final product? Those are all essential skills that are teaching kids about how to use it ethically.

One of the useful things for us to engage in as education systems is to start thinking about your skill progressions across those grade bands. What does AI usage look like when it comes to K-2?

Nancy Frey (08:28): And AI usage in K-2 is not kids getting on a chatbot and working away at that. But it’s, in fact, when the teacher builds the habits and the dispositions about asking simple questions like, “Is this true?” We call them truth detectives. How do we interrogate materials of any kind? How do we notice when something is true versus when something is pretend? Those are appropriate kinds of questions for the very youngest children to be able to engage in. And it’s building those habits and those dispositions around verification before they’ve ever touched a keyboard.

And then we go into grades three to five, and now we’re growing those information investigators. And so in many cases, it’s the teacher that is the one who is conducting the search with students and letting them see what it is that the chatbot is generating. How do we push back on it? How do we notice whenever something just doesn’t sound right? Where did this information come from?

So in the elementary grades, it’s way less about kids touching a keyboard and engaging with a chatbot and a whole lot more about building the habits and building the dispositions around how it is that you verify information. How do we as adults show young people how it is that we verify information?

And that’s just one example. But I think that that idea of skills progressions and what this looks like in those different grade bands can be a starting point for teachers and for systems to be able to look closely at what’s appropriate AI use and what is not.

Vicki Davis (10:20): How do we help teachers in this time period where I’m having to hold them accountable, but if they’re a good liar or if they’re a really good student, they always spell everything right anyway, they’re not going to get caught?

Nobody likes to feel like they’ve been made a fool out of. Too many teachers who feel that way of, “I can’t catch it. They’re all going to write right in front of me. I’m going to do the blue book. They’re going to write on paper.” And there may be times for that. But how do we grapple with this as teachers where we’re not deceived?

Nancy Frey (10:49): I agree with you. We do a lot of in-class writing, timed writing. You have 20 minutes. This is what the prompt is, and you’re going to do it right in front of us. That is definitely one of the approaches to be able to use, for sure.

But the other is, how do we think closely about how it is that we redesign some of the tasks that we’re asking students to do so that they’re a bit more AI resistant? And use the example of a student who says, “Yeah, I got everything off of QuillBot,” which is definitely not a cool thing to do in any way. But it also causes some wondering: what was it about the assignment, in the way that it was written, that made it easy for that student to use QuillBot?

I’ll use as another example, and this is Carol Jago’s work that she’s been doing for decades now — at the end of an essay, asking some questions about what did you find the most difficult thing to do? If you had more time, what would you do with this next?

Asking some of those reflective questions that are not questions that a chatbot is easily going to be able to fulfill helps to be able to make sure that the young humans in front of us are present in those assignments.

Vicki Davis (12:07): We’ve been talking to Nancy Frey, professor of educational leadership at San Diego State. The book is co-authored with Douglas Fisher and Sal Khan. I like that you say, okay, these are the conditions where you might want to ban it. And that’s okay. But I think even if you have a ban, hopefully you have a plan.

Nancy Frey (12:29): I love that. You can have a ban, but have a plan. I’m going to use that in my own life.

Vicki Davis (12:35): Thank you for coming on the show, Nancy.

Nancy Frey (12:37): Thank you so much.

Vicki Davis (12:39): Thanks for tuning in to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. Watch the video version of this podcast and catch my new radio and TV show, Cool Cat Teacher Talk, on YouTube and a radio or TV station near you. Join my Cool Cat Teacher Classroom Matters newsletter at coolcatteacher.com/newsletter. Leave a review if you found this helpful. See you later, educator.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

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Sometimes we let the AI get it wrong. YES! This is something I do in my classroom where we intentionally analyze what AI does right and wrong. The only difference is these CodeAI activities are super easy for students to use AND free AND have guardrails to protect students. At ISTE 2026 this year, I went to the CodeAI classroom and took a class. I came away very impressed with the lessons CodeAI gives away for free.

Sponsored: Today's show is sponsored by CodeAI. I highly recommend CodeAI and their free AI +CS curriculum and this show is being aired as a result of them sponsoring my time at ISTE 2026. Thank you to CodeAI for making this episode possible.

Now, if you're wondering, Hour of Code, which was “code.org” (we say code dot org) has rebranded as CodeAI. They have so many free resources for teaching both Computer Science and AI in any class (even non-Computer Science classes) and to kids of all ages. They also have unplugged lessons and activities where students learn about AI, bias, and how it works. I highly recommend CodeAI as a great place to start as you bring AI education into your school. Sit down and play with it and find some great lessons you can use in your classroom. We dig into what they have, wisdom on teaching AI, and some nuanced counterintuitive thoughts on teaching AI in the classroom.

“The tool use is not the same as educating students about how these tools work.”

Karim Meghji

President and CEO, CodeAI

Try This Tomorrow

Pick one prompt in your subject that you already suspect AI will fumble — a “healthy meal” plan, a summary of a text your students know cold, a word problem with a trick in it. Run it in front of the class, then spend the last ten minutes on one question: what did it get wrong, and how would we know? No new tool, no purchase, one class period.

Research Note

In the episode I mention that student AI use is “up in the 70%.” Here are the current numbers: Common Sense Media’s March 2026 survey of 1,204 U.S. children ages 9–17 found 86% have used some form of AI and 67% have used AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude. Common Sense Media, 2026

Karim Meghji is the President and CEO at Code.org, the nonprofit dedicated to ensuring every student in every school has the opportunity to learn computer science and AI. Code.org is known worldwide for Hour of Code and the new Hour of AI.

Karim previously served as the CPO at Code.org, leading the global effort to bring CS and AI into K-12 classrooms. His path was shaped in high school, when a teacher inspired a lifelong passion for technical problem-solving — a “lightbulb moment” that now fuels his mission to empower students everywhere. A seasoned executive with experience in scaling high-growth companies, he has served in leadership roles at Remitly, Booking.com and RealNetworks. He is dedicated to the vision that teaching students how technology works gives them the agency to build the future.

Editor's note: This bio was written before the organization's 2026 rebrand. Code.org is now CodeAI.

Website: code.org

If this show helps you teach better, a rating or review is the single best way to help another teacher find it.

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Vicki Davis: We don't have to be a mechanic to drive a car, but it really does help to know how the car works. That's how today's guest, Karim Meghji, thinks about AI in the classroom. So today for Tech Tool Tuesday, we're going to look at CodeAI, the free tool that lets our students pop the hood on AI instead of just typing in the box. Now, CodeAI is from the nonprofit that we used to call Code.org. And they've built a tool that will change how schools all over the world teach about artificial intelligence. Today's show is sponsored by CodeAI. I highly recommend CodeAI and the tools that they've built in their free AI and computer science curriculum.

Vicki Davis: This show is being aired as a result of CodeAI sponsoring my time at ISTE 2026 this year. Thank you to CodeAI for making this episode possible.

Announcer: This is the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: Our guest today is someone that I first sat down with about a very big idea that AI literacy belongs in every classroom, not just the computer science lab. Karim Meghji is president and CEO of CodeAI, the nonprofit formerly known as Code.org. And the organization behind Hour of Code, which got me started on Python, by the way, Thank you for that. And now, Hour of AI. When Karim was on the show earlier this year, we dug into why students needed to understand what's happening under the hood of these tools and not just use them.

Vicki Davis: We talked about computational thinking to unplugged AI activities to a wonderful line that you said that you don't have to be a mechanic to drive a car, but it does help to know how the car works. So CodeAI has stepped into a brand new chapter, and we are filming this at ISTE 2026, and really trying to help students understand AI and not just use it. So Karim, thanks for coming back to the show. So you spent… Three and a half years as product development for Code.org. What made you decide that, okay, we need to focus on kids understanding AI? Like, now is the time.

Karim Meghji: That moment began years before we rebranded. It began when we started thinking about computational thinking and computer science as a foundational skill that every student needed to have as they went through their K-12 experience, given that our world is so digital. And so understanding the world is why we started teaching computer science to begin with. We actually wrote our first AI curriculum in 2018 for middle school students. But I will say that and then another AI activity that we built called AI for Oceans, it's for slightly younger students.

Karim Meghji: Those moments when we put that curriculum into the classroom in 2018, 2019, 2020, we really saw the power of showing kids how to think about demystification in technology and how important that is in their lives. As generative AI has come on the scene, I think that just underscored even more the need for unboxing this technology. I think when we last talked, we talked a little bit about the glass box versus the black box.

Karim Meghji: And so our brand change is really to reflect that, that now, in addition to demystifying computer science and technology, generally speaking, demystifying AI and getting into, a situation where students can look at the glass box and see how it's working and maybe have a screwdriver and take it apart is as important in a world with AI as it was in a world with just computer science.

Vicki Davis: So, Karim, I was in your classroom today and I took a class and I thought it was really interesting how you designed it because, for example, they had us generate a healthy meal and there was definite cultural bias to that healthy meal. And we got to talk about the bias that we saw. We can talk to kids all day long, but if they don't experience it, they don't understand it. What are your thoughts behind how you designed the AI interactions that you have for free on CodeAI?

Karim Meghji: So we do think a lot about not just how AI works, goes right, works well, answers the question, whatever that case may be that a student may be looking for. But we also try and build into our curriculum moments where it does something that's worth inspection, worth looking at a little more closely, whether it's, in this example, a bias situation, or we have other lessons where we actually have the AI answer incorrectly, the answer to the question, to show them what it would look like when AI doesn't answer correctly. And then we inspect that and through the curriculum, through the teacher-led experience and through the classroom discussion that occurs.

Karim Meghji: And you might have noticed that today, actually, as you went through our curriculum and our little setup. A lot of our work is not just the curriculum online. It's actually the discussions that occur next to the curriculum. And that's where there's a lot of rich activity for students to learn about the nuances, especially in a world where this technology is not deterministic.

Vicki Davis: You said a couple of times, they said, who is in control, you or the AI? Where did you come up with that line? I love it.

Karim Meghji: A lot of this is about leveraging the language around human in the loop. But there's another step that the human shouldn't just be in a loop. They should actually be in driving. So human in the loop could be sitting in the passenger seat if we're going to use the car analogy, which we've talked a little bit about the last time we talked about that. And so this idea that actually, you know, you actually control, direct, steer, guide, lead an AI system to solving a problem, to engaging in a new learning experience, but it should be you as the student, as the adult that should guide what the outcome is, not sit passively.

Karim Meghji: We want an active participant, not a passive participant in this experience. Yeah.

Vicki Davis: Karim, 18 years from now, when somebody's done CodeAI from kindergarten all the way up, what is that student able to do when they graduate from high school? What does success look like there?

Karim Meghji: The first thing is they'll be able to look at outputs from AI and question. What am I seeing? Should I accept the first answer? Should I push it? Should I question it? How do I question the system to produce hopefully a better answer and an answer that they can maybe actually go validate separately? So learning the art of validation, which I think is general media literacy skill, I think is something that they will be able to do because they'll have, it's not a skepticism is the right word, but a healthy relationship with the AI system because they understand what's happening under the hood.

Karim Meghji: Part of the challenge is because AI systems sound so authoritative and they sound so human as a human, young or old, we accept it. But if you understand it's a machine, it reduces that level of trust you have with that machine and gets you to a place where maybe you have a healthier relationship. So I think that's part one. And the other thing that I think is going to be really interesting to your question about what happens after 18 years of learning about AI, we're, I think, going to see a transformation and democratization of building technical things.

Karim Meghji: You know, there are a lot of students out there who now vibe code games or adults who are putting together vibe code solutions for, you know, products they want to build. I was speaking with someone earlier today, an entrepreneur who has no technical background after just a few courses, a little bit of, learning about AI and computer science, just a little bit, now is building a business around a product they're excited about, designing the product, designing the marketing, creating videos, all of these things that otherwise. They wouldn't be able to do as a single individual. So I think it's going to really democratize the ability to build and create.

Karim Meghji: Which puts us in a world where, again, what we're building and creating are technical artifacts. And so understanding how they work is going to be important as they proliferate. I think we'll have a lot of builders in 18 years. I think it's going to look very different. And then I think the third thing is. And I think this is the interesting question, like we're going to have AI systems talking to other AI systems. And what does that look like? I do think at some point AI systems are going to interact and we'll have to cross that bridge, what that looks like in terms of learning and how to work in a world that looks like that.

Karim Meghji: And part of it, what I mean is not only human to human, human to AI, but AI to AI. What does that all look like? And I think the student who's gone through their, K through 12 education, learning about AI is going to be more comfortable understanding how to manage and work in that world than the student that doesn't.

Vicki Davis: Karim, you have a panel, as we're recording this at ISTE 2026, about putting students at the center. And what does responsible, trustworthy AI education look like? Because I will say this, one of the things that pleased me the most about the class today was your definitions of artificial intelligence because I have warned teachers in a session this morning, if you use AI to write the definitions for AI, It anthropomorphizes itself terribly. I loved how you said AI is a machine. And I think that's trustworthy as a teacher. So what does it look like for you? What do you want that to be?

Karim Meghji: Yeah, I think trustworthy education starts with the fact that, you know, AI isn't building the education itself, to your point. If you're going to start anywhere with AI education, it starts with humans teaching humans about what the machine is doing. The other thing I was going to say is, you know, there's a lot of talk, especially at this conference, about safety in the classroom. Safety of these tools. And I think it's a really important conversation. There's an interesting, anecdote from Jonathan Haidt's book, The Anxious Generation, where he talks about we sometimes overprotect in the physical world and underprotect in the digital world, right?

Karim Meghji: I think a lot of folks that are listening, that'll resonate with them. And I was thinking about the fact that I think the same applies to education. I think we might be overeducating in some spaces and undereducating in the digital space. So I see that as an important like step to trustworthy and safe AI education, which is let's educate our students, not using the tool. The tool use is not the same as educating students about how these tools work. That I think is safety and trustworthiness. So I want to see more of that. That'd be my definition.

Vicki Davis: I love the prompts today that I did in the class, but I'm curious, what guardrails do you have on the back end to keep kids safe when they're using your free resources at CodeAI?

Karim Meghji: Yeah, so we have a whole set of technology. When a student enters the prompt, there's a set of filters that that prompt goes through even before it sees an AI system. Then an AI system kicks in to look at the prompt to, again, check it. Then it goes into the actual model where we're asking the question. And then as the response comes back, it has another AI system and filtering. So both on the input and the output side, we're looking at and inspecting what interaction is about to occur. And we test hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of prompts and set a very high threshold for success rate or failure rate, as the case may be.

Karim Meghji: These systems are never going to be at the level we can get 100% success because we can't cover every possible prompt and they'll break it. We call it jailbreaking. They will jailbreak our products. But by running hundreds of prompts, you put your mind in the context of a young person and then you you try a lot of those prompts and you automate these things and then you redo these things again and again and again. Right. So the combination of having a good data set, growing that data set, testing and then having these what we call a pre and post filter are how we ensure that we maintain a very high bar on the safety of the product itself.

Vicki Davis: I've always recommended for years Code.org for learning how to code. And now it's CodeAI because you've already done a lot of really hard work. And it's not easy to just bring AI. Like, I would never just… Bring AI into a school without considering these things. But when we choose not to have a plan, that's what we're doing because it's already there. I mean, the statistics on how many kids are using AI is up in the 70% from what I've read recently. They're using it. So using your tools at CodeAI, I'm really a fan of the prompt method and all the stuff I went through today. And you can't do all that in 50 minutes.

Vicki Davis: So if you are talking to a teacher, they're not a computer science teacher, but they're like, it's the right thing to do to teach my students about AI. Where do they start on your site?

Karim Meghji: Yeah, the first thing that they can do is take our professional development courses. We have a set that just gets teachers going, like gets them comfortable. But you want to get to that next level of understanding about what's happening with these tools. Step one is take a little bit of professional development courses. The other thing you can do is actually take the student-facing curriculum, like you did today and like many teachers have been doing at the conference. The best part about it is, you know, we're all kind of beginners at this point, right?

Karim Meghji: I think it can be difficult to be a teacher in a classroom right now because, you know, we come into that mindset as a teacher that we've got to be able to answer the questions that our students are going to ask us. This is a moment where, and, you know, even CodeAI, we are beginners right now as we learn how to build curriculum and technology around AI. But the more we're willing to do it with the community, and I think the more that teachers are willing to do it with their students, I'd say start. That's the name of the game at this point, right? Get in there and learn with your students. I think that's step one.

Karim Meghji: I think the other thing, if you're not using AI, you've got to start. I think that's why I got it. It's so simple to say that, but it is important. And I think using the tools is also one great way to understand how these tools can go really well and where they can go wrong.

Vicki Davis: As we finish up, what's your dream for CodeAI? I mean, you're leading the organization. Where do you want it to go? What impact do you want it to make in classrooms?

Karim Meghji: Yeah, yeah. I'm glad you asked that question, especially across the world. I think that's the, you know, you have to have an aspiration that's sometimes, lofty and big and audacious and one that the organization will keep kind of striving towards. And that is that every student across the globe, K through 12, primary and secondary in a lot of markets outside the U.S., have the opportunity, the ability and the access to foundational AI education that teaches students not just how to use AI tools, but teaches them how the tools work. That's our aspiration.

Vicki Davis: And it's really a big deal because if these kids are making decisions that change our whole world and they don't understand how artificial intelligence—I still know so many adults who think AI is a search engine.

Karim Meghji: Yeah, yeah.

Vicki Davis: And now we have a search engine that is AI, which is—but, you know, just that— You used the word skepticism or that, just that intelligence about how it works. Sometimes it's right and it's really right and it's truly wonderful. But these are the things that are going to make a huge difference for our future. So what's your last encouragement for educators everywhere about why it's time now to bring AI education into their school and not what?

Karim Meghji: You know, I think a lot about the world that our kids are in today. It's a digital world. The devices that we have in our pockets, on our desks, in our living rooms, in our cars, you know, we're surrounded by digital technology. A thousand years ago, we worked in a physical world and agricultural society, or we built things out of rocks and sticks and things around us. And we had to learn about the physical world so we could operate in it. And I think it's an incredible moment right now where the digital world is the world we live in. We need to teach our students about the digital world.

Karim Meghji: So the digital sciences of computer science, AI science, and data science, I think, are really critical. That's the message I would leave with our teachers is, you know, if you want your students to succeed in the world that they're in today and that they are going to be living in as they enter the workforce, embracing the digital sciences as part of that is going to be important.

Vicki Davis: And it doesn't mean you have to be on the screen all the time.

Karim Meghji: Yeah, it doesn't mean screens all the time, exactly.

Vicki Davis: No, it doesn't. In my AP CSP class, we go lids down a lot of times. Absolutely. And we teach XY coordinates. They're in costumes and mapped out with painter's tape on the floor making their robot moves.

Karim Meghji: Some of the best learning occurs when you actually do something and then discuss it. You have a conversation about it. You have different viewpoints on it. So, yeah, absolutely not a screen-oriented activity, but still learning about how the digital world works, right? Yeah.

Vicki Davis: We've been talking with Karim Meghji, head of CodeAI, just about artificial intelligence education. They have a lot of great resources. And thanks for talking with us today. Thanks for tuning in to the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast. Watch the video version of this podcast and catch my new radio and TV show, Cool Cat Teacher Talk, on YouTube and a radio or TV station near you. Join my Cool Cat Teacher Classroom Matters newsletter at coolcatteacher.com forward slash newsletter. Leave a review if you found this helpful. See you later, educator.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a sponsored episode and blog post. CodeAI has compensated me to share information about their free AI and computer science curriculum. However, all opinions expressed are my own. I have personally reviewed these resources and only recommend tools I believe offer genuine value to classroom teachers. My endorsement is limited to the educational products and services discussed in this episode. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” The sponsor has no impact on the editorial content of this show.

This post also contains an affiliate link to a book mentioned in the episode. If you choose to buy, I may be paid a commission at no additional cost to you.

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Jeff Bogaczyk helps us think about how we communicate. He has hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok because people want to know how to communicate. And teaching students to read body language and to be effectively congruently read by others is part of what we also teach students. In today's world, face-to-face verbal communication is more important than ever largely because it prevents the misunderstandings so prevalent in a world of texting and emails.

Watch on YouTube and subscribe on your favorite podcatcher for new episodes every weekday.

Try This Tomorrow

Pick the one direction your students get wrong most often. Tomorrow, deliver it three ways in the same class period — say it out loud, write it on the board, and post it in your LMS. Then ask one student to say it back to you in their own words before anyone starts working. That last step is where you find out what they actually heard.

Research Note

The study Jeff describes is Elizabeth Newton's 1990 Stanford psychology dissertation, The Rocky Road from Actions to Intentions. “Tappers” tapped out the rhythm of a well-known song and predicted that listeners would name the tune about half the time. Listeners actually got it 2.5% of the time. Stanford University Libraries

Dr. Jeff Bogaczyk currently serves as the Head of School for Christian Life School in Kenosha, WI. He completed his undergraduate degree at North Central University in Minneapolis MN and later received a Master of Arts in Leadership and Liberal Studies and then a Ph.D. in Rhetoric, both from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. His research interests are in interpersonal and organizational communication and media ecology, particularly in the area of education.

For the past 15 years, he has served in educational leadership and he currently serves as the book review editor for Explorations in Media Ecology and is a former board member for the Media Ecology Associate. As a hobby, he hosts a podcast and a blog, Mind For Life, where he explores leadership, personal development, entrepreneurship, human psychology, and media ecology.

Connect with Jeff: mindforlife.org · Instagram · Threads · TikTok · YouTube

If this one gave you language for something you've felt in your classroom, share it with a teacher friend who needs it this week.

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Vicki Davis: (00:01) They told us these platforms would connect us, and here we are, lonelier than ever. Our guest today, Dr. Jeff Bogaczyk, calls that the technological bluff, and he says that the antidote isn't another app. It's something we've had all along — the way we carry our own body. Stick around, because this one will change how you walk into your classroom tomorrow and how you teach emotional intelligence to your students.

Announcer: (00:31) This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: (00:35) Today we're talking with Dr. Jeff Bogaczyk. He's head of school in Wisconsin. He holds a PhD in rhetoric and hosts the remarkable Mind For Life podcast. His research focuses on media ecology — that's the study of how our communication technologies shape the way we think, relate, and learn.

And we're going to talk about communication and education, understanding the media around us, maybe a little bit of AI, as we often talk about. But Jeff, it's really interesting. Communication in this age of loneliness, miscommunication, and division — this is a topic that's resonating with people, isn't it?

Jeff Bogaczyk: (01:24) Yeah, just to address that, there was a French sociologist, Jacques Ellul, who wrote a book a while back called The Technological Bluff. And his basic interpretation of society was that we need to now look through the lens of technique and technology as we look into society.

And basically, the technological bluff was about what technology promises humanity in order to advance itself. I don't know if you remember, when back when the social media platforms were all coming out — and these are going to connect us better to human beings, these platforms are going to allow us to interact with other people and facilitate better human connections.

That was a false truth. It was a lie. And here we are, more segmented in society than ever before, people disconnected, as you mentioned, epidemics of loneliness, all as a result of these platforms. They are not bringing us together. They are distancing us. They are pitting one against the other. And it's an unfortunate situation.

But quite honestly, the money was worth it for them. And people will do and say whatever they have to do in order to be able to advance whatever their projects are and cash in on it. And that's what we see going on. Similar, I would say, Elon Musk, with the promises of robotics, and nobody's ever going to have to work, and everybody's going to have free income, and everybody's going to be driven around by cars and robots. Is that really the world we want to live in? Because work does have a meaningful purpose in our life. We want to be able to do something that's purposeful, and working with people and being in relationships. I don't trust those guys, to be quite honest with you.

Vicki Davis: (03:01) Well, it's a saying — fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I was in the cell phone business, and how do we market cell phones? We learned that one reason back in the early '90s that people would buy cell phones — that was for the safety of their children. Did phones make them safer? No. Social media, did it make us more socially connected? No, it made us lonelier.

This is one thing I teach my students: you have to be careful of the marketing line. Because AI, for example — is it processing? Is it doing data analytics? No, it says it's thinking. It's not thinking. It's processing. It's doing algorithms. And I asked them, hey, would you have used this if it said “algorithmically calculating” whatever? They said no. I said, but how about when it says “thinking”? So they've intentionally anthropomorphized AI to make it think that it's like a human brain, which it's not.

Now, there's some great uses of AI. This is a really prevalent marketing technique of technology companies — to tell us it's going to make our lives better. Oh, don't be afraid.

Jeff Bogaczyk: (03:59) It's interesting you say that, because there is a — I would say a foundational basis for interpretation of how people think of the human brain. People think of the human brain as a computer. That metaphor then extends to what computers do — that all the brain does is process information. And we know that it's more than that.

The brain is connected to our bodies. It is connected to our nervous systems. The brain allows us to perceive the world in ways completely different because of its connections to our body, that computers can never do. And so people with that interpretation, or that foundational interpretation of how the brain works, extend it to machines.

And I think there's just a fundamental difference. We're not machines. We are creations. We are bodies. And there is something very unique and distinct about that — quite different qualitatively, you might say it, from computers and robots and everything that they're creating to try to mimic or recreate the human.

Vicki Davis: (05:02) So one thing I always tell my students is, in the age of AI, emotional intelligence of us humans is far more important. I always encourage them. We do activities to learn to read the body language of the other people, because they tend to want to look at the screen. And when they look at the screen, everybody around them looks at the screen. They're not making eye contact. They're not understanding, you know, what we're communicating.

And you're all about communication. Now, you've got a 30-day challenge on your Instagram that by the time we air this may be all the way through, but I encourage people to go listen to it. And you had some really interesting statistics you shared about somebody tapping out what they thought was a rhythm. Could you share that study with us? Because it just really resonated with me.

Jeff Bogaczyk: (05:51) The issue is the curse of knowledge. And everybody has internal knowledge of certain things that we often think other people have as well, but they don't. As the example you're referring to in that study — it was a 1990 study at Stanford where somebody who knew a song, say for example “Happy Birthday to You,” would just tap out the rhythm, “Happy Birthday to You,” of that song and thought, oh, it's so easy. Because when you're tapping out the song, you're singing along in your own brain the melody, because you know the song. And so that knowledge that we have internally of the song, we just think, oh, everybody else possesses that.

They don't. They're not hearing the melody of “Happy Birthday to You” or “The Star-Spangled Banner” or “Mary Had a Little Lamb” or anything like that. All they're hearing is taps in some type of rhythmic sequence. Without the internal knowledge, it's very difficult for other people to understand what's going on in our minds.

I think it's part of — you know, as human beings, we've got a couple of problems. Number one, we think other people can read our minds. Like, you should just know what I'm thinking, and all of my past experiences, past knowledge, and past history. Additionally, we think we can read other people's minds. And so that comes back to emotional intelligence — that we think people see our emotions and know our emotional states and can recognize those things, when they don't. We often fail to recognize that we don't understand other people's emotional states.

And emotional intelligence — which I think is wonderful, and how you talk to your students about that, I think it's incredible. That's such a key quality to be able to understand. We're more than just, again, information beings. We are emotional beings, and that emotion comes through in all of that.

So that knowledge goes back to — you know, one of the other things I talk about in this 30-day challenge is that illusion of transparency. We just assume that other people know what's going on in our minds, and they don't. And so that's why communication is so critical — asking questions to actually hear what somebody else is feeling or what they're going through, and then communicating the knowledge that we have. Because we just have the expectation that you're going to get it. You should know this. You should get it. Well, they don't. They can't read your mind. They don't know what you're thinking. And so being clear in how you communicate really does help to solve some of those things that prevent us from connecting with one another.

Vicki Davis: (08:32) So Jeff, you're a head of school. How do you take this to your teachers? Because so often what we think we've communicated to our students — we have an eye-opening moment where we realize, what I think I just said, they didn't understand what I said. They understood something totally different. Especially middle school. They kind of have so much going on so often. And it's like, I didn't say that at all. How do you help your teachers with this?

Jeff Bogaczyk: (08:58) What we try to do — it's not easy. These are obstacles for communication that we deal with quite regularly and often.

But we encourage our teachers to communicate out often and in multiple ways — through, you might want to say it, multiple media — the expectations and what's coming. And then to write it on the board, to write it in the software system that people are looking at, to communicate it to students verbally. Just communicating out the expectations over and over again.

And we do that from a leadership perspective as well, communicating out what we expect and what our vision and what our mission is. Somebody said this before, and I don't know who, actually, but it does make sense: the moment you're sick of saying it, that's the moment they're finally starting to actually hear it. It just needs to be communicated over and over.

And for us, one of our expected student outcomes, which is a part of our portrait of a graduate, is confident communicators. We want to — through our school, through our curriculum, through our environment — produce students who are confident communicators. They can speak well. They can write well. They can think well. Thinking, to me, is a communication event — that intrapersonal communication. You're having a dialogue with yourself when you're thinking.

For our students, that they can negotiate the most important relationships in their life. And the way we do that is through communication. There is no relationship without communication. Communication is — you might even say it — is the relationship.

Vicki Davis: (10:38) We've been talking with Dr. Jeff Bogaczyk. He has the Mind For Life podcast. He's all over social media. And there's so much we could talk about — and hey, we didn't even get a chance to talk about AI today. That'll have to be another conversation, about how technology has changed how we communicate. But you know, here's the thing.

In the age of AI, the humans that will be successful are the humans who have the emotional intelligence, the communication skills. I love your profile of a graduate, because it's so important to be able to communicate effectively — whether it's like we are, online, or especially face-to-face — just so we can have those good, healthy relationships, so that we can reduce loneliness. If we could move from social media to just being social human beings, we would have a better world, wouldn't we, Jeff?

Jeff Bogaczyk: (11:30) I think we would. Depends on how you would define “better.” I think both you and I would define it differently than some of the people that are advancing these platforms and pushing these technologies on us. So more humanistic, if we can say it that way — not in the secular humanistic way, but just in the fact that we are connected better at the human level, which is an important thing.

Vicki Davis: (11:53) So Jeff, thank you for coming on the show, and thanks for all that you're sharing. Mind For Life is a really great resource for all of us.

Jeff Bogaczyk: (12:01) Vicki, it's been a pleasure to be with you. Thanks for having me. I've enjoyed it, and we definitely have to do it again.

Vicki Davis: (12:08) Thanks for tuning in to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. Watch the video version of this podcast and catch my new radio and TV show, Cool Cat Teacher Talk, on YouTube and a radio or TV station near you. Join my Cool Cat Teacher Classroom Matters newsletter at coolcatteacher.com/newsletter. Leave a review if you found this helpful. See you later, educator.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post How to Teach Confident Communicators appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

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From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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Try This Tomorrow

Bring a map into your classroom — a star map, a map of Mars, or even a world map — and open with a question you don’t answer for them. Mark calls this tapping into the “explorer’s mindset”: you spark discovery without handing over the answer. It costs nothing and works in any subject.

Mark packed this conversation with places to go next. Here’s everything he mentioned, grouped so you can find what fits your classroom.

Dr. Mark Wagner is CEO and co-founder of ARES Learning, a public benefit corporation dedicated to preparing for humanity’s future in space. In this capacity he leads a space education online course for teachers, co-leads an astrogeology for educators field experience, and co-hosts a free online space education summit.

He has served as President of the Space Prize Foundation, Director of Education Partnerships at the Aldrin Family Foundation, and in a similar role with Slooh: The Cosmic Classroom.

Recently, he launched a new space education course… for everyone! Mark has a Ph.D. in Educational Technology and a master’s degree in Cross-Cultural Education. He also holds graduate certificates in Space Education and Space Philosophy. He is the author of Space Education: Preparing Students for Humanity’s Multi-Planet Future (2022).

Connect with Mark: LinkedIn · Instagram · areslearning.com · [email protected]

If this episode gave you an idea to try, follow the 10 Minute Teacher in your favorite podcast app so you never miss a new episode.

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

John: Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the…

Vicki Davis: John, we are not doing that.

John: Long ago, in the galaxy far, far away.

Vicki Davis: This is not the intro we're supposed to be doing, John.

John: Luke, I am your father.

Vicki Davis: John, I am your mother. This is not going to be our intro.

John: I'm sorry, mother. I can't do that.

Vicki Davis: Okay, so this is what happens when a mom and son work together. Sometimes it goes a little bit off the rails. This episode is about space. This is not sci-fi. Space is actually something that we can teach in every classroom. So, John, don't you think that you're taking this space thing just a little too fast?

John: No.

Vicki Davis: I don't know what that was. But do or do not, there is no try. We are going to talk about space in any classroom. John is my son, and he and I create this show together. We love Star Wars, Star Trek, Guardians of the Galaxy, all these space things. And we just decided to have a little fun because, hey, the 10-minute teacher is back to five days a week and sometimes six. So we're going to talk with my friend Mark Wagner about how to teach about space in any classroom.

Announcer: This is the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: Today, I'm talking with an old friend, Dr. Mark Wagner. He is CEO and co-founder of ARES Learning, president of the Space Prize Foundation, and author of Space Education, Preparing Students for Humanity's Multi-Planet Future. Mark founded EdTech Team back in 2006 and helped shape how a whole generation of us learned to use technology in the classroom. But now he's turned his attention to preparing students to the growing space economy and for a future that may include the moon, Mars, and beyond.

Mark Wagner, Ph.D.: When you reached out to me, you were talking about how excited everyone is about the Artemis mission. I am so excited to see it's taken a hold of people's imaginations in a much broader way than even the exciting headlines in the last couple of years.

Vicki Davis: So let's talk about how space took a hold of your imagination. So you spent all this time in Web 2, and then you were like, space is going to be big. Why? What was the story?

Mark Wagner, Ph.D.: It makes my 20-year education technology career almost a side story. I went to space camp a couple times as a kid in sixth grade and again in 11th grade. I originally went to school to be an astronomical engineer, but I realized at the time that the science fiction stories that inspired me were really important, and I ended up jumping ship and studying literature and teaching high school English, which is what got me into ed tech to begin with. In 2020, right before the pandemic, I had the opportunity to start thinking about what's next, bringing both those worlds full circle so that I could apply my ed tech career to what was happening in space. Between you and me, I saw a lot of parallels of how excited people were in 2006 about Google for Education and how little support there was for teachers. And if you look at 2019, there was starting to be some real excitement around SpaceX and Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic and everything that was hitting the headlines in terms of human spaceflight and commercial spaceflight, with very little support for it in schools. So literally right before COVID, some of my partners and I were talking about how to use space as an element to engage and motivate kids and teach just about anything, really.

Vicki Davis: So you talk a lot about the space economy. Interestingly, there's an AP course where they had to talk about the issues of lower orbit satellites and the lack of regulation in that area for an AP lit class. That was one of the things they analyzed this year. And I was thinking, wow, people are starting to talk about space. I mean, is it just Artemis or is it the fact people realize, hey, this is part of who we are on this earth is space?

Mark Wagner, Ph.D.: Yeah, and it's interesting. It's not necessarily a funding priority for schools just yet, at least not at large scale. But absolutely over the last five, six years, I've seen that interest notching up in a growing community of educators. Some of them have been there for decades. The Space Exploration Educators Conference, or SEEK, hit its 30th year a couple of years ago. So there's some people who have been doing this a really long time, and we're seeing a rise in the number of people that are interested in it. And for me, especially coming out of tech and kids learning socially, no matter who you are, what your strengths are, what your interests are — and this goes for teachers and students — space can be that element of engaging, motivating, hooking, being the gateway to all kinds of learning. And you mentioned, this is kind of the other big hook, especially at a societal or policy level, is the growing space economy. A couple of years ago, we passed a milestone of about $400 billion a year. At the time, they were saying it would reach a trillion dollars by 2040. But those projections now look like a trillion dollars by 2030. And I think we're still on track for that. Aerospace is growing for scientists, engineers, astronauts — there's never been more opportunities to be a part of it. And there's this growing space economy where whatever your strengths and interests are, they need you. A lot of people talk about the barista at Spaceport America where Virgin Galactic flies. But even more so, I play hockey with guys that never got a degree and they're welders and machinists, and their biggest client is SpaceX in Hawthorne. I love telling the story of one of them telling me at hockey one Saturday morning, like, Mark, those guys are the dumbest smart people I know — I've got to teach them the most basic stuff. Whether you're a welder or a barista or you're in marketing — I know space marketers, I know people in HR and space finances. I've interviewed a space fashion designer and an interior designer who works on luxury spacecraft. These are all real jobs today. There's a whole lot of opportunity in this wider space economy. I also like to joke that the opposite is true. Even if you're not interested in space, you'd better understand the opportunities that are coming out of space. So the same way in the 90s we had to convince people that learning about the internet was maybe a good idea, and now it's just a given, I like to joke: if you work for a shoe company, you'd better know the new materials coming out of micro-G environments. You'd better know what your shoe can do if it can talk to GPS and Starlink and be part of the Internet of Things. Already, satellites — particularly GPS, but also communication satellites and Earth observation satellites — impact every industry from agriculture to crime fighting. If you're not up to speed with what's happening with space technology, it's pretty equivalent to not being up to speed with what's happening with the internet. You're missing out on big opportunities and you're not really fully participating in today's economy.

Vicki Davis: You know, folks who look at all this may say, why is everybody rushing to have these lower orbit satellites? But there really is a space race to cover the whole world with the internet, right?

Mark Wagner, Ph.D.: Over the last couple of years with SpaceX and Starlink, we're already in a world where broadband access can happen regardless of borders and despots. They've used Starlink in emergency situations after hurricanes, after the fires in L.A. They put Starlink base stations out for first responders, behind enemy lines in Ukraine and elsewhere. Now you're in a new position where, like, oh, this big company controls the internet. But we're certainly in a position where you can sidestep borders. You don't need the kind of infrastructure you needed in the past. Never mind copper lines — we don't even need cell towers going forward.

Vicki Davis: What are the experts saying about how long it's going to be to have global internet?

Mark Wagner, Ph.D.: You and I remember the time of OLPC, one laptop per child. It turns out even putting a billion dollars behind something like that doesn't solve the problem. We've come a long way in narrowing the gap of who's got access to broadband and basic computing, but there's no easy solution. There's still some room to grow. But it's interesting to roll back 13 years or so. We had a guy named Rich Duvall keynote one of the Google for Education summits up in Silicon Valley, and he worked for the X Lab at the time, their moonshot factory. He had this great idea that he pitched to Larry and Sergey, as the story goes, and they said, that's a great idea, but it's going to benefit the next billion people to get online most — fix that problem first. And that's when Project Loon was born. The idea at the time was to put balloons into the stratosphere with basically 5G cell technology on them to beam internet down to the planet. A great success story there, and a great failing-forward story there. But long story short, Project Loon's gone, because somebody thought 10x that and thought even bigger. Now we've got thousands of satellites in orbit doing that job. Amazon's coming in with competition, and last I heard, Rwanda wants to launch 300,000 satellites with a similar capacity. If you've got African countries launching their own constellations, I'd say that barrier to entry is coming down.

Vicki Davis: You talk about the skill sets and the mindsets that students need for the space economy.

Mark Wagner, Ph.D.: The sort of mindsets that are good for, say, an astronaut or an engineer or a scientist turn out to also be good for an entrepreneur or a social change agent trying to solve big problems here on Earth. So I start with the explorer's mindset. You're talking about things like comfort with the unknown. It also tends to tap into the idea that people who are explorers develop a greater sense of stewardship for the environment and for the earth. I like to bring in moonshot thinking. That's the idea that when we went to the moon the first time in the 60s, we didn't know how we were going to do it when Kennedy said we're going to do that in this decade. But we did it anyway — this idea that we were going to learn by failing forward. So moonshot thinking encourages kids and educators to think big, to think outside the box, to tackle problems bigger than they might have tackled otherwise. I mean, it was a 19-year-old that solved the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, right? Most people are capable of much more than they think possible. And to me, you've got to hit that moonshot thinking before getting into a system like design thinking, because that threatens to just be iterative and get people what they already think they want. To me, those are almost a trilogy: the explorer's mindset, moonshot thinking, and design thinking. But my favorite one now is what astronaut Katie Coleman calls the operational mindset. In the business world that means something else, but to her it means it's not all about you, but you are critically important to the mission. Like for any given kid, or the teacher for that matter, it's not all about you, but you are critically important to the learning environment. Those are four that I think are really important to start with.

Vicki Davis: Where do you think that schools are falling short out of those four the most?

Mark Wagner, Ph.D.: You see a lot more project-based learning. You see a ton of design learning in schools — design thinking, design methodology. That was true a decade ago, too. I think moonshot thinking, or thinking big, is really hard, and I think giving kids the freedom to explore is really hard for schools. As a general rule, schools don't allow kids to discover on their own and wander in the wilderness a little bit — metaphorically, or literally — to find their own way. Even something as simple as bringing a map into the classroom, you can tap into that element of exploration without giving a kid the answer, letting them discover the answers on their own. That could be physical problem solving in a maker space, or — I love databot or MaxIQ.space — they make sensors that kids can use to create their own classroom experiments. They can create their own high-altitude balloon payloads. They can even send them to space with various partners. So there's this opportunity to let kids create the experiment, create the hypothesis, and figure out a way to get their hardware up into the stratosphere or up into space even. I think there's very, very little of that happening. And there are opportunities for kids to actually get their experiments up to the ISS or into orbit on other vehicles. They're not necessarily cheap, but there's some great opportunities out there. There's a book I'll recommend, The Next 500 Years by Christopher Mason — he's a microbiologist — and we've already put tardigrade DNA into human tissue to make it radiation resistant. We already know the 247 gene edits or whatever it is, something like that, to cause a human to create their own vitamin C. And if we're going to survive the trip to Mars and back — literally a couple of years ago, we learned that our kidneys won't make it. Just hands down, won't make it. The radiation is going to kill us. So we either need much heavier ships with a lot more shielding, or we're going to need to modify ourselves genetically.

Vicki Davis: Your book, Space Education, was written with Frank White, and he coined the term the overview effect. For teachers who want to dive deeper into this, what is the first chapter you would point them to in your book and why?

Mark Wagner, Ph.D.: One is he talks about the overview effect. In the book, he coined the term to capture the change in perspective that people tend to experience when they look down on the earth from space. They don't see borders. They don't see tribes. They don't see our conflict. And they see the stark reality that the earth is a relatively small and fragile ball of life hanging in the forbidding black void of space, and that thin, thin blue line of atmosphere. Everybody I've spoken to about it says it's thinner than you think. You can see the pictures of that thin blue line, and it's thinner than you think. And you think about how every living thing, aside from maybe some things in the ocean, is in that blue line. That blue line is what's protecting us. So people look down, they don't see borders typically — although my interview with So-yeon Yi from South Korea was interesting because they see a border from space. But typically people don't see borders, they don't see conflicts, they don't see our tribes. They see that we're all in this together on spaceship Earth. And they tend to come to that realization: we are all crew, or we should be. Don't be caught being a passenger on spaceship Earth. And they tend to come back more interested in diplomacy, more interested in protecting the environment. And that changes the way people interact down here. That's why astronauts have said for years, if only we could pull the politicians up to orbit or up to the moon so that they could look back on the Earth.

Vicki Davis: We've been talking with Dr. Mark Wagner, CEO and co-founder of ARES Learning, president of the Space Prize Foundation, and author of Space Education, Preparing Students for Humanity's Multi-Planet Future.

Announcer: Thanks for tuning in to the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast. Watch the video version of this podcast and catch my new radio and TV show, Cool Cat Teacher Talk, on YouTube and a radio or TV station near you. Join my Cool Cat Teacher Classroom Matters newsletter at coolcatteacher.com forward slash newsletter. Leave a review if you found this helpful. See you later, educator.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post How to Teach About Space in the Classroom with Mark Wagner appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

If you're seeing this on another site, they are "scraping" my feed and taking my content to present it to you so be aware of this.

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Do we have any PhD candidates out there? I would argue that at this point in history, your research might matter more than ever. Here's an example that shows why.

Patrick O’Neil at a community college in Indianapolis has literally set AI in education on its head. So, he read the research on AI, and something didn’t add up. Justin Reich, associate professor of digital media at MIT, shared this on LinkedIn, said:

So he [Patrick] did what any normal person would do: 1) he read 40 papers and chapters on meta-analytic methods teaching himself the field, 2) found and carefully read 14 meta-analyses on GenAI and education, 3) read a sample of 60 of the underlying papers in these analyses. Finally, he did 4) published a forensic review of these 14 papers.

If you love educational research as I do—if you love helping practicing teachers get evidence to support good practice—I suspect you will find the review very disturbing.

None of the 14 papers have a coherent outcome measure, lumping indicators of mental health alongside tests alongside self-reports of perceived learning. 11 of 14 have no study population criteria, so children can be included alongside medical trainees. Six of the meta-analyses include a paper with fabricated citations. Three meta-analyses include a study with references published before November 2022 that refer to ChatGPT. The main paper summarizes and illustrates these problems, and the included appendices provide a review of each meta-analysis. I find Patrick’s work to be thorough and compelling.

The operative word there. Patrick read. He read. He thought. He examined. And then, Patrick wrote. A chemistry teacher at a local university didn't like what he read. Look at this!

As I was reading Patrick’s paper, I remembered an interview I did with Dr. Maggie Broderick about servant scholarship and the need for research at the graduate level that makes education a better place.

Honestly, from what I saw Patrick do, it seems like real research (where you set aside the AI and actually read the papers yourself and follow every link) may add more value than anyone can imagine. In the age of AI, Patrick proves that it is humans who actually do the work who excel. And that is the kind of servant scholarship we all need.

So, if you're choosing your dissertation topic and you're in the field of education, I hope you'll consider research that can be part of your service to humankind. If you're going to use your brainpower, use it for good. Serve with your study! Humans are more important than ever! Maggie really is encouraging for PhD students. Let me hear from you. What do you think?

“It’s much more of a process than a product.”

Dr. Maggie Broderick

Associate Professor, National University

Dr. Maggie Broderick is an associate professor at National University, where she serves as a dissertation chair and as a faculty lead for Social Emotional Learning and Curriculum and Instruction. She is also the director of NU’s Advanced Research Center and the editor of the International Journal of Online Graduate Education. Dr. Broderick is an active scholar who is passionate about teaching and learning at all levels.

Connect with Maggie on LinkedIn.

If Maggie’s idea of servant scholarship resonated, share this episode with a colleague who’s thinking about a doctorate.

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Vicki Davis: Today, we're talking with Maggie Broderick about social-emotional learning at the college level. Now, this is important because we do want our students to be prepared for the next level, and you could argue that some of these things we need to be teaching at the high school or even junior high level. Happy Thought Leader Thursday!

Announcer: This is the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: I'm so excited today to be talking to Dr. Maggie Broderick. She's associate professor at National University and editor of the Journal of Online Graduate Education. Maggie, I know that you've written about everything from social-emotional learning to research-based guidance for teachers of less commonly taught content areas. But there's this kind of overarching passion you have about servant scholarship. What is that?

Maggie Broderick: Thanks so much, Vicki. It's great to be here. I love your podcast. I was thinking about how you do so much with PK through 12 and also thinking about higher ed, how those go together. And servant scholarship, I guess you would say, is sort of my heart of a teacher. I think a lot about that. Why is somebody a teacher? Also about my role in higher education. Why does somebody publish and present if they do some kind of scholarly work? Basically, what's their why? What's their motivation and their whole reason for doing it? Because it's a lot of work. If you want to write a chapter or a book, publish a journal with peer review or present at a conference, you're signing yourself up for a lot. It's not a quick thing. And you really have to pour your heart and soul in. So I think, OK, people kind of need a little guidance on that journey. There's so much out there these days. So the idea is that if we have that kind of lens where we're thinking, what good can we do for everything once we're not there anymore, sort of planting trees won't see someday, that can be our muse and really give us a guidance for how we choose to publish and present. Because there's just so much out there and so many avenues, people get stuck. It's just a good way to think about sort of a servant leadership mindset towards your scholarship.

Vicki Davis: I sort of think that when you wrote the book, Navigating the School as a Smaller Fish, is there a servant scholarship story behind that book?

Maggie Broderick: I was really grateful. With that chapter, it was in a book a colleague of mine did, well, two colleagues, and they were looking for basically guidance for new teachers because we have such attrition rates, right? Hasn't everybody heard that statistic that an enormous number of teachers leave within the first five years? I thought to myself, well, I taught music and German, which is a little different, right? And I teach ESL teachers and I was like, well, I don't know the research on that just yet. I'd like to bet their role is even harder in terms of that attrition. There's a lot. And I thought, gosh, we need to support those teachers. So I reached out to some colleagues and colleagues of colleagues and friends of friends and just said, can you share some anecdotes of what it's like to be that small fish, right? What is it like when you are the only, let's say, Russian teacher in a program within this enormous high school and you have this role for all this time and maybe you don't have colleagues who quite get your groove. You're doing something different. And we find that often those are sort of safe spaces and really extra wonderful places for our students. When teachers have that emotion labor within themselves, they give that to their students and that beautiful gift of helping the students. We need to support those teachers, too, when they're doing those beautiful things. Let's say it's in an art class over in that wing of the high school, or maybe it's the marching band or something like this. Less commonly taught, so maybe they need a different kind of support.

Vicki Davis: Some of the greatest schools that I've seen, I'm thinking of the American School of Bombay with my friend Shabbi Luthra, who's actually director of research. Some K-12 schools, larger, well-funded schools, have research directors because they understand to truly look at their unique situation and unique environment and the unique time and history in which we are. We have to do research to understand that attitude of constantly doing research, is a powerful one. So how can we empower more of our Ph.D. students? It's not about just picking something out of the blue that's easy. It's about having a servant's heart with what you select that can actually help people, right?

Maggie Broderick: Absolutely. It's so interesting, Vicki, because I've been sharing dissertations since, I think, gosh, 2016 as a chair and maybe 2012 or 2013 as a committee member, over a decade being on dissertation committees. So you end up with like this portfolio of many dissertations you've looked at over the years, and they're lengthy, right. And you do see a pattern like anyone who does this and wants to do a doctoral degree can learn the basics. How can I do research? What is qualitative? What is quantitative? What's an appropriate methodology? What are the steps in making a lit review? Right. But like you said, to make it something actually from your heart and not just learning sort of the ropes and the ways to be a researcher, I think that makes that connection between research and practice. Right. So we're not just learning sort of, oh, how do I do a correlational analysis? We learn how will that impact maybe, I don't know, the English language learners at my school or maybe parental engagement, all kinds of things. I have a student right now who's about to defend and I talk about her work a lot. Mary Alvarez is her name. And Mary is doing her dissertation on people who left the profession after COVID. They just said, hey, I'm retiring. I could stick around. I'm still pretty young. Teachers, maybe they retire after 30 years, but they're like, I'm out of here. And she really wants to understand what their stories were. I think that's helpful because something could happen again. We don't know what's going to ever happen. What are things that can go on and suddenly we have a bunch of teachers leaving? What can we do to support the teachers? It's a really heartfelt message there of servant leadership. We need to understand, okay, why did they leave? What was the decision there? What would we do perhaps differently if we had a chance, you know?

Vicki Davis: And this profession is a noble profession, and we need to partner. Researchers and practitioners in the classroom and our best, most noblest, we are friends and partners and collaborators, not two separate things. Because there are some teachers who feel like, well, Ivory Tower, they don't get the classroom. But you're talking about people who actually get the classroom and do the research.

Maggie Broderick: Right. It's so important to make that connection. It's almost one of those mantras that you hear, oh, let's connect research and practice. Yay. But it's so much deeper than just like sort of reading one article and saying, I'm going to try that new tip or trick, which is good. If you see something in an article and go, I'm going to try that today. Like I think of Tomlinson's differentiated instruction and how widespread that is now and how it took some time, you know, actually for us to change our mindset. And that's connecting research and practice. But even at a deeper level, sometimes it's a very specific population. I've had doctoral students in American Samoa, for example, who are Native American who work in a school where it's a tribal school or something like this. Their problems are specific sometimes to their context. So it might not just be a widespread sort of connection with differentiated instruction, which is super important, but maybe it's something very specific to that group or that context. Maybe it's rural, urban, suburban, whatever the case may be. We have a very diverse country here with lots of different pockets of people who have different needs, you know?

Vicki Davis: One of the things I think frustrates some teachers is that a lot of the research these days is being funded by the tool companies. I've never seen a tool that improves learning. It's always how the teacher uses the tool, supports the tool, is the pedagogy around the tool. So I know that researchers need funding. And yes, PhD, that's at a little different stage, but you work with researchers of all types. How can researchers maintain a servant heart, still get funding without, quote, selling out?

Maggie Broderick: Well, that's a great question. It's so much in the world today, especially in our country, I think, where money is the language, right? We all know money speaks volumes sometimes. No, I'm thinking about sort of the first part of what you asked, because that teacher being so much more important than, say, some packaged item, it's a dispositional thing, right? So I think about dispositions for teachers, and I've done research on that connecting with SEL. I think that's true for researchers, too. I think the disposition of a researcher matters. And do they care more about fame and money or sort of having a resume that's like really, really long and extensive? Or do they care more about making that impact? And it might end up being somewhere in the middle. Most people who publish and present aren't going to make money on it. It's pretty rare, but I think we need to give a bit of encouragement, put their name out there and say, there's a balancing act, right? We don't want it to be totally pro bono per se, but we also want it to be unbiased, appropriate. So that's a really great question. I think it kind of depends on who you're asking. If you're asking the people I work with more as sort of just a small, I do a very simple book chapter as opposed to sort of these huge grants and things like that, right? So I think there's two different sets maybe.

Vicki Davis: Well, for me, I'm a classroom teacher, but also need to fund the podcast and the newsletter. And that's thousands of dollars. I'll probably turn away 95% of the people who want to sponsor. But you know what, there's that 5% of organizations and tools I would recommend anyway. To me, my litmus test is, if I would recommend this anyway, and does their culture respect the artistry of the teacher? So we can't always judge as teachers and say, oh, I'm going to do that. A tool company sponsored this, so we just have to throw it out. There is research out there that can be very helpful for us, even if funded by a big company. I do think it's the heart of the researcher, which sometimes can be hard to get at unless you look at their body of work, because doesn't body of work matter?

Maggie Broderick: 100%. And we have to collaborate. When you're looking at that, is the person doing everything sort of just on their own? Or are they sort of like, I'm going to come over here and work with you and with you, and then we all come together. It's that spirit of collaboration. And that's one of our four C's, right? We've been hearing about for 24 years now, the 21st century skills. But I think it's still super relevant that collaboration and research, just like collaboration and teaching, just makes everything richer.

Vicki Davis: Well, and I do want to point out that servant scholarship can filter down to every grade level because I've seen students do research about this. The school had some money and they're trying to figure out where we're going to put the basketball court or they're trying to figure out how to improve their recycling program or what type of things need to be added on campus. And the students do research. They do servant scholarship. I mean, this is far-reaching of how can we do research that serves our communities? That's so powerful.

Maggie Broderick: I love that. I mean, I always think about adding in that policy piece, right? Like research, practice, policy. It's not just your practice, like we said, with differentiated instruction, which is super important, but also your policies. What are you going to do for equity of distribution of resources like the basketball court or whatever the case may be and all of that? And really having kids understand the research process and the why behind it could be really powerful to make that lasting in them instead of sort of, just like we said with doctoral students, oh, you've learned the ropes. That's great. If the more to it is what's really motivating and engaging.

Vicki Davis: If we look at the characteristics of this younger generation coming up into scholarship, into teaching, Purpose is a big part of why they want to work, isn't it?

Maggie Broderick: I have three kids. One is 22, one's 18, and one's 13. And I see that a lot. Two of them are old enough to vote, and we have discussions, and the 13-year-old still wants to have those discussions. The purpose, like, what are we doing? Why are we doing it? Instead of just going with the flow and learning sort of the more shallow level understanding of things, they want to go pretty deep. I love that.

Vicki Davis: So, Dr. Maggie Broderick, why don't we finish up with just a quick pep talk encouragement for all of our listeners who are looking at earning their PhD. It is something you have to earn. You have to work for it. It's not given to you anywhere I know of. So could you give them a little pep talk about selecting their topics for their dissertation in this servant scholarship approach?

Maggie Broderick: I think it's helpful. A lot of people don't realize that there are various types of doctoral degrees. You might think you can only get the PhD, but there's the PhD and the EDD within education and other ones that are tangential to education. There's really, I don't want to say something for everyone because it's a special niche to want to go that far, but people might be surprised that they have options. And then within that, just really have that growth mindset, which we want to see in our students. Keep thinking, I'm just on a journey. And then eventually you do work with your committee in a PhD or an EDD program and just understand you're going to get different perspectives and your role is to look at all of that and make sense of it and try to grow through it. It's much more of a process than a product. So we really want to think about our growth and our growth mindset and understanding that that's a journey that may take a lot of time, but just like lots of things that take time, it's really worth it to have that beautiful, transformational kind of growth within yourself.

Vicki Davis: Dr. Maggie Broderick, thank you for your time today. And thank you for this terminology of servant scholarship. I absolutely love this and I'll be using this one. Thank you.

Maggie Broderick: Thanks, Vicki. It's great to be here today.

Vicki Davis: Thanks for tuning in to the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast. Watch the video version of this podcast and catch my new radio and TV show, Cool Cat Teacher Talk, on YouTube and a radio or TV station near you. Join my Cool Cat Teacher Classroom Matters newsletter at coolcatteacher.com forward slash newsletter. Leave a review if you found this helpful. See you later, educator.

As we work to live, grow, and thrive in the AI age, I hope we all recognize the value of true human connection. I work hard to add my perspectives and personal insights to every blog post and to each podcast episode, with news from right now. I do use AI to generate the summary and the transcript. I think AI adds value there. But I believe I add value to you with my thoughts. Part of the conversations we should have is where humans have a true advantage and where we best improve the world. I think this show is an important conversation for PhD programs everywhere, as I think Maggie makes some great points. I hope you join the conversation. Don't play king or queen of the hill — make a bigger hill. (And yes, you can quote me on that!)

The post Servant Scholarship: How to Choose a Dissertation Topic That Helps appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

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The 2026 New Hampshire Teacher of the Year Megan Philbrook made a real difference in her classroom, her social studies class. Project-based learning is part of an awesome teacher’s toolkit. While we may not use it every day, the two or three times a year or a semester that we do will make a huge difference, and it might just change your life like it did for Megan.

Watch on YouTube and subscribe for new episodes every week.

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Greet your class at the door with rock, paper, scissors — beat the teacher and walk in; lose and head to the back of the line. One round per student, zero prep, and every kid starts class with a smile and a moment of connection.

Megan Philbrook is a social studies teacher for grades five through eight at a rural K-8 school in New Hampshire. Philbrook holds a Bachelor of Arts in history and secondary education from Wheaton College. Her course load includes fifth- grade World Citizenship, sixth-grade Ancient Civilizations, seventh-grade World History, and eighth-grade American Studies.

Philbrook is known for her dynamic, student-centered teaching style, which she calls Top Notch Teaching for the 603. Her pedagogy emphasizes connecting classroom content to real-world experiences, encouraging students to engage deeply with history, and understand their role in a democratic society.

In 2025, Philbrook's commitment to civic education and historical inquiry has been widely recognized. She was awarded an American Battlefield Trust Field Trip Grant, earned a competitive scholarship to attend the National Teacher's Institute at Gettysburg battlefield, was accepted into the iCivics Leadership Academy, and was selected for the National History Day Silent Heroes project celebrating WWII Marine Corps Veterans from NH.

Beyond her classroom, Philbrook is a dedicated school and community leader. She co-leads Andover Elementary/Middle School's technology integration team and volunteers at her local library to fundraise and bring literacy initiatives to young readers.

As a historian and educator, Philbrook is currently preparing her school and town to commemorate the United States Semiquincentennial in 2026. She is actively involved in promoting state-level planning for America's 250th birthday and is leading student-driven civic projects designed to deepen understanding of U.S. history, government, and their active citizenship.

She is honored to serve as the 2026 New Hampshire Teacher of the Year.

Follow Megan on Instagram at @TopNotch603Teaching and on her “NH Teacher of the Year” Facebook fanpage.

And every week on my radio/TV show Cool Cat Teacher Talk, I dig into topics like this with multiple educators.

If this show helped you, would you leave a quick rating or review wherever you listen? It helps other teachers find these conversations.

The post Project-Based Social Studies Ideas Students Never Forget appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

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From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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Can elementary students really build their own apps? I've been building apps with my students for years — I even led a global collaborative app project back in 2017 with classrooms around the world, and blogged about it on Edutopia. This is a fantastic app building tool for students. This year, we even vibe coded, as there's a place to put code into it, and created some fantastic apps.

Watch on YouTube and subscribe for new episodes every week.

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Ask students to name one real problem in your school or community, then sketch a three-screen app on paper that helps solve it: a home screen, an information screen, and a “take action” screen. No devices required — you're teaching the design process before anyone writes a line of code.

I am the Computer Science Teacher and Technology Specialist at Kedron Elementary School in Fayette County, Georgia. Thirteen years of teaching experience has reinforced my passion for education and also ignited my interest in technology. As the Computer Science Teacher, I teach digital citizenship, Google applied skills, 3D modeling and printing, mobile app development, robotics, graphic design, video production, and block coding to kindergarten through fifth grade students. I had the honor of receiving the 2025 Computational Thinking award, presented by Dr. Richard Woods and the Georgia Department of Education. As the Technology Specialist, I maintain all of the devices in the building, I lead technology based school improvement initiatives, and I manage mass communications for Kedron. Prior to working at Kedron, I was a high school English teacher. As an English teacher, I served in technology focused leadership roles by serving on the Learning Management System Evaluation Committee, the 1:1 Technology Rollout Committee, the Personalized Learning Committee, the Virtual Teacher Exemplar Committee, and as a virtual course designer and a virtual course teacher. Through these experiences I have gained expertise in both leadership and instructional technology. Most importantly, I have enjoyed a plethora of opportunities to experience, promote, and advocate for the teaching and learning of technology skills.

Mr. Edward Courtney is a certified elementary & special education classroom teacher and has worked in the field for 8 years. He has received recognition and several local and regional accolades for technology innovation in the classroom. He has a MS in Teaching from Fordham University and a BS in Psychology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In addition to his professional degrees, he is also certified in school building and district leadership. Mr. Courtney currently works for Long Beach Public Schools located in Long Beach, NY at East Elementary School as a K-5 WINGS teacher. WINGS, or What I Need to Grow as a Student, provides students with opportunities for differentiation and personalized learning paths. Mr. Courtney believes that we are all lifelong learners and strives to create meaningful and collaborative learning environments.

Connect with Edward on X: @MrCourtneyNY.

If this episode helped you, please leave a rating and review — it helps more teachers find the show.

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Vicki Davis: Happy Tech Tool Tuesday. Today we're talking about MAD-learn, one of my favorite tools for creating apps with students. Let's learn.

Announcer: This is the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: Today's sponsor is MAD-learn, my favorite app development tool for students. Stick around at the end of today's show to hear more, or visit coolcatteacher.com/madlearn.

Vicki Davis: Can you build apps with students? We have with us today two elementary teachers, Erin Keith and Mr. Edward Courtney. As we talk about building apps with kids, we all use something called MAD-learn. I use it in my classroom and they use it as well. So Erin, we're going to start with you. You're the computer science teacher and technology specialist at Kedron Elementary School in Fayette County, Georgia. She has 13 years of teaching experience. So Erin, how did you get into making apps with kids?

Erin Keith: Let me give you some of my background to help you understand my foray into mobile app development. I have been teaching for now 14 years — the first 10 years of my experience was high school English. In 2020, I jumped on board with virtual course development and got very involved in instructional technology and made a career shift from high school English to elementary computer science. That being said, I need everyone to know that my first experience with mobile app development came with almost zero computer science knowledge. Since then, I have taken a lot of classes and I feel much more qualified for the position that I'm in. But when I started, I had no coding experience, and it was easy. And so I feel like if I can do it, and if I can make it something really special for my students, then anyone can. I just really love it. It may sound intimidating at first, but the way that the software is presented, it's as simple as it can be, and it takes students through the entire design process so that they're learning those skills, as well as computer science, coding, app development — those pieces too.

Vicki Davis: So we have Mr. Edward Courtney also with us. He's a certified elementary and special education classroom teacher. He's worked in the field for eight years, and Mr. Courtney currently works for Long Beach Public Schools located in Long Beach, New York, at East Elementary School as a K-5 WINGS teacher. Okay Edward, I have to ask — what is a WINGS teacher? And then you can tell us how you got into app development.

Edward Courtney: WINGS is an acronym for “What I Need to Grow as a Student.” And the program came to life four years ago. I was a fourth grade teacher before that, and then this opportunity presented itself where I step out as a classroom teacher and become more of a building teacher. So I am able to interact with every student in our building. And through this program, we get to work on individualized projects. We get to push enrichment, technology, gameplay — all learning from what the student needs, diving into questions that the students have on their mind that they really can't get to in the typical classroom day. So we have an opportunity to explore different platforms. At a tech conference, I was in a room learning about Genius Time, which I implemented with the WINGS program. And they spoke about this app called MAD-learn. And I was like, I am very intrigued by this. My students will love it. How can we get this? Working with MAD-learn, I found this amazing platform that I'm sure we can all agree upon that the students love. I, along with Erin, know nothing about coding. I am still very much a basic user of coding, but the platform itself is so user friendly that someone like myself — like my third, fourth, fifth graders — can really dive into it and see their work come to life. And that's a huge plus in my book.

Vicki Davis: Well, I first saw this when a fifth grader, back when ISTE was in Atlanta, was presenting a science app that she had made. And I thought to myself, wow, I really want to do some more app building. We actually did a global collaborative app building project that first year. It's such a great way to incorporate project-based learning, problem-based learning, and really harnessing student passions and even writing. Let's talk about some of your favorite apps that your students have built, and I might sprinkle in a few of my favorites too. Edward, do you want to start?

Edward Courtney: Last year, when we fully embraced the MAD-learn platform and I introduced it to my students, we were actually going through a difficult time with our building with a potential school closure happening. The students — we were currently working in an activism and advocacy unit, and I started introducing them to MAD-learn. We learned the curriculum, and all the kids wanted to do was share how to save East School. Their focus on their apps was this advocacy piece. And while some students did save East School — share information, facts, all about what we could do to support it — other students pivoted in a different direction with educating others on save the rainforest, save the sea turtles, save our beach, being a beach community. So that really lent itself to the app development with advocacy, activism, and sharing knowledge with others that we can do something and implement change.

Erin Keith: I've had the opportunity now to try several different projects. I've encouraged students to identify problems and solve the problems with the apps that they're building. And when you leave it that open-ended, you get some really interesting results. We are also a Leader in Me school. So that's based on Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective Leaders, and so it's our character development program here at Kedron. We are currently using MAD-learn to develop digital portfolios for our students. It's a great application for the platform. Another one is I've encouraged students to build apps that will help the rising students. So I've had students create Meet the Teacher apps so that they are essentially informing the rising students of what they need to know — the ins and outs of the current teacher that they have in the classroom. And that's been really fun and entertaining. But my favorite way that I've seen this unfold is when I teach them how to build the app in computer science for a specific reason — maybe for the Leader in Me portfolio — they then have that skill and they apply it to other contexts. For example, our students participate in an InVenture project through Georgia Tech, and they get to build something. And these students will come to me and say, here is my idea, this is what I'm creating for InVenture, let's build this app.

Vicki Davis: I teach ninth grade, so a little bit older, but still the same concept. My students identify a problem. They've self-formed teams. I coach them a little bit, so I shift over into being coach versus quote “teacher.” And I do teach them some things about graphic design and color theory and all that sort of thing. But I actually teach the person on their team they have designated. So they have a project manager, assistant project manager, graphic designer. So the graphic designers might meet with me and do something, or the others might meet with me and do another thing. Then we have a shark tank, and we have three judges who come in and judge, and they compete and they present, and the parents come. And we've had everything from Drone Zone, an app that categorized all different types of drones, to iCare, an app that was all about — people care, but they don't know how to care, they don't know how to be kind. And one of the most powerful ones I ever saw that really changed the lives of the students that one year was one called Uncut. It was against self-harm. We had to be really, really careful, because as they proposed their project, I actually found it was a problem for some of the kids on the team. But they're like, we want to know how to help with this. I had to involve our counselor, and we had to do it. It was done in such a tasteful way, but it was really about “you are great the way you are.” And it was such a powerful, moving app. So your kids come in and they propose these apps and they pitch these apps and they create the apps. When your administration comes to you and says, “Hey Erin and Edward, what are the kids learning?” — what are some of the things you feel like that they're learning as they're creating the apps, besides “hey, I'm making an app,” right?

Erin Keith: So I spoke earlier to the design process, which is definitely a section of our computer science standards. It's easy to argue for computational thinking, for problem solving, for all of these skills that we're watching them master. But my favorite part — and what I think the future will desire of our students — are the soft skills. It's that they are working with each other, bouncing ideas off each other, they are learning to be persistent when they hit a wall and they can't really figure out what to do next. I think that it's incredible that they are able to develop apps as young children. But I don't think that when they graduate that that's really the skill that the future is going to need of them. I think it's going to be all of those other pieces that come to the forefront when they have the opportunity to do something like this.

Vicki Davis: Great answer. Edward?

Edward Courtney: Couldn't agree more. The soft skills behind the process of working together through the app building — the design process that is built into MAD-learn is so huge and really can be transferred into any other area beyond the app building, because it is a step-by-step process. It's methodical, where at the end you see what the results are and you can check it in real time and give yourself feedback in the moment and really respond to what you're doing in the moment. That is such a critical skill that students can transfer into other areas and see success in all of their growth and their learning.

Vicki Davis: Okay, so this is incredible, because that's exactly what — we're going to talk technology here — you know, it's the emotional intelligence. I also have older students, so I do teach them the appropriate ways to get UX feedback from AI, and how you can interact with AI and get your appropriate color scheme into logos. Now, since the inception of AI, the graphic design capabilities of my students getting feedback from AI — since they're in ninth grade and they're allowed to do that — are just amazing. But the other thing is I pull a lot of content from Adam Grant's book Hidden Potential and talk about, do teams work well together. I also share the statistic that in high school — typically, and actually all the way K through 12 — team captains are usually elected that are extroverts. But very often, the best team captains are actually not extroverts. And not that we want to be anti-extrovert, but it seems that in K-12 we're so pro-extrovert, to the point that it's hard for our teams to get anything done because we elect the person who talks the most. What's happened since I've been sharing — we listened to some of it, we talk about some of his content — is that the students who are elected the head of these teams, these self-forming teams, are now different students than would have been elected five years ago. And the team dynamics are incredible. But just helping the kids say, I'm going to look at who brings us together, I'm going to look at who helps us work together — that emotional intelligence is just priceless. My kids come back years later and say, wow, one of the best things I ever did was build an app. What do your students say when they get all the way through?

Erin Keith: Students who typically struggle with being distracted, or who can't really absorb a significant amount of instruction at one time — that's gone, because they want to do it. They're excited to do it. It's not something special that I had to orchestrate. It's just part of building the app that all of a sudden we have this excitement and this engagement, and we are accomplishing so much so quickly because they're so excited about it.

Edward Courtney: I introduced the platform in third grade. It's for my third, fourth, and fifth graders. And I see them at the start of third grade, see them again fourth grade, see them again fifth grade. And we celebrate the initial start at the end of the unit in third grade, and we say, oh my gosh, you made an app, congratulations. You see the progress that you made, and you see your design all the way through from start to finish. I reintroduced it again in fourth grade, and they were like, I want to change my app from last year, I want to finesse my app from last year. And they can then grow with the app, and there's no stopping point. They can revisit it, they can make tweaks as they learn and grow. And that's one of the most amazing things — that's one of the shining stars through this app, through our unit — is that they can grow with the app, and they can get real-time feedback that helps them to understand, grow, and learn along the way.

Vicki Davis: So we keep talking apps, and I do want to clarify that — people might say, well, are these apps protected? Right. They are private. They're not officially on the app store. There are QR codes where anybody can launch them who has the QR code and look at the apps. There is a way — I've had a couple of my students receive sponsorships to launch these onto the official app stores for the phones that anybody could download. But it is sort of a protected place for the kids. It's not like they're live immediately. It's a protected app environment. Edward, have you had any kids who've surprised you?

Edward Courtney: My three, four, five level have just started to dabble into AI. And with the way that technology is constantly evolving, and knowing that the skills we are teaching students today need to transfer into careers in the future — we don't even know what those careers could potentially be — it's so important for us to teach it the right way, or to teach it in a way that can be, again, transferable, things that can really see through many different iterations of it. So for myself, we are currently building an AI unit where students will become their own prompt engineers. That's the key, the meat of it all. If you're not putting in the correct prompt, then you're not going to get the output that you are ideally looking for. Doing it in a safe manner, doing it in the correct, efficient manner — that's what we are starting to work on with the elementary students. So far it's been really engaging. The kids enjoy it so much. We've dabbled into Magic Media with Canva, where they are creating these outrageous, fun, silly images that we then talk about, we reflect on — how do you know that this is AI? How does it look different than something real? It's making sure that they understand the technology, the tools, how to use them safely, how to use them correctly, and reflecting on that process. That's where the awe, the inspiration, the spark comes in. And it's been so much fun so far.

Vicki Davis: And let me applaud you, because some folks just rush into AI everything. But there's a darker side of AI, particularly with kids who can struggle with understanding that AI is a tool. It's not a he or she. It's not human. It is just a computer tool that you can chat with, which is just so powerful. But we do have to have care and wisdom. I had Dr. Nancy Frey on the show not too long ago, and she said, you know, it's okay to have a ban as long as you have a plan. You don't have to start with it wide open, but you do need to have a plan for how you're going to get there. And it's great to see that both of you are doing that. Mr. Edward Courtney, Erin Keith — thank you both for coming on the show.

Erin Keith: Thank you for having us, Vicki.

Edward Courtney: Thank you so much.

Vicki Davis: MAD-learn is my go-to app development tool for students, and here's why it stands out. It's not just about coding. MAD-learn guides students through the entire design process using six built-in modules covering ideation, planning, designing, building, testing, and launching — all in one place. My ninth graders have built everything from study tools to stress reduction apps to apps about hobbies that they love. And they own every step of the process. If you want your students to think like designers and builders, visit coolcatteacher.com/madlearn. That's coolcatteacher.com/madlearn.

Vicki Davis: Thanks for tuning in to the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast. Watch the video version of this podcast and catch my new radio and TV show, Cool Cat Teacher Talk, on YouTube and a radio or TV station near you. Join my Cool Cat Teacher Classroom Matters newsletter at coolcatteacher.com/newsletter. Leave a review if you found this helpful. See you later, educator.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a sponsored episode and blog post. MAD-learn has compensated me to share information about MAD-learn. However, all opinions expressed are my own. I have personally reviewed these resources and only recommend tools I believe offer genuine value to classroom teachers. My endorsement is limited to the educational products and services discussed in this episode. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” The sponsor has no impact on the editorial content of this show.

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This show is encouraging and hard at the same time. Debbie Simões survived South Phoenix shootouts, five-year-olds cursing her, and an assault that left her with a bruised liver, kidney, and separated shoulder. She still chooses to see the value in every child and to advise a way forward. Our value as teachers and students is not in whether we get everything right, but in just who we are. Each of us is valuable. Each of us needs hope. And we can be hope agents for each other! Her mantra is, “We are people of value who value people and add value to them.”

Watch on YouTube and subscribe for new episodes every week.

Debbie has some powerful takeaways and so many more than listed here. But these were some of my favorites:

Try This Tomorrow

Be a hope agent in three small moves this week: leave an anonymous note for someone who needs encouragement; when you catch a colleague doing something great, tell their principal (not them) so it comes back to them from above; and put one genuine positive into every conversation you have today.

My journey began teaching in inner-city classrooms, where I saw firsthand that student success was deeply tied to relationships, mindset, and school culture. I became a student—not just of pedagogy—but of how leadership, connection, and collective thought shape both teachers’ and students’ outcomes. Frustrated by bureaucracy, I helped open a dual-language charter school and served as principal, leading everything from instructional coaching to Title I, ESOL, and ESE compliance. I also served as Director of a university-based lab school. Along the way, I’ve earned two M.Ed.’s, devoured books, studied business and organizational coaching, enrolled in coaching programs, and trained with John Maxwell’s Leadership Team and the Center for Teacher Effectiveness.

Five years ago I started my own business, Best Questers, to equip educators—from the boardroom to the classroom—with practical, relevant, and meaningful tools that foster holistic growth and cultivate a hopeful, happy culture of belonging. I believe, as John Maxwell teaches, “We are people of value who value people and add value to them.” That belief drives everything I do. My calling in this season of my career is to equip and empower educators to live out their noble purpose with excellence, joy and hope. All teachers and students should love stepping into their greatness together each day!

Connect with Debbie at bestquesters.net and read High Five to Thrive.

If this episode encouraged you, would you leave a rating or review? It helps another tired teacher find a little hope.

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Vicki Davis: Happy Motivational Monday. This is episode 950, and we’re talking about the importance of feeling valued in education. Our guest today encourages us teachers to be a hope agent — somebody who refills another person’s tank when it’s running low. Here are three ways you can become a hope agent this week. One: find someone who needs encouragement and leave them an anonymous note. Two: when you see someone doing something awesome, tell their administrator — not them, their principal. Let it come back to them from above. And three: put one positive into every conversation. Become a hope agent.

Announcer: This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: I’m excited today to be talking with Debbie Simões. She’s the founder of Best Questers. She’s a John Maxwell certified coach and dedicated to equipping educators with leadership skills and helping people know that they are valued. Her newest book is High Five to Thrive. Now, Debbie, it’s really important to you that people feel valued. Why are you passionate about this?

Debbie Simões: Our potential — it’s tied to being valued and feeling valued, because what you think and believe has everything to do with what you achieve. Every single one of us is a person of value. We don’t always know that, and we’re not always treated like that, and sometimes we don’t even treat ourselves like that.

Vicki Davis: It is true. My classroom is called Masterpiece Theater. Ephesians 2:10 is my inspiration, because I believe every single one of us is a masterpiece. And just valuing people, slowing down and realizing that even that person who’s driving you crazy or whatever, they’re a person of value — that’s so important, especially in schools where our job is people.

Debbie Simões: That’s right. It just floods over into every single aspect of life. I think it’s something that we don’t always keep in the front of our mind. But when you really value people and you keep that in the front of your mind, you realize that I’m a person of value because I’m a people, and you’re a person of value. And like you said, even the person driving you nuts — we’re all a person of value. That kind of opens the floodgates. When we’re communicating, we can connect with one another instead of listening to respond, or listening to be right or correct someone. When we communicate to connect, it sort of teaches us to let go of communicating to correct. And that allows us to really build connections that uplift all of us.

Vicki Davis: We have to relate to educate. Can you give me a practical example of the difference in communicating these two different ways?

Debbie Simões: A lot of times we want to correct. And especially if you’re trained as a teacher, we have to correct. If you’re a parent too, you have to correct sometimes. In life, we all need other people to shine a light on our blind spots. But you can do it in such a way that you’re still preserving that connection — because if you’re correcting in a way that is demeaning and putting self-talk in that other person’s mind, you’re building limiting beliefs that are building walls around that person’s potential. And if you’re that person doing it to yourself, we accept those limiting beliefs and they become part of how we see ourselves.

Debbie Simões: I guess as an example — what I’m going to give is not from my classroom, but more from my family. My parents are up in age and they have dementia. That one thing has been life-changing, because our relationship cannot flourish if I’m always correcting them. If I’m remembering that I am communicating to connect, most of the things that they’re getting mixed up don’t really matter. And a lot of times, as a teacher or a parent, it’s the same. Not everything has to be corrected.

Vicki Davis: Right. And you do learn that. My mom passed away from dementia in 2020. I think that’s a mistake that I made a lot early on in her situation. It’s like, hey, let’s just relax and enjoy being together. If you want to ask me the same question seven times, I’m going to answer it seven times, because I’m with you. It is a great example. You talked about early on being kind to yourself — how you treat yourself.

Debbie Simões: I noticed as a teacher, especially early in my career, I was so critical of myself, because I had those high ideals and expectations. And of course, I was just learning. I didn’t know how to do it all. And I always taught in inner-city school districts. My first job was in South Phoenix. We had shootouts at my school on a regular basis. My five-year-olds were telling me to F off and things like that. And it was a whole new world for me. And I didn’t have a lot of support at that school. So I was just learning. I just didn’t have like those hope agents, I like to call them — people that lift you up and give you that hope when your gas tank is a little low.

Debbie Simões: I’ve learned that when you really don’t take the time to be tuned in to the thoughts that are in your head, and you don’t have an awareness of how critical those thoughts are — because they guide you in what you’re willing to do, what you’re going to be able to do — it’s all tied to what you think you’re going to be able to do. And whether you see yourself as a person of value. As I’ve gone through life, and especially as a teacher — particularly with those students who have one or both parents in jail, and a lot of dysfunction in their lives that they’re dealing with, a lot of times abuse that they’re dealing with — the messages that they’re getting are not always affirming in a positive way. My superpower quickly became, even in my very first year, seeing beyond the mask of the behavior to the real person and the value of that person within. I feel very blessed that I developed that.

Debbie Simões: Each person is a priceless gift to the world. And what you do with the gift, that’s really all up to you. We as teachers are going to shape that destiny, but it’s ultimately up to the individual. It has to go beyond that kind of praise — especially the praise like “good boy, good girl,” behavior-based praise. But when we have identity-based praise, that’s really affirming who they are, and that the person they are is someone of value, and helping them cultivate those kinds of thoughts. So I felt like that was really my most important job as a teacher. I didn’t always measure up to that myself, because I’m a person. Sometimes my classroom would get on my nerves. I have to be honest — I’m not above that. I can’t say I was a teacher for all those years and nobody ever got on my nerves. It did sometimes. And I had to remind myself: remember Brian Cambourne’s Conditions for Learning? His were related to literacy — about immersion, demonstration, and so on. But one of them was approximation. And I used to keep Brian Cambourne’s Conditions for Learning in front of me on my desk, so that I could remind myself every day that I’m approximating and that my kids are approximating. And our value isn’t tied to whether we get everything perfect. Our value is: are we being the best person that we can — the best you? Are you being the best you that you can be?

Vicki Davis: My principal and I were talking not too long ago about some of the most difficult situations I’ve dealt with with students. Those students have become some of the dearest to me. And in many ways, I’m dear to them. They keep choosing to take my classes — because when you can see past behavior and see the value of the person, that makes such a difference. So, Debbie, pretend like I’m one of those students that’s just, you know, cussed at you — a five-year-old. How do you look past the profanity and the anger and the clenched fist?

Debbie Simões: Well, I think it would depend, because you have to have a relationship with each individual to really know the best thing that you can think of. And there’s not one right answer. For me, what I would do, first of all, take a deep breath and realize that a lot of times it’s not about you — and thinking about what is that student dealing with in their life, and who are they, where are they coming from, and where is that coming from? And in that moment, the kinds of things I might say to a student is something like: “That hurts me. I’m a person.” It’s okay to be a person with your kids. In fact, if you’re really going to connect with them, they have to also see you as a person. I go to the grocery store — I remember seeing my teacher in the grocery store once when I was a little girl. And I was like, my teacher goes to the grocery store? As if my teacher, what, didn’t eat? What did I think? I don’t know. When you connect with them and say, “That hurts my heart when you say things like that — and not just because you’re saying it to me, but because you have that feeling in your heart. Let’s take a few minutes to calm down and think about where’s that feeling coming from. And we can talk about it in a few minutes, because I know that’s not who you really are.”

Vicki Davis: I love your loving approach. Debbie, it’s not always easy, and sometimes we struggle with burnout and exhaustion. We’re recording today, and I had to really work on getting my energy level up, because I didn’t have a bad day, but it’s exhausting. How do we do this when we’re tired?

Debbie Simões: That is exactly why my business partners and I wrote High Five to Thrive — because we feel that from teachers, and we know the data is there. We’re losing teachers, and we are not replacing them at the rate that we’re losing teachers. This is a nationwide crisis: teacher retention. We as teachers have to learn — generally speaking, and I am not wanting to stereotype — but if somebody went into the field of teaching, number one, I’ve never met a teacher that said, “What am I going to do with my life? I could really make some money if I just be a teacher, and I’m going to be rich. I’m going to have the summers off.” Nobody goes into teaching for the money. So teachers have a calling. I think I see it sometimes on Facebook, that teachers feeling frustrated and angry. I see sometimes comments: “I’m tired — if one more person tells me to lean into my purpose, I want to choke them.” And I can understand that. But really and truly, you can’t just say, “Well, lean into your purpose.” It’s the context in which that message hits you, whether you can receive that or not.

Vicki Davis: Yeah. And your situation — if you can’t pay the bills, it makes you angry. Our joke at our house is that, because I started off in the business world, if my husband wasn’t an engineer, we couldn’t support my teaching. And I’ve always done stuff on the side, like Cool Cat Teacher, which is a calling also. There were seasons where my students didn’t have enough and I felt like I had to buy more stuff, and I needed stuff for my kids when they were in school. The struggle is real. Yeah, we want to do this job, but it’s also a professional job. It’s not something just anybody can do right off the street.

Debbie Simões: No, no, it is not. There’s something John Maxwell says to us whenever we have our Maxwell leadership conventions. And when I first heard it, I thought, well, that’s a whole lot of redundancy. Why does he keep repeating? It’s really at the heart of who I am and how I approach things. And I feel like this is a message that really needs to get out there — this is how we’re going to transform schools into vibrant hubs of engagement and belonging: having a mantra that we are people of value who value people and add value to them. That’s really what teaching is. It’s believing that we’re all people of value. You don’t go into teaching believing, well, some of my kids are going to be of value but not all of them. There’s that one over there — that one over there might not behave like they’re a person of value, but that means they need a little something extra. And most teachers are going to do the best they can to try to figure out what the little something extra is and make the magic happen.

Debbie Simões: When you internalize that — and if we had that mantra as the motto of every classroom and every school — just imagine what a very different approach we would be taking. And I think when you’re in the context of that, and you feel really valued, and you value others, and you see people trying to add value to you — then when you’re having a bad day and someone is trying to help you lean into your purpose, then you’re a little more likely to receive it than if you’re not feeling valued. Things are all relative. But to me, it is never acceptable. I feel heartbroken that it’s a thing today that on social media there are groups to help teachers transition out of teaching into something else. The reason why that’s unacceptable and really heartbreaking to me is because teachers are not just teaching because that’s just any old job they could get. It’s because they had a calling and a purpose. And that matters. Not everybody has that calling. Nobody should have to give up on their calling because of all the bureaucracy that they’re fed up with — not feeling supported, not feeling there’s a way to get the behaviors of your students to align with your vision for what your classroom should be like.

Debbie Simões: You know, I was a teacher. I didn’t have my kids always behaving. Things that I have witnessed are things I never, ever thought I would have ever seen. I always taught little ones. I once was assaulted by a first grader when I worked for D.C. public schools, and I had a bruised liver, a bruised kidney, and a separated shoulder. But that was heartbreaking for me, because the consequences of that were not in my control. Twenty years later, I’m still wondering what I could have done differently to have a better outcome for that young man. But I’m not perfect by any means, and I was never a perfect teacher. I had a perfect intention, and I just approximated the best I can. I feel that if I only knew what I know now — if I only had someone to encourage me and help my school really rally around one another, and building that community of learners as teachers even — that we’re a community of learners, and that we value ourselves and others, and we add value to one another. If I had a situation like that, and someone helping me understand leadership principles… Teachers don’t see themselves as leaders, but they are. They are influencers.

Vicki Davis: Influencers in the most important way. I want to say this: no teacher should ever have to fear for their life or be assaulted. But then again, no kid should ever have to fear for their life and be assaulted. Violence is just so heartbreaking, and there are no easy answers. But I do know this: treating people with respect, kindness, and valuing them — it just has to be part of the equation of what we do. And a lot of times that’s not necessarily taught in the classes we take to be teachers. You’ve used the word “hope agent.” How can we be hope agents for each other?

Debbie Simões: I think number one is just being aware that we all kind of have a hope tank, like a gas tank, and we all need to refill it sometimes. Having that awareness really allows you to walk alongside someone when they need that. But sometimes we have to hold the vision for someone else. We need someone else to hold the vision for us at times. When you have someone that can hold that up for you and say, “Hey, wait a minute — this is who you are, and this is where you’re heading. And you have such an important skill, and just your presence means so much to other people. We really need you. You’re going to be fine. This is a difficult thing that you’re in, but it’s not going to be forever.” And, you know, just whatever that person needs in that moment. And that’s being a hope agent.

Vicki Davis: Debbie Simões — and the book is High Five to Thrive. Debbie, thank you for telling us your story.

Debbie Simões: Thank you for having me. This was amazing.

Vicki Davis: Thanks for tuning in to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. Watch the video version of this podcast and catch my new radio and TV show, Cool Cat Teacher Talk, on YouTube and a radio or TV station near you. Join my Cool Cat Teacher Classroom Matters newsletter at coolcatteacher.com/newsletter. Leave a review if you found this helpful. See you later, educator.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post Valuing Students and Teachers: Become a Hope Agent appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

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From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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Today is a new feature I'll run on some Saturdays – not all of them, but it is a day where I can post things on the personal and human side of life just sometimes. Here's a piece where I went through my most highlighted books, I use a tool called Readwise that helps me chat with my highlights and look at them as well, and I went through those to share what those books are and my recommendations on who might find them useful.

These are eleven books for your consideration, and many of them are timeless. I fully expect some of them won't be your cup of tea. That is ok. But when something is a book I've read multiple times, it stands out and might can help you.

I do want to point out that the books I share on deciding when to say no and how to prioritize and have purpose are some I wished I had read earlier. There's a power in knowing your purpose. There's a power in saying no. Not because you want to be a contrarian but every yes is a no to something that might be better. So you have to choose your yeses and your no's can help you say yes to some really great things.

I hope you enjoy Significant Saturday and know that you matter, you are significant, and to take a moment to feed your soul with books and resources for the spiritual side of life as well as helping you have a more peaceful life because of the order and success in your classroom.

“You are significant, not because of what you produce, but just because of who you are.”

Vicki Davis

Host, 10 Minute Teacher Podcast

If you're here, you might know me. Twenty-four-year teacher, Mom of three amazing kids, and wife of an awesome, quick-witted, few-worded engineer she met at Georgia Tech. I could print my full bio with all of the awards, but I think I just want to tell you that I'm your servant. Educators. Those who are working to reach kids. Teaching is noble.

I sort of fell into teaching in college, as I loved being a TA for a remarkable professor. Then, in 1992, Mom asked me to help her teach people how to use this Internet thing so she could earn enough money to put in the first computer lab at my alma mater high school. I've been teaching ever since. Sometimes businesses. Sometimes kids. Lots of time, teachers. I have a lot to learn and love to read and learn new technologies. I am also passionate about sharing and helping others.

I know this isn't an official bio, and you can see mine here. That said, I guess I'm just writing this bio just to feel like I'm a human on a page writing something another human might read. I use AI to help me, but I don't want AI slop. I want to be me and share with you, even if AI might summarize, I want you to feel like you get more realness by taking the time to come to my blog. If more humans don't do this, I guess we'll just have search engines summarizing pretend humans who are pretending to write, and we will lose this crazy connection we have built since I've been blogging in 2005. I had a person not too long ago – a leader I respect – tell me she started reading to me in elementary school when she decided she wanted to be a teacher. That is cool, I guess. I'd love to feel like my consistency has helped some people. OK, enough of this. On with the show! Let's learn!

If this list pointed you to your next read, share it with a teacher friend who needs a good book this summer.

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Announcer: This is the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: Today's episode 949 is Significant Saturday. I won't run one of these specials every week, but every now and then, I want to air something a little different — something about the other side of your life. The one where you're a human being, not a human doing. You are significant, not because of what you produce, but just because of who you are. So today you'll get a few of the books I have loved that have helped me remember that. So here are 11 book recommendations from me to you. I hope you find one that you enjoy.

Vicki Davis: As we talk about integrating AI thoughtfully into our classrooms, it reminds me that wisdom comes not just from the latest technology, but from timeless truths and continuous learning. Speaking of learning, summertime is upon us, and whether you're poolside, on a road trip, or just enjoying some well-deserved downtime, I want to share some books that have absolutely transformed my thinking and my classroom. These aren't just books I've read. These are the books I've devoured, highlighted, and returned to again and again. In fact, looking at my Readwise library, I've highlighted over 6,800 passages from these books combined.

Vicki Davis: Let me start with a book that's absolutely essential for anyone using AI who wants to honor their Christian faith: The Age of AI by Jason Thacker. He says, quote, “AI is doing things like driving cars around our streets and automating countless jobs that were created for humans. AI is changing everything about our world and society, and we aren't prepared,” end quote. He then takes two questions to aid the journey of understanding AI from a Christian perspective. For one, what does it mean to be human? And number two, what is technology in AI? Friends, if you're a Christian educator or business person or parent who wants to use AI wisely and ethically, this needs to be at the top of your summer reading list. Thacker brilliantly addresses the intersection of technology and faith, helping us navigate questions like, how do we maintain human dignity in an AI world? What does it mean to create with integrity when AI can generate content? This book speaks directly to the heart of what we've been discussing — using technology as a tool while keeping our humanity and values intact. So book number one, The Age of AI by Jason Thacker.

Vicki Davis: After reading that book, read The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler. They make a point in the book and they say, quote, “every time a technology goes exponential, we find an internet-sized opportunity tucked inside.” Think about the internet itself. While it seemingly decimated industries — music, media, retail, travel, and taxis — a study by McKinsey Global Research found the net actually created 2.6 new jobs for each one it extinguished. There's a lot of hope as you read this book, and it'll help you understand the big picture of what things are happening. So my book number two, The Future Is Faster Than You Think by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler.

Vicki Davis: Now, let me share a book that's been a companion to me for many years: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie. This is one of my favorite passages. He says, quote, “one of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.” Carnegie's wisdom from decades ago feels more relevant than ever. Carnegie also says the most relaxing, recreating forces are healthy religion, sleep, music, and laughter. Have faith in God. Learn to sleep well, love good music, and see the funny side of life. Book number three, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie.

Vicki Davis: For those of you feeling overwhelmed or burned out — and let's be honest, who isn't after this school year — I recommend Necessary Endings by Henry Cloud. Cloud opens the book and says, “today may be the enemy of your tomorrow. In your business and perhaps your life, the tomorrow you desire and envision may never come to pass if you do not end some things you are doing today.” This book taught me that sometimes the most life-giving thing we can do is let go of what's no longer serving us. Cloud writes about how endings aren't failures. They're often the doorway to new beginnings. Book number four, Necessary Endings by Henry Cloud.

Vicki Davis: For my author and creator friends, Die Empty by Todd Henry is a must-read. Now, the title sounds morbid, but here is what he says. “The most valuable land in the world is the graveyard. In the graveyard are buried all of the unwritten novels, never-launched businesses, unreconciled relationships, and all of the other things that people thought, I'll get around to that tomorrow.” He also says there is an over-emphasis on celebrity and recognition in our culture, and it will eventually be the death of us. Cultivating a love of the process is a key to making a lasting contribution. With only one in four people in the world feeling they are living up to their creative potential, he reminds us that your legacy is built one decision at a time. Todd Henry's message is life-giving. Don't go to your grave with your best work still inside you. Book number five, Die Empty by Todd Henry.

Vicki Davis: And if you're looking to build sustainable systems for capturing and organizing ideas — especially important in our information-rich world — Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte revolutionized how I manage knowledge. I've done past shows on my personal second brain system that you can see on my Cool Cat Teacher YouTube channel. So book number six, Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte.

Vicki Davis: Friends, I'd be remiss if I didn't share the book that has the most highlights in my entire library: The Complete Work of E.M. Bounds, with 541 highlights. Bounds writes about prayer in a way that changed my life. And he said, quote, “our short prayers owe their point in efficiency to the long ones that have preceded them.” Book number seven, The Complete Work of E.M. Bounds.

Vicki Davis: And for daily encouragement, Springs in the Desert by Lettie B. Cowman offers devotional thoughts that feel like cool water on a hot summer day. As she cared for her husband for many years, who was terminally ill, she and her husband looked for things that encouraged them, and then they put them into this book. From college to now, and anytime I have hard things going on, this book is my go-to devotional book to settle my mind and get some sleep. Book number eight, Springs in the Desert by Lettie B. Cowman.

Vicki Davis: And I love books that encourage me and help me think. John Maxwell has these small books he calls the 101 series. They are perfect for reading a chapter and then having your adult children read it and discuss them at the table. He says, quote, “hoping for a good future without investing in it today is like a farmer waiting for a crop without ever planting a seed.” Maxwell also says, “you can have anything you want, but you cannot have everything you want.” Life's about choices, isn't it? So book number nine is actually a book series, John Maxwell's 101 series. I like the small little individual books because I can share them, even though it's in a big large book too.

Vicki Davis: And finally, if you're a teacher and last year didn't go right in terms of procedures or behavior, there are two books I recommend and give these to first-year teachers: Harry and Rosemary Wong's The First Days of School for classroom procedures, and Fred Jones' Tools for Teachers about behavior management and classroom setup. These two books make number 10 and number 11. And you know, as I look at these books — from AI ethics to ancient wisdom about prayer, from productivity systems to letting go — I'm reminded that growth happens when we're intentional about what we feed our minds and souls. This summer, I challenge you to pick just one or two of these books. Don't feel like you need to read them all. Choose what speaks to where you are right now. Remember, we're not just educators or business people, we're lifelong learners. And the beautiful thing about summer is it gives us permission to slow down and dig deep into ideas that can transform not just our work, but our lives.

Vicki Davis: Thanks for tuning in to the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast. Watch the video version of this podcast and catch my new radio and TV show, Cool Cat Teacher Talk, on YouTube and a radio or TV station near you. Join my Cool Cat Teacher Classroom Matters newsletter at coolcatteacher.com/newsletter. Leave a review if you found this helpful. See you later, educator.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post 11 Books for Your Teacher Summer: AI, Faith & Focus appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

If you're seeing this on another site, they are "scraping" my feed and taking my content to present it to you so be aware of this.