Cool Cat Teacher Blog https://www.coolcatteacher.com/ A Top Teacher Blog: Ideas & Encouragement for Remarkable Educators Thu, 23 Jul 2026 02:23:18 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://www.coolcatteacher.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/cct_favicon_32x32.png Cool Cat Teacher Blog https://www.coolcatteacher.com/ 32 32 60068710 Servant Scholarship: How to Choose a Dissertation Topic That Helps https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e953/ https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e953/#respond Thu, 23 Jul 2026 11:00:00 +0000 https://www.coolcatteacher.com/?p=34964 From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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Dr. Maggie Broderick explains servant scholarship—choosing a dissertation topic that helps real teachers and students by connecting research to classroom practice, policy, and purpose.

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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]]> From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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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

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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.

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

Episode Transcript

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

Click to read the full transcript

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.

A Note from Vicki

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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]]> https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e953/feed/ 0 34964 Project-Based Social Studies Ideas Students Never Forget https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e952/ https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e952/#respond Wed, 22 Jul 2026 11:00:00 +0000 https://www.coolcatteacher.com/?p=34960 From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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Her students secretly nominated her for NH Teacher of the Year. Megan Philbrook shares project-based social studies ideas students never forget — student-filmed history plays, Revolution podcasts, and civic engagement that works.

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

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

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.

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Key Takeaways for Teachers from Megan Philbrook

  • “Every single interaction has to be done with such care and even just such intention.” Her fifth graders play rock, paper, scissors to enter the room — thirty seconds that tells every kid this class is a good place to be.
  • Reuse last year’s student projects to inspire this year’s students. Megan played her seventh graders’ self-written, self-filmed Ancient Rome play for the third graders — little kids rise toward what the big kids built.
  • “Look through the window” at history — and retire the word “we.” We didn’t fight the American Revolution, so her students examine the perspectives of the people who did — a discourse move that takes the heat out of hard history.
  • Tap your state’s free resources for America’s 250th. Megan says the training she hosted drew 60 educators representing 51 schools to hear what free semiquincentennial resources their state entities already offer.

Try This Tomorrow

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.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

About Megan Philbrook (Bio as Submitted)

Megan-Philbrook-headshot
Megan-Philbrook-headshot

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.

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

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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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]]> https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e952/feed/ 0 34960 Building Apps with Students Using MAD-learn https://www.coolcatteacher.com/building-apps-with-students-mad-learn/ https://www.coolcatteacher.com/building-apps-with-students-mad-learn/#respond Tue, 21 Jul 2026 11:00:00 +0000 https://www.coolcatteacher.com/?p=34951 From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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Can elementary students build their own apps? Two elementary teachers share how they use MAD-learn for gold-standard project-based learning — and how app-building teaches the soft skills that last.

The post Building Apps with Students Using MAD-learn 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.

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.

Key Takeaways for Teachers from Erin Keith and Edward Courtney

  • Students move from consumers to creators. When kids build their own apps, they stop just using technology and start making it — and that shift changes how they see themselves as learners.
  • The soft skills are the real curriculum. Erin's students build persistence, collaboration, and problem-solving — the very skills the future will ask of them — while they think they're “just” building an app.
  • Apps become acts of service. Edward's students built apps to save their school, protect sea turtles, and support their beach community; Erin's built “Meet the Teacher” apps to welcome next year's class. The work turns outward toward helping others.
  • Introduce AI with care and a plan. Both teachers frame AI as a tool — not a person — and teach it with guardrails, echoing Dr. Nancy Frey's line that “it's okay to have a ban as long as you have a plan.”

Try This Tomorrow

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.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

About Erin Keith (Bio as Submitted)

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.

About Edward Courtney (Bio as Sumitted)

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.

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Episode Transcript

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

Click to read the full transcript

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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]]> https://www.coolcatteacher.com/building-apps-with-students-mad-learn/feed/ 0 34951 Valuing Students and Teachers: Become a Hope Agent https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e950/ https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e950/#respond Mon, 20 Jul 2026 11:00:00 +0000 https://www.coolcatteacher.com/?p=34946 From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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Debbie Simões was assaulted by a first grader — and still teaches us a hopeful way forward. In this Motivational Monday episode, the Best Questers founder shows how valuing students (and yourself) transforms a classroom, and what it means to become a hope agent for a tired colleague.

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

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

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.

Key Takeaways for Teachers from Debbie Simões

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

  • Communicate to connect, not to correct. Debbie’s line “when we communicate to connect, it sort of teaches us to let go of communicating to correct” is a shift any of us can make in the next conversation we have with a hard-to-reach student.
  • Trade behavior-based praise for identity-based praise. “Good boy, good girl” rewards behavior; telling a child who they are — a person of value — affirms the human underneath the behavior.
  • See past the mask of the behavior. Debbie calls it her superpower: “seeing beyond the mask of the behavior to the real person and the value of that person within.” The student who is hardest to love is often the one who most needs to be seen.
  • Be a hope agent — and let people refill your tank, too. We all have a “hope tank” that runs low, and part of the job is holding the vision for a colleague when they can’t hold it for themselves.

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.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

  • High Five to Thrive: 5 Proven Practices to Unleash Your Passion for Teaching by Donita Grissom, Viki Kelchner, and Debbie Simões — the book behind this conversation, written to help teachers stay connected to their calling.
  • Best Questers — Debbie’s company, equipping educators from the boardroom to the classroom with practical tools for a culture of belonging.
  • Brian Cambourne’s Conditions of Learning — the literacy framework Debbie kept on her desk; its principle of approximation reminds us that neither teachers nor students have to be perfect to be growing.

About Debbie Simões – Bio As Submitted

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.

Other Shows for Teachers

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

Episode Transcript

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

Click to read the full transcript

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.

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]]> https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e950/feed/ 0 34946 11 Books for Your Teacher Summer: AI, Faith & Focus https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e949/ https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e949/#respond Sat, 18 Jul 2026 15:51:36 +0000 https://www.coolcatteacher.com/?p=34939 From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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Summer reading for teachers: 11 books Vicki Davis highlights and returns to again and again — AI ethics, productivity, faith, and classroom-management classics — with a challenge to pick just one or two this summer.

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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.

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

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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!

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Episode Transcript

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

Click to read the full transcript

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!

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]]> https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e949/feed/ 0 34939 AI Tools Inside Adobe Express and Canva for Teachers https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e948/ https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e948/#respond Fri, 17 Jul 2026 11:32:00 +0000 https://www.coolcatteacher.com/?p=34933 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.

Adobe Express and Canva are full of AI tools that save teachers hours. Innovative learning specialist Amy Storer shares the features her teachers love — from student podcasts to no-code interactive games — plus how to pick the one tool worth mastering this year.

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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.

Two of the most useful AI art creation tools are Canva and Adobe Express for Educators. Amy Storer is an expert in both of them. On today's show, she takes a look at what is useful, what teachers are talking about, and how she helps them use these tools in the classroom. Both of these are definite candidates for first-week projects for kids of all ages. Adobe Express has some cool templates, as does Canva, that you can use to get to know your students. I believe the best way to start a school year is to build that relationship with your students and get to know them better. “About me” projects are a great way to do that.

Amy Storer is an Innovative Learning Specialist and respected speaker in Montgomery ISD who is passionate about empowering educators through purposeful technology integration. She thrives on partnering with educators to enhance the great learning already happening in their classrooms and schools by leveraging powerful digital tools.

Amy is a certified educator and trainer for Google, Microsoft, Adobe Express, and Canva, and she brings energy, expertise, and heart to every professional learning experience. Her work centers on meaningful PD, authentic classroom connections, and innovative strategies that make learning stick.

Connect with Amy: LinkedIn · X/Twitter @techamys · Instagram @techamys · TikTok @techamys

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Episode Transcript

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

Click to read the full transcript

Vicki Davis: It's Fab Idea Friday. Pick an AI art tool to use with your students. Adobe Express and Canva — that we talk about in today's show — do more than you think, and you'll get lots of ideas. But here's why I'd start with Adobe Express. Most AI image tools learned by scraping the internet — somebody's art taken without asking. Adobe trained Firefly on licensed and public domain work instead. It's not spotless — some of that training data turned out to be AI-generated itself — but Adobe will at least tell you where the model learned to draw. And that's the question, isn't it? Not what can this make, but where did it learn? Let's talk to Amy Storer.

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

Vicki Davis: Amy Storer is an innovative learning specialist in Montgomery ISD in Texas. She's a nationally recognized ed tech speaker whose work centers on purposeful technology integration that makes teaching and learning easier, more creative, and authentic. She is known for Coaching That Clicks. Amy, thanks for coming on the show — welcome.

Amy Storer: Thanks for having me.

Vicki Davis: Today we are going to talk about all the tools that have teachers excited, whether they're new or old. I know you do training on all of these — but what are teachers getting the most excited about that you're sharing these days, Amy?

Amy Storer: A big part of my job is working directly with teachers. Each month, I come with a theme or a topic. One month it was all about Canva; this month, February, is all about falling in love with Adobe Express and diving into that tool as teachers and students. One of the tools I've been sharing is one of their newest, and it's Create a Podcast. It is a professional, studio-style podcast experience for students. I introduced it to a third-grade teacher last week — she used it within two days. The animated character feature in Adobe is another great one too, but the podcast is now a button that kids and teachers can click on the Adobe Express homepage. It's a blue button. You can do things like add intro music — they have an entire music library — and you can even invite people onto your show. All of that you can do in that one tab. And even better — let's say the kids are recording in a busy hallway at school, which happened last week with these kids — you can then click the Enhance button and drown out that background noise and make your voice cleaner and crisper. It's just the one-stop shop.

Vicki Davis: But the thing about Adobe Podcast when it came out — oh my goodness, the audio cleanup feature is so great. They've actually built that into Adobe Premiere Pro, which is what I use to produce the radio and TV version of this show. [Kip, my husband and the show's original producer] would spend just 30 minutes doing all the settings and all the manual cleanup, and now it's like we hit a button and it's done. The quality that comes out of Adobe Podcast is truly remarkable. But the other thing is, it's so easy. The only problem I've ever had in my classroom is if people don't make sure their mic is allowed in Chrome. But if that's the only thing, that's a big win. What kinds of podcasts did the third-grade students record?

Amy Storer: One little girl was trying it out and she was interviewing a parent who was there, talking about Valentine's Day — favorite things about Valentine's, types of candy you like. She had another student who came up with a name; it was called “Ruffin' Time.” Some other teachers I've visited with were thinking about using it for kids to interview each other, to talk about topics or concepts. For example, the fourth-grade kids are learning about continents right now, and another teacher was going to pair up kids to interview each other about what they know about continents. Just another way for kids to show what they know that's not a traditional pen-and-paper task. It sounds cheesy, but the possibilities are endless with the different things you can do — book studies, interviewing people in different fields. I'm just so excited to keep working with teachers when it comes to this, because I could see so many things that could benefit kids.

Vicki Davis: Oh, my kids love Adobe Express too. What do your teachers say about Adobe Express, and what are the features they really like in there?

Amy Storer: Animated Character. It's a very easy lift for even your littlest students. They get up to two minutes to record, which is just enough time to share what you need to share. What it does is take the recording of the students, and the character's mouth will move in sync with that recording. We did an animated Valentine card — that's a really neat one. I've seen teachers use it for different GT projects. I've worked with teachers in Houston where they created a hybrid animal for a GT project — for example, it was an otter and a butterfly, the “otterfly.” And you can use that same feature in the designer and in the character's mouth: you would add a mouth with a transparent background. The Quick Actions for teachers have been really popular too — to do things like edit a PDF or merge documents together, some of those really simple tasks that teachers are having to go to multiple websites to do. You could do it all inside Adobe Express. And I'm team anything that saves teachers time.

Vicki Davis: My students really, really like Adobe Express. So, okay — teachers are getting excited about Adobe Podcast, Adobe Express, all those little cool things. What else? Because you have a big toolkit.

Amy Storer: Canva Code. The first time I used it, I was beside myself with how much time it saved me — and that it was going to be interactive and engaging for students. So if it's not something you're familiar with: Canva Code, you don't have to know anything about coding, less than zero. But you think about your dream interactivity that you want to build with students. For me — I'm a science teacher — we're studying food chains. To wrap up our unit and assess my kids, I want them to play a game where they're organizing organisms into buckets — producer, consumer, et cetera — to give them instant feedback. I don't have time, I don't have money to build it or pay for it. This is where Canva Code comes in. So on the Canva website, there's a Canva AI button, top center. Click Canva AI, and you'll see another button that says Code, and you just copy and paste in. Maybe you've leaned into AI to help you come up with your prompt. Once you have everything there, you click the button to generate it. When I'm presenting on this, my sister thinks I sound so silly, but when it starts to run and build, I always say, “Look, Ma, no hands!” It's writing all those lines of code for me. And even better — once it's done writing the code for that interactivity, I can keep talking to it: “I forgot to add a spot for a student to put their ID number.” I just found out at TCEA, not too long ago, that you could ask it to put a Spanish toggle button, and it will translate the interactivity.

Vicki Davis: Anything else about Canva that your teachers are going, “Oh yeah, this is awesome”?

Amy Storer: Their Magic Studio. When you're in the designer and you are designing presentations or graphics, on the left-hand side, that panel — there's the Magic Studio. It has things like remove background, generate background, things like that.

Vicki Davis: So we've got all this Adobe stuff, all this Canva stuff.

Amy Storer: What else? Another tip I found out recently: if you're in presentation mode in Canva and you click any number on your keyboard, it will pull up a timer overlay on top of that presentation. I was like, I did not know that.

Vicki Davis: And I push, like, seven and it gives me a seven-minute timer, or one and it gives me a one-minute. Wow. Now that is cool.

Amy Storer: So when I was at TCEA, one of the tools — Scribe, S-C-R-I-B-E. What Scribe does is it's an extension you put on your computer. When you turn the extension on, a side panel pops up, and what it's doing is recording everywhere that you click. When you're done capturing the steps, you click Stop Capture. A new tab will open and it's the steps from start to finish — but not just the steps. They have grabbed screenshots, and wherever you have clicked, they have added a hotspot. So it will say, “Number one, go to the Google Slide link.” Teachers would click that, and when they get there, it shows them a picture: “You're going to click here, click here.” I call it like a how-to flowchart from start to finish. I just made one for families recently on how to get into ClassLink and get to different apps for students. It's good for sharing instructions with teachers. It's one of my favorite tools to share and use.

Vicki Davis: You've given us a lot of tools. Let's just shift it a little bit. How are teachers feeling these days with all the AI that's happening? What's the mood? What are teachers saying to you about their struggles or their excitement?

Amy Storer: I think it's a mix. Many are leaning into it — how it can support them, support teachers — which is how I started. It was teacher-facing for me, and still a lot of what I do is teacher-facing. I think the older the kids get, the more worry teachers and families do have if AI is helping or hurting with student learning. I really firmly believe that once our teachers get more comfortable with it and have used it and can understand how it can support, not replace, I think that's going to help. But I do think it's a good mix, understandably.

Vicki Davis: As we finish up — talk to educators who feel overwhelmed, who feel stressed. Just give some encouragement.

Amy Storer: I'm saying things that sound easier said than done, but: you've got this. You are a professional. You know what to do to support your students. I know at times it can feel as if all of these different apps and tech ideas are coming at you. Do you have to do all the things? No. You do what works best for your students. Pick up one tool. Pick up one tool, use it the entire school year, get really good at that tool, put it in your toolbox — and maybe next school year, pick up a new one. You do not have to do all the things. You find what works best for you and your students. At the end of the day, if you're supporting our kids, they're learning, they're engaged, they're creating — not just consuming — then you're doing it.

Vicki Davis: So Amy Storer has been with us today. She's a learning specialist in Montgomery ISD in Texas and a nationally recognized ed tech speaker here in the US. I appreciate all these tips — you taught me some new ones. I'm really excited to go try those, and thanks for being encouraging. It was really awesome to spend time with you.

Amy Storer: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

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.

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]]> https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e948/feed/ 0 34933 Teacher Burnout: How to Reconnect and Feel Fulfilled https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e947/ https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e947/#respond Thu, 16 Jul 2026 12:12:37 +0000 https://www.coolcatteacher.com/?p=34927 From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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Teacher burnout doesn't mean you're broken — it means you're disconnected. Michelle Chanda Singh, and ISTE 2026 winner of 20 to watch, shares how teachers can reconnect, set boundaries, and serve from fulfillment instead of sacrifice, plus a simple "clarity audit" you can do this week.

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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.

Today is Thought Leader Thursday. But I want it to be more than a Thought Leader, I want you to listen to today and be thoughtful. Handling our burnout is a fact of life for sustaining a long-term career in teaching. In my 24-year career, I've had to deal with my own burnout several times.

Dr. Michelle Chanda Singh shares openly about her struggles and gives us advice on how she helps career teachers live better lives. I remember one summer when I dealt with burnout, and it was July, and I wasn't ready to go back to school. I wish I could have heard this show. I do hope it helps. It also excites me because she was named one of 20 to Watch at ISTE 2026 this year! Congratulations Michelle!

Because to have engaged students we have to be engaged teachers and that isn't always easy. Our students are so important and you are too. Teaching is an art but the artist has to be able to hold the brush. I hope this helps you steady your hands and comfort your heart so you can have the best school year ever!

Note: I recorded this show with Michelle while she was doing her research. She now has her PhD and I've changed her title. While I'm sorry I didn't air this sooner, I got behind last year as I cared for an ailing father. I'm so glad this conversation was so real though because I was in the middle of that when we recorded!

“We have to fix our own disengagement, our own disconnection.”

Michelle Chanda Singh

Founder, The Restful Teacher

Listen to the Show

Global Educator | TEDx Speaker | Best Selling Author | Founder | CEO

Dr. Michelle Chanda Singh is a National Board Certified Teacher, the visionary founder of the Restful Teacher™, and the dynamic CEO of LCT-E Learning Solutions®. With over two decades of education experience, including over 20 years serving Miami-Dade County public schools as a teacher, district leader, and consultant, and over ten years as an adjunct professor of teacher education, Michelle's unwavering commitment to fostering equity and inclusivity in education is truly inspiring.

Her journey began as a 9-year-old immigrant from Jamaica, where she developed a passion for cultural understanding and empathy that has shaped her path to becoming an award-winning educator. As the leader of LCT-E Learning Solutions®, Michelle is on a mission to level the playing field in education by tackling the disengagement of students and teachers. Her team's innovative teacher training programs are grounded in the EQUAL Methodology™, designed to create a more inclusive and equitable educational experience for students, particularly Black students.

Michelle envisions a world where every child is seen, every student's voice is heard, and every potential is realized. Her unwavering dedication to building an equitable and inclusive educational system has already impacted over 40,000 teachers globally. By leading with empathy, advocating for equity, and striving for excellence, Michelle Singh is reshaping the future of education.

Other Shows for K-12 Teachers

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If this episode helped you, share it with a teacher friend who needs the encouragement.

Episode Transcript

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

Click to read the full transcript

Vicki Davis (Intro): Happy Thought Leader Thursday. Today, we're going to talk about how we as teachers can re-engage in our own classrooms. You might have heard somebody say, “My heart isn't in it anymore.” It's mid-July as I'm releasing this episode, and some of us go back to school soon, and we may not be ready. So here's a quote from Dave Burgess in his best-selling book, Teach Like a Pirate: “Some teachers look out over the 99% engaged classroom with kids on fire about learning and feel successful. Others choose to focus on the one percent and feel like failures.” And then he says, make a conscious decision to focus on what empowers you. Now, I'll admit it — I tend to be a one-percent focuser. I find that kid who wasn't with me and I carry him home, sometimes even through the summer. But if we're going to engage our students, we must engage ourselves first. Let's start by looking at the wins. Now, let's talk about teacher engagement.

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

Vicki Davis: So excited today to be talking with Michelle Singh. She's a National Board Certified Teacher, founder of The Restful Teacher, and CEO of LCT-E Learning Solutions. She has over 20 years serving in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools as a teacher, district leader, and consultant. So Michelle, as we start the school year, we're looking ahead going, “Okay, I really need to engage those students.” What is the work you're currently doing in that area?

Michelle Singh: I'm actually doing my dissertation right now around the disengagement of Black students in classrooms, particularly secondary language arts classrooms. So I'm doing a lot of work around student engagement and the factors leading to student disengagement — everything from issues with their home life, their community life, their cognitive, behavioral, social, and emotional worlds. There are so many layers to student disengagement, and it is not because students are lazy, and it's not because students don't have discipline. Think of the iceberg. It's not all what you see at the top. There's so much more below the surface that causes the disengagement of students. But one of the things that has really stood out to me when it comes to engagement — I've noticed in conversations with my clients as a consultant that we are disengaged, just like our students.

Michelle Singh: In order for us to truly tap into what we need to really be there and serve and support our students the way they deserve, we have to fix our own disengagement, our own disconnection. There are a lot of things that cause us to disconnect. It could be traumas from our childhood that aren't addressed, that we're not even aware of. It could be the toxic work environments we're part of. It could be burnout — not prioritizing our wellbeing and our rest. It could be having too much happening in our families.

Vicki Davis: There are so many things besides just the exhaustion. We have to relate to educate, but that takes a lot of effort.

Michelle Singh: Oh, it does. I love that — “you have to relate to educate.” I just finished one of my college classes with aspiring teachers, and relationships are the most important thing. I heard it echoed in the room: every experience they shared about the teacher who influenced them was because of trust, was because of safety, was because of relationships.

Vicki Davis: That's what you talk about with Ms. Fernandez. Tell us a little bit about her.

Michelle Singh: In my TED talk, I talk about Ms. Fernandez, my Spanish teacher. One of the things I'll always remember Ms. Fernandez for is her ability to see me — to see me exactly as who I was, this little immigrant girl coming from Jamaica with the heavy accent, with the bushy hair, with the school uniform. The only kid in the class wearing a uniform, because that's what we did in Jamaica. The only kid in class who stood up to speak, because that's what we did in Jamaica. The kid that everyone laughed at, where other teachers stayed silent. She was the one who made me feel seen, who told me it was okay to be me. And she was also the one who gave me incredible learning experiences that I didn't recognize were incredible until I became a teacher myself and started looking back and tapping into her strategies and implementing them in my own practice.

Vicki Davis: And we have all these kids who are hurting and who need us. The percentages you shared in your TED talk — 2% of teachers in America are African-American male and 7% are African-American women. And if you're not engaged… we need more. We don't need to lose the ones we have. What do we do, Michelle?

Michelle Singh: I can talk personally about what I've done, as well as what I'm helping other women educators of color address. It's addressing that disconnection in yourself, addressing the reason why you don't feel fulfilled. Because if you're not fulfilled, how are you going to show up and do a job that's so important? I have been there — where I've shown up and been on autopilot and didn't even realize I was on autopilot. And that didn't serve me, and it did not serve my students. So how do we get from that to feeling so full inside that we're able to serve from a place of fulfillment rather than a place of sacrifice?

Vicki Davis: Some days, even if I'm totally in sync with my teaching, I don't feel it — so I show up anyway. But there is this huge systemic problem of teacher disengagement. Teachers are hurt, they're wounded. So where does a teacher start who's listening to you and thinking, “Michelle, you are right”?

Michelle Singh: You start with acknowledgement. Acknowledgement that you are disconnected, that you are not fulfilled, that you realize, “I have been on autopilot for so long. I am burnt out. I need help.” And when you start with acknowledgement, then you're starting to confront the behaviors and the beliefs that are keeping you stuck in that lack of fulfillment. Really think about: what does fulfillment mean to you? What is it to feel like your cup is full? What is it to feel like I am totally connected with my why, and I have defined success on my terms — not society's standards, not someone else's standards? What does that feel like to me? What does that look like to me? You have to define those things for yourself, and you have to acknowledge beliefs and behaviors that are not serving you well. And I'll tell you this — it's not something you can do alone. You know how there's the A-team? I have the Michelle team. That's God, that's my therapist, that's a coach, and that's a community. Because you can't do this work alone. I have to have those four things to be able to say, “Okay, this is when perfectionism is coming in. This is when that limiting belief is coming in. This is when that imposter syndrome is coming in.” And here's what I can do to move forward.

Vicki Davis: When you have too much, it's too much. And it's hard when you get there, Michelle. Speaking from experience, some teachers feel like there's no option but to quit. That's just where they are.

Michelle Singh: I know. I've been there. I have been there, where I felt I just didn't have another way out. My health was at risk — my mental health, my emotional health, my physical health — all of that was at risk because of the work environment I was in. And I had gotten to the point where I just could not take it anymore. I literally broke down in tears in the office of my supervisor's supervisor — she was a superintendent. And I left shortly after that. After 15 years in the public school system, I chucked up the deuces and I left. Now I'm still connected — I still do work as a consultant, and I still serve. However, I do it on my own terms.

Vicki Davis: So we acknowledge that there is a time when you have to step away. There is that time.

Michelle Singh: You have to. And it's not easy to step away — 15 years in a career, and you don't know what's next. But when your health and your family are at stake, when you're looking at all of those things and realizing you might not be here in a couple of years because your health is getting so bad — then you have to make a decision to prioritize yourself. And that's what a lot of us don't do. We are great at doing everything for everybody else and saying yes to everything, but we don't prioritize ourselves. That's one of the things I've learned to do in the past couple of years: say yes to myself. Say yes to myself, and say no, and set boundaries.

Vicki Davis: Boundaries is a great word. Because when you say yes to one thing, you're saying no to something else. So there are seasons, and it's okay to transition. I'm curious, though — you're doing your paper on this right now for your dissertation. Are there some low-hanging fruit you can point teachers to, to help them engage themselves?

Michelle Singh: I would say do a clarity audit. Let's call it that — a clarity audit, where you're really going to do some self-reflection to figure out what in your life makes you float and what in your life frustrates you. And then I would even say, make a list of the things that you no longer want to tolerate. The clarity audit will help you figure out the things that make you the happiest, that are completely aligned to your core values — this is your why, why you're here on this earth, why you're doing the work you're doing. But then also identify the things you don't want to do anymore, and figure out a way to not do those things anymore.

Vicki Davis: Unless it's the dishes — most of us are stuck with those. Home comes with you, especially when you're stressed out at home, you know?

Michelle Singh: There's a book I read when I left teaching and started on the entrepreneurial path — Rachel Rodgers (We Should All Be Millionaires). One of the things I learned from that book was identifying the things in your life that take up time where you could be doing something more valuable, and then delegating that. So for me, of course, driving — but also laundry. The time it would take me to do laundry, I could be doing something that could make me more money or more productive: write an article, do something for my students that's just more pleasing. So I delegate the laundry to a service. The cost of that was not as great as I thought, because I'm getting fulfillment from not doing it anymore and doing something I love instead. I was able to identify those things I no longer wanted to tolerate and figure out a way to get them done — and focus on the things that made me float.

Vicki Davis: Could we finish with a pep talk for teachers as they head back into their classrooms and just need some encouragement? What would you say to them?

Michelle Singh: It's so important to celebrate the small wins. We don't take time to do that — the smallest things. A kid smiled at you today. A kid said, “Hey, Miss, I like your shoes.” The smallest wins. I would say celebrate the small wins and write them down, because you're going to need to go back to those to boost you up when you're not feeling your best, when you're feeling like you're not enough. But know that you are enough.

Vicki Davis: Oh, those do help — taking those letters they write and putting them in an “atta-girl” drawer, opening it up and looking at them when you have the hard days, because they do come. Well, thank you for coming on the show today, Michelle.

Michelle Singh: You can connect with me at empty2empowered.com — that's the word “empty,” the number 2, empowered.com. And that's how we can stay connected.

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.

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]]> https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e947/feed/ 0 34927 Free AI for Teachers: How to Get Claude and ChatGPT Free https://www.coolcatteacher.com/free-ai-for-teachers/ https://www.coolcatteacher.com/free-ai-for-teachers/#respond Wed, 15 Jul 2026 18:58:48 +0000 https://www.coolcatteacher.com/?p=34913 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.

Claude is now free for verified K-12 teachers, and ChatGPT is free too. Here's how to get approved, which classroom tools connect, how to vibe code your own games, and how to keep student data safe.

The post Free AI for Teachers: How to Get Claude and ChatGPT Free 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.

I've made it no secret that I love Claude Cowork. This post provides an overview of how it works. I'll share the screenshots, tips, tricks, and some warnings. As of July 14, 2026, teachers can apply for a year of Claude. Even if you're not sure if you'll use it. I recommend doing it. Claude is amazing. (This coming from someone ChatGPT said was in the top 10% of users last year.)

Claude is free for verified K-12 teachers in the United States, and if you sign up by June 30, 2027, you get a full year — along with features built just for the classroom, like teaching skills and curriculum alignment. And this is on top of ChatGPT being free for teachers through June 2028, too.

Get ChatGPT Free for Teachers

Also, I have some warnings for using Claude Cowork as that is part of this “free” offering for teachers. (I always put free in quotes because remember, if something is free, you're the product. And teachers are the best people to train a product on the knowledge of the world. Companies are definitely getting something in return from teachers here.)

Remember that for both Claude and ChatGPT, you'll need two things: a school email and to be verified as a teacher. As of right now it is for US K-12 Teachers. Claude you can apply and then you get a year from approval. ChatGPT you can apply and get it through June 2028.

Get Claude for Teachers free →

The short (TLDR) version

Two of the biggest Two of the biggest AI tools are now free for teachers — Claude if you sign up by June 30, 2027, and ChatGPT through June 2028. Both require a school email and teacher verification. Below is how to get each one, how to vibe code your own classroom games, and a serious word about protecting student data.

Now, remember that Gemini for Education, which uses the Gemini 2.5 Pro model, is given to K12 educators at no cost. Also, if you take the Generative AI for Educators course, you can unlock three months of Google AI Pro at no charge. (as of July 15, 2026 when I post this.)

Claude for Teachers

You can get Claude for Teachers, which includes Claude Cowork that works on your desktop through this program. Once you're verified, it is free, and there are some benefits in terms of how it handles student data. I've got a section below on this as you'll want to know what it does, but if my teachers are using Claude, I'd want this for them just because of the data protection!

Once you're verified, it's completely free.

So, this is a little different than regular Claude because they aligned Claude with Learning Commons for state standards which is built into the teacher addition. In addition, materials from Illustrative Mathematics and OpenSciEd are also integrated (plus whatever else you want to add or create.)

What are these resources?

So, I didn't know what some of these resources were, so I. had to look them up.

  • Learning Commons — gives Claude the academic standards for all 50 states. Furthermore, beneath the standard are the small skills that go with it, along with the order in which students typically learn them. This is valuable training data. Again, I haven't used Learning Commons, but from first glance, it looks solid.
    TIP: What if your standards aren't in the Learning Commons? So, I align with AP Standards and CTSA, but I've used Claude Cowork with those. I downloaded the standards documents and put them in a folder for Claude Cowork to reference and use. Because Claude Cowork isn't just chat (it is more agentic), just having them in a folder and giving Claude access to the folder means that for the tasks you connect to that folder, it will align with those standards if you tell it to.
  • Illustrative Mathematics — a widely used, research-based math curriculum (IM v.360). Claude can pull from it so your math materials are grounded in a real, coherent progression. (Again, see the note above and you can align to your standards if you can get a PDF of them. I'm sure other tools will align soon as well.
  • OpenSciEd — a free, high-quality, phenomenon-based science curriculum. Claude can draw on it to build science lessons and student materials. This has lots of instructional materials that you can use. Here's an example of the elementary school materials.

Claude Connects To Other Tools

So, if you look at my AI Vocabulary Document (PDF), you'll see the acronym MCP. (I've embedded it below as a resource for you.)

Ai Terms Every Student Should KnowDownload

AI tools use something called MCP. It stands for Model Context Protocol, but let's talk simply.

MCP is a connector. Just like TCP was a connector to help us connect to web pages, MCP connects our AI tool to the tools we use.

What are examples of how MCP might be used?

So for example, I have an MCP connector for Fantastical that helps me work with my calendar. I also connect ot Todoist, which lets me work with my calendar. I use Spark to connect with my email. I'll tell you which one I don't use. I do not let it connect to Microsoft Outlook for my school email. That has PII in it. I can't use it there. (More on that later.)

So many teachers will love this one! Claude Cowork can connect straight to Canva, for example. That means you can describe what you want, and Claude will send an image over to Canva for you to edit. You can do the same with Adobe apps. There are so many connectors — you can browse them all at claude.com/connectors — but be wise about what you give it access to.

A Glitch with MCP's.

So, here's one thing I've discovered. Sometimes when you install a new MCP there are glitches. This is what happens – you try to type in the Claude chat and it won't. You can type other places but nowhere in that chat. I've researched and found that this happens for a variety of reasons. It might be a programming glitch or that you're pulling a lot of data through an MCP.

For this reason, I like to use things officially approved by Claude in their connectors directory. I also use Airtable, Evernote, WordPress, and several other connectors.

How an MCP from Claude Cowork was used in publishing this post.

For example, I wrote this blog post in Claude. I put all of what I wanted in it. I drafted it, and Claude ran a fact check and formatted for me. Then, when I was happy, I “pushed” the draft to WordPress. Then, I am in this blog post editing and rewording. The only drawback is sometimes Claude makes my words, well, “Claudish,” and I want them to be “Vicki-ish” and just write like me, so that takes some tweaking, but overall, it is a time saver and is very helpful!

Set Your Permissions

Here's the thing I love about Claude Cowork: you get very granular control. For just about every task, you can choose:

Your four permission levels

  • No access — Claude can't touch it.
  • Read only — Claude can look, but not change anything.
  • Approval required — Claude asks you before every action.
  • Everything — Claude can act on its own for that task.

You can set this per tool. Below are my own settings for Airtable, the database I use to track my shows.

Claude Cowork works largely on your computer. (They've built ways to move things between my phone and my computer, but Cowork mostly lives on the desktop.) This is where you get to real agentic power — where Claude can carry a task forward on its own. You can have it scan a school announcements page and write a summary for your class newsletter, and plenty of other tasks like that. Claude Cowork has “chat” “Cowork” and also a “Code” button available.”

Download Claude Cowork – Mac or PC

Claude Design can create designs and also send things over to Canva. It works in your web browser. It is not available inside Claude Cowork but only on the web. The goal is you can create design packages and it can quickly create and duplicate for you. And while you can send to Canva, Adobe has MCP's that are really powerful.

Claude Design is a powerful tool for creating prototypes, apps, web pages, animations, and more.

And Claude Cowork can go active inside your Chrome browser tabs — with your permission. That permission piece is exactly where training has to come in. You need to know where to use it and where not to. For example, you could log into your student information system and hand Claude access to that tab if you didn't know better. Training is what helps people know not to do that. But it will happen — which is why we have to teach it.

Claude for Teachers also includes Claude Code, the tool developers use to build software. Don't let the name scare you off — this is exactly what makes vibe coding possible, and it's the piece I want you to get excited about. More on that in a second.

One more distinction. Skills can run inside the traditional chat you're used to (chat is when you just talk with an AI tool, and each chat is its own separate work), but skills also run inside Cowork. I have lots of tasks that Cowork does for me every week.

OK, I take it back. There is something called “Prompt injection” that people can run and use. I'm pretty sure the names of my skills could open me up to that if I were targeted – so I didn't share my skills. Sorry.

Try this tomorrow

Ask Claude to take one existing worksheet and build three tiered versions of it — below, at, and above grade level — using the differentiation skill. One upload, one prompt, and you'll see the difference the standards alignment makes. Just take off the names!

I'll be honest about one caution here, too. An example used on the Anthropic website was someone using IEP meeting notes with Claude. I think that's an area where I think you'd be walking into a problem. Keep the most sensitive student records out until you fully understand the settings.

Vibe Coding For Amazing Learning

Here's the part we haven't even talked about yet, and it might be my favorite. We sat down with Donnie Piercey about vibe coding, and it's one of the best uses of an AI tool like Claude.

Vibe coding means you describe what you want and the AI writes the program for you. You upload your vocabulary, make a game of your choosing, and hand your students a link right from inside Claude Code. They play, they review, and you built it in an afternoon.

I vibe coded an AI review game and an innovation tracker I call my turtle tracker, and I documented how I built both. Honestly? The vibe coding I did this past school year did more to help my students than anything else I tried. They didn't stop at playing the games I made — they started vibe coding their own review games and sharing them with each other in Google Classroom.

This and Claude Cowork are my two favorite uses of this tool.

I used to just use Claude chat and then Claude Cowork to write these games. Then, just click share and post the link inside Google Classroom.

I decided to learn more about Claude Code, and wow, I'm glad I did. If you want to know how I made this game from the PDF of my AI Vocab that I embedded above, here are the step-by-step instructions. (Google Doc)

🎮 Spy the AI — an AI vocabulary game

Do you know your AI vocabulary? Help the cat get to ISTE and see what level you are!

Play Spy the AI →

🐢 The Turtle Tracker — an innovation tracker

I vibe coded this tool to run right in your browser — even on your phone — to help you keep up with what you want to try next.

Open the Turtle Tracker →

Both of these — and the writeups of exactly how I built them — live in my 50+ AI and EdTech Tools doc from my ISTE session. ,Here are the instructions for the more advanced way I vibe coded these games. But start small.

And here's the kicker for teachers: because Claude for Teachers includes Claude Code, the same tool I used to build these is now free for you, too.

How to get verified

Ready to get Claude for Teachers?

It's for individual educators (not whole schools or districts — those use Claude for Nonprofits). You'll verify with your school email. Sign up by June 30, 2027, for a full free year.

Get verified →

What about the limits?

There are some limits — I'm sure of it, because there's a little star at the bottom of the page noting that “extra usage limits apply.” And as a heavy user of Claude Cowork, I know how easy it is to hit those limits. So it helps to understand what's being measured and how not to get stuck in the middle of a task.

What is a token?

Vocabulary

A token is a small piece of text. As a common rule of thumb, one token is roughly 4 characters, or about ¾ of an English word (the exact count varies by tool and language). Tokens are simply how AI measures the work it's doing — every word you type and every word Claude writes back is counted in tokens, and that count is what determines how much processing you're using. Anthropic token-counting docs

If you want to keep an eye on your usage, two simple commands help. Just type the slash and the word:

/session-audit — looks at everything you're doing in Claude Cowork and will inventory transcripts and give you recommendations. Very cool if you've been using Claude a while to see if you can make improvements.

/context — shows your current conversation's context window as a colored grid, with tips on what's taking up the most space.

These slash commands can be very useful. I asked Claude Cowork to go through and find the most useful slash commands and make a graphic from them. However, a lot of them were for skills or things I haven't installed.

So, just click in the box and type the forward slash – / . A useful one that opps up for me is “accessibility-review.” This is basically a fast way to open your skills but also some from anthropic that it creates.

Don't forget — ChatGPT is free for teachers too

I want to make sure you know that ChatGPT is also free for teachers through June 2028. It works a little differently — it's a shared workspace for teachers and staff at a K-12 school or district, where you can securely work with classroom materials, collaborate with colleagues, and (like Claude) your data isn't used to train the models by default.

Get ChatGPT Free for Teachers

Set up ChatGPT for Teachers →

Between these two as well as the Gemini that is available for teachers through your Google accounts, we have three free tools that can help us. Gemini also has Gems (like the Edugems listed by my friend Eric Curts.) I think it is useful for IT Coaches and teachers, when you're ready, to use different models. You'll find each have different uses as well.

These are powerful tools. But we have to keep the teacher firmly in control. But part of being in control is knowing what you can do to begin with.

Where to learn more

If you want to get better at prompting, here's the exact approach I teach my students: my presentation on crafting effective AI prompts.

And Claude Cowork? I think this is something I'll be teaching a lot more about soon — so if that's what you're here for, follow my YouTube channel. In the meantime, go ahead and get approved. It's free, the protections are real, and the best way to learn it is to start.

See how I teach about AI to my middle and high school students with lesson plans and resources you can use.

Get Claude for Teachers free →

See you later, educator.

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]]> https://www.coolcatteacher.com/free-ai-for-teachers/feed/ 0 34913 A Real Teacher Sparking Curiosity Makes All the Difference https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e946/ https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e946/#respond Wed, 15 Jul 2026 11:00:00 +0000 https://www.coolcatteacher.com/?p=34910 From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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Sparking curiosity starts with a real teacher. STEM educator Brandie Wright shares the ISTE story people assumed was AI — and why human connection still wins in the age of AI.

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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.

Watch on YouTube and subscribe for new episodes every week.

Key Takeaways for Teachers from Brandie Wright

  • Relationships come before content. At YELLOWHAB, students belong to a “crew” — a school family that stays together year after year. That four-year relationship is why a once-reluctant student now grabs the whiteboard marker and asks for math problems.
  • “Sitting here talking — this is real. The human connection is real, being able to look at someone is real. You don't have to guess.” Brandie's reminder that presence is the thing AI can't fake — and the thing students are hungriest for.
  • Know where AI's “believable” stories come from. Brandie's insight: generated responses feel real because a human programmed them and they studied human stories. Teaching students that is AI literacy.
  • Small, human, and hands-on beats screens-alone. Brandie's students use i-Ready and IXL “a little here and there,” but their go-to is a whiteboard marker and a teacher who loves them — the craft the pandemic proved we can't replace.

Try This Tomorrow

Open tomorrow's lesson with a short story hook that raises a question you don't answer right away, and start a class “wonder book” where students park the questions they can't answer yet. Revisit one each week. It costs nothing and signals that curiosity is welcome here.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

  • YELLOWHAB — the tuition-free micro school in Norfolk, Virginia, founded by Pharrell Williams' nonprofit YELLOW, where Brandie teaches.
  • ISTE Generation AI & AI Explorations — the community-of-practice and coaching work behind the “portrait of an AI graduate” pavilion Brandie helped facilitate at ISTE.
  • CodeAI (formerly Code.org) — Karim Meghji's line Vicki quotes: it's “humans communicating with humans about how to use the machine.”
  • NotebookLM — the Google AI tool Brandie references that can generate podcast-style audio (an example of why real human conversation still matters).
  • i-Ready and IXL — the practice platforms Brandie's students use “a little here and there.”
  • Todd Nesloney — whose “What am I reading?” door-sign idea (every adult in the building showing the book they're reading) Vicki shares in the opening.

About Brandie Wright

Brandie Wright took the ISTE 2026 stage in June in Orlando to talk about how she inspired curiosity in a student. It was awesome!
Brandie Wright took the ISTE 2026 stage in June in Orlando to talk about how she inspired curiosity in a student. It was awesome!

Brandie Wright is a STEM educator and AI coach at YELLOWHAB, the tuition-free micro school Pharrell Williams founded in Norfolk, Virginia. She was a 2026 ISTELive main-stage speaker on sparking curiosity, facilitates a Generation AI community of practice for STEAM educators (grades 4–12), and serves as an instructional coach for ISTE's AI Explorations course.

Connect with Brandie: brandie@teamyellow.org

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Episode Transcript

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

Click to read the full transcript

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

Vicki Davis: Happy wonderful Classroom Wednesday. On today's show, we're talking about sparking curiosity. Here are three ideas. One, keep a wonder book — the place where you collect the quotes, the overheard conversations, and the questions you don't have answers to yet. Two, let's open our lessons with a story hook that sparks curiosity. Three, when Todd Nesloney was an elementary principal, every door in his building had a sign: “What am I reading?” — with the cover of the book. Not just teachers — the custodian, the counselor, the ladies in the lunchroom, and the PE coach. Every adult in that building was quietly telling kids, “I have a lot to learn. I'm still curious, and I'm still reading.” Now, let's find out how Brandie sparks curiosity in her students.

Vicki Davis: Brandie Wright is a STEM educator and AI coach at YELLOWHAB, the tuition-free micro school Pharrell Williams created in Norfolk to even the odds for kids the system too often overlooks. So, Brandie, you took the main stage on Sunday. How did you feel when the folks at ISTE emailed you and said, “Hey, we want you to tell your story about how you teach kids?”

Brandie Wright: I was blown away. This was actually a dream of mine — to be on the main stage. A few years ago I told my friend, “Take a picture of me in front of the stage. I'm going to do that one day.” They asked me to share a story around curiosity. They said, “We want the teacher's story. We want your story.” He was here. He came.

Vicki Davis: The story of a real student.

Brandie Wright: He and his father came, and they were on the front row. That was a last-minute gift from our school. I didn't know that was going to be possible. I didn't think people would think he wasn't real until my friend told me literally just yesterday. She said, “No — people thought you made him up.” And I said, “Really?” Once I had the full story and how I wanted to tell it, I gave them pictures. So that picture of him looking up — that's a real picture my coworker took. We were in the aquarium and she took it.

Vicki Davis: There's a whole other issue we can talk about in a minute. I was sitting there, and I was messaging my son John, and I said, “Okay, this is an amazing person. I just hope the student is real.” So tell a little bit about this student. Did you get to use his real name?

Brandie Wright: That is his real name.

Vicki Davis: So tell a little bit about this student.

Brandie Wright: When I first met Kamari, the school had only been open two years. He was in third grade. He's a twin — he and his twin went there, and I became their new teacher in the middle of the school year, in January. So you can imagine: they were already at a new school that had just started this new concept of a micro school. “What do you mean? I'm coming from a public school, and now I'm in this small school with these kids I don't know.” He was just one of those kids. He was busy, but he was talkative, and I could tell he loved basketball, he loved football — that was the thing. It didn't take very long for us to develop a connection. I think it came around because I also love football.

Vicki Davis: Some kids just have connections with different people.

Brandie Wright: Yes, they do. So we have a format at our school we call crew. Some schools do this — it's not just homeroom. Crew is very much like your school family. You have a crew leader, and I was his crew leader. They come to us first in the morning, and we also see them at the end of the day. When we go on a field trip or any learning experience, we go by crew. And then they stay with us every year. This is his fourth year in my crew. So you can imagine the relationship we've built. Over the years it's gone from — I came to his football game and it was like, “Whoa, you're coming to my football game?” — to a real connection. And I love how inquisitive he is. Literally when they came here for the main stage, right outside there's a nice sign with this thing standing up and things sticking out of it. I said, “Let's go take a picture in front of this sign.” And he looked up and said, “Do you think they made that?” And I said — see, this is what I'm saying. He sees things and he automatically asks questions. I love it. That's just his thing.

Brandie Wright: And he doesn't mind. He knows he can say, “Miss Brandy, what about this?” That's how I said my name on stage — that was intentional, because that's how he says my name. At our school, they can address us however we allow them to; they don't have to say Miss Wright. I told him they can call me Miss Brandy — you can call me Miss B, most of them say Miss Brandy. How he says my name, it's like it's one word: “Miss Brandy.” I love it. He literally is that inquisitive. He loves to try new foods.

Brandie Wright: Anything I say — “Let's try this,” or “What do you think about this?” — he's like, “Okay,” ready to try it. And math has been a real challenge, where he loves it but sometimes he gets frustrated. I had to remind him — I was his math teacher in the beginning, because we had a blended learning environment where all of us taught two classes. In micro schools, that's what happens. So I was teaching missions and numeracy — I was his numeracy teacher. Now I'm not his math teacher, but during crew he'll grab the whiteboard marker — that's the “magical” thing I mean. Because our table is a whiteboard, he'll say, “Miss Brandy, give me some multiplication facts.” We're learning multi-digit, and he's like, “Can you give me some problems? Can you write some problems on that?”

Vicki Davis: He goes from a kid who doesn't like math to one who works math for fun.

Brandie Wright: He loves it — with me. And I'm not even his math teacher anymore. Sometimes when he's in math and she has to push him on new things, when he gets frustrated, she sends him to me. Because crew is very much like family — I'm his school mom. So if Kamari's frustrated, if he's stuck in the mud, if he's a little rambunctious and needs to be calmed down, they send him to me. Or they'll say, “Go talk to Miss Brandy about this.” But when he's learning something new, he's so excited about math — that is his thing. He's like, “I can do this, I love it.” The whiteboard marker is truly magical.

Vicki Davis: I'm so glad, Brandie, that I found you yesterday at the AI portrait-of-an-AI-graduate pavilion. I want to talk about that pavilion — what is happening there? Because I think this is a really neat thing to do at a conference.

Brandie Wright: One hundred percent. They are highlighting each role — there are six roles. I have had the privilege of facilitating a community of practice for Generation AI. It's the STEAM group, and they are educators teaching grades four through twelve. We had two communities of practice, but the STEAM grades four through twelve is the one I facilitate. What they had to do was pick a strand — one of the roles — and create a proposal: “How are you using generative AI to address a particular problem of practice?” So they could look at their class, or if they're a coach, at the educators they train, and say, “I've identified this issue, and this is how generative AI can help me with it.” Then they go through a design-thinking type process — just like we teach students to do — and submit it as a proposal. Some were actually able to test it, implement it, get data, and show it. Some are in the middle — we started this in February, so some are still in the planning phases. The way the AI pavilion was set up, I thought, was genius. On one side of the board it'll say “problem solver,” and there are Chromebooks there for you to go through a little exercise. On the other side, one of our community-of-practice members was showing how they used their problem of practice to do problem solving.

Vicki Davis: Sometimes it was a team of two, sometimes three or four. What I like is that it's humans communicating with humans about how to use the machine. I got that quote from Karim Meghji from CodeAI yesterday — but it feels very teachery.

Brandie Wright: Absolutely. People could walk around and ask questions. We explained: this is science-fair style. You're not here to stand and do a presentation — you're here so people feel like, “Yeah, I'm a science teacher. How did you do that?” Then you get to talk to them, they get to ask questions, they can see your slides, but they can also just talk to you: “Show me how you did that.” That's what it was.

Vicki Davis: As I sat there — you, and then the lady after you — I literally texted our cameraman John and said, “Okay, this would be great, except I think AI wrote these stories. I think these kids aren't real.” So what makes me, as a teacher, listen to a teacher? There was nothing about you that was unbelievable — you were telling that story like it was real. But what makes me and others have to come to you and say, “Was that a real student?” — and he was sitting on the front row. Why do we have to prove we're human in the age of AI? It bothers me that I made the mistake of thinking that was not a real student. Why is it that you're telling a story and you have to prove that it's real?

Brandie Wright: Honestly, my answer is probably going to be a little shocking, but it's because we forget where AI really comes from. The things that are generated — the responses — they're generated by a computer that was programmed by a human and studied human stories. So they're believable because there was a human that actually programmed the response. It should seem real. But it's sad that they're so real — it's sad sometimes that it's so believable, because it makes people think they don't need the actual human. That's the sad part. I agree with you that we should be able to know that this was a real person.

Vicki Davis: Are we going to have to have a stamp now? “Real human. Real human story.” We shouldn't have to do that.

Brandie Wright: Think about food — I'll give an analogy. Back in the day, we knew that when we got a potato chip, or when we went to McDonald's as kids, the french fries were french fries. We knew they were from potatoes. Do we think they're from potatoes now? Who knows. That's the point. There was a time when you knew that when someone wrote a book, those were their words. You knew when you read a poem that they wrote that poem; you knew when you saw a picture that they painted it. Now, because of the progression of technology, you do have to wonder. At some point I think it's going to get to where people won't care, unfortunately — they'll just say, “Well, maybe it wasn't.”

Vicki Davis: We don't want to be deceived. I've seen so many people reshare stories about that teacher who — it was a fake teacher, a fake reason, shared for whatever reason to get clicks. Brandie, it makes me feel good as a teacher to have a human, because we relate. And I have to say this about your founder: I've been through a couple of hard years with the pandemic, and I've probably half-funded your school for how many times I've played “Happy.” My son can attest to that. I've had my parents pass, all the different things, but it's like — “Okay, I'm going to be happy.” I would play that song, and if I had a crabby person in my house, I'd turn it on and leave the house. Because it's a decision. You know so much about thriving in this age — the decisions we as humans make that nobody can make for us, the human connections we have, asking the questions. Because how would I have known? Remember how the keynote speaker said we have to admit that we don't know what we don't know? If I hadn't actually asked you that question, you would have —

Brandie Wright: Absolutely. You would have thought he wasn't real.

Vicki Davis: Then how would I know? We're going to move forward with real conversations and real questions — being real.

Brandie Wright: So I have a question for you. If you didn't know he was real, would it change the impact of my story? When you found out he was real —

Vicki Davis: It does make a difference. Because AI is supposed to help us be better humans, not pretend to be human. When we feel like there's something artificial in it — I think we're so hungry for human connection since the pandemic in particular. We want real. I want a connection with a real woman on stage. And see, now that I've talked to you, I have that connection. Now I love the story enough to reach out to the media team and say, “Hey, can I talk to her?” Because here's the thing — even though I wasn't sure the story was true, I felt like you were real. There had to be a story behind this story. Does that make sense?

Brandie Wright: Absolutely. I think, to your credit, doing this — I strongly encourage you to continue to do this in this age of AI, where tools such as NotebookLM (which I love) create podcasts and things using AI. This is important. Sitting here talking — this is real. The human connection is real, being able to look at someone is real. You don't have to guess. You know this is me. If you had sent me the questions over email, I could have typed anything.

Vicki Davis: They'll send people the questions for that very reason.

Brandie Wright: See — so this is important.

Vicki Davis: I don't want AI slop. Human connection — because I think we're hungry for it. And I think our kids are hungry for it, because your student could all day long interact with AI. He would never be doing math problems on his own if he interacted with AI. It's the craftsmanship of being a teacher.

Brandie Wright: You want the real response. And they prefer it. I think kids prefer to be with the teacher physically. That's one of the big things about our school — that's why it's small. That's why we keep our classes small. There's power in these small groups so that they don't get lost, and they're not going to depend on the technology. They would much rather grab a whiteboard marker and work out the problem — that's most of the kids. We use i-Ready and IXL and all the things for a little bit here and there, but that's not their go-to. It's not their preference. So we have to maintain that. If we could really maintain their desire and keep feeding it so they don't lose it — because if we starve that from them, if we keep it from them, then it'll dwindle. They won't have it anymore. So we've got to keep it.

Vicki Davis: If we have any proof from the pandemic, it's that screens and kids by themselves don't make progress. It's teachers who are artisans and craftsmen — who love the kids and who help us move forward. We have been talking with Brandie Wright, STEM educator and AI coach at YELLOWHAB, the tuition-free micro school Pharrell Williams created in Norfolk. This has been a joy. Thank you for letting me find you yesterday at the AI pavilion, and for changing your schedule so we could sit down and talk. This went in a direction we didn't expect.

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]]> https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e946/feed/ 0 34910 AI Assisted Grading: A Teacher’s 30-Second Checklist https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e945/ https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e945/#respond Tue, 14 Jul 2026 11:00:00 +0000 https://www.coolcatteacher.com/?p=34898 From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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AI assisted grading is coming fast. Steve Swanson built an AI grading tool — then deleted the button that would grade for him. Here's his 30-second checklist for evaluating any AI assessment tool before you let it near student work.

The post AI Assisted Grading: A Teacher’s 30-Second Checklist 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.

AI assisted grading, I predict, will be a hot topic — even hotter this school year as more teachers move towards this approach. That said, we have to understand how to train it, how it works, and how to select tools in order to safely do AI assisted grading.

Watch on YouTube and subscribe for new episodes every week.

Key Takeaways for Teachers from Steve Swanson

  • He built the auto-grade button — then deleted it. Steve could push one button, pull every assignment out of Google Classroom, grade them all, and send them straight back to students. He describes that as “sort of like what you would call a black box. You don't see it happening.” He took it out. As he puts it, that decision wasn't only the thinking process — “it's 22 years of teaching as well. It just doesn't feel right.” When the person who built the shortcut refuses to ship it, teachers should pay attention.
  • Ask one question before any AI tool touches student work: where does the data go? Steve says he built ClassLens around FERPA and student-data privacy from the ground up, and that the only thing he stores is an obscure ID number Google assigns each student. That's the question — not “how fast is it,” but “where is it stored, what is being stored, and who keeps it?” Ask the vendor. Make them answer.
  • The teaching assistant analogy reframes the whole debate. Steve points out that professors have used TAs to grade for generations — but the professor has the final say. Vicki was a TA in college and graded everything, then handed her notes to the professor. AI can suggest. It cannot decide. As Steve says, “because we're the final say in their grade, I think every single assignment, every comment, should pass through our eyes and be editable so we can change it.” Relate to educate — and the relationship runs through the gradebook too.
  • Your rubric is the input that determines the output. “AI, the more context you give, the better output they can give you,” Steve says. “So if you write a really good rubric, they'll grade it pretty much spot on to what you're asking.” The work you skip on the front end shows up as garbage on the back end.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

About Steve Swanson

Steve Swanson the creator of Class Lens.

Steve describes himself and his tool this way:

Steven Swanson teaches engineering in the four-year engineering academy at Whittier High School (California)— design/drafting, mechatronics, and senior capstone. He also teaches AP Computer Science and AP Physics online. Steven is the founder of Evolved Academics, LLC (https://www.evolvedacademics.com) and the builder of ClassLens (https://www.classlens.com), the only K-12 AI grading tool with Google's restricted-scope OAuth verification, SOC 2 Type I attested, CASA Tier 2, and CISA Secure by Design Pledge signatory. He built ClassLens while teaching full time, because he needed it for his own gradebook.

(The compliance and certification claims above are Steve's own description of his product and have not been independently verified by Cool Cat Teacher. As always, run any tool through your own district's privacy and security review before using it with student work.)

Connect with Steve:

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Episode Transcript

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

Click to read the full transcript

Vicki Davis: Happy Tech Tip Tuesday. Today we'll be talking about AI assessment. For me, this summertime is the time that I spend training the AI so that it can help me assess. Always have you in the loop. You should be the one giving grades, as well as disclose to your students how you're using the artificial intelligence and how you are training it. This helps you have both credibility with your students and helps you save time in your modeling how you want artificial intelligence to be used. I hope you enjoyed today's Tech Tip Tuesday here on the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast.

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

Vicki Davis: Today we're talking with Steven Swanson. He is a high school engineering teacher at Whittier High School and also an AP Computer Science and AP Physics teacher. He built a tool called ClassLens, an AI grading tool he made because he needed it for his own gradebook. He is unique in the fact that he deleted a feature to automatically return AI-generated grades to students. And that requires that teachers review everything that AI has suggested for feedback. And we're going to get into that.

Vicki Davis: Steve, ClassLens started because you needed it for your own gradebook. I want you to take me back to the moment in your teaching where you said, “I can't keep doing this. There's a better way and I can build it.”

Steven Swanson: The very first day that hit me was — I take a lot of days off because I run an academy. I'm off maybe fifteen days a year for field trips. And I missed one or two days in a row, because sometimes we do our field trips back to back. And I remember I gave one extra assignment than usual to my sophomores. And I did that because they can be a little squirrely and I thought this better keep them a little bit busier. So I gave them that extra one.

Steven Swanson: And when I came back — I said, “You know what, let me grade this.” The night before I went back, actually. And I started grading, and I saw there was like 150 individual things to look at. You might know this too: a lot of teachers, we try to become efficient. We'll sometimes give credit or no credit. If they turn this in and they did the work — sometimes homework is like that, I just check whether they do it or not. Then they have the high-stakes assignments where you're checking every little thing.

Steven Swanson: But I don't feel like that was valuable. They were drawing CAD — computer-aided drafting, for those who are wondering what CAD is. I teach engineering in this class. And I looked at them and I wanted them to be not only accountable, but mainly I wanted them to know what they did wrong if they were doing something wrong. They spent two hours doing it. I wanted them to know.

Steven Swanson: I started it and I said, this is going to take me all night if I want to actually give feedback too. Think about that — writing each individual comment. I have a hundred and fifty-something students. So I was like, this is going to take a long time. So I thought, let me try to create something where maybe I could just take a glance at it and give them a comment on whether they did it right or not. So that's where it started.

Vicki Davis: And I've written lots of things to help me, because when you have something — I mean, I always review it — but when you have something and you have a lot of little boxes to check, if it can at least check the boxes for you, then that tells you where to guide. And it just speeds it up.

Steven Swanson: Yeah. Through all my work I did on it, I did find most recently that making them rubrics — so if you build a very good rubric, and you might know this too, and some of your listeners: AI, the more context you give, the better output they can give you. So if you write a really good rubric, they'll grade it pretty much spot on to what you're asking.

Vicki Davis: Recently I had Christian Miller, author of The Honesty Crisis, on my show, and he says — this is a great quote — that when students get feedback from the teacher and aren't told that AI did it, and it looks like it's coming from the teacher, he said, quote, “It's not right. They're actually being dishonest towards their students, and that's a violation of trust.” What's your opinion on what he said?

Steven Swanson: I 100% agree. In fact, I talked to an administrator about it. We were chatting as I was building it. He said, “I can see this as a really good tool. And I see it as a great tool for low-stakes, high-volume assignments, where you just want to give a little bit more back to the kid, but you just don't have the time.” He suggested — I think this is a good idea — that teachers who use this should put something in their syllabus that says, “Hey, I do use an AI grading tool for assignments, and sometimes the feedback may be given back for assignments.”

Steven Swanson: So definitely, that's a great idea. And I think that's always the case. Even the grade itself — even if it's assisted, even though I got rid of the auto-return feature, it passes in front of me and I'm looking at each grade and I'm looking at each comment. I still think there should be something. I don't know if it's per assignment. I don't know if you need to have every single one say this was written by an AI tool. I don't know about that — that could be argued either way. But definitely it should be stated somewhere, whether it's on your website, syllabus, or assignment paper.

Vicki Davis: So you just said something that we're going to dig into. You turned off the auto-grade — I hate to use the word “grade,” because for me, I feel like as the teacher, every grade passes through me. Now, feedback, I can have it help me write, and then I need to adjust it. But I should look at everything, which is basically what you've done. But most AI-assisted grading tools allow a teacher just to hit a button and just send it back. So why were you willing to — take me through the mental process of “okay, I'm going to turn this off, and I know everybody else does it, but this is why.”

Steven Swanson: First off, for some of the listeners, it's called “human in the loop” now. That's what it's often called — does this pass through human inspection or not? I don't want to say it was a mental thought. It was more of a gut feeling. In the process of building this, you start building feature upon feature upon feature. And when you're in product development — and this is for any product — what you want to do is just make the easiest environment for the end user, a teacher or whoever it is. And then you think, how can I make their life the easiest, where everything is efficient and everything's done for you, because automation is key to a lot of things.

Steven Swanson: As you're pushing the envelope of development, I could get to a point where I could say, “Hey, I could just push a button.” It sucks all the assignments out of whatever you're using — say that's Google Classroom — and it pulls the assignments out, grades them all, and then sends them right back to the student. That's sort of like what you would call a black box. You don't see it happening. Upon creating it, it almost felt immediately wrong. “Hey, this doesn't feel right.” And that's not only the thinking process, it's 22 years of teaching as well. It just doesn't feel right.

Vicki Davis: We want help. We want to save time. But we also — I mean, we have a relationship with students. That's a relationship of trust. Even when I'm not there, when my sub is there and I'm not, I want to know what went on, you know? I don't like to just hand something over with no supervision. Do you think that's why maybe it felt icky? Or have you talked to other teachers and how they feel about it?

Steven Swanson: I did talk to another teacher about it. But I think if you think of like a multiple choice — I can push a button, it grades them all, but you have faith that when I say the correct answer is A, then a student chooses A, it will get it right. And if they chose B, they will get it wrong. And you have faith in that, correct?

Steven Swanson: If you had that same faith with an AI — and nobody does right now — that it's going to do everything right every single time… that faith doesn't exist right now. It's building that way. Could they get to that point where you just go, “Wow, everything it does is correct”? Maybe 10 years from now, I don't know. But it's not here today.

Vicki Davis: So I want to say this. First of all, ClassLens is not sponsoring this. The reason I accepted your pitch to me — and I have to say that, or else everybody in the world will just send me emails — but you're a teacher, and in your email, you said something that I really want to know the answer to. You said that there is one question every teacher needs to ask before they let any AI tool grade student work. What is that question?

Steven Swanson: When you're doing it, you want to know what's happening to it. Like, where does it go? Where is it stored?

Steven Swanson: I know when I built it — just because I know about FERPA and privacy with student data — I built that from the ground up. That's where I started. And then I realized, okay, where is this going to go? And then I realized, no, it's not going to go anywhere. It's not going to even be stored on my server. It goes to a trusted LLM company. It's a Google one, made by Google — and because Google Classroom created it, I chose that one.

Steven Swanson: And they also are one of the only companies where they will approve a zero, where they hold none of your data, and it immediately deletes it. And I delete it from my server immediately after grading, and the teacher approves it and it goes back in. And on my end, I don't need to sell it. I don't need to collect data. That's not my forte. And I definitely don't have the money to pay for that.

Steven Swanson: So no, definitely that was something you should always look at. And for the most part, a lot of districts, before they even approve the use of this — and some districts do require that and others do not, depends on your state — a lot of them will actually look at that for you. They're going to look and say, okay, they want to know every spot of where this is stored, what is being stored. Is it their name? What is it?

Steven Swanson: The only thing I do store is an obscure number that Google assigns to each student. And I only keep that because I'm planning the next feature, which is if a student wanted to opt out, you would be able to check that box for the student and say, okay, when the grades pass through, it doesn't do anything for that student. I can foresee that happening in the future where districts might allow opting out, or even a state might say it's required.

Vicki Davis: If you could change one thing about how the ed tech industry sells AI to schools right now, what would it be?

Steven Swanson: I haven't thought too much about that, but I do know that it's being flooded. They're adding AI tools to everything. I would say that anything — and if this isn't already true for the company — I think they have to have human in the loop for teacher stuff. I mean, if it involves students and their grades and the grades they're getting, I think human in the loop has to be every part of it.

Steven Swanson: And that's why I pretty much reached out to you: you need to have a teacher look at this stuff. You can suggest whatever you want. Here's a comment it should be. Here's a grade that I think it should be. But all of those should be editable by the teacher before they click “Okay, I agree to all this,” and then send it to my students. That's kind of how ClassLens does it. It just lists all the grades, the comments, and you can click on them and see the work and double-check and say — like, every once in a while I'll see something that's a little low grade, and let me see, why is that getting such a low grade? Let me look at that assignment and see if I agree with that grade.

Steven Swanson: You definitely want that. Can you have somebody suggest grades? Sure. People have forever used — what? — teaching assistants. Colleges use that, where they have somebody grade a lot of their professors' work and stuff like that. But because we're the final say in their grade, I think every single assignment, every comment, should pass through our eyes and be editable so we can change it.

Vicki Davis: Steve, that's such a great analogy, because I was a TA in college and I graded everything and then wrote my notes and gave it to the professor, but he had the ultimate say. Obviously I wasn't the professor. So what a great analogy — because we have used people to help us. It's just that most of us classroom teachers in K-12, most of us don't qualify for any help. And so we're so desperate and overworked that we want that help.

Vicki Davis: Let's shift to this. Pretend that a teacher is listening to this in their car and they're saying, “Okay, I think I'm going to try to use an AI tool to grade work tomorrow.” Could you give them a 30-second checklist? What should they be looking for as they prepare to do that?

Steven Swanson: One, obviously make sure the Google auth — we talked about that. Make sure that when you sign into Google, or whatever your sign-in is, that there's no warnings or anything like that. Make sure there is a privacy agreement that they're not doing anything with the data.

Steven Swanson: And I think the best advice I can give them is: the first time you use it — and hopefully nobody's using it in a bind where they need their grades turned in 30 minutes — you should be able to provide yourself with enough time when you're using this for the first time. Grade it. Read every single comment. Read every single one. Even if you go, “Hey, this is just as long as grading” — yes, but you want to make sure it grades correctly. So look at every grade, look at all their work, look at all the comments and go, “How off is this from what I would have given?” Do that. Don't just trust it right off the bat. And do that for as many assignments as it takes before you start to feel comfortable with it.

Steven Swanson: Like, if you passed this work on to a human, like we just talked about — would you trust them right off the bat? I know I wouldn't. Even if the district said, “Hey, I've got somebody who'll grade your stuff for you, they sit right next to you” — I know that's never going to happen — but they'll grade your stuff. Yeah, I would still want to glance through it and look through it and kind of try to grasp if they were doing it correctly or the way I would have been assigning them, right? So I think they should do the same thing.

Vicki Davis: So Steve, you've been really emphatic: human in the loop. Is there anything else about the movement to try to give us AI assistance for assessment that makes you angry or really concerns you?

Steven Swanson: I wouldn't say angry. This is for science in general — I think they're building very quickly. They're almost trying to fly a plane while they build it at the same time. I'm talking about the AI companies themselves. And it's like an arms race.

Steven Swanson: I take that quote from — what is it — the dinosaur movie, where he says, “Your scientists are too busy thinking whether they can do it rather than if they should.”

Vicki Davis: Jurassic Park.

Steven Swanson: Jurassic Park. There you go. Jurassic Park.

Vicki Davis: I love that one, too.

Steven Swanson: Yeah. And it sometimes feels like that. It's like, “Hey, we have stuff. Let's try to figure out — one, just how can we use them right now? Where are we going with this? What is the plan next?” A lot of people don't know that. And I know it's uneasy for everybody, and it's uneasy for me. And I think most of your listeners — and probably you would agree — if I could snap my fingers and just go back before AI and say there was no AI, that life was easier. It's only going to get more complex as these AI models get more powerful and sharper and more capable.

Steven Swanson: Now you just take an LLM — a large language model, that's what they're called — and you give it tools that can do stuff, and then you call them agents, and then, you know, what's next? So I guess that's the stuff where — it's uncertainty, and everybody is uncomfortable with uncertainty. So I wouldn't say I'm angry about it, but uneasy about it, because it is uncertainty. And we don't know where this is all heading. I know where it is now, but I think the thing that keeps me up at night is: where does this all go? That's what's uneasy for most people.

Vicki Davis: It is. And it's something we talk about a lot on all my shows, because I believe that nobody's smart enough to be king of the hill. We've got to make a bigger hill. And particularly, we've got to make room for classroom teacher voices. And that's what you're giving us. I think it's great to have classroom teachers develop apps, just like classroom teachers having shows, right?

Vicki Davis: So we've been talking to Steven Swanson. He's a high school engineering teacher at Whittier High School and an AP Computer Science and AP Physics teacher. And he created ClassLens. And I can't finish the show without saying — tell us what movie was filmed at Whittier High School, for our listeners, as we finish.

Steven Swanson: Yeah, so if you've got any Back to the Future fans — the high school I work at is actually the home to Hill Valley High, which was the high school in Back to the Future.

Vicki Davis: So you've got some Back to the Future going with your AI-assisted grading. So good luck, Steve, and thanks for reaching out. Thanks for coming on the show and sharing your perspective.

Steven Swanson: Yeah, and thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

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The post AI Assisted Grading: A Teacher’s 30-Second Checklist appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

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