Vicki Davis: Today on Tech Tool Tuesday, we're talking about vibe coding for Gemini for teachers with Alice Keeler. Remember, go to the webpage for this episode for a lot of amazing resources at coolcatteacher.com forward slash E966.

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

Vicki Davis: I am so excited today to be talking with my friend Alice Keeler. She is the queen of spreadsheets and yes, Google gave her that name and she has her cat on camera. For those of you who are watching YouTube, well, I am the cool cat teacher, so there you go. She is a mom of five, author of eight books. She blogs at alicekeeler.com. She has an AI teacher toolbox that you definitely want to check out at educatoraiassistant.com. It not only creates lesson plans rubrics, but it collects no data. All of her data collection-free add-ons are at alicekeeler.com. Forward slash codedbyalice. You sent me a text the other day that said, how many? 37. 37 add-ons.

Alice Keeler: And it just feels like so many, I can't keep track. I'm like, is it really that many?

Vicki Davis: Yeah. And you start as a math teacher.

Alice Keeler: I taught myself to code. And now with Vibe Coding, I'm killing it with the Vibe Coding. So Vibe Coding would be that when you use AI to code. So I go to Google Gemini and I'm like, this is what I want. I code Google Workspace, right? So Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides. I know how to code. So my prompts are pretty good. This is what I want the add-on to do. Honestly, Vicki, the other day, it was really disappointing because it worked the first time. No edits. I'm like, how boring is that? But it also is like, how quickly can I get out new features and improve the functionality and things that I kind of know about, but I don't know? I can actually incorporate those things really quickly into my add-ons and into my code. So Vibe Coding is coding with AI. So it took me two days to create this AI teacher toolkit. So what I wanted to do is to have something that collects no data. I feel very squishy about all of these products that have seemed to have popped up over the last year. There's some rumors about some companies just signing whatever the schools give them. But are they? I mean, it's easy to sign something, but what are they really doing with your data? So I want my toolbox to be small. I don't want to sign up for 10,000 different products. So what can I do with Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Forms, stay in the Google ecosystem if you're a Google user? This is the ecosystem you're in. It's in your own Google Drive. You should, like, keep your data with yourself. So what I coded was the ability to, it's an add-on for Google Sheets, that will allow you to create lesson plans, rubrics, respond to an angry parent, lesson plan simulator that turns your lesson plan into a D&D adventure. Honestly, anything you want, like, literally anything you want. IEP writer, Dungeons & Dragons, any of those things and more because I have a feature that allows you to describe what you want, what tool you want, and it will create the prompt for you and add it into your toolbox. In my particular case, everything is sitting in your Google Drive, in your Sheets. So, I mean, like if it's in your Google Drive, we have a lot of PII in our student drive, right? Like all the student work, rosters, everything, Google Classroom has that PII.

Vicki Davis: Now that vibe coding exists and people can write their own extensions, There are bad actors that can write extensions that can take information. So how do we determine which extensions we really want to trust? And do we just write them ourselves?

Alice Keeler: I think you should write them ourselves. I mean, it took me two days to write this teacher AI toolkit. Now, granted, I have a lot of background knowledge and things that helped me to do this. I don't know that your average person with no knowledge could just pull this off tomorrow. But that's what's really exciting is that school districts can look at these tools and be like, we want that, but we want the privacy. They can literally have somebody with honestly very mediocre skills in coding, put one together, distribute it out to the whole school district, and you know it's safe because you made it internally and you published it. And it's so easy to publish internally. Now, you have to have permissions. Like, probably as a teacher, you don't have the ability to make a cloud project at your school. So you're going to want to work with your IT department, Either get them to do it because it's insanely easy to do that. We're in a really exciting time of more security because it's really doable. If these companies can pop up overnight, why can't your school district make that themselves and then share it with other school districts? Like, it feels to me like the democratization of EdTech right now. I'm really excited about it.

Vicki Davis: Programming we've been talking about for years. The rise of citizen programming, which is basically vibe coding, means that by describing an app or a tool that you can create it adds another layer of what IT departments will do, which is the approval of apps, programs, websites, all of these things to deploy them. Because if you can do that, you can have more safety and more security. But, you know, there are some IT departments who say, hey, we're not programmers, we're computer fixers. Right. That's got to change.

Alice Keeler: I think that's true for every job. It's not just the IT department. What does the job of teachers look like moving forward now that we have this democratization of ed tech and all of the things? So I would hope that the IT department is always moving forward because technology moves fast. So what we were doing in the IT department 10 years ago, 15 years ago, was obviously not the same today, right? How many of them were writing AI policies 10 years ago? None of them. And I hope they all are now. So let's just assume that's happening. But getting them on board with the citizen coding, with the vibe coding, is that you have people from your community, your school district, contributing to solve your really unique problems. Yeah. And anything you buy is pretty much off the shelf, right? It addresses your problems, but does it really solve what you need it to do? Now, I'm just doing it with Google Workspace, but of course, you can vibe code in anything. You can vibe code Python and different things for whatever your applications are. What could we do if we were to vibe code and create these tools that we know that they're safe because we made them ourselves and worked on them internally? Some of it's going to be too much. I don't know that I'm going to recreate PowerSchool anytime soon, as much as I need. But there's a lot of things that we can look at. And like, that's a cool feature. Could we build it internally? Could we band together with some other schools? I know like Fresno Unified and their Microsoft school. They're awesome. They do make their own power school. And so they do it all internally. It's gamified. And so it does happen. And it is possible. But Fresno Unified is the third largest school district, I think, in the state of California. So they have a lot of resources. But better yet, if we were to just, you know, make a conglomerate that we work together.

Vicki Davis: One thing at ISTE that perplexed me, I guess, a little bit is I'm a big one for using like the actual direct model. Like if I'm going to be using Gemini, I'm going to go straight to Gemini and use it. If I'm going to be using Claude, so many of these tools built on top of models, A, they don't tell you which model they're using. B, they don't tell you how they're using the data. And you're not transparent to like, where is this data going and who's using it? And then you've got the issue of, listen, you and I have known each other a long time and we lived through the web 2 era. So many apps that we talked about daily in the Web 2 era, including one of them was Wikispaces, bought by TES and then went away. Daily tools, big players, thinking they're going to be here forever. Right. And then they went away.

Alice Keeler: Right.

Vicki Davis: And that's going to happen again. And as OpenAI or Gemini or whoever updates these app models, it'll break. And then we start from scratch.

Alice Keeler: When I, when I connected up, I put in my code, a link that says model name and I click model name. So it's really easy for me to update which model. So, and so all I literally have to do is swap out, not even a line of code is just a text string have to be actively supporting, but I hope that you're using tools that are being actively supported anyway. So for example, my add-on template tab, I have 30 something million installs on that. [Editor's note: the Google Workspace Marketplace listing for TemplateTab shows 26M+ installs.] So what that does is it takes your roster of students on the first sheet, and then you design your graphic organizer on the second sheet in Google Sheets, and then it'll replicate your graphic organizer for each student on your roster and put their name on the tab at the bottom. So at some point, Google had changed the way that they handled folders and moving files and some of those things. And so they are deprecated. So I go in and I look at my code and some things are like lined out because they're not supported anymore. So in that case, I did have to update my code, but not because of AI per se, but just because that's how software works.

Vicki Davis: Your point is really valid. Like this is helping me understand is that the value of, is this being actively maintained and updated so that you can have access to the new models? So Alice Keeler at alicekeeler.com, what she's great at is helping people become massively efficient with Google Workspace. So if your school is Google Workspace, you should reach out to Alice. She can help you just be a game changer. We're not going to get more people, so we got to get more efficient. We got to streamline admin so that we can free up resources to have more people in the classroom. So thanks for coming on the show, Alice.

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

Vicki Davis (00:00): How a school built its culture around the seven habits for highly effective people, and the academics followed. This is episode 965. Happy Motivational Monday.

Announcer (00:13): This is the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (00:17): Today, we're talking with Muriel Summers. She's a principal who took a struggling Title I elementary school, A.B. Combs in Raleigh, North Carolina, and turned it into one of the most visited schools in the world by asking a question many of us need to be asking. What if every child could be a leader? Muriel is now FranklinCovey's Global Ambassador, co-author of the newly updated A Leader in Me, and also the new book Teacher Believed in Me with David K. Hatch.

Muriel, you said that leadership isn't a title or a personality trait. It's a set of habits that can be taught. Take us back to 1999, your first year at A.B. Combs. What did you see that made you bet the whole school on that idea?

Muriel Summers (01:13): Vicki, first of all, I am a big fan and quite honored to be part of this this morning. I'm reminded that through incredible challenge often comes wonderful opportunity. And I think if there was a quote that captured that first year for me as a principal, it would be that. I really didn't even know what I was doing.

I had so longed to be a principal for a while, and that was my goal. The way this story goes is that several people applied to be the principal of A.B. Combs. When they did their homework, whatever their reason, they withdrew their names. I was the fifth person interviewed for this job, and I was the one who did not, embarrassingly enough, do my homework as much as I should have.

But nonetheless, I know now that I was given one of the greatest professional gifts of my lifetime to go in with like-minded, amazing educators with a belief that we could do something extraordinary. We approached our challenge of reinventing ourselves. And how were we going to do that? And the charge was that it could not be a theme like any other school.

It could not be like any other magnet school. And we wouldn't have a lot of money in which to make it happen. So that was the charge before us, and I had just heard Dr. Covey speak in Washington, D.C. I was listening with the head of an administrator that had been issued this incredible challenge, but also the heart of a single mother of two small children.

How was I going to make all of this happen? So as I listened to Dr. Covey speak, I wondered if I had learned these habits much earlier in my life, how different my life might have been. And that was one question swirling around. And then the second question was, I wonder if you could teach leadership to young children.

So I listened to him and I was quite emotional, Vicki. I was quite emotional thinking about my own future, thinking about what my vision was. Habit number two, begin with the end in mind. Thinking how am I going to be proactive and use my time effectively when I had so many things juggling in the air.

But learning these habits gave me my toolkit to navigate a school and to navigate my life and to navigate my role as a mother, a friend, and all the other roles that we play. So I hear him speak. I go back to the school, and I'm like, we've got to reinvent ourselves. We don't have much time.

I've just heard Covey speak. Do you think we can teach these habits? Now, mind you, Vicki, there was no framework for us to follow as educators. We read his book.

We read Sean Covey's book, which I will lovingly and admiringly say that it's the cliff notes of his father's book. So it really related to our teachers in a way that they could take what Sean had written and pull any book off a shelf and find a way to teach these habits.

Vicki Davis (04:23): So you're talking about seven habits for highly effective people, and I'm assuming seven habits for highly effective people for teens, right?

Muriel Summers (04:29): That's exactly right. So we called in our parents, our students, our teachers, university professors, because we are like three miles from NC State University, 20 miles from UNC Chapel Hill. We asked the question, if you could create your ideal school. What would it look like, sound like, and feel like?

And we gathered all that feedback. Teachers wanted students that respected them. They wanted to work in an environment where they had a voice. Students wanted teachers who loved them.

Now, mind you, this was an elementary school. Business leaders were looking for a skill set quite different than an academic skill set. The comments that were made was, We can teach someone with average intelligence how to be successful in our organization, but we can't teach them how to be trustworthy. We can't teach them how to be collaborative.

We can't teach them how to embrace diversity if it isn't a part of who they are. Then parents, we just want a teacher who knows our child. We want them to know their child's story. We want them to see their gifts beyond academics.

We took those seven habits, Vicki, and we aligned it with all that feedback, and it screamed leadership to us. So we just went to work. This is a philosophy. It's not a program.

One of our core paradigms, our core beliefs, that every child has genius. So we went about creating a culture where children had roles and responsibilities, where their genius was recognized. We saw discipline go down almost instantly because children wanted to come to school and they wanted to be a part. So we started referring to everybody as a leader, Vicki.

And guess what? We not only viewed them that way, we also gave them opportunities to lead. So when you've got a culture of everyone is leading, everyone is important, everyone's voice matters, everyone has genius. You don't have to worry about the academics.

They just happen. But we fixed the culture, and we created a culture of leadership for all. And we went from one of the lowest performing to one of the highest performing. Everyone was working from the inside out to become all that we thought individually we could become.

And equally as important to create a school that every child wanted to come to that would leave a lasting impact.

Vicki Davis (07:05): Take me on a verbal tour. Tell me what I would see from morning to when school ends, the types of things that students or teachers might be doing, and also your role.

Muriel Summers (07:17): We had an incredible assistant principal whose name was Michael Armstrong, and he died at a very early age of 40. But Michael left a lasting impact, and he would always say, can you feel it? So the moment you would walk in the building, we wanted people to feel something. And Vicki, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

You don't have to be in a school very long, just a few minutes, to know what that school is about, about what you see, what you hear, and what you feel. When the children entered the building, there were big words right above the doors. So when they got off that bus, these were the words that they saw. And I feel like I'm going to get emotional, but you are seen, you are known.

And you are loved. And when they got off that bus, they would hear happy music playing. Teachers would be out greeting the children as they got off the bus, calling them by name was a requirement. You know every child's name.

They would call them by name, always modeling. We model what we expect to see our children do. So they would walk, hear that fun music, hear their name being said. We're so happy you're here.

They'd walk up the steps, they'd look at those words. You are seen, you are known, you are loved. They'd walk in to the building. There was always someone standing there to greet them.

I helped to get children out of the cars so I could see the parents. And so everyone was in the hallway. Children would go to their classroom and they were greeted. Social etiquette, big part of what we taught as well.

They would either high five, shake the hand, do a little dance, do whatever. So that that first connection with their teacher was being made that day. The walls were required to teach and to reflect our students' genius. I always had some challenges with our fire marshals because when we had an art show, there were 900 pieces of art on the wall because every child had their art displayed because we wanted our children to see themselves as leaders in art, leaders in music, leaders in public speaking based on their genius and based on their passion.

My favorite teacher, Miss Rose. So much of Miss Rose is embedded in the culture of A.B. Combs. She told us every day it mattered not where we came from. What mattered was the size of our dreams and our hopes for our own future.

And we were the sons and daughters of cotton workers and mill workers and cotton farmers in rural North Carolina. So much of what is in the classrooms today becomes a reflection of each teacher's favorite teacher. So we wanted the school to reflect leadership. I know you're a collector of quotes.

There are a lot of quotes throughout the building. But they're not just words, Vicki. We take our children several times during the year on a field trip throughout the school to say, what does this mean to you? What do you want this to look like?

The school is very much child-centered based on what children have said they wanted and also what we wanted the walls to teach. You will see the Seven Habits Tree in the building. You will see photographs of great leaders. That it's very important to us that we put role models, great examples of great leaders in front of our students.

And whether we find that on the news or in a sports arena or in a piece of great literature, we're always pointing out the characteristics of great leaders. The morning begins with a morning meeting. So every child is having a voice and a say. And those meetings are very powerful.

They're as important as instruction as far as I'm concerned because they set the tone. And then every afternoon, we conclude with doing an evaluation on how we did in our classrooms. What went well? What are the opportunities for improvement tomorrow?

And the teacher stands in the doorway as each child leaves and tells him to have a great night. And that's exactly what Miss Rose did. She would say, how am I going to make it to the next day without you? How am I going to make it through the night?

Because I'm going to miss you so much. And you know what, Vicki, we believed her. We believed she was going to miss us. And we loved her to pieces.

And the impact that one lady had on the lives of so many, your teacher, you as a teacher, and I hope. Me as a teacher, I hope I left a little bit of my heart in every child that I taught. I hope I leave a little bit of myself with them. Yeah.

Vicki Davis (12:13): Take me back to when you would have a new teacher start at your school. What did you say?

Muriel Summers (12:18): Well, before they were ever hired, students assisted me in the hiring process. And what I mean by that is a teacher jumped through several hoops to be a teacher at Combs. And one of those hoops was the administrators reviewing the file and saying, this person looks like they could be a good match. Then we brought children in and we never asked children, Vicki.

We taught them how to interview someone as young as five years old. Children know what they're looking for in a teacher. We let them loose. Now, there was always an adult in the room with the children who were interviewing the teacher.

But the adult's job was not to tell the children what to say, but to listen so that we could debrief afterwards and say, this is what you did well. Children, in essence, were learning how to interview as they interviewed a teacher. And children would ask the most amazing questions, Vicki, questions that we never thought about asking. And the teachers that we were interviewing would always say the student interview was by far the hardest.

They were not responsible for determining if a person got hired or not. But their voice mattered. And it mattered to us. There was only one time, Vicki, in all the 20 years that children were part of interviewing, did I go against what the children said?

It was like they were looking for the same things we were looking for. But this was a gentleman who had a degree from a local university. He had this business background of systems thinking, and I was so intrigued by it. No matter how good you are, continuous improvement, how do you get better?

Vicki Davis (14:05): He had that. Sharpen the saw, right?

Muriel Summers (14:07): Exactly. But he had a business skill set that I didn't have, and I thought how valuable he would be on our team. So he had majored in business, an MBA degree in business, but had always wanted to be a teacher, or so he thought he did. The children said he's very smart so he's a genius he's a leader in intelligence because they picked up on this man was very smart, but we don't think he gets kids.

And I'm like, tell me more. We just don't think he gets what kids are about. I thought, well, they're gonna learn to like him, and I need him, and we're gonna hire him. He lasted until November.

Vicki Davis (14:47): Oh, my goodness. So the kids were right.

Muriel Summers (14:49): The kids were right. Dr. Covey would say, a little child shall lead us. And I think that was really the fabric of everything. Let our children lead.

Let them have a voice.

Vicki Davis (15:04): What are some things I can bring to my classroom tomorrow?

Muriel Summers (15:09): There are over 8,500 schools in over 60 countries around the world that are teaching the same thing that we started at A.B. Combs. So there is that framework. But this leader in me and teacher believed in me go hand in hand, teacher believed in me, because we wanted to give homage to great teachers. What do great teachers do differently?

So that quote, never underestimate what a committed group of people can do, because, indeed, it's what has changed the world. And I do think in a very small way, A.B. Combs has changed the world in terms of what schools should look like, sound like, and feel like based on the hearts of teachers and the hopes and dreams of children. If I can do it, Vicki, anybody can do it. Not to get caught up in the whirlwind, of those things that matter least.

But let us stay focused on what matters most. And to me, it's just love them. Just love the teachers, love the children enough that you will give your very best to help them all succeed.

Vicki Davis (16:26): My mom, who was a great teacher and my closest mentor and who loved the seven habits, um, Always said, you've got to create your to-be list before you create your to-do list. Because the things you do, they're just an overwhelming number of things that you could do. But if you don't know what you want to be, you have no ability to determine the right thing to do. We've been talking with Muriel Summers.

She's a principal who took a struggling Title I elementary school, A.B. Combs in Raleigh, North Carolina. She has an updated book of The Leader in Me, a new book, Teacher Believed in Me. Muriel, thank you so much for coming on the show, for coming.

Muriel Summers (17:13): Vicki, thank you. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Vicki Davis (17:18): 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.

Vicki Davis (00:01): Free BBC Resources for Your Classroom. Episode 964. For Fab Idea Friday.

Today we talk about all kinds of free BBC storytelling with lesson plans built by a former teacher.

Number one, check out Bluey — 15 free lessons on friendship, feeling, and reading body language.

Two, every video has leveled articles. Same article, three reading levels.

Three, check out their amazing interactive field trips — Walking with Dinosaurs, Planet Earth Passport, and more.

Announcer (00:35): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (00:39): Today's show is sponsored by the BBC Learning Hub — a free library of ad-free BBC videos and ready-to-teach lesson plans for pre-K through twelfth grade. Stay tuned at the end of the show to learn more.

Vicki Davis (00:53): Our next guest, Kimmie Fink, spent 13 years teaching. She was named Puget Sound Teacher of the Year, and now she's Senior Editor at the BBC Learning Hub. She helps bring BBC's world-class storytelling — from Planet Earth to Walking with Dinosaurs — to everyday classrooms with free, ready-to-use resources.

So we're at ISTE 2026. First of all, these resources are free. As you're pulling together content, what did you start, like, looking at to design the content to bring it to classrooms?

Kimmie Fink (01:23): Yeah, you know, I think for me, getting to work for the BBC is kind of a dream, because there's so much amazing content out there. And you know that it's trusted, that it's accurate, that it's well produced. And I know how much my students enjoyed, in particular, engaging with video — and how hard it was to find quality video, especially on YouTube. It's full of ads, right?

And so having something that is just safe for my students to watch and that I know is of great quality. We've looked through this massive library of BBC content and looked for things that we know are going to be engaging to students. Also my experience as a mom. I see things like the racer snakes chasing the baby iguanas, and I'm thinking, oh, my eight-year-old is going to eat that up. I know that all kids will, because that content is so engaging.

We're looking to provide supplemental resources for teachers that are just ready to go, like out of the box. So you don't have to do so much. I also knew that as a teacher, I had my curriculum that I was teaching. I was really looking for things to supplement and to make the experience come to life. So the idea that we have this home for that where you can come is just really appealing to me.

Vicki Davis (02:36): When I was at your booth, you had the videos and you have like lesson plans and you can download it. So like describe: if a teacher wanted to use stuff tomorrow, what would be the kinds of things he or she could expect to be able to get from your site?

Kimmie Fink (02:50): Gosh, it's hard to know where to start. But for ELA, we have these wonderful articles that are pulled from BBC magazines like Science Focus, History Extra, and Discover Wildlife. And what we've done is we've leveled them. So it's the same article, but it's written at a grade three through five, grade six through eight, grade nine through 12. So your students can access it at whatever level. And we know that in every classroom, just because it's labeled a fifth grade classroom doesn't mean everybody's reading at a fifth grade level, right? But they're able to access that at any level.

There's vocabulary built into that. Every single one of our videos has a writing prompt attached to it. So you just pick something you think that your kids are going to be super interested in. Maybe it's polar bear cubs. And there's a writing prompt that goes with it. So that's where I would start with ELA.

With science — Walking with Dinosaurs came out in 1999. And they came out with a completely new version last year. And we got our hands on it first, which was so exciting. It follows six different dinosaurs. You go back and forth in the episode between the dig site and then the CGI dinosaurs. What I did is I went through it. I got to watch all the episodes and then pick out the learning moments. I paired a dig site clip with the CGI clip of the actual dinosaur. Then we created a paleontologist field journal. And then we made an interactive map. So students get this interactive map and you can visit in any order the dig sites. And you watch each of these videos and you take a quiz on it and you fill out your paleontologist field journal.

But there's some extra fun content in there like, what dinosaur are you? Because obviously you need to do a personality quiz to figure out what kind of dinosaur you are. I'm a Lusotitan.

Vicki Davis (04:22): Oh, I don't even know what that is.

Kimmie Fink (04:24): It is a massive, massive dinosaur.

But for me, I mean, just having students make that connection and almost kind of put themselves in that role of paleontologist. Because you look and they're showing you the Spinosaurus' tail. And then we're asking you to make some predictions about what do you think that meant about it. And then you watch it and you realize that the Spinosaurus was aquatic. So there's this real kind of like role playing and figuring things out as you go. And I just think that's such an exciting experience for kids.

Vicki Davis (04:53): So a teacher can just go and download all this, have all this posted in their learning management system, and then their kids can be paleontologists and basically go on. Now, how long would it take to do the virtual field trip? Is that something that like teachers do, say, hey, one day a week for six weeks — or what's the time span for it?

Kimmie Fink (05:12): I think that we estimated it was sort of like a 45-minute to 60-minute exploration for the students themselves. But we also have this full teacher guide, so you can do it as part of a larger unit. But something that I felt like as a teacher I needed was, I need to be able to take the piece that I want and not have to do the whole thing — because it's just like, well, I got to print this and then I got to download this, and it's too much. So, like, maybe you just want to watch the baby Triceratops video. You can do that. You can watch that individually.

It's really like, take what you need. So everything is not like a massive production. But you want to do the whole thing, you can do the whole thing.

Vicki Davis (05:46): They're free.

Kimmie Fink (05:47): It's really fun. Yeah. It's a really fun job.

Vicki Davis (05:49): You don't have — like you said, you don't have to worry about the ads and all the stuff that happens when we do YouTube content, because there are things that happen. So we've talked Walking with Dinosaurs. What are some of the other stories that kids love, that are some of your most popular, that teachers are just like, oh yeah, this is great for my classroom?

Kimmie Fink (06:08): We are so thrilled to be the home to the only licensed learning materials for Bluey. Bluey has such a massive footprint here with kids. I mean, we've been here at ISTE and everybody is coming to our booth. There's been so much engagement. And the way the show is written, it's just such a natural, you know, way to promote those life skills — you know, friendship and feelings and things like that. And doing it, meeting kids where they're at.

Vicki Davis (06:32): Body language.

Kimmie Fink (06:34): Oh gosh, huge. Recognizing emotions, right? All of that stuff. Which can be tough.

Vicki Davis (06:39): There is something called a nonverbal learning disability, which is a struggle, and a lot of kids have them. And learning to read that body language is just vital to help kids.

Kimmie Fink (06:49): So we've got 15 lessons. They're all free.

Vicki Davis (06:51): They had two little books. They're very cute. Because I was looking at them. And you can print them in color or black and white — either way — but they're really nice.

Kimmie Fink (06:59): So that's been really popular. One of my other favorite experiences has to do with Planet Earth. I mean, if anybody who knows Sir David Attenborough — I mean, he's a British national treasure. Is just incredible. He just celebrated his 100th birthday. And I mean, we have so much content from him.

And then we did a collection of the eight most popular Planet Earth videos. And we made a little Planet Earth passport so that kids can go through and watch, you know, the clip on lemurs in Madagascar and then go in their passport and fill out, you know, answer questions and illustrate it and just kind of explore on their own. So that's been a really popular one as well.

Vicki Davis (07:35): So it sounds like the virtual field trips are really popular with teachers.

Kimmie Fink (07:38): Yeah, that's really where we're going — is to create more interactive experiences for kids, because I think it's really important, that student-facing piece, and they can explore on their own. And it really mirrors the way that they're consuming content outside of an educational setting.

Vicki Davis (07:53): Well, think about it. You could go to a dig, but archaeological digs are not usually the most exciting places. You can't guarantee that they're going to find something on the day you're there. Otherwise, it's just going to be dirt, right?

Kimmie Fink (08:03): Right. Yes.

Vicki Davis (08:04): So this way you can actually go on a field trip that you'd expect. It's going to be consistent and do some cool things. And all that material is there. Y'all have a booth here at ISTE, but it has been hopping. Largely because of Bluey, but also the other stuff.

Kimmie Fink (08:17): I think Bluey draws people in. And then we say, here's everything else that we have. And people kind of go, wow. And somebody asked me, she said, so is there a free version in addition to a paid version? And I said, no — there's only free.

Vicki Davis (08:32): Really? I know it.

Kimmie Fink (08:34): Yeah, so it's great.

Vicki Davis (08:35): It's free and it's wonderful. You have seen this from both sides of the desk. Describe a time that something really changed in your classroom because you had the right piece of media.

Kimmie Fink (08:46): We had a reading anthology for our ELA program, as a lot of people do, and it could be a little dry. It was about chimpanzees. And we were engaging with it and it was fine. But I had found some videos of Jane Goodall in the Gombe with the chimpanzees. And I just felt like it made that connection for my kids, because they could actually see this person.

We think about, when we're reading about chimpanzees, and of course the goal is, you know, comprehension and things like that. But I also want kids to care about conservation and things like that. We talked about storytelling, and I feel like it's the way that we access experiences that we don't have firsthand knowledge of. Really high-quality video can do that often. And I don't think it takes away from getting the information as a reader. I think it amplifies it.

Vicki Davis (09:35): When you talk to teachers and when you're talking to them at the booth, what are they most excited about? Besides Bluey, obviously.

Kimmie Fink (09:41): I've had a lot of excitement around our newsroom. So I think that a lot of people hear BBC and they think news, right? Because, of course, BBC News is quite well known. And we have just launched our newsroom, and we have a daily Newsbite. And so you come in every day, every school day. We have a new one. It's like a five minute clip. It's about, you know, some kind of relevant news story. And then there's questions that go along with it.

People were really excited about it because, again, there's so much on there. And you were asking, like, where can I start? That's a great place to start. It's like, this is a great way to, like, start my day. And we know that media literacy is so important right now and, you know, quite frankly, really lacking. And so that's been something that teachers have been really excited about as well.

And then we are planning on, as we move into back to school, really gamifying that more. We really want to give teachers that. I mean, I'd play all the New York Times games, you know — like, give them that Wordle experience where they can see how they're doing compared to other classrooms and they can maybe have a streak or something like that. So that's coming as well. So we're getting some good feedback on that.

Vicki Davis (10:44): So if a teacher says, okay, I want to try out these resources — where do they start for what they could use right away?

Kimmie Fink (10:52): Yeah, I mean, I think the Newsbites is something that can be used right away. I would also recommend just go to our homepage. We have a new top nav that we just launched. And I think it does a really good job of showing the breadth of what's available. So you can go in and there's science and environment right at the top. There's social studies, global, international kind of content. And then we have other topics where you can explore, like what we have for like SEL, math and ELA, which we are still building out. But I think that's a good place.

And we are always updating. So every month, I'll put something that fits. Like we have an article on the 4th of July and the history behind that. And so if you go to each of those places, we'll have things that are like germane to whatever time of year it is. And I think that could be a nice entry point as well, right? So you're coming in in October, you're going to see some videos on bats because it's, you know, Halloween is coming. Or you're going to see a Bluey worksheet that's on Halloween. So we definitely try to have content that's relevant to the time.

Vicki Davis (11:47): Okay. Now you said math.

Kimmie Fink (11:49): Yeah, I did.

Vicki Davis (11:50): So could you give me at least one example for math? Because a lot of times people don't think of math as having great videos, but there are some out there.

Kimmie Fink (11:58): So what we have for math are currently — so we have the Numberblocks. So there's Numberblocks and Alphablocks, are shows that are distributed by the BBC. And we have licensed a lot of their magazine content as printables. So we have a lot of math printables that you can use. But the video is coming, and it will be more like a kind of like explainer videos.

Vicki Davis (12:19): Oh, that's awesome. Okay, so as we're finishing up — what kind of guides the content that you select?

Kimmie Fink (12:25): So we have developed our global knowledge framework, and there's really five pillars to it of things that guide our — you were asking before about how I make selections, right? So I'm looking at these things. And the first one is media literacy. And then second, we have sustainability and environment, which, of course, makes a lot of sense with what the BBC produces. We have global citizenship — so, you know, knowing more about the world, cultural awareness, cultural relevance — and then financial literacy and digital literacy as well.

We have a mailing list that you can sign up. When you go to the website, you can view all of our videos. You don't have to be signed in or anything like that. In order to download like a printable or something like that, you're going to go ahead and log in. It's really easy. It just takes a few minutes and it's free. And then when you are logged in, you can do things like create your own playlists. So we have curated playlists — like we have a great penguin playlist. But if you want to do your own and then assign it to students via Google Classroom, you can do all that once you're logged in and download all the printables that you want. Print them off. Copy them. You're good to go.

Vicki Davis (13:25): We've been talking with Kimmie from the BBC Learning Hub. Thanks for coming on.

Kimmie Fink (13:29): Thank you so much for having me.

Vicki Davis (13:30): The BBC Learning Hub is a free story-driven platform from BBC Studios with more than a thousand classroom resources. You get ad-free video clips from BBC storytelling that teachers and students already love, paired with standards-aligned lesson plans, leveled reading passages, comprehension questions, and printable activities. And you can send it all straight to Google Classroom. They work for pre-K all the way through high school, and every bit of it is free.

This is exactly the kind of high-quality, teacher-ready content I love sharing with you. Real BBC storytelling that makes the lesson come alive without adding to your prep. Build your first playlist at coolcatteacher.com forward slash BBC. Start with Walking with Dinosaurs or the amazing Bluey content for your younger students. That's coolcatteacher.com forward slash BBC.

Vicki Davis (14:30): 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.

Vicki Davis: Assessment and Feedback that Move Learning Forward. Episode 963 for Thought Leader Thursday.

The moment you put a grade on something, it stops being formative. Three tips.

One, if you use slides, add a quick formative question every student answers in the moment. Then pivot the lesson.

Two, run a review game. Pull the class stats and reteach only where they're weak. Let them watch you use the data and tell them to use their own when they're reviewing.

Three, pre-assess five vocabulary words you'll use in class today. Don't take a grade, but it does show them what matters and get class started.

Let's think about assessment.

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

Vicki Davis: Today, we're talking with a longtime friend, Starr Sackstein. She has been on the show three times already. This is her fourth appearance. She's educator, author, speaker, and she is one of the most passionate voices in assessment reform. She's written numerous books on rethinking grading, including her newest, Actionable Assessment, co-authored with Michael McDowell.

She spent over two decades helping teachers move from traditional grading to meaningful feedback that actually drives learning. Starr, you and I were talking in the pre-show. I started blogging in 2005. When did you start blogging?

Starr Sackstein: Probably around 2008. And then I was lucky enough to blog for Ed Week a little bit thereafter. That was a game changer, for sure.

Vicki Davis: You've spent so much time in the classroom, and now you're talking about actionable assessment. So this is really interesting, because you're like, hey, when we think assessment, we think grades. But I know you — you're not a fan of grades. So help me understand: what's actionable assessment?

Starr Sackstein: So Michael and I both agree that teachers are super good at collecting data. And unfortunately, they don't always know what to do with it when they have it. And sometimes the quality of what they're collecting isn't as good as it can be. So this book really lays a foundation in what formative assessment really is and how it is different than summative. Those are terms we throw around an awful lot, but I'm still convinced not everybody really knows what they mean.

Vicki Davis: Let's define it. Define clearly, for everybody who's a beginner or wants to explain it to another teacher: formative and summative.

Starr Sackstein: So formative assessment is more of a process. Sure, there are intermediary tasks and people have their formative benchmarks. Like, as soon as you put a grade, though, on something, it is no longer formative. Formative is supposed to be practice. It's supposed to be getting data to the learner, to the teacher, so that adjustments can be made and practice can be continued until they're ready for the summative, which is when we check for what they got from all of it.

And that's really an endpoint. And I'm not saying that you can't take data from summative and use it again in the future, but the purpose of it is really assessment of learning — things that have already happened. Formative is assessment for learning. The preposition in the middle there is what changes the meaning of all of it.

As I've really lived in this assessment work for such a long time now, I believe assessment is learning. Like, anytime we are watching kids learn, anytime we're taking in new stuff, learning is occurring. And I think too often we think about them in moments instead of this ongoing process where we're teaching kiddos to set goals, to track their progress, to deal with not having things right right away — because the stickier and the harder things we are learning, the more likely it is we're not going to get it on the first try. And we need to normalize that a bunch more than we actually do in school.

If we could take the grade away from the formative parts of what we do, the fear of being wrong and the fear of engaging will be a lot less. And so this book, which is super practical — you have a short two chapters that basically give you the foundational work that help you understand how we're using the terminology. And then the whole rest of the book is: at the beginning of the lesson, when you find out this, these are strategies you can use right in the moment to make changes, so that you don't spend a whole 40 minutes on a lesson that isn't going to get you the results that you think you need. And sometimes that information comes in the middle of the lesson. Sometimes it comes at the end.

And what's really different about this book is we also have a lot of graphics, so that if you're working with a PLC, it actually helps you visualize what this looks like when kids are at different phases in the learning too. So it breaks down kids who are at proficiency, kids who are approaching it, kids that are already past it, how you could extend the learning so that that rich data that you're collecting in class really goes to good use.

Vicki Davis: Okay, so there's so much to unpack here. Let's kind of start with the beginning of class. So you've probably read the book Small Teaching by James Lang. And one of his biggest things was: ask five questions that you're not expecting them to know at the beginning of class and see what they already know. And that that primes the pump for learning, because they know, hey, this is what we're going to learn about in class so that I can answer these questions. Right?

And when I started doing that in my AP CSP class — I read that during my first class, which, you know, had 100% pass rate that first year while I was still learning. And I think a lot of it had to do with that method, right, of doing that. It was like, you mean I'm supposed to ask them stuff that they don't know, to see if they know it or see if they don't? And the first thing my kids asked, of course, was, are you taking a grade on this? No. I explained to my students, this is formative assessment. So they know when I say formative, that's testing — like, in some ways I feel like it's testing me. They can relax and just like, hey, what have we learned?

So what is one of the most surprising assessment methods that you recommend, that teachers come back to you and say, I had no idea that would be so awesome?

Starr Sackstein: I think we lean in a lot to things like four corners activities and different things that mix modalities, so that you're not using the same stuff all the time. You're getting kids out of their seats. You're getting them to, like — kind of like what you said before — you're getting them to think about what they think. And using activities like that in different parts of a lesson, you could activate a lot of different things as a pre-assessment. What do they know? What are their feelings? How does this get them primed to go deeper and to test what's going on for them at the beginning? It could be in the middle.

Vicki Davis: Okay, so let's talk about four corners for a second, because honestly — so I've been teaching 24 years, and I didn't learn this technique until like eight or nine years ago. So describe what that is, because it is really great.

Starr Sackstein: It's one of my absolute favorites. I love to do it with adult learners, also in PDs that I do, because adult learners need to learn the same way kid learners need to learn — like multimodalities, not sitting and getting.

Four Corners is: you have different statements. You have four different spots in the room. You could do it a dozen different ways. We actually have tons of different models for how you could do it, even in a math class. The most typical way is agree, disagree, strongly agree, strongly disagree. Make a statement, have them think about where they belong in the room — not watching their friends and deciding where to go based on where their friends go — because they do have to defend why they've gone where they have gone. And then you have them discuss and share out. And then in some circumstances, after they hear all of the justifications, you might ask them if they want to switch where they are in the room based on the justification of others.

I've seen English teachers use it with characterization. Like, you could do it by a specific kind of topic. In science, you could do it where you're thinking about — you have a question and you have like multiple choice answers around the room. Like, where do you find yourself in answering this question based on the data you collected in your lab? And same with math, thinking about different ways to move it around.

So it's really just this great kid-to-kid discussion tool where they have to first think, have a lot of conversation, and then move. You have the movement, you have the discussion, and then you could get some writing pieces out. I've seen folks use like Post-it notes so that certain people don't monopolize conversation too. And the teachers collect the Post-it notes, so that once your Post-it note is collected, you can't speak again until everyone else's Post-it notes. So it's an easy way to collect who's done talking already and who still needs to talk, in order to have that equity of voice in the classroom.

Vicki Davis: And see, you combine so many different things, because you can use the Post-it note example with just about any class conversation. Help it include all the voices. And then some students, they're so observant, and watchers — but if they know that they need the answer to be part of class that day, they will speak up. And then it like changes everything, and you're thinking, why doesn't this student speak more? They just have such good things to say.

So that is an awesome strategy. And that's been around a while, hadn't it?

Starr Sackstein: It sure has. It always baffles me a little bit how many folks don't use it.

Vicki Davis: Everybody's looking for the new thing, you know? And sometimes these timeless things that have been around forever — are there any other timeless things in the book that you're like, hey, this may have been around for 50 years, but it's pretty doggone good?

Starr Sackstein: Yeah, I mean, honestly, I just opened up to like a random chart that we have. Some of the stuff on here is just so evergreen. Think, pair, share. Whiteboard responses. Reading records. And stuff like this was for data outputs for different kinds of sometimes ineffective versus effective assessments that we do in class. So it names a lot of those things, and then it gives different scenarios of what teachers might do, what it looks like, the data you collect, and then how you use such things.

Those of you who see the little — our little teacher over here — it could be just about anybody. And then throughout the whole thing, the middle section is just all pictures. And there's reflection phases, quick poll examples, informal discussions.

Vicki Davis: So let's ask this question then. You talked about effective and ineffective. What are some of the biggest mistakes that people make, and you're like, oh, this would be really good to kind of move out of the classroom?

Starr Sackstein: A lot of times we get very attached to things that we do and we love, as educators. Sometimes I was definitely guilty of that too, when I thought something was awesome and it wasn't necessarily best for kids. And sometimes they're not even aligned to the standards or anything that we're actually trying to assess. I think the biggest challenge generally is that our assessments don't always match what we're trying to assess.

My very first few projects, for example — I had ideas. I didn't even think about the standards. I just thought about the things that I wanted them to do. And when I asked kids to think about their own learning, and even in what I got from them, everybody's interpretation of my directions were so very different that my lack of clarity created this amorphous blob of information that came back at me.

Because I think as a teacher, we're inclined to blame the kids for not doing what we asked them to do. But when you have that many kids not doing what you asked them to do, there's clearly an issue on your side, not their side. Like, the only kids who really got it were the ones who came for extra help, who I had an opportunity to like talk them through what was going on inside my brain — because it was evident, but it was not a good, it was not well designed.

So like the situation — what I learned then was how important to bring reflection, metacognition, into this. Tell me about your learning experience throughout that. And those were as important for kids as they were for me, because it kept me honest.

Vicki Davis: Sometimes you do get a hard class. You know, I was talking to somebody the other day and I said, just because you have a hard class doesn't mean you're a bad teacher. Right? Because sometimes you just have a hard class, right? And you have to shift some things you do. And so sometimes these assessments look a little different depending on the class. You might have a group of rough and tumble boys, and you might be doing more stuff in the corner, except certain ones of them can't go in the same corner. Right? You're like, you two got to always disagree. I've had that before.

But you know, assessment is so important, and it doesn't always mean you're taking a grade. What's one encouragement that you can give to teachers as we finish up, as they look at their assessments for the week this week?

Starr Sackstein: I'd say be super intentional about the assessments that you're doing. Think more of it like a process and not like an end result necessarily — unless of course it's summative that you're working on. And don't be afraid to ask your kids for feedback on them. Too often we keep the separation between teacher stuff and student stuff. And I think that the more we could think of a classroom as a partnership of learning, and less about I'm in charge, you're doing what I tell you to do — like, that power dynamic kind of shifts, the more equitable that space is really going to feel for the kiddos. And they might invest a little bit more if what they're telling you actually impacts what you're doing.

You're looking at your assessments — think, is this going to help each child in my room become a little bit better than they were before, based on the things that we're learning?

Vicki Davis: Today, we've been talking with Starr Sackstein. She has written so many books, and her newest is Actionable Assessment, co-authored with Michael McDowell. And just a great topic here. Assessment's always something we're discussing, and lots of resources online that Starr has. So take a look and take advantage of those, and buy the book. So thanks, Starr, for coming on the show.

Starr Sackstein: Thank you for having me, Vicki.

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

Vicki Davis (00:01): Math games that build fluency while kids have fun. This is a Wonderful Classroom Wednesday, episode 962. Now that we're five days a week, I've got all kinds of free resources attached to every episode. So this is episode 962. You can go to coolcatteacher.com forward slash E962 and get all the free resources to bring these ideas to your classroom.

Announcer (00:29): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (00:33): Math can be fun. Today, we're talking to two leaders in math education, Dr. Jennifer Bay-Williams and Dr. Gina Kling, who can help us see just how fun math can be. Dr. Jennifer Bay-Williams is a national leader in mathematics and a lead writer to the AMTE Standards for the Preparation of Teachers of Mathematics. She's authored 18 books, and she is co-author with our other guest today, Dr. Gina Kling, of Math Fact Fluency. And those of you watching on YouTube and TV, I'm holding up their book, which has 60-plus games and assessment tools to support learning and retention. Jennifer, am I right? Did you say the word “math” and “games” on this same cover of the book? And is that possible?

Jennifer Bay-Williams (01:22): It's not just possible. It's really best practice. Playing a game to learn basic facts is fun. Also, students are in a low-stress environment where they're working with a peer playing the game. So they're actually getting a lot of practice. And if they get stuck or they don't know what to do, their friend can give them a tip or an idea to figure out the fact. In the end, they learn their facts better and they have a stronger, positive feeling towards math learning.

Vicki Davis (01:52): While I ended up loving math, I'll admit we used to do the round the world thing, and the hardest thing I ever learned was math facts. It was harder to me than calculus because I struggle with memorization. And I just remember getting physically ill, where you would get up out of the desk and whoever got the fact the fastest could advance. It just drove me crazy. Do all of the games, Jennifer, have to be stressful, or can they actually be fun?

Jennifer Bay-Williams (02:14): I love this question. And I've taught pre-service teachers, elementary teachers in particular, for 30 years. And when I ask what is their worst memories of math, that around the world comes up all the time. It has caused so much distaste for math. That's the softest term I can give it — anxiety on the other end.

It's such a bad practice. Let's eliminate the bad practices first. The games in the book, none of them have that competitive, be-fast component to them. Their strategy, like low stress. So for example, they use simple dice, simple cards. You would turn over a card or roll a dice to solve your problem to get like a spot on the game board. And then it's my turn and I roll the dice and solve my own problem to find my spot on the game board. I'm not competing with you either, Vicki. We're just playing the game. And then the winner is the random person that's rolling well that day.

It's their strategy in the games that are fun. But the key of the games is to make sure they're not about speed, because when students are under pressure to be fast, it blocks their thinking. To be clear, they will end up automatic and fast with their facts through this low-stress, engaging, game-based approach.

Vicki Davis (03:23): We've talked about around the world, but what about timed tests? What's your opinion? Let's go there.

Jennifer Bay-Williams (03:29): Timed tests need to be abandoned.

Vicki Davis (03:31): Really?

Jennifer Bay-Williams (03:32): Is that a good enough answer?

Vicki Davis (03:33): Completely out the door. Give us the whys.

Jennifer Bay-Williams (03:36): The intention of using them is to make kids faster. Using a timed test doesn't make a child faster. It can make them anxious. You think about that around the world feeling you have. The timed test is like, I've got to hurry up. When you feel stressed, you just can't think through things. What I've noticed in watching students under time pressure is they really drop back to a more primitive strategy like skip counting or counting, instead of taking the time to think through a more efficient way to get to the answer. Those timed tests are actually not supporting their progress forward, can be emotionally challenging. They're ineffective.

The third reason I would say — when we get the results of that timed test and we see that they got six times seven incorrect, we don't really know why. And when they get it correct, we don't know if they were skip counting still or if they just knew the answer. The evidence that we get from those tests don't really help us help the student to really master their facts, to become good at their facts. So it's not a useful assessment tool for teachers either.

So there's so many better options out there. Could we just abandon the tests that have been creating such negative feelings about mathematics for decades? Could we please just not use those anymore?

Vicki Davis (04:46): Wow. Gina, what do you want to add?

Gina Kling (04:47): Yeah, I think, you know, a really important idea, too, to think about are the messages we give to kids. And if we do these great games and, like, number sense routines are very popular to use as well, and we give this message that, hey, we value your thinking, we value your creativity, your strategies — then we give a timed test. We're no longer giving the message that we value their thinking and creativity and problem solving. That's confusing, right? It's confusing to any of us to get mixed messages, but that's really confusing to kids.

It muddies the waters of what it means to be fluent and what we value in terms of them being mathematicians. I mentioned earlier our definition of fluency. Yes, accuracy and efficiency are part of that. Flexibility and appropriate strategies are the other two components. And so, as Jenny mentioned, timed tests don't give us a measure of all of those things. In fact, I question whether they give us a measure of any of those things, because so many kids just shut down when given a timed test. And then we can't even see their accuracy.

I remember years ago doing professional learning with some teachers, and this one teacher said, “Well, you know, I've noticed the kids know their facts when they play their games, but then when I give them the timed test, they don't know their facts.” And it's like, well, why give them the timed test then? Like, you already knew it from the gameplay.

None of us are looking for more things to do. We don't have enough time. We have to be strategic with what we're doing and making sure that our assessments align with what it is that we value in our teaching. Jenny pointed out also, we need to give teachers alternatives — game observation, interviews, strategy writing. There's so many different ways that we can get better data. It's not that we don't need to assess where our kids are at. We can get better assessment data through other.

Vicki Davis (06:29): I just remember the sick feeling of my first timed test. It was half done. I remember going home and saying, “I know the facts. It's just when she called time.” And then we just spent so much effort on getting me faster. I'll even tell my students now, be real careful about judging yourself in what you think you do at math, because I loved algebra. I adored calculus. Help me understand why calculus at Georgia Tech is more doable and less stressful than math facts in first grade.

Here's the thing about timed tests is that when you turn that timer off and you just hand it to them and ask them to do it, a lot of times they get it done faster than you would have timed them for anyway. If a kid needs the time, they use it. If they don't need the time, they don't use it. Honestly, I don't really even understand why we time things like the SAT, especially now that it's electronic. Kids tend to use the time that they need.

Jennifer Bay-Williams (07:26): So Vicki, you're probably in a very small minority of somebody that made it to calculus when you didn't fare well with timed tests. And that's one of the problems — is people decide when they're six that they're not good at math because of the timed test. That's another compelling reason to not use them.

When I ask teachers, why are we using them in any ways if they're not good formative assessments and they cause anxiety and you don't get good data from them? And the answers I get are, we don't have anything else to use. Our book has two chapters on that. It's what we've always done. Let's change that. That hasn't been working for us.

The thing you just mentioned, the end-of-year exams, which are timed — but they're not timed like a timed test. You're not doing, let's see, 20 problems in one minute. They're set up with 45 minutes, which is plenty of time to solve those problems if you've really learned those math topics. And a lot of states have canceled the time factor, and now schools are dealing with another problem, that those tests just linger on and take more of their instructional time because there's no time limit on them.

So that's a whole different phenomena, the end-of-year exams, and certainly not an explanation of why they need timed tests. You know, you can't be talking about the SAT they're going to take when they're juniors in high school as a reason to put a, you know, six-year-old under a timer to solve, you know, 60 problems as fast as they can.

Gina Kling (08:45): And I could add on to that. There was an example this winter. I was working in a school district and a kindergarten teacher said, “Well, I do this because they need to learn how to handle pressure.” Which again, you're thinking a five-year-old, a six-year-old. That's scary to think.

But what happens then is they equate that feeling with math. I don't know the psychology of how we can best help kids learn how to handle pressure situations, but I don't want it linked with math. Our goal is to help them learn how to deal with pressure. Take it out of the math classroom. Find other ways of doing that. We need to separate it from math. Otherwise, we're never going to get beyond the math anxiety that's crippling so many of these potential rich mathematical thinkers.

Vicki Davis (09:22): A lot of it comes back to the fact that my mom was a teacher, and I remember hearing her tell my dad her education is not going to be over before it starts, because this was first grade for me. And we spent a whole lot of time after dinner counting apples and counting this and counting that and so much time.

Not everybody has the tutor like I had to help me understand, because if she hadn't intervened, my whole life would have been different just because of timed tests. And I was good in school. I was valedictorian in my high school class. I was first in my class at Georgia Tech. And when I tell people that math facts were so hard for me, I've had people roll their eyes at me. I've had people make fun of me as an adult.

Do they know their math facts? Yes, they need to know them — but not do they need to do X number of problems at X amount of time.

I'm glad that you're talking openly about this, and I don't want anybody to think that we are advocating for sorriness or not knowing math. We want them to know math. We want them to have excellence. But this is a better way to excellence than having people have their whole life changed.

Vicki Davis (10:25): Gina, do you have like a favorite game that's your go-to when you kind of start those math facts?

Gina Kling (10:31): I do, absolutely. And you know what? As soon as we started talking about it, I thought, boy, I wish I grabbed a deck of cards, because it's my favorite game. I'm gonna go out on a limb and think it's probably Jenny's favorite game too. It's the game that kind of brought us together as writing partners. And it's called Salute.

Where, if the three of us were playing — I was the dealer. I would give you each a card that you would put up on your foreheads, but you wouldn't be allowed to look at. So you would each be holding up a card. I would look at your cards. And I would tell you what the sum of those two cards are. And then you would — so Vicki, you would look at Jenny. So let's say I said the sum was 16. And you look at Jenny and you see a nine. You can figure out what your missing addend is. The same time, Jenny's looking at you and she's seeing a seven on your forehead and figuring out that she has a nine. And then we just rotate roles.

It's one of my favorite games because it is so incredibly engaging. Family math nights and parents and kids together are getting engaged. But I also love it because as much as we want math to be fun, it's got to be meaningful. It's got to have mathematical meat to it. And that particular game, they're using addition, they're using subtraction. We can actually adapt it when they get a little older to multiplication and division. They all have a different role in the game that they all depend on each other to be able to make the game work.

So it's just a mathematically rich game. Imagine kids playing that for 15 minutes — all the facts they're practicing, probably the same number of facts as they would on a worksheet, but they're so much more engaged. And that engagement is going to make that understanding last. That's a fun one.

Vicki Davis (11:58): One of the biggest obstacles I have in computer science is if I ever hear a parent say, “I was never good at computer.” And one of the things I see in math in particular, the parents will say, “Oh, I was never good at math” too. And they try to pigeonhole their child, create that block. How do you coach teachers to be respectful and honoring of the parents — because we work with parents, not against parents — to help kids have an open mind that, hey, I can be good at math? Because our future as a country is grounded in, can we really get this math thing turned around. It's important.

Gina Kling (12:34): We have a whole chapter in our book. Our last chapter is about communicating, like, with the broader community, primarily families, and the experiences that we provide not only for children in our schools but for families, in terms of rethinking what it means to be good at math — because that's really where the source of the problem is. You know, the notion that they had of what it meant to be good at math, being fast, being good at memorizing, really has very little to anything to do with being good at it. Like, what we value is problem solving, perseverance.

And so not only sharing those messages in our schools, both with how we teach kids but also how we assess kids, that we have that coherence — that, yeah, I value your thinking, I value the fact that you're sticking with this problem and working really hard — but then providing environments for parents to explore that. Something very engaging around a family math night.

We send home bookmarks with some of our games and game baggies that just give guidance to parents on how to play math games with their kids, how to ask questions — like just asking their children as they play, “How did you figure it out? Can you think of another way you could figure that out?” Because they don't know, because they probably never had experiences playing math games as kids. We need to help coach our parents to not only understand what it really means to do mathematics effectively and how they can best help their children with that. It really is changing the narrative around all of that.

Vicki Davis (13:54): I love that. Jenny, did you want to add anything?

Jennifer Bay-Williams (13:56): We do want to help parents. Parents want to help their child. And so we're going to help them help their child by pointing out that math is no more inherited than reading or social studies. It's acquired through hard work and good experiences. And if they feel not good at math, then they'll be excited that we're trying to remove some of the things in our ways of teaching that have caused those bad feelings, like timed tests — and replace them with things that lead to that confidence and competence, like learning about strategies so that you can figure the problem out. You don't have to rely on your memory.

That's what we're trying to do, is to really bolster students' confidence and competence early on, because they carry that forward. And so the way the parents can help is they can be open that they didn't have a good math experience, but they have to help the student recognize that that was through their own experiences and not some sort of genetic flaw.

Vicki Davis (14:49): Exactly. Saying, I think you have a great teacher. I would love it if you would have a great experience so you can help me with math. Spin it around, because we want our children to be excellent. Oh, this has been such a delightful conversation.

Jennifer Bay-Williams (15:04): To make your life easier playing those games — there is a companion website where the games are downloadable. Half of the games are downloadable. It's a free website for anyone. The Kentucky Center for Mathematics developed this website during COVID and just as a service to ASCD. That's why it's located on the Kentucky Center for Mathematics website.

But if you just Google the title of the book, Math Fact Fluency Companion Website, and you look for the picture of the purple book, you'll end up on that website. Half the games are there. They're in English and in Spanish. There are student recording pages. Some of the assessment tools are there as well. If you want to play Subtraction Stacks, you don't have to make that game board, or Trios. It's downloadable on the website.

Vicki Davis (15:43): Dr. Gina Kling and Dr. Jennifer Bay-Williams, thank you for having this.

Vicki Davis (15:49): 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.

Vicki Davis: How to make VR actually work in your classroom. Episode 961 is a Tech Tool Tuesday. Our guest says the wow has to be secondary to the why. Here's three tips. One, before you book a headset, finish this sentence: what can my students do in VR that they can't do in my room? No sentence, no headsets. Two, count the first session at 15 minutes. And three, make that first trip a scavenger hunt. Let them find the loopholes and debrief when you're done about how to make it better.

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

Vicki Davis: There's so many terminologies out there that sometimes it helps to do a deep dive. Meghan Freeman is an education leader and visionary strategist who now serves as the co-founder and co-CEO of Illuminate XR. It's an immersive learning company working at the intersection of extended reality, AI, and neuroscience-informed design. Meghan, people are like, okay, what's XR? Do we really need another acronym? What is it and what makes it different from everything else?

Meghan Freeman: First of all, thank you so much for having me on. I'm so honored to be here today and talk a little bit about my journey and so excited about the XR space. It's that intersection of AI and VR and all things augmented reality, right? So as this technology and this technological revolution we're in, where new things are popping up daily, it's allowing for that definition to include all of the new items that are coming in the future. AI, VR, augmented reality, all the exciting technological tools and assets that can help support a teacher in being better.

Vicki Davis: For someone who knows nothing and all those acronyms just made their head spin, give us like a simple first grade explanation of these different terms and what it looks like in the classroom, like what an experience might look like in XR.

Meghan Freeman: For me, starting back when I was running a school, I have been involved in so many tech rollouts and I was very concerned as a leader, like, oh gosh, how am I going to manage this tool? I hadn't stepped into VR before.

I remember partnering with my co-CEO, Colin Cooper. It's how I met him through a think tank. And I remember him getting me into the VR headset for the very first time. And the first thing we did was just some really fun applications. It was very exploratory and very Socratic.

So virtual reality is the ability for you to be able to put on a headset. I use the Meta Quest. It's right here. And it's at my side all the time because I'm always in VR at this point. But there's many different ones you can use. All of them are great. And all of them are based on varying budgets. But ultimately, getting into that space and allowing to be immersed.

And I had never walked the plank before. I don't know if you've ever had that experience. You get in. And you go climb up, get into an elevator, go up to the very top floor. You look out. And when you look down, you genuinely feel as if you are at the top of a building and have to walk out on the plank.

And it was so funny because I was in my office and I really felt I was so hesitant to allow myself to even take one step forward. I have a natural fear of heights. And so it took me probably two or three times to be able to actually get the ability to be able to move one foot in front of the other, even though I knew consciously I was in my room. It was unreal. And to me, that's when a moment clicked.

As someone who has a fear of heights, the ability to be able to practice that fear and the safety of my headset, I was thinking of all of my teenagers and all of my students as who come to my school who are looking for a second or maybe third chance to get their high school diploma, coming in with a variety of fears or things that they have told themselves they couldn't do well.

I thought, well, Meghan, you put the VR headset, you climbed up an elevator, you walked out on the plank. And in my mind, the neurons were firing as if I was really in that space. Your mind does not understand that you are in a virtual reality space. That's how immersed you become. When that moment happened for me, I thought this is something that could be transformational for students.

Meghan Freeman: As a leader who's been involved in multiple rollouts, we spent an entire year with my staff playing. So what I wanted to do was not pretend like we knew how to implement this well. I wanted to empower my staff because they are smart, they are intelligent, they are critical, they know what students like, what they don't like. And I wanted to be able to get my leadership team. So we got 46 devices for our staff.

And we literally spent the entire year creating policy, playing, telling what we liked, what we didn't like, what our concerns were, safety concerns, because at the time, we were ahead of the curve. And the ability to be able to lock down your headsets on an MDM or a device management system that was safe for children didn't exist yet. And so we were trying to figure out how to get students in here safely. And there was a lot of questions. And as a part of my leadership, I love Question Quest. So we constantly ask teachers to sit with a question and help support us in coming up with an answer.

Meghan Freeman: They were amazing. What came out of that journey was idea after idea of how to support students, one of them being public speaking. So if you could imagine, public speaking is something that most high school students, middle school students, even elementary school students really are fearful of — getting up in front of their peers. And as most children, do they want to be accepted?

And when you're able to practice your speech in an environment where in the VR, you can change environments. You can be in a classroom. You can be on a TED Talk stage. You can be anywhere you want. And you can have actual interaction with AI, which is now bringing in the next component, an AI avatar in there that can give you feedback on how your speech went.

And the idea is as you go into these in practice, just like I was able to eventually walk out on the plank and actually solve that really terrifying experience for myself, we would want to see those transference of skills for students. Imagine them traveling around the world with BRINK Traveler and some of the apps that are available out there for kids to be immersed in different places they've never been before.

Imagine for technical education and what you do, Vicki, and being able to put students in situations that maybe are too expensive for a school to have, but you can recreate it in the virtual reality environment. We are very excited to be looking at this space and working really hard to ensure that teachers who know students best are at the heart of how we design.

Vicki Davis: So let's talk a little bit about policy. So I've used some VR headsets and different things. And one of the first things that I learned was really creating strict rules about when someone is in VR, respecting that person's space. You're not going to grief or bother or touch that person, even how at the time, because we were using some Windows Mixed Reality headsets.

Even at the time when it got time to take them out, how we would do that, I would say, okay, put your hand on their shoulder. Tell the person inside, okay, when they put your hand on their shoulder, it means speak quietly into their ear. It's time to come out. Now, that was, I don't know, 10 years ago how we did it.

But what are some of those things for like, how does space look? Are the students, I assume they're seated. Are they standing? What does the space look like? And then how do you respect the person who is in VR so that you protect them? Because you truly are aware of what's in your headset, but everything else really doesn't exist.

Meghan Freeman: And classroom management is classroom management. And when you're using a new tool, right, that was the big component and a lot of questions around classroom management. And looking at multiple applications, some of them had strengths when it came to classroom management, and some of them had areas where, okay, this is not going to work for a group environment until this happens or this happens. There was a lot of variables there.

So when we're looking at it, there was a couple of platforms that really allowed for easy teacher classroom management where there were toggles between whether you could have spatial conversation so you could only hear the person next to you. But if you walked a foot away in the virtual space, you wouldn't be hearing the entire class talking.

You could immediately seat students in the space so that a teacher could actually have students come focused because in the VR environment, just like if they were out on the playground or outside, they would be distracted by the world. And in order for them to focus on you for those moments of direct instruction that make sense for the reason you're going into virtual reality, having those toggles, those controls, being able to mute, being able to limit access to any outside technologies, limiting access to web browsers, which can be really common.

It's so funny. Some of your smartest kiddos will find the loopholes in your system. And so making sure they're not accessing any type of website or web browsers while in the space, because depending on the tool that you're using, classroom management becomes a big concern.

Meghan Freeman: And so just like you said, it depends on how you're applying it and what you're doing. So at IXR, we use a program called ENGAGE, and they're wonderful. The reason why I like them is, number one, they're very secure. So being in this world of AI and XR, student security with safety of data is so important to me. They're not doing any type of metrics or profiling on a student, which is really important to us here at IXR — student safety matters.

And I love the ability for the teacher to be able to control a lot that goes on in the environment. And they're listening as more teachers are entering into the platform and adding more ways for teachers to have better classroom management.

Meghan Freeman: Some experiences need to be designed for groups. So that's another thing my team learned is that when you're looking at designing the virtual reality experience for a student, the wow needs to be secondary to the why. And I've always said that it's super, super important that the moment you get immersed, why a student is engaging in this immersion needs to be really planned and thought out.

So teachers do need time to sit with, okay, I'm teaching this course. I know when a student puts on a headset that they are going to be immersed. I want to get the most bang for my buck. What am I going to do? At IXR, it's very simple for them to create a virtual reality experience for their class really quickly. And so I'm always looking for tools that amplify the teacher, allow for that personalized touch, because no one size fits all.

And the teacher must really think, what can I do in VR that I might not be able to do in my class? And how can I make this moment something students won't forget?

Vicki Davis: So I love what you said about the wow is secondary to the why. Let's go through a couple different things like language arts and — science, history, even math, like the chemistry. You have some quick examples you can give us?

Meghan Freeman: For chemistry, for example, going into a chemistry lab and being able to use chemicals that you would never be able to use safely in a classroom setting and for them to see the reaction of these chemicals in an environment where they never would be hurt. That's something that you can't do in an environment.

There is in many schools dissections, right? So there is a lot of students who are legally allowed to opt out of a dissection due to ethical reasons. While in the VR, you can have a virtual reality dissection where you're not impacting a real animal, allowing for the students to engage in the anatomy of an animal and learn because that's so important for transferability of who we are as humans.

So for them to engage in something that normally maybe they wouldn't — so many wow factors: traveling around the world, going into Shakespearean times, sitting in the Globe Theater, going back to Pompeii, going to the Statue of Liberty if you've never been, allowing for students to sit in the Oval Office and speak to an AI-generated president, having the ability for students to be able to explore the natural environment.

And if you were a social science teacher, for example, could you imagine teaching a lesson and allowing for the why of your VR environment to be letting your students experience empathy? So you could create virtual environments where you have the students being able to see perspectives in a real life location from different humans based on this point in history. And oftentimes we do that in writing, which is great. But for someone to be able to visualize that and really work and see an AI character that's recreated and letting them experience something from multiple perspectives, doing that analysis, deciding what's true, what's not — those are skills that are so important for today's children.

Meghan Freeman: And another big wow is collaboration and communication. We're able to do a lot of that in the traditional classroom setting through group projects, project-based learning. But the ability to be able to go up to the moon and sit on the moon and give the students the opportunity to speak to astronauts and say, okay, guys, you're not able to get off. You have a budget. You need to convince NASA and create a way to live on the moon. Here's all of your variables. You have access to scientists if you have questions — and letting them go into productive struggle.

A lot of times students these days are so fearful of failure. And that's what real life is. Real life is just failure and then learning from it and moving forward. So allowing for the VR stage or VR experience to be the space where productive struggle becomes natural and allows for students to use their genuine curiosity to try and tackle challenging things. And if they succeed, awesome. If they don't, they can go back in. They can try again. And they can make another mistake or conquer fear.

There's so much that you can do that allows for this to be a real safe environment, kind of outside of ego, outside of what peers may see if you want to do that one-on-one for a student. So it's a very novel, interesting, exciting way to bring learning to life in your classroom.

Vicki Davis: Well, you know, with all the pushback on screen time, now is there any kind of like screen time limits for where you think, okay, like let's go in VR, let's go out of VR?

Meghan Freeman: Great question. I am someone who gets very car sick, and so I was really shocked when getting into the VR headsets how seasick, car sick it made me. My equilibrium got off. Some people don't experience that. Some do.

So I would not suggest at the beginning of any type of VR experience anything more than 15 minutes, allowing for what I call short sprints for them to be in the VR, to see the wow, to experience the necessary management style, how they can be polite and respectful in this space too. I would say no longer than 25 to 30 minutes max is the amount of time I would ever want a student in there.

Vicki Davis: If a picture is worth a thousand words, an experience is priceless. And we always want to give kids experience and not every kid can afford different experiences to go certain places.

Meghan Freeman: Well, in my experience, I've worked with students who just the traditional school system did not serve for many reasons. And many of them struggled with algebra. And so what I would say is one of the things we're tackling currently is applying algebraic concepts to the VR sprints and giving students the ability to practice algebra in a space that's safe.

Knowing the world that we're going into, algebra is going to be more important than ever. My heart lies with students who were struggling and need the power of artificial intelligence and the power of virtual reality to support them.

And for our students that were coming to us really struggling, we saw the most academic gain and growth when we focused on human first and then standards second.

Vicki Davis: I love that. Here's the thing. If textbooks and paper and pencil worked, then we wouldn't have so many that are going back to get their GED. We always have known that math and manipulatives go together. And what better manipulative can you have than to manipulate inside VR?

So many great ideas here. So we've been talking to Meghan Freeman, education leader and strategist who serves as co-founder and co-CEO of Illuminate XR. And thank you for coming on the show.

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.

Vicki Davis (00:01): Happy Motivational Monday. If you think that you can’t have an awesome, warm, friendly school that is also data-driven, today’s guest, Deborah Dennie, will motivate you to realize that you can have a data-driven school that’s also a great place to work.

Announcer (00:23): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (00:27): Today, we’re talking with Dr. Deborah Dennie, Principal of Leonardtown Middle School in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. Dr. Dennie has led her school for 10 years and has been named a 2026 NASSP National Middle Level Principal of the Year finalist. She’s Maryland’s Middle School Principal of the Year. We have a lot to talk about, but we’re going to talk a lot about data-driven leadership and how it can transform a school culture, and put students on the path to success. So thanks for coming on the show, Debbie.

Dr. Deborah Dennie (01:08): Thanks for having me, Vicki.

Vicki Davis (01:09): Debbie, you started your teaching career in 1986, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Can you take me back to that moment and what drew you into education and what was it like teaching in those early years?

Dr. Deborah Dennie (01:23): At that point in time, I didn’t think I would get to teach because I was so young and growing up in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, once I graduated from high school, a pathway to teaching is a bit different from the way it is in the U.S. And so I was told way back then that, oh, you were too young to teach. I, believe it or not, ended up being a shoe department manager for a year until the Ministry of Education called me and I started to teach in mid-year. I was 17-year-old then teaching 15-year-old boys. It was a task, but I stayed in it. I have always wanted to teach. I think that was the drive to continue along those parts. I did take break once I had my girls, and I stayed home with them. And then I went back out. My husband and I moved here to the U.S. So it’s been a journey, and it’s been a pleasant one. I take everything, the good, the bad, the ugly. And there hasn’t been a whole lot of uglies, really, because I enjoy what I do.

Vicki Davis (02:32): And you’re a middle years. That’s not the easiest season of life to lead a school for, you know?

Dr. Deborah Dennie (02:38): No. They give us a run for our money. The classic middle child.

Vicki Davis (02:42): Debbie, you’ve been at Leonardtown Middle School for a decade now. So when you first walked through those doors as a principal, what did you see that needed to change? And what did you see that you wanted to protect?

Dr. Deborah Dennie (02:55): Leonardtown Middle School has, there wasn’t a whole lot for me to change at that point in time. To be honest, my first year, I came in and I thought, I’m just going to look and I’m going to listen. I didn’t change a thing because I did not want to be the principal to come in and just take away everything that everybody had for however long, because my predecessor had been here eight to nine years. That wasn’t my goal, to come in and simply change things. I needed to assess. I needed to look. I needed to listen, see if there was anything that I needed to, quote unquote, put my stamp on. So really and truly, I didn’t come in with the intention of changing anything right off the bat. I thought I would look at it, assess, and in that first year, if I saw anything that I needed to change, then I would do so gradually.

Vicki Davis (03:48): I love that humble attitude. What does data-driven leadership look like in your school on a Tuesday morning, for example?

Dr. Deborah Dennie (03:55): Let’s just pick any morning. Every two weeks, I look at our passback. I look to see how the kids progress in. I look to see how that means for the teachers as well, because it’s not just about the kids. We have to have the teachers on board. So I will go through and I will take a look at that data with my assistant principals and my resource teacher. And we go through, we go through all of these. We look to see, okay, there are so many Fs. This is the average because assessment and accountability would send us that average for all of the content areas and overall average, and then broken down by content, even the unified arts. We look at all of these things and I look to see, all right, maybe in sixth grade core math, the average percentage of F’s would be eight or nine percent. But as a building average, it’s five percent. Then I look to see who is over that building average. If you’re above that building average, then you’re going to be hearing from me. I’ll be copying the resource teacher. And then I send out some pointed questions. Why is there this gap? You know, what are we doing for those kids who are failing? What are we doing for those kids? Are we reteaching? Are we looking at the standards? All of these things we look at. However, it’s not just about that. For me, it goes beyond that instructional piece. We’re a school, so it has to be about the instruction. What it goes to is you talked earlier about the culture and that means you have to be present because maybe the reason why X number of kids have so many F’s because they’re not coming to school. So we have to get them into school. So when I think about data, it’s not just that instructional piece, the A’s, the B’s, the F’s, the county formative assessments or the state testing. Yes, all important. We’re not going to get anywhere if we don’t pay attention to those. We also have to look at those other things that make up a part of the culture of the building, because if the kids are not present, they’re not learning. So it means that part of that data, I also have to look at the attendance data. I also have to look at the discipline data. I have to look at so many pieces of data. So I don’t want to get it lost in the sense that it’s just about the instructional data, because part of what makes that instructional data what it is depends on the others, the attendance data, the discipline data. For goodness sakes, the cultural climate data from the teachers and the kids. So for me, it’s all encompassing. And that is something that we pay close attention to for discipline. And we start out the school year paying a lot of attention on discipline data, actually, because we figure if we don’t want to lose time addressing discipline concerns. So we look at the discipline data, we look at where we were last year at that time, and we actually pose a challenge to the kids. If you can better what we looked like on paper last year, and most of the times I focus on like the top five areas that we got the discipline data in. I look at the top five most challenging areas, and we address those. If they look better by end of October, well, guess what? Everybody gets to participate in a classic car show. We invite our community members who own classic cars. They come in, they line up their cars, the student leaders come out, they assist with everything, but every grade level gets to spend some time outside looking at classic cars and they actually judge for the best in show. The community loves it, the kids love it, and we, the teachers and administrators, love it because we know they get to do that because they’re behaving. It’s trying to keep that culture, that climate, that academics, everything rolling to one. So that’s how we use the data.

Vicki Davis (08:06): And you seem to be great with the community. Did you have an attendance emphasis with Miss Maryland? Did you have something with her?

Dr. Deborah Dennie (08:13): Yes, yes, we did. And it was fabulous because we had that, we had the classic car show in the fall and so on. And everybody knows it’s getting to be springtime. It is. The winter, you’re cooped up. We have so many snow days. We lose time. And then it’s coming close and everybody wants spring. We want it. We want it. We want it. But then we have a few warm days and the kids are like, I’m going to stay home or it snowed and it’s too cold outside. We’re just going to stay home. So we try to incentivize. And that’s that’s one of the things I incentivize everything. We thought at first that we invite a lot of the professional teams in the Maryland, Virginia, D.C. area. But that didn’t go as well as we wanted it to. And then I thought, well, maybe we should stay a little close to home. Let’s see what we can get. I asked, invited the sheriff to come in to judge the doors at the beginning of Olympics. We had an Olympic theme going on for the doors, a door decoration. And so he came in with the assistant superintendent to be judges. And while he was here, I’m like, you know what? We have an attendance thing going. How about you give a shout out to the kids, record yourself, telling them about the importance of attendance. And if we get to 94%, the magic number based on the state, you give them a shout out. So he did. And it was really great. I’m like, oh, well, I could expand on this. My media specialist, she taught Miss Maryland in elementary school. And she said, well, I’m not. Could she come and visit? I said, she could come and visit only if she’s going to talk about attendance. We did that. But I thought, I’ll just ask. And I asked, can you do a video for us? 30 seconds, giving a shout out to them because they made 94%. We had a weekly incentive and it’s posted in the main hallway to see who was winning. And she said, of course. So we did that. And then we put a picture of her up on our TV in the main hallway and just question marks, her picture and question marks. And every morning we had trivia. What school did she go to? Could you guess which teacher in the building taught her? Every morning it was a different thing leading up to her visit. And then we had a grand assembly where she came and talked about SMART goals. Attendance was great. And we’ve been averaging. We even got a shout out from the superintendent at our administrative meetings because we were the only middle school to make, the only secondary school to make 94%. We are trying to keep it at that level. But like I said, we look at data as an all-encompassing thing.

Vicki Davis (10:56): So, Debbie, as we finish up, teaching’s hard. Administering’s hard. You know, these are all difficult things. What keeps you going when you have that hard day and you have those voices in your head and you have that… angry parent you dealt with or whatever was just difficult? Because, you know, sometimes things just happen. But look at you at the end of your day. How do you laugh when you’re hurting?

Dr. Deborah Dennie (11:18): My girls, my family, my daughters, I would text them. Sometimes it’s just a text. They’ll say, what’s up now, mom? I’ll just say, I give one of those send a bitmoji or something with an angry face and they will encourage me. My girls, my husband, my brother, they are my backbone. When I have an absolutely awful day, I know I can just call them, text them, even if I’m in the moment and I just send a quick text and they send back something and it’s all good. On the drive home, they will call to just follow up to say, hey, how did things work out? That kind of thing. And just, having them there to talk to, knowing that I can just fall back on them, they will listen. That helps me out a whole lot.

Vicki Davis (12:05): So what’s your word to the teachers who are hurting and struggling and tired? What’s your words of encouragement to them?

Dr. Deborah Dennie (12:12): Find that person that you can just talk to. Because sometimes just talking, it doesn’t have to be that you’re venting, you’re just letting it off your chest. Yes, we want that mental health piece. We can’t say enough about that, but that’s part of the mental health, being able to release, being able to talk to somebody. So find that person who at the end of the day, you can just say, oh my goodness, I had such an awful day. And they’re like, oh, I’m sorry to hear that. And they’re there for you. They have your back. When everything else, when the cloud, when it’s raining on this side, you have sunshine on this side and they’re your sunshine.

Vicki Davis (12:53): I have my sunshine, and I lean on them every day, including today, too. So we’ve been talking with Dr. Deborah Dennie, principal of Leonardtown Middle School in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. She’s been there 10 years. She is a finalist for the 2026 NASSP National Middle Level Principal of the Year, and she’s Maryland’s Middle School Principal of the Year. So, Debbie, congratulations on your recognition, and thanks for encouraging us today.

Dr. Deborah Dennie (13:26): Thank you for having me.

Vicki Davis (13:29): 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.

Vicki Davis (00:00): Happy Fab Idea Friday. Today we're going to talk to a principal who made travel part of her school culture. Let's learn how she did it.

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

Vicki Davis (00:14): Today's show is sponsored by EF Explore America and the STEM Tours. To show your students how STEM impacts the world up close and in action, go to EFExploreAmerica.com forward slash STEM. And stay tuned at the end of the show to learn more.

Vicki Davis (00:36): Today, we're talking with Karen Spencer. She's principal at Parkview Baptist School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Karen is a lifelong educator who's worked in both public and private schools across elementary and middle school grades. For many years, she's partnered with EF Tours to take her students on domestic and international trips. We're going to talk a little bit about the leader's seat, when a school decides to make travel part of their mission and what they're doing. Karen, tell us a little bit about your school and why you've made travel part of what you do.

Karen Spencer (01:08): So Parkview Baptist is a pre-K through 12 school. We have about 1,100 students, and from varying socioeconomic levels. We are associated with the Baptist. We are just a very mission-minded school.

I feel like there's so much learning that can happen outside the walls of the classroom. Several years ago, one of my teachers and I decided we wanted to bring more STEM to the school. We reached out to EF at the time, said, you know what? We want to see what we can do to offer some type of a STEM component to travel.

We had just the previous two years before started a Washington, D.C. trip with our eighth graders. And it was such a great success and just exposing our students to so much history, that we were like, let's bring in now a STEM component. And so the three options with EF were San Francisco, New York, and Boston.

San Francisco seemed a little far for this adventure with seventh graders. Boston just hit us. And there were just so many things. What I love about EF is that over time, this has evolved from just a STEM trip to a STEM, history and fun trip. And we do all things Boston.

It's so much fun to watch the students grow and gain independence. That, to me, is what's so important — is letting them see another part of the U.S., meet different types of people, and grow in their independence. Watching them yesterday — we just got back yesterday from our Boston trip — and watching my seventh graders navigate security at a very busy, bustling Boston airport, I was a little nervous.

But they did a fantastic job, even when things got stacked and they had to be delayed, or move in this line or that line. They did an amazing job. And it's just great watching them start to grow up and gain that.

Vicki Davis (03:06): Highlights. What are some of the things y'all did?

Karen Spencer (03:08): We went to MIT and Harvard. Got a glimpse at Harvard and Ivy League, more liberal arts school, and then MIT, a more STEM school. Show them options, that there are options out there — but it starts now, building that resume and getting your scores up, your transcripts ready, so that you have options when you graduate.

And we went to FIRST Robotics, MassRobotics, and the kids got to experiment with the robotics there. And we, of course, turned it into a competition, and they were all in.

Did you know that Boston has a museum of ice cream? We found that one on this trip and it was so fun and so yummy. We did the Fine Arts Museum, the Museum of Science. We did Lexington and Concord, the Boston Tea Party, the USS Constitution. We did the Freedom Trail. We walked up Beacon Hill. You name it, I think we did it.

Vicki Davis (04:03): Yes, and we're recording this in April 2026, if you're saying, hey, I want to go when it looks like that. Is seventh grade the only grade you travel with, or is this something you try to do with a lot of grade levels?

Karen Spencer (04:13): Sixth grade, we do just a one quick overnight marine biology trip, but not with EF — just on our own. Then in seventh grade, we start with EF, and we do our Boston STEM and History trip. Then in eighth grade, Washington, D.C., for our eighth graders. And then in high school, we add in international trips.

And that to me is so much fun, and so amazing to see different parts of the world, different cultures, and let the students in high school experience even more independence and really get to see outside of our borders as well.

We've been doing this for many years, and it has just broadened our high school's view of the world. And our students, they are able to see different cultures, different places, different ways. People live differently, but yet we're all the same.

It's just fun watching them gain even more independence by traveling internationally and working their way through customs, and having freedom in these small towns and big cities. We have gone to Austria, Germany, Switzerland. We've gone to Greece, France. We've done all of Italy. This past summer, we did London, Paris, and Edinburgh, Scotland. And I got to tell you, I'm a fan of Scotland. The whole trip was fabulous, but I really love Scotland.

Vicki Davis (05:33): So when you go internationally, do you have your kids doing hands-on activities also? And like, what do those look like?

Karen Spencer (05:38): We've done flamenco dance lessons. We have done cooking classes. We have done some hiking, some bike riding. It's less classroom-esque and more get out and see the world type activity.

Vicki Davis (05:53): So Karen, when other administrators talk to you and say, okay, why should I go through all the headache of traveling with my students? What do you tell them?

Karen Spencer (06:03): It is amazing. It is so much fun. My favorite thing is getting to know the students on a different level, and getting to see them and having them see me in a different way. We do allow parents to come on our trips too. And I have built some amazing relationships with parents and with the students, because they get to see my heart and get to see me in a different light. And I get to see them in a different light.

I will tell you, I came back this morning and one of our students — I saw this child who tends to sometimes get in trouble in such a different light. And I saw him come to life in a different way. I have such a new love and respect for him that was different than what I had before, because I saw him in this way.

But for other administrators, I will tell you, it's a lot of work, but it is so worth it. You have to go in with a mentality that there are going to be issues. There's going to be problems to solve. You have to be flexible. You have to go with the flow. And you want to bring the fun.

We will sing on the bus. We will do model shots in different locations. We will look at TikTok and find what's the best ice cream place in Paris. You have to meet them where they are and make it fun. And then it becomes fun for everyone. I think I have some parents and students that would travel anywhere, I said, because we've had such a great time. But you have to bring that mentality with it, and knowing you're going to solve some problems along the way.

Vicki Davis (07:35): So you've been using EF Tours for a while. Why do you keep coming back to them?

Karen Spencer (07:39): Well, they have proven time and time again that they're willing to listen. They're willing to help me. I will tell you, on this last trip, the Museum of Ice Cream was an absolute spur-of-the-moment thing. One of the parents mentioned it in passing at lunch. And I said, wait, what? I looked at my tour guide and I said, we have to make this happen. And he was like, let me see if we can squeeze it in.

He and I start looking at our schedule. How can we squeeze it in? I call EF. I said, how can we make this work? And they are like, we're on it. They jumped on it with us. It was amazing. Three hours later, we were there.

And that's one of the reasons I like EF so much is they want to work with me. They want to make it a great experience. And one year, we had a terrible plane situation. But you know what? The next year, they solved it. And they worked with me, make a better situation with our planes. And I trust them. They've been in business a long time. They send security guards to help at night, that sort of thing. It just gives me a peace of mind. I just — I trust them.

Vicki Davis (08:43): That's wonderful. So we've been talking with Karen Spencer, principal at Parkview Baptist School from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. So Karen, thanks for talking to us about this. And these are just so many great trips. I'm getting the travel bug again to want to travel with some of my students. So thanks for coming on the show.

Karen Spencer (09:00): You're welcome. I enjoyed it. It was great meeting you, Vicki.

Vicki Davis (09:03): If you're a STEM teacher like me, you want your students to see how STEM impacts the real world, not just read about it. On an EF Explore America STEM tour, they might code robots with MassRobotics at MIT, explore marine ecosystems in Florida's coral reefs, or even sit down with a former spy in Washington, D.C., to discover how STEM thinking shows up where you least expect it. Every itinerary is designed by experts to amplify what you teach through hands-on experiences that can't be replicated in the classroom. Visit EFExploreAmerica.com forward slash STEM and see what an EF Explore American STEM tour can do for your students. Some of the greatest things I've ever done with my students have been tours. They make it all easy for you. So again, check out EFExploreAmerica.com forward slash STEM.

Vicki Davis (10:04): 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.