Vicki Davis (00:04): Today's show is sponsored by EF Educational Tours and their Career Readiness Tours. To show your students what careers look like up close and in action, go to eftours.com/ready and stay tuned at the end of the show to learn more.

Vicki Davis (00:23): Today we're talking with Jessica Pack. She is starting her 21st year as a middle school teacher. She teaches ELA, ELD, and social studies. She was 2014 California Teacher of the Year and she's the author of Moviemaking in the Classroom, published by ISTE. She's also an Adobe Innovator. So Jessica, you say that every student has a story worth sharing and a voice worth hearing. So as we start the school year, how can we bring that mindset in on day one?

Jessica Pack (00:47): Oh my gosh, you know what? Moviemaking is such a great way to get to know your kiddos and who they are as people, so that they're not just a new little body at a desk. They're an actual, whole person, where you're learning their hopes, their dreams, how they see themselves in the future, and how they identify most strongly now, where they're at in life. So it's a great culturally relevant strategy to roll out from day one.

Vicki Davis (01:07): So tell us a little bit about your classroom. Do you have kids using cell phones, or are cell phones banned in your school and you're using webcams? What does your setup look like for making your movies?

Jessica Pack (01:17): So predominantly, I rely on my one-to-one Chromebook setup in my classroom. That tends to be district-wide how we utilize tech. But I do allow cell phone use as the year progresses for students to film original footage. They become more willing to introduce original footage and show their faces as the year goes on. But middle school specifically, they like to start the year maybe with Adobe Animate from audio, where it's a little avatar instead of their actual face.

Vicki Davis (01:46): So describe that. You're getting ready to start school as we're recording this, and as this airs, you'll be back in school. So what does that first assignment look like for you?

Jessica Pack (01:50): I have two first assignments planned in the first two weeks. The first one is utilizing the children's book The Best Part of Me. And it's just this fantastic book where kids celebrate the parts of themselves that are most unique, that they find the most value in, and then they share a little bit about themselves using video. So my students will be making these short little maybe four or five sentence poems as like an introduction to the tools and the platforms that we'll use throughout the year. And then their second project, the second week, is to write an “I Am” poem about themselves, which, you know, that's the gold standard of getting to know our kiddos. And we often have used them in the past, the analog version. I like to digitize that and really get to know who my kids are and their families, their neighborhoods that they're coming from, the cultures that they are part of.

Vicki Davis (02:27): Mm-hmm.

Jessica Pack (02:37): So it's just a really fantastic way to see my students as whole people.

Vicki Davis (02:42): Now you did say a word that we talk about a lot on my show — generative AI. And you're just back from a conference with Adobe where y'all learned about all the new things. What are some of the newer generative pieces of film and photography that you're most excited about bringing to your sixth graders?

Jessica Pack (02:54): I think what I'm most excited about is to really leverage the generative tools in Adobe Express from day one. Express is the program from Adobe that really kind of works best with my students, right? I mean, there's fancier tools, but I'm with sixth graders. So we use Express, but I like the idea of being able to show them generative fill straight out the gate and do some of those lovely guided activities that Express publishes monthly, so that they can really build this fluency with prompting generative AI to give them the return that they want. So for me, I think this school year is about being intentional and really building in those sort of AI citizenship type of skills lessons to help them be successful.

Vicki Davis (03:36): And Jessica, I start with Adobe Express too. I mean, that's where we have an AI art competition. We'll be doing that in the month of August with my eighth graders, where they learn how to prompt and they learn how to create and they learn how to edit, you know, because some people get frustrated because they're like, I can't get anything out of my first prompt. And they don't understand that it's an iterative process, right?

Jessica Pack (03:54): Absolutely. I think, you know, the more that we can be transparent and model that type of iteration and thinking with our students, the more that they'll understand that they need to do that independently. And that's really sort of the metacognitive piece, right? Is teaching kids to think about how they're thinking about AI. So, you know, I'm really excited to watch them grow.

Vicki Davis (04:15): Now sometimes I'll see people who integrate technology into their classroom and they can get out of balance, because we have to balance curriculum with creativity, and those first couple weeks are really very much about classroom procedures as well and getting those routines established. How do you keep a balance?

Jessica Pack (04:29): For me, it's really important to examine the task that I want my students to engage in and ask myself if tech is really what best serves that task, or if it's something that we can be more analog and more interpersonal about. Like sometimes you just need to make a big giant collaborative poster with markers. And I think that that's fine too. We need to give kids that time to socialize.

Vicki Davis (04:47): Yeah.

Jessica Pack (04:52): And really look at each other in the face and like have that conversation and that co-creation moment that maybe doesn't involve tech all the time. And I think that that lays a great groundwork so that when we do introduce tech, they have this bond over this shared creativity, and they have a little more creative confidence to be able to move forward.

Vicki Davis (05:11): Now you talk about growth over grades, right?

Jessica Pack (05:18): Oh yes.

Vicki Davis (05:20): Okay, so can you tell us a story about a student whose creativity surprised you when grades took a backseat?

Jessica Pack (05:24): Yeah, you know, I think I really saw that with my English language learner students this past year. I taught a class of predominantly what we call LTEL students. It's a long-term English language learner. So these are students who'd been in our school system for quite some time and hadn't yet passed the proficiency exam. I took an approach to the class that was creativity-based and storytelling-based. So students just created a whole plethora of projects with Adobe Express, and having all of those tools and that creative freedom, I really saw them blossom as people, and their language skills improved. Yes, because we were in all four domains of reading, writing, listening, speaking. But I think more importantly, their self-concept and how they viewed themselves and their capabilities really improved. And it was just really lovely to see them speak with less hesitancy, write with less hesitancy. And they just kind of approached everything in the room — every task is like a workshop moment where we're just going to keep trying and iterating until we get the best version that we like for this task. So it was just really lovely to watch.

Vicki Davis (06:24): And you know, project-based learning — I mean, this is really something that a lot of people who are grappling with what's happening with AI keep coming back to. Project-based learning is the way that we're going to teach. It's the way we're going to master. And particularly, I mean, in languages where AI can do translation for you, it would be easy to become overly dependent upon technology and not actually have a true understanding of language. Do you feel like this new approach is one that you'll keep using with project-based learning and teaching these kids?

Jessica Pack (06:54): Absolutely. I think that anytime we're trying to just automate or drill and kill worksheets — it's looked a lot of different ways over the last 20 years in class. But those compliance-based type tasks are just not invigorating to students. And I think that's when they seek AI to help them kind of do a workaround so they don't have to spend so much time on it. But when it's a project that they're truly invested in, from just a standpoint as a learner or a standpoint as a person in general that they just find it compelling, those are the projects where they're going to really put forward their best creative effort and be fully engaged. And that's what we all want, right? We want classrooms full of joy and full of passion and full of all different types of learning. And I think that's how you get it.

Vicki Davis (07:39): So when we make movies, a challenge I have — I teach film and work with my own students and also encourage other teachers to bring movies to their own classroom. Some people just can't let go of perfection. Can you think about, like, things that don't go as planned, and give us a story that actually turned into a meaningful moment, even though maybe the movie wasn't perfect?

Jessica Pack (08:00): Absolutely. You know, I think one of the roadblocks for teachers is that they tend to leave moviemaking for the end of the school year, and they're like, oh, that'll be the fun thing we do to wrap up our year together. But when you build in intentional moments, maybe as unit assessment throughout the year where they're constantly using storytelling as a vehicle for learning —

Vicki Davis (08:10): (laughs)

Jessica Pack (08:20): A lot of those early projects are messy, and maybe things are a little bit of controlled chaos in the room. But I think that that's a really good thing, because by the end of the year, they'll just be able to create these beautiful pieces that really showcase what they know about themselves in the world. So one student in particular I had several years ago used moviemaking as a vehicle to process personal grief. So she had had a loss in her family. And because we had so many storytelling opportunities, she came to me shortly after it happened and said, will you help me? Can I make a movie about this? Because I want people to know my story and to maybe learn from it. So that was a really powerful moment for me as a teacher, to remember that we're not just teaching kids state standards. We're teaching them life skills. And for her, it was a way to process complex emotion.

Vicki Davis (08:46): Mm.

Vicki Davis (08:48): So you have your book, Moviemaking in the Classroom, that ISTE has published that people can go to. But where is a simple starting point for somebody who says, okay, I like what Jessica's saying, I want to try it. You've given us some of your beginning-of-the-year sorts of things, but can you give us something for a beginning teacher who's completely new to moviemaking?

Jessica Pack (09:33): Sure, I would say find the point at the end of the unit where it could maybe be a capstone. And an introductory project could just be something like three frames that kind of showcase what we know about a topic, what are some questions we still have, and how will I seek the information that I still need. It could also be, if it's beginning of the year, “me in three.” So just three frames about yourself and three sort of video or image clips that have that agreement piece where what you're talking about, you're hearing about, or you're seeing. And so I really think that just starting small and manageable can be a great entry point.

Vicki Davis (10:08): You've given us so many ideas for back to school. This is Jessica Pack. Her book is Moviemaking in the Classroom. And so I hope everybody will pick it up. As someone who has been teaching movies for as long as I've been teaching, and teaching it in my regular computer science courses, teaching it in all my courses — it's just so important. Story is part of who we are as humans, and project-based learning, we know, is something that's unique and different that works. And with all these generative tools, kids don't have to have their face on camera. I know some kids who just absolutely would never go on camera for that reason. So Jessica, you've given us so many great ideas. Where else can they go to find information about you and what you're doing?

Jessica Pack (10:48): You can find me at packwoman.com. You can find me at jessicapack.com, and at packwoman208 on Instagram and X.

Vicki Davis (10:57): Okay, thank you, Jessica.

Jessica Pack (10:58): Thank you so much.

Vicki Davis (11:00): Teachers, show your students what a career actually looks like — not in a textbook, but in the real world. On an EF Career Readiness Tour, your students will connect with entrepreneurs at the London School of Economics, or they might go behind the scenes at Toyota's manufacturing plant in Japan, or tour a French culinary school to see future chefs in action. EF Career Readiness Tours can take your students around the world for hands-on industry experience you can't replicate in the classroom. Browse EF Career Readiness Tours at eftours.com/ready. That's eftours.com/ready, and make careers come alive through travel.

Vicki Davis: Today's show is sponsored by EF Educational Tours and their Career Readiness Tours. To show your students what careers look like up close and in action, go to eftours.com/ready and stay tuned at the end of the show to learn more.

Vicki Davis: Our guest today, Dr. Sarah Thomas, is a trailblazer in education. She is the Regional Technology Coordinator for Prince George's County Public Schools in Maryland and founder of EduMatch, a global network where educators connect and collaborate. She's also won the ISTE Making It Happen Award. At ISTE 2025, she's spotlighting the intersection of AI and education. Thank you for coming on the show, Sarah.

Sarah Thomas, PhD: Thank you so much for having me, Vicki.

Vicki Davis: You're really passionate about using AI in the right ways, and you believe AI is a creativity amplifier. That's so different from what a lot of people believe. Why do you believe that?

Sarah Thomas, PhD: I've been wrestling with my own use of AI, and I've been thinking about this intently for the last couple of weeks. One thing that someone said on Facebook when I threw it out to the community: that AI, if you use it for productivity, actually frees up your time so that you're able to shine and devote your own space and creativity to your zone of genius. And I really, really love that. It resonated with me because it definitely helps me automate a lot of things and gives me back more time in my day.

Vicki Davis: So what kind of things do you automate with AI?

Sarah Thomas, PhD: A lot of organization. I was giving a keynote — I created the slides and the content myself, but I did a run-through of how I was going to present it. I spoke to the AI and said, if you could just give me this back in bullet-point format so I could plug it into my speaker notes. If I were to do that myself, it probably would have taken me way longer. That's one thing it really helped me with.

Vicki Davis: A lot of people say students can't use AI, we don't want them to use AI, with all the debates going on. As you advise your district, what are some of the good uses of AI you really like to see students have?

Sarah Thomas, PhD: Just as with anything else, AI is nuanced. There are some big rocks you have to make sure are in place — for example, COPPA and FERPA protections. Making sure that PII is not uploaded, and really reading the privacy policies and terms of service to figure out what kind of information they're collecting on students. I speak with a lot of districts about their plans for rolling out AI, and one pivotal point: as educators, we really need to understand how these tools work. If we're not in those spaces, it opens up Pandora's box. We definitely need to model for our students how to use it ethically and how to maximize their output — not just run it through and copy and paste whatever the output is. That reminds me of when I was first teaching and students got a hold of Wikipedia and would just copy the page and paste it. Really teaching them to use AI in a way that helps them brainstorm and maximize their creativity — that's what we need to encourage.

Vicki Davis: Tell me a story. Have you seen a student recently use AI in a really cool way where you thought, yes, that's what I want to talk about?

Sarah Thomas, PhD: The district I work most closely with has been doing a lot of piloting with artificial intelligence, and I've been looking at it with an eagle-eye view — students using it as a writing tutor, to give them feedback, to help poke holes in their work. Teaching our students to use it in a way that makes them better — I think that's where all the magic is lying.

Vicki Davis: I want them to know how to use AI to give them formative feedback before I grade. It's kind of like spell check to me — I won't take it if they haven't spell checked. And now I don't even want to take it unless they've gotten that initial AI feedback. Why should I be the one getting the feedback and sitting there going through it?

Vicki Davis: How do we help educators move from fear to using AI in the classroom? Because there's a lot of fear.

Sarah Thomas, PhD: That's understandable with a lot of new things — that fear. AI has its pros and its cons. When I first started learning about it, I was just like, yes, AI! But the more I use it and learn, there are things we need to keep in mind. The key is making sure everyone is well-informed of the good and the bad. I think it was Carnegie who said, if you're afraid of something, think of the worst possible outcome and then prepare against that.

Vicki Davis: Yeah — Dale Carnegie. I feel like fear is paralyzing kids, adults, so many people, especially as it relates to AI. There are some AI views that I think are over the top — okay, we're going to marry AI and all that. That's not healthy. I'm pro-human, you know? So let me ask you this: is there one piece of advice for teachers just starting to integrate AI, and what would it be?

Sarah Thomas, PhD: We want to keep our students safe. When using AI, be sure not to enter personally identifiable information — keep that secure. Thankfully I don't have a horror story, but I can give you a hypothetical. If that's input into an AI system without safeguards, it could help train the model, and all of a sudden the model knows that little Jimmy goes to such-and-such school. We really don't want to give that information about our students. On the flip side, also evaluate the output. I spoke to the Wikipedia example with our students, and it's so easy to fall into that trap ourselves — we want to verify whatever AI gives us. I heard someone mention the 80/20 rule: even if it does 80% of the work, that 20% — eyeballs on it, tweaking it — that's something we need to do. I have a quick story about that: a lawyer used AI to look up case history and actually tried to use the output in a courtroom, but most of those were hallucinations. You always have to go back and verify.

Vicki Davis: Ugh. Because we're ultimately responsible. Tools like Perplexity — that's why I'm kind of liking it, because it can be more accurate. I like to play “find the lie in AI” with my students. We use different models on something we know. The way they do it is, who's the greatest basketball player who ever lived, or what's the best movie ever — something they know about, so they can see, hey, this might be debatable. Because they think there's just “the answer.” So, as we finish up — we're recording this before ISTE, and this will air after ISTE 2025 — if you could pick one thing you want everybody who goes to your session to understand, what is that one thing?

Sarah Thomas, PhD: What I'd want everyone who comes to my session to understand is the power that we have as educators, the power our students have, and that when we collaborate among ourselves and with each other, we can truly change the world. That would be my one takeaway.

Vicki Davis: What do you say to people who say AI can help with a teacher shortage?

Sarah Thomas, PhD: It can maybe help brainstorm some solutions, but AI is not going to take the place of a teacher. It can help with instructional practice, but there's nothing like a human being. Like you said, you're human first — human-centric. I agree with that. A robot is not going to take the place of a teacher.

Vicki Davis: We would never think a robot could be a doctor. It's insulting to the professionalism of teachers. We've got such a teaching crisis now. Everybody I ask — these questions are about relationship — and I always say you have to relate to educate. So Sarah, Dr. Sarah Thomas, where are the places people can go to connect with you?

Sarah Thomas, PhD: I would love your listeners to connect with me — I love to talk shop. You can find me on the socials, Sarah the teacher: S-A-R-A-H-D-A-T-E-E-C-H-U-R. And you can find my organization, EduMatch, at edumatch.org. Definitely reach out, click on that “Work With Us” page, and see how we can support you.

Vicki Davis: Thank you, Sarah. I appreciate you for coming on the show.

Sarah Thomas, PhD: Thank you so much, Vicki. I appreciate you.

Vicki Davis: Teachers, show your students what a career actually looks like — not in a textbook, but in the real world. On an EF Career Readiness Tour, your students will connect with entrepreneurs at the London School of Economics, go behind the scenes at Toyota's manufacturing plant in Japan, or tour a French culinary school to see future chefs in action. EF Career Readiness Tours can take your students around the world for hands-on industry experience you can't replicate in the classroom. Browse EF Career Readiness Tours at eftours.com/ready. That's eftours.com/ready — and make careers come alive through travel.

Miranda Grabowski (00:04): I get to sit back and watch my students learn how science happens in the real world.

They’re actually doing the science on their own, not just sitting back and letting someone talk.

Angela Cannava (00:15): Ms. Cannava, everything you taught me is actually what they do in the real lab. This is so cool.

Vicki Davis (00:21): 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/STEM. And stay tuned at the end of the show to learn more.

Vicki Davis (00:41): Welcome to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. I’m Vicki Davis, the Cool Cat Teacher. And today we’re talking about something that changes students forever — teaching STEM when you travel with your students. Here’s what I’ve learned after more than two decades in the classroom: STEM stops being abstract the moment a student does real science in a real place.

A biology class in Panama plants mangroves. A biomed class in the UK runs a live DNA fingerprinting lab. A middle schooler walks the MIT campus. Today you’ll meet four teachers who did exactly that. Let’s go.

Miranda Grabowski (01:18): Recently I got back from our Panama trip. Forty of our 11th graders — our students — were in Panama to help conserve their wetlands.

I get to sit back and watch my students learn in real time how science happens in the real world.

They’re actually doing the science on their own, not just sitting back and letting someone talk to them. Out there in the boots, picking up the mangroves, getting on a boat, getting sunburned, going to plant these mangroves to help conserve that natural environment of the country. It’s great to see the students not just pretend to like the thing, but actually do the thing.

Which is one reason I love traveling with kids — is to see them actually get their hands into whatever it is, whether it’s mangroves or paint restoration or whatever the activity is focused on that day. That’s why I like traveling — is to see the kids actually experience things as opposed to just read about them.

Vicki Davis (02:14): Miranda Grabowski in Panama. But what happens when a high school CTE biomed teacher takes her class across the ocean and her students suddenly realize the experiment they’re doing is the exact same one working scientists do for a living? Angela Cannava, Denver, Colorado.

Angela Cannava (02:33): I remember one student that necessarily wasn’t the most excited to be in class sometimes — I just remember him coming up to me after doing the whole forensics workshop and saying, “Ms. Cannava, everything you taught me is actually what they do in the real lab. This is so cool.”

We did everything from health science related things — anatomical museums and seeing anatomical artifacts that were collected from years ago, a lot of the old paintings that were done of anatomy, some of the first anatomical paintings that were done. We had to go see all of those. That hooked really nicely also into the anatomy class that I teach, because I also teach an anatomy class. Lots of classroom connections with what we were actually doing and seeing. But then you also have all the really fun stuff beyond the learning part of the EF Tours. We went on the London Eye and it was like sunset and beautiful. And I have this picture of these students just looking out across the skyline — all smiles — and I’ve never seen such happy kids in my life. It was a really good mix of getting to see really good sites plus the learning.

A key for any teacher wanting to take students on a trip is just — number one — knowing that you can definitely do it. If you build strong relationships with students, they will want to travel with you.

Vicki Davis (03:57): DNA in the UK. Next stop, Boston, where a principal took seventh graders to MIT, Harvard, and the FIRST Robotics regionals — because you can’t want the future if you’ve never seen it. Karen Spencer, Parkview Baptist, Baton Rouge.

Karen Spencer (04:13): We went to MIT and Harvard — got a glimpse at Harvard, an Ivy League, more liberal arts school, and then MIT, a more STEM school — to show them options. But it starts now, building that résumé and getting your scores up, your transcripts ready, so that you have options when you get there.

We did a tour of Fenway Park, went to MASS Robotics, and just got to experiment 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. 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. I have to tell you, Boston this time of year was stunningly beautiful with all the trees in bloom and the tulips and the daffodils.

Vicki Davis (05:11): Yes. And we’re recording this in April 2026. If you’re saying, “Hey, I want to go when it looks like that” — so you’ve been using EF Tours for a while. Why do you keep coming back to them?

Karen Spencer (05:21): 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 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 were like, “We’re on it.” They jumped on it with us and it was amazing. Three hours later we were there.

And that’s one of the reasons I like EF so much — they want to work with me. They want to make it a great experience. 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.

Vicki Davis (06:15): We’ve been talking with Karen Spencer, principal at Parkview Baptist School from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Vicki Davis (06:21): Ivy League in seventh grade plants the seed. But what happens when a social studies teacher takes eighth graders to hands-on science museums in Washington, DC? Edith Cortez, Laredo.

Edith Cortez (06:34): Everyone thinks Washington — monuments and memorials. But the museums that we went to were hands-on and my kids loved it. The museums — they are so competitive. They had so many scenarios to gravitate from and moving around in every single one. And then they had to beat each other through the activities to get to the end game.

We went to several different museums that we were able to visit during our Washington STEM trip and that was very interesting for us.

Four boys that traveled with me were my students that year. And they were so excited to travel — “we’re gonna do this and we’re gonna do that.” And I kept saying, “It’s a STEM trip. It’s a STEM trip, we’re gonna do this.” And they all loved the idea of it, but they didn’t understand or internalize what it really meant.

Once they got there, they were like, “Hey, Miss Cortez — yo, this is really cool. I didn’t think we were gonna get to do all these things.” I’m like, “What did you think it meant?” They’re like, “I don’t know — we had no idea we were going to actually build on things or try to navigate through all of these activities or scenarios.”

There was one that showed about terminology and then they gave them scenarios and they had to build on a story. And my boys were so extravagantly engaged with it that they just ran with it. So many details, they added so much to it. They had the crowd going. I have a massive group thread with all the parents and I’m sending them pictures of everything. The parents are like, “My — we should have signed on to this trip.”

But it’s not easy. Hardships happen and life happens. Sometimes they don’t have that opportunity, and I totally understand — because my parents would have never, probably, been able. I always tell my students: if and when you have the opportunity in life, take advantage of it. Because there’s a whole world outside of Laredo, Texas.

Vicki Davis (08:07): Yeah.

Edith Cortez (08:25): We need to take advantage of seeing—

Vicki Davis (08:28): Four teachers. Four different subjects. One shared truth: once a kid has done it, they start asking, “Could I do this for a living?” That’s the magic. And that’s why EF Tours, our sponsor, exists — to help teachers like you and me take STEM off the page and into the world. This is Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (08:48): 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 MASS Robotics at MIT, explore marine ecosystems in Florida’s coral reefs, or even sit down with a former spy in Washington DC 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/STEM and see what an EF Explore America 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/STEM.

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain.

Vicki Davis (00:00): Welcome back, educator. Today we're going to have some honest conversations about artificial intelligence, something we all need to be having.

Announcer (00:09): Ever wondered how remarkable teaching happens? Find out right now at Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis. Get insights from top educators, tech tips, and inspiration to elevate your teaching.

Vicki Davis (00:21): I have a story I like to tell students that I call the Honesty Telescope. This story is from Benno Mueller Hill, a professor at University of Cologne at the Institute of Genetics, who told this story in September 1993 edition in the Quarterly Review of Biology. This is a story from when he was in high school. Now I want to know. I wrote this story down around 1995 to put in my quote box. Benno said that one morning in high school, he was last in a line of 40 students waiting to look through a telescope.

This telescope had been set up by his physics professor to view a planet and its moon. Now, the first student stepped up and looked, so the teacher asked him if he could see in. The first student shook his head and said, no, I'm nearsighted. So the teacher showed him how to adjust the lenses and turned the knobs to focus it. After lots of adjusting and frustration. The boy finally said he could see the planet in the moon. Every other student said they could see it right away.

Every student just saw what he was supposed to see. Planet in moons. But finally they got to the second to last student. Student. Number 39. Harter, Harter looked into the telescope and said, I can't see a thing. So the teacher shouted at it, you idiot! You have to adjust the lenses. The student tried but said one last time. I still can't see anything. It's all black. Then it says that the teacher was exasperated and finally looked the telescope himself with an odd look.

The lens cap still covered the telescope. Nobody, none of those 38 students had actually seen a thing. They all said that they could. Benno asked himself if he would have had the courage, as the last boy in line, to admit that he did not see anything. So when you're approaching the honesty telescope, it means that even if everybody else has looked at something, look at it yourself with fresh eyes. And when you do, you need to be honest about what we actually see, when we feel pressure to see what everybody else is seeing and don't share the truth of what we see.

It makes it difficult to learn, grow, and have honest conversations. I know there's a pressure to agree with everybody else around us. People who say that that AI is terrible or that AI is great. But often those answers are actually in between. And there's good and bad uses for every technology, just like their good and bad uses for educational technology, some that improve learning and some that take away. So when we talk about artificial intelligence, so much is unknown.

First we're going to talk to Justin Reich from MIT. And we'll learn how in the age of AI, in the absence of extensive research studies, which we may not have for many years, we're going to have to be willing to create micro experiments in our own classrooms, in schools. Let's talk to Justin.

Announcer (03:42): Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (03:46): Today we're so glad to welcome back my friend Justin Reich. Now, Justin is actually one of those who saved my classroom in real life. He is an associate professor. Of digital media at MIT, the director of the Teaching Systems Lab. He's the author of Iterate and Failure to Disrupt. And he's back to talk about the homework Machine. His brand new limited series podcast that dives into it, AI is really doing in our K-12 classroom. Based on 120 interviews with teachers and students across the country.

Justin, you've gone and conducted these 120 interviews about AI in classrooms. What made you think that you needed to, like, get the real story directly from teachers and students?

Justin Reich (04:36): It was the almost exact same motivation that had me visit your room 20 years ago. 20 years ago, all kinds of folks were talking about web 2.0 in schools. A thing that I understand better now is that when new technologies come along, elites dominate the conversation. Think tank people and self-described thought leaders and policymaker kinds of folks and things like me. And I really don't actually trust any of those people. I trust classroom teachers and students a lot.

At the very least, their voices are essential. So for the same reason that I wanted to visit your classroom and see what was really happening in your environment in Georgia 20 years ago, I wanted to say, all right, you know, ChatGPT has come and crashed the party. It has showed up uninvited in all of these different schools, and teachers and students are just bringing it into the classroom on their phones. And what do they think? And what do they say about it?

Because, you know, sort of professors and thought leaders can think whatever they want. But the most important observations are the ones from the people who are closest to what's actually happening.

Vicki Davis (05:37): Let's kind of back up at the 30,000ft view. But what kind of conclusions are you starting to draw?

Justin Reich (05:42): We've had a hard time concluding, because there's 130,000 public schools in this country. There are 13,000 school districts and it hits different places really differently. There are lots of schools in the country where there are no substitute teachers and kids come to school. Hungry kids are not showing up to school because of chronic absenteeism and, you know, really huge challenges. And in those kinds of places, AI tended to be described as the fifth, 12th, 19th thing on people's lists.

Like, if kids don't show up to school, it doesn't really matter what's going on with AI. When teachers said to us, I would love to do a day of professional development on AI, there are no subs. There's no one who can come into my classroom and have me leave. It tended to be in more affluent places where people said, like, this is the number one concern. This is the thing that we're really tackling, and then people just have wildly divergent opinions about what's going on.

There are some folks who said, like, this is a complete game changer for my classroom. I'm super excited about what's happening. I'm thrilled about what my students can do. And there are other folks who said, this is a machine that put words in my students mouth that aren't their words, and how am I supposed to teach someone if I'm just getting words from a machine and not from my actual students? What's this going to do to trust? What's this going to do to our community?

Really wide ranging opinions. Probably some of the most exciting stories are where those wide ranging opinions are in one community. I'm sure there's some of that in your school. I'm sure there's some of that and all your listeners schools and just hearing about how communities are trying to negotiate these challenges on a time scale that nobody asked for. Nobody gets to pick. This is the AI year. It just all arrived at once. Part of what we're trying to tell schools and district leaders is like, you actually do have to deal with it.

We're not exactly sure what you're supposed to do, but you have to do something and you have to do something together. Because if you let each individual teacher figure things out in their own classroom, that's the real recipe for chaos.

Vicki Davis (07:35): So if you have one teacher like me, actively use an AI. I teach kids how to do presentations with AI, create their presentations, the spreadsheet where my kids are writing lookup tables that I never could have had. Eighth graders. Right? Right. All these different things. But then maybe somebody down the hall thinks it's, quote, cheating to write a presentation. I tried to make sure, is this the student giving the presentation or are they reading their slides?

But here's the deal. Ten years ago, if they read their slides, they couldn't make a good grade because it wasn't their presentation, because their mom might have written it right. So you're saying that that when we take all these different approaches that it really can harm learning?

Justin Reich (08:13): I think the most important thing is the community talking about it together and coming up with some shared expectations, because you could actually imagine a really good school curriculum where imagine your school, some of your students head to Miss Vicki's classroom, and they're getting this really AI intensive experience. And those same students in some other year are going into a classroom where they say, we're actually not going to use a lot of this stuff.

There are a lot of techniques that humans have developed over thousands of years for communication, and we're just going to focus on those because it's good to get good at those two. And a student has a sort of coherent experience through this thing where they go, oh, sometimes we're doing more traditional things and sometimes we're doing newer things, and I know which is which, and that's okay. I think the real chaos is when 10th graders get spread across, are in Miss Vicki's classroom and some are in somebody else's classroom, and Miss Vicki is expecting this, and the other person expecting this, and they're not getting the same experience.

And there's not the same set of rules. It's coherent working together amongst the faculty to say, okay, we're all going to do it this way, or we're all going to be really intentional and communicate to students how we're going to do it differently. You know, one thing that we're pretty sure of from the state of the research right now, is that we don't know the best way to do this. This is not a moment to sort of look for best practices because the best practices aren't developed yet.

It's a moment to experiment, but the way that you help students feel like they're part of a meaningful, coherent set of experiments is that you tell them that that's going on, and you talk across faculty, so you feel like whatever it is that you're deciding to do, you're doing it together with some sort of joint set of expectations.

The main advice that we have for people is create spaces where faculty and talk to each other and whatever they decide to do, because there's a lot of potentially good approaches to do it together and to help students see that they're part of a community of people who are feeling their way and systematically experimenting their way through this thing, as opposed to just there's this set of rules in this classroom and this set of the rules of this other classroom, and nobody knows what the connective tissue is between any of it.

Vicki Davis (10:10): So let's talk about this research for a minute. I just did a piece of my newsletter, the Stanford Meta Research, where they look all the places studying AI, and they found only 20 of them had any measurable results. But then none of them are in the basically US K-12 classroom. And it seems like to me there are a lot of people trying to draw far reaching conclusions from research that's in its infancy. Do you see that happening?

Justin Reich (10:34): It is exactly right. Two reporters in the past week, one from the New York Times, one from Ed Week, saying, like, what are best practices with AI right now? And I hear that from teachers all the time. Like, what are the research based best practices? That's a really good intuition for teachers to have in lots of things, like, if your students are having a hard time reading, you should not invent reading instruction like we've studied teaching reading for 60 years, and we can tell you better and worse ways to teach reading.

We can't do that yet with AI. To give you a kind of benchmark, I think Google was founded as a company around 1995, first peer reviewed paper that had really solid research about how, like the most effective ways of teaching kids to sort truth from fiction on the web was published in 2019. So it took about 25 years for the research community to say, we're pretty sure this is what you should teach students to do when they're using a search engine to find facts, the arc of time that it takes for the research community to come up with, like, pretty solid answers to important questions is unfortunately, like closer to decades than years.

Ten years from now, you and I will have this conversation and we won't be like, what should I policy be? We'll be like, oh, we've studied like AI policy in schools for a while, and we're pretty sure that when schools do this kind of thing, it doesn't work as well. And when they do this kind of thing, it works better. But we're actually still kind of a long way away from that. When big science is taking a long time, then what educators needs to substitute is local science is going into their own communities and saying, we don't have all the right answers.

So what we're going to do is an experiment, like the best ways to conduct experiments or to a tell the people involved that you're experimental. So parents and students and teachers should know these are just things we're trying. There are no best practices yet. This is our best intuition of the way to go forward. And then you evaluate the evidence afterwards. So, you know, you were just telling me a story about having your students do speeches in class, and you've had students do speeches in your class for decades.

You're saying, oh, when we do this AI enhanced approach, the speeches were better. You know, I graded them. I compared the grades from 2026 with the kind of grades I got in 2019. And because the performance of understanding is better, I have evidence that the thing that I'm doing is working. You could imagine there are other experiments that you could do where you try an AI enhance thing and you're like, oh no, that made it worse. And you say, okay, that's a bad experiment, that one we're going to throw away.

But that, I think, is the crucial stage that we're at that sort of local educators with their colleagues conducting their own local classroom experiments in this period of uncertainty, where the research summaries that you're going to get for the next decade are not going to give you the sort of slam dunk answer, because big science just takes longer than that.

Vicki Davis (13:20): I've been using Claude Cowork a lot and I've written a skill to take the research on adding fun to learning that I run my lesson plans through so that it gives me more ideas on how to have fun in the classroom. It gives me ten. I decide which one to take. Oh, we gave the worst speech contest. So the kids had a checklist, and their goal was to have as many wrong ways to give speech as possible. It was hilarious. It was wonderful. And truthfully, they made better grades now than they made last semester.

Justin Reich (13:50): I think there are a few things there. When people use tools to make their work better and make their students learn more. To me, that's winning. So a thing that I really like about your example is that you have this clear vision of what high quality work looks like, honed over two decades. And you're saying, look, I got this tool. And it helped me get better learning outcomes from my students. So anytime teachers, you're talking in that kind of way of I did a thing before I was clear about what good outcomes looked like.

I tried a new thing. I got better outcomes like that, to me, sounds like winning. And it doesn't matter to me whether you're winning with with AI or cereal boxes or whatever else. I think educators should be conscientious that students do bring a deep suspicion about teachers using AI potentially inappropriately. We got lots of stories and examples of teachers starts getting tired on a Sunday night, and they have AI give too much help making a quiz, and some of the quiz questions like don't make sense and they don't work anymore.

And the students take the quiz and it's messed up and they go, yeah, you know, you were making stuff up with AI and I think rightly so. They become quite suspicious. Like if you're not putting in the effort, why should I put in the effort? Perhaps the hardest thing about your story is you. You had an important detail, which is you said I asked AI to give me ten suggestions and I picked the good one. You can pick the good one because you're a master teacher who has been doing this for decades.

When brand new teachers or any not. I mean, the thing about AI is that it's utility depends upon your domain knowledge, but they're novice teachers who have never taught before, who are looking at ten suggestions from a lesson plan suggestion machine of any kind. They're new, and so they can't tell the good ones from the bad ones. Just like when we ask our students to use AI to give them suggestions on their writing or something like that. If they're novice writers, they can't actually tell the difference between the good suggestions and the bad suggestions.

Vicki Davis (15:54): About domain knowledge. How would you define domain knowledge?

Justin Reich (15:57): In progressive education? There's sort of often a hope of something like what we're going to teach students critical thinking. We're going to teach students 21st century skills. We're going to teach students these like big, broad ideas that are applicable to lots of things. And it actually turns out that being an expert and being creative and being good at stuff often involves like having lots and lots of facts stored in your head. Probably the best research we have on this is about chess.

If you teach students to become masters of chess, they're actually not any better at anything else. They're not better strategic thinkers, they're not better creative thinkers. And the way that we make people be really good at chess is basically having them memorize historical chess games. Like, if you want to become a grand master at chess. You have to play a bunch of games of chess. But then the other thing you do is you just read these books, which are about other people's chess games, and then over time you start to like, recognize patterns in chess.

But, you know, it's basically like storing a series of facts in your head. It's kind of weird to think that Magnus Carlsen is way better at chess than you or I, because he's memorized a bunch of chess facts, but like, the reality is pretty close to that. And so similarly, like if you want to be a good plumber, you actually have memorized a bunch of plumbing facts, like some of those plumbing facts are about, like how you turn things and move your hands and things like that.

So I have memorized lots and lots of history of education facts and history of education, technology facts. And so when I ask to help do research or to do. Education related things, it's pretty easy for me to spot when they're wrong, because I know lots of things. When my novice students who are MIT students who are brilliant in many ways and know lots more than me in lots of areas all the time, they write papers where they've used GPT to summarize the research or other things like that, and it's pretty obvious to me that they're totally wrong.

And it's not because they're stupid kids, they're incredibly smart kids because they have no domain expertise in my class. That's why they're taking my class. I think the advice that you're giving students is, is exactly right, that in the areas in which we really know a lot of stuff, we have some pretty powerful tools to discern the quality of GPT output in areas in which we don't know a lot of stuff. We really are much more limited in our capacity to look at a set of output and say, that's true, that has good evidence behind it.

That's creative, that's interesting. We have an episode of this in the Homework Machine, where my colleague gets GPT to write a song in the style of Johnny Cash, and he does a great Johnny Cash impression. And so he asks GPT to come up with a bunch of, like, potential song verses. And most of them are terrible, but a handful of them are really good and really funny. And the way that Jesse knows the difference is he's a songwriter. He's spent decades trying to write music, listening to lots and lots of music, memorizing song lyrics.

You got all these song facts in your heads. One of the good things about that if you run schools is that, you know, for a couple hundred years in the United States, schools have been in the business of developing domain knowledge. Like the thing that we do is we help people make sense of biology and physics and social studies in US history and world history and British literature and whatever else we've decided to do. The if it were the case that the thing that made us good at AI was some sort of specialized set of AI skills, then we'd be like, man, we really got to change the curriculum here, and we've got to teach all these new and different things.

If the thing that makes us really good as humans at partnering with AI is deep domain knowledge, then like, actually, maybe we don't have to change schools that much at all. Like if we want students to be really good microbiologists using AI to invent new proteins and drugs or things like that, then maybe the thing that they really need is a really good education in biology so that they can discern outputs. We'll still have to learn more in the decades ahead about what kinds of things help people be the best partner with GPT and AI and whatever else gets invented.

But if I was a betting man, I would put a lot of bets on domain knowledge, and in some ways, it's good news for schools, because that's one of the things that at our best, we're good at.

Vicki Davis (20:00): So you're called the show The Homework Machine. And isn't that how a lot of students are viewing AI? It's like, hey, the teacher that says, answer the questions. At the end of the chapter, I want to take a picture of the chapter and take a picture of those questions and be done. What do we do about this? Does that mean homework goes away?

Justin Reich (20:19): My favorite thing that students will tell us is they'll say things like, oh, I don't use AI for homework. And then you keep talking to them for a while and they describe using AI for homework and you're like, And they're like, oh no, that's busywork. You know, a lot of students will decide, like, this is the homework that's not important and doesn't count. And this is the homework that is important. It does count my teacher head. I'm thinking to myself, like, you don't get to decide that.

Like I'm not. I'm sure not all my homework is perfect, but I really only assigned you this because I really believe that need to be needed to be in your head for you to be able to do other things in the future. So you know for sure lots of students are using GPT to bypass learning. I mean, probably our favorite episode of the Homework Machine is episode four called busted, which is interviews with five students about how and why they cheat, some of the stories about them hitting a wall.

You know, kids getting late at night and being like, I'm just going to have the machine do it. We have a great interview with one student who just did homework, all of his homework his senior year. He just had GPT do for him. And to some extent, my interpretation was it was just kind of boundary pushing. It was just like, I'm an adolescent. My job is to figure out what I can get away with. Nobody stopped me, and so I kept getting away with it. You know, one of our favorite stories is from a student who really loved her International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge class.

And it was taking up a ton of her time, and she wasn't using AI to do any of that work. She was using AI to do her other classes because she really wanted to do her homework in this other. So it was it was like skipping some homework in order to do other homework. So students have a lot of different approaches. We saw three different ways teachers were dealing with this. One we called Beg and Plead, which is basically this, you know, in the moments in which you think students should be doing work with their own brains, you just say, I promise you it is a bad idea to use AI.

Please don't do it. That tends to work best in sort of small school communities, where students trust that they're going to get a lot of human feedback. So in places where people feel like they have really close relationships with their teachers, and their teachers are meaningfully looking at their work, that seemed to work okay. Another one was kind of like the constant, like the nag and do not accept approach where there's not a lot of like punitive things.

It's just people turn in work that you're pretty sure they didn't do and you're like, man, do it again. You know, we had one teacher who was like, I'm the pettiest person, you know, like you're just going to like, you keep turning this stuff in and I'm going to keep turning it back. We have a great story of a teacher who, when he gets stuff that he's pretty sure is AI. I love this detail. He'll take a phrase and he'll write it on an index card. He'll take words and he's like, pretty sure the students don't know and write it on the index card.

And then he'll call the student up to the table and pass them the index card and be like, you know, hey, Jim, what does this mean? And Jim's like, I don't have any idea. And they okay, like because this was in your paper. And then we had, you know, their schools that are using detectors and, you know, using the detectors immediately punitive using detectors to spark a conversation that leads to punitive approaches and things like that and their justifications for that.

And then maybe the fourth approach is one that we're called calling bog trotter, after Bruce bog Trotter and Matilda, who eats a piece of cake and then is forced to eat the entire cake where the teachers are just like, you must use AI, you're going to use AI to cheat? Fine, then everything has to be sort of all AI all of the time, and I'm just going to make the assignments much harder so that you can't complete them without AI. And I think as I was reflecting back in my classes, I pretty much use all of these strategies in one form or another.

We don't know what the right approach is, but I think some of the things that do seem to matter, our colleagues talking with each other about the kinds of things that they're going to use in their schools, and the kinds of programs that they're not going to use in their schools, so that hopefully there's some consistency, or at least when there's inconsistencies in departments are greater, they're described to students. And then are people looking at student work before and afterwards.

You know, if your plan is to just like beg and plead students not to use AI, but you're getting all of these garbage, homogenized essays that kids are obviously cheating on, then your strategy is not working. You've got to, like, go back to the well and you've got to pick a new strategy. I think what we can do at this point is describe a range of approaches that teachers are taking, and tell some stories about where they seem to be working and where they seem not to be working.

But it'll be a little while before anybody can say like, okay, these are the ways that we know don't work at all. And these are the ways that we know work pretty well.

Vicki Davis (24:46): Well, my approach is when we do the coding, I pull up what they turn in and, I kind of know when it's a little past their ability. And they have to explain every line of code. And you know, what if they wrote it with AI, but they learned what every single line did? Hey. They used AI to learn how to how to code at a higher level than I can teach. I'll take that all day long, but anything you turn in for me, I guess it's kind of like the index card approach, except I try not to be too.

Gotcha. It's like everything that you turn in is the topic of a conversation. Before my students did their presentations, they had to use Google NotebookLM to do their research. And I interviewed every single one of them, and we sat down and had a conversation. And if they didn't understand that topic, I'd say, hey, you need to go back and look at this, this and this. I'm coming back to you. We're going to talk about it. I got to ask you one more question, though, because you wrote about subtraction in ASCD, The Power of Less, where everybody's trying to add AI to everything.

What should we be subtracting as we finish the show?

Justin Reich (25:47): The whole idea of subtraction is that schools are too complicated today. There are too many things going on and we can't be good at everything. And so we need to be deliberate about taking things away in the national conversation. Almost the only thing that schools across the country blue states, red states, private schools, public schools have agreed can be subtracted from schools is cell phones. And you and I could have a long conversation about whether or not cell phones belong in classrooms.

But here's the thing that I celebrate is that people said, we're just not going to deal with this anymore, but we're going to put them away. And maybe they would have been a good learning thing. But here's one fewer thing that we're going to deal with so that we can deal with more important things. And I actually celebrate that part of the decision. But schools just have to decide. Cannot keep adding, you know, new standards, new technologies, new like schools cannot solve all the problems of society.

We have 180 days. We're about seven hours a day. It's actually not that much time. And so I think good exercise for schools to be regularly doing is in their cycles of professional development, improvement and things like that, or like what are some things that we can stop? What are some things that we can set aside because we want to do a really good job on a manageable number of things, not a mediocre job at an unmanageable number of things. Because our schools are so diverse, it's really hard to say, like, this is the thing that you should definitely get rid of, but it's the things that are just kind of limping along and not really working anymore.

Finding what to prune is the way that you get your best stuff to grow.

Vicki Davis (27:19): I love the great way to end. So Justin is an associate professor of digital media at MIT and director of the Teaching Systems Lab, author of Iterate and Failure to Disrupt. And we've. Been talking about the homework machine available wherever you get podcast.

Announcer (27:37): Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (27:41): Again, we need to think about how are we going to create experiments in our own classrooms and in our schools? Once I knew a remarkable woman named Shabbi Luthra, she was Director of Research and Development at the American School of Bombay in Mumbai, India. It was her job to conduct experiments on every tool that they used at that school. They created an environment where they were constantly piloting, testing results and deploying them to the whole school when they worked.

I like what Justin said. Finding out what to prune is how your best stuff grows, and that's what we need to hear right now. We don't need to do everything. We need to test things and keep only what works. I told the story of the Honesty Telescope at the beginning of this session, where 38 boys in a line of 40 looked through a telescope and claimed to see a planet and a moon. But a little boy named Harter said he couldn't see anything. That was when they found out the lens cap had been on the telescope the whole time.

The author of that story, Benno Mueller Hill, also said in that 1993 paper where he told that story that in science and elsewhere, there are two types of truth. Number one, the truth everybody already knows. And number two, the truth that is not yet discovered. He said that most scientists simply just produce more of the same. That has been said before. They look through that telescope and claim to see what everybody else saw without you thinking themselves.

Then he says that the second kind of truth, truth that hasn't been discovered yet is different. At first it looks too bizarre to be true, and maybe as dangerous as fire. If you're not clever, it may destroy you. It thus takes cleverness and courage to deal with such new truth. Benno Mueller-Hill goes on to say, you have to get older, perhaps as old as I am, to see that self-deception plays an astonishing role in science. In spite of all of scientists worship of truth.

So I want to say something right now. I think we all need to hear. We can't use the word research based practices and AI in the same sentence. Yet to to. We are so eager to find research based best practices that non peer reviewed excerpts of articles are going viral before they're even published. Like the now famous Your Brain on ChatGPT article that claimed that students who use AI show less brain activity. But recently on LinkedIn, Cambridge researcher Doctor Philippa Hardman made a great point.

She said that if you look at other research, it's not whether students use AI. It's how the research she was looking at showed that scattered surface level AI use is worse than no AI at all, while strategic offloading paired with higher order thinking can deepen learning, not drain it. The better question we have got to start asking is not is AI making kids dumber? It is. Are we teaching kids the difference between AI usage that makes us smarter and better able to do our jobs?

An AI that causes us to make mistakes in our brains. To stop engaging with what we're trying to learn. This is what This is why I find people who poke holes in arguments to be so useful. I like to follow people. Maybe even that some call curmudgeons who like tapioca pudding and eat dinner at 445. I may have just described myself, so we'll go on to a philosopher at Wake Forest that has been asking a different question. What does honesty even mean now on both sides of the desk?

Announcer (31:44): Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (31:48): Today we're talking with Doctor Christian Miller, the A.C. Reid Professor of philosophy at Wake Forest University. For over a decade, he's led some of the largest research projects on honesty and moral character ever funded, including the Honesty Project and The Character Project. His new book is called The Honesty Crisis and it will be out May 19th, 2026. We're going to talk about something that every teacher and administrator in every college professor is feeling right now.

What honesty means in the age of AI and how it's under threat in our classrooms from both sides of the desk. So, Christian, thanks for coming on the show.

Dr. Christian Miller (32:30): Great to be with you. I really look forward to our conversation, even if it's maybe not the most positive thing in the world. It's an important conversation to have.

Vicki Davis (32:36): It's the one we're having in teachers lounges and at the lunch table. What do we do about honesty and where has it gone? Especially in the age of AI? And some people just say, oh, it's always been this bad as a teacher has been teaching 24 years, I'm not convinced. So what do you think.

Dr. Christian Miller (32:52): On the historical question? I'm not convinced either. I mean, student cheating has been around forever. That's nothing new. That's nothing we haven't heard before. I did think, though, that it ramped up when we shipped it to the internet. So when the internet came along, that was first what I call an honesty crisis, where honesty becomes more appealing and dishonesty is hard to detect. So it's easier to get away with dishonesty when you have the internet.

That was, I think, the first big moments. You could go online, you could find material, you could put that material into your paper or find answers to problem sets and really cut corners that way. But they didn't end there, of course. And so with the dawn of AI, I think that's now the second honesty crisis we're facing in education. It's been just progression of more and more opportunity to cheat, as well as difficulty in being caught cheating. That's a bad combination when it's easier to cheat and it's more difficult to get caught cheating.

And that's a recipe for for dishonesty.

Vicki Davis (33:46): So what does your research say about honesty in this topic? I mean, do people want to be honest? Is it as rampant as we think it is? According to.

Dr. Christian Miller (33:54): Research in general, I think people do want to be honest, but there are limits to going to go so far. So the research I've consulted suggests that in general we believe that things like cheating are wrong. We also care about how we're perceived by others. We want to be perceived by others as honest people. We even want to think of ourselves as honest people. So those are all good things. Those are going to keep dishonesty in check. At the same time, we do have a desire to cheat if we think we can get away with it and it'll benefit ourselves.

Our character, I think here is complicated. It's multifaceted. It's it's not like simplistic. We're good, we're bad, we're honest. We're dishonest. I think we're a mixed bag. As the opportunity to cheat gets easier and the rewards get greater, the good side of our character can erode. So that belief that cheating is wrong will have limits. That desire to think of ourselves as good people in eyes limits. So what is happening with the AI situation is whereas before there was always this threat, maybe I'll get caught.

There was this idea, well, still going to take me some work to go on the internet and I'm going to have to find this stuff, and I'm going to have to change it and adapt it for my purposes. Now, it's so easy that the lot of the traditional safeguards aren't as effective as they once were. So all I have to do is go to this website, give the prompt and I can get in a span of five seconds or 10s my assignment completed for me. And not just just badly or C quality or B quality.

I can get a quality work done for me in 10s, whereas normally that would take me an hour or two. That's a really hard temptation to resist. Once you know it's there, it's available to you. It's a really hard temptation to resist.

Vicki Davis (35:43): So you've also said something that's caught my attention that in education, the dishonesty problem isn't only about students, but it's also about teachers using AI to give feedback. Now, I will admit that I use AI to support me, so I'll put in my rubric and I'll grade and I'll go in AI and I'll say, hey, this is the points they have off, you know, right this up so that I can paste it in. And I'm kind of, I guess using it like a word calculator. But what's your perspective on AI to give feedback?

Is it having AI quote grade something I personally think we should never have teachers do? Or what's your take on that side of the desk?

Dr. Christian Miller (36:22): I think it's so easy to jump into the student side of it and just focus on that. But I think there's lots of other aspects to this whole idea. I mean, we could even have a discussion of whether AI itself is honest or not. There's a question of what about in the teacher's research if they're doing research or just newsletter publication, communication with parents, all that kind of side of thing if they're using AI. But here you're focusing specifically on teachers grading or teachers assessing student work.

Now, I think it's all a question of whether there's transparency or not. So let's start with a student case. But then where you took us to the teacher case, I have no problem. From an honesty perspective, if a student is transparent that they used AI because now we're out of the there may be maybe other problems, maybe they weren't supposed to. Maybe they're violating the rules. But from an honesty perspective, at least they're forthcoming. They're transparent about what they did.

If they don't do that, if they present their work as if it were their own with no disclosure when it wasn't, then that actually meets the definition of plagiarism. So they're using another source to produce the work and they're taking credit for that work themselves. So that's just a kind of standard example of plagiarism, whether that's plagiarism from the internet, whether that's plagiarism from another student's paper, whether that's plagiarism from AI, it still counts as plagiarism, and plagiarism is dishonest.

Well, now we shift to the teacher case. If the teacher says, look, I'm going to assess your work using the help of these tools. Some of my communication with you is going to be generated by AI to help save some time of writing. These emails or whatnot might be other ethical questions that arise, but there's no in my mind question about honesty. Here's where I think it gets quite tricky. So the student gets the paper back on the paper are some, you know, typed comments.

Or at the end of the paper there are some type comments or somewhere there's this feedback. The feedback is AI generated. The student isn't told that it looks like it's coming from the teacher, and that's what any reasonable person would have assumed. It's not right. They're actually being dishonest towards the student. That's if that were to be discovered, that would be a violation of trust. And I think a role of the trust in the classroom, which is very important to have.

Vicki Davis (38:42): Our policy at our school, is that some AI feedback tools are allowed, but with complete oversight by the teacher, complete transparency to your students. So if I have a massive project and and I have AI quote looking at it and supporting me, I always say students review this, this, this is the grade that I've given you. But I did use AI in portions of assessing this for you. So if you have any questions or issues, I want you to look this over and bring it back to me.

Is that how we should handle it, or is should we just not even use it at all.

Dr. Christian Miller (39:19): I'm hesitant to tell anyone what to do here. I think that's great. As far as an honesty perspective, I have no objections at all. You're being very, very clear. There's a larger question of role modeling. So in a lot of my work, especially earlier work, I thought about just virtue and character in general, beyond honesty. How should we think about a good person? How should we become better? And one really important idea is role modeling good character in front of other people.

If you want to try and inspire them to be good themselves. So the point here is transparency. That's great. No problem with honesty. Now, if you're saying that to the students, they're going to naturally have the thoughts. Well if you're using that why can't I it.

Vicki Davis (40:03): And of course in my classroom they can. But yeah yeah.

Dr. Christian Miller (40:05): So not but some many of them wouldn't that wouldn't be allowed. So if it's perceived as in any way a double standard or hypocritical like you're not letting us use it, but you're using it even though you're telling us why, why not, why not let us use it to that's that's going to create problems. So instead, if the idea is I'm going to role model, look, I know these tools available. I'm not going to use them. I'm going to instead pour myself into grading this paper using my own knowledge and experience and skills.

And it might be not as reliable. So I want you to come to me if I made a mistake or whatnot. But at least you know that this is entirely me speaking and I'm not drawing on anything else. That's that's another idea. I'm not saying it's better or worse. I'm writing to tell someone who's working, you know, tremendous hours in, in K through 12 that they're doing something wrong.

Vicki Davis (40:57): When we have a student bring something to us. I mean, all of us teachers have a different way of handling this situation. I teach computer science, so we are allowed an AP, CSP to have AI work with a student. I require that they have to be able to explain every single line of code. But say my friend Dawne across the hall, a student brings her paper that is obviously most likely AI written. And we know AI detectors don't work, which is a big part of the problem.

Is there any research on the best way to handle that possible dishonesty issue?

Dr. Christian Miller (41:32): I have a couple of things to say here that are going to be controversial, and I'll just flag that. And, you know, listeners, please feel free to to take it for what it's worth, on the detector front, I would have agreed with you maybe even a year ago or two years ago. And I know you've had passed guests talk about this too recently. There seems to be a bit of a change, a pivot. So I'm seeing places like Pangrim, which are reporting stunning reliability and detection.

So almost no false positives. You know, 1 in 10,000 kind of rates of error with false positives. So I am revising my thinking a bit about whether to go to these detectors or not. Even if that's true, let's just let's just assume that there is this great detector out there now. Still, I think we want to have some valid concerns about using it. You know, one is it's not 100% reliable, even if it's 99.99% reliable, it's not 100%. So there's questions of whether it's going to meet the threshold for punishment of the students, especially in my case at a university.

We have an actual committee where you would have to go through kind of trial process, and so would we meet the evidentiary bar there. I mean, there's also larger questions about trust. And, you know, if this is something that's known to students are going to have to run their papers through that. What kind of classroom environment does it create? Does it break down trust in the classroom and create an atmosphere of fear? Those are all valid points and concerns.

So having said that, I'm of two minds about your original question. So one part of my mind says, okay, a professor, you know, a professor has brought a paper to me that they're suspicious about. One part of my mind says, let's use these, these detectors and see what they tell us, what my mind says. Let's enter a conversation with a student. So I've done this before. I'll say, look, you know, student comes into my office, tell me, tell me a bit about this paper.

Tell me, how did you write it? Walk me through the steps. Can you explain this idea? And this wasn't something in the class material, you know. Where did this come from? How did you learn about this? At some point, often they will say they admit I use some other source. If they do that, then I'm tend to be quite lenient. I will not take them to any kind of hearing. I'm not going to get other people involved. I'll say something along the lines. Look, there has to be some kind of consequence for this, but I'm not going to fail you for the class.

I'm not going to sack you for the entire grade. Your grade will take a hit. But let's learn from this. Rewrite the paper and give you a second chance.

Vicki Davis (44:05): In the detection, you know, my students are pretty open and honest. We had conversations about humanizers, right? Right. Students will whatever AI tool of their choices generate or use it. And then they'll pull it into a quote, humanize, which supposedly makes it undetectable. And then they'll run it through whatever AI detection tool they know people are using it. So while a detection service may have false positives, I guess my question is always what you can't test, which is the false negatives, right?

Like that's the big unknown here because all it takes is 1 or 2 get away with it. Telling all their peers they're getting away with it. To discredit any AI detection tool we could try to use. And we want to make this easy. It's just doesn't feel like an easy solution and it is a crisis. I agree with that word.

Dr. Christian Miller (44:57): Yeah. So what you said is all very apt and appropriate. So my current thinking is in agreement with you. The detector is not completely reliable. And so I think I echo a lot of people in the humanities at the college level. And I suspect it's not just at the college level where we think this is a lost cause, where we are at the point where we're going to take drastic measures to deal with the situation, taking the opportunity of AI out of the hands of our students.

And I will say up front, I know this isn't going to be a one size fits all for everyone. So what do you do in coding cases? What do you do about problem sets? You know, in the sciences it's hard, but in humanities I think I speak for, you know, 90 plus percent of my colleagues, not just in my university, but across the country where we don't think the traditional paper, here's the paper assignment right at home and then turn it in that has any AI proofing ability anymore.

So we're just taking that out of the out of their hands and going with either Bluebook, traditional tests, oral exams or some kind of in-class writing scaffolding assignments. This is nothing new to your listeners. I'm sure there's nothing new to you, but this is one where it is such a crisis that I don't have a lot of hope that there's going to be any remedy to help us address it.

Vicki Davis (46:16): Well, just from our perspective as an educator is that we have to be honest with ourselves about the state that AI has put us in with education. Because if we can't discuss these honestly and say, hey, I'm not buying the line of the tech companies that AI is going to fix everything. AI has broken a lot of things and a lot of us K-12 have moved to oral conversations. My AP class, they have to be able to defend every line of code verbally on the spot.

But then part of my struggle with the handwritten papers is that when you have a student who is dysgraphic and dyslexic, as I do them all family and struggles with written expression, those students literally and legally need technology to be able to help them to truly express themselves in the world. And then there's the piece of entry level jobs are going away. In lieu of jobs where people can manage AI, they have to be able to manage AI agents where we're heading and know how to do that type of work.

So we really are in a conundrum, aren't we?

Dr. Christian Miller (47:32): We are. Yeah. So I have a similar situation, my family. So I'm very cognizant of that. You could make the quick points, but it's not completely satisfactory that there's one thing of using a computer and it's one thing and it's a different thing of using a computer with internet access. We have we have ways of shutting off or blocking internet access. So at least they have the typing tools and the spell check and whatnot without the option of going somewhere else for help, but that's not complete.

A completely satisfactory point. Agree with you also on well, in my level of college here, doing a disservice if we're not providing an opportunity to the students to make use of these tools, because then they'll be at a disadvantage when they get out in the job world. I don't know about that. I mean, I think they have plenty of opportunity to use this on their own, and they're using it all the time anyway. And at least in my world of the humanities, I don't see I mean, maybe it really varies by field, so maybe I should qualify what I say.

My business students would be different, or my science students would be different. Maybe have to go field by field. I'm not so sure that my humanities students are. I had a disadvantage if I say, look, I don't want you to use this stuff for my my philosophy papers, I think they're going to have plenty of opportunity to use it for other things. Maybe I'm here being naive, naively optimistic, but I don't want to think that I'm disadvantaging them by discouraging them from using it.

Vicki Davis (48:53): Are there any steps that teachers who are listening to you today can make to make their classrooms more honest? Places and spaces? What types of words should be using and how should we be modeling in ourselves?

Dr. Christian Miller (49:07): I would say it starts with how you as a teacher are thinking about honesty. Are you being honest yourself with your students in terms of like we've talked about with AI use, being transparent when you're using it, when you're not? Or are you keeping that in reserve as something you're not disclosing? It's also a matter of, are you honest with yourself? A failure of honesty that we overlook is we can be self deceptive. We can deceive ourselves and not tell ourselves the truth about places where we don't want to confront something and that bothers us, so we deceive ourselves.

But more concretely, I am a big proponent of the idea that role modeling matters, that we can inspire our students and demonstrate by example. So I think it's very important to be upfront from day one and expect the students to live by the same standards of honesty that you're expected to live by, to hold everyone to the same standards here. I really like honor codes. I'm a big proponent of them, I think even though they may not be able to block the AI crisis, they do a lot of good work, and they've been documented for 30 years that they do a lot of good work.

So if your school has honor code, I really believe that you, the teacher, should be upfront about your affirmation of it and not just say the students have to affirm it. So in my classes, when they take a Blue Book exam, we all verbally recite the honor Code together. Not just the students. We we all say it out loud. We actually recite it, and I say it too, because I'm showing to them. I'm holding myself to the same standards that you're being held to.

And when they turn in papers, I make them handwrite the honor code and sign it. So even if they did something fishy on this paper, they still have to take a stand at pledging their integrity and honor in writing that honor code and signing it. That's taking a stance, and it can be held accountable for that. So I think both sides affirm an honor code, and the students write it out on papers and verbally recite it on exams. It can't hurt and it can only help.

It won't fix everything, but it can only help.

Vicki Davis (51:10): So Christian, what is your goal for the book The Honesty Crisis?

Dr. Christian Miller (51:14): The book is larger in scope than just education, so it's talking about six different areas of society where I see honesty crisis happening and education is only one of them. Others include things like deepfake videos, political misinformation, celebrity, even religion. I talk about things like sermon plagiarism. So I'm I'm worried about honesty crisis popping up all over the place. I guess my goals would be threefold one just appreciate what honesty is in the first place.

Get a better handle on what it is to be an honest person. That's actually quite interesting and more nuanced and complex than you might have thought. It's not just a matter of don't tell lies. It has way more richness to it than that. So greater appreciation, whilst he is greater appreciation of where it's eroding in society, places. We might not even have paid attention to. AI in the education case is an obvious one. Some are more subtle. Lastly, I kind of feeling and a motivation to do something about it.

Not only now I'm I'm better equipped a more knowledgeable about this, but I'm also inspired to change my life and work towards change in other people's lives to address these honestly. Crisis. Because honesty is our most treasured virtue. when it erodes, terrible things tend to happen in society, so it's worth fighting for.

Vicki Davis (52:30): Honesty is worth fighting for. As an educator, I want to believe in the integrity of what's happening in my classroom. We don't want to give our lives for something that's pretend, that's fake, that's not real. And we know that people struggle with, you know, what do I believe in in the world anymore? You know, more than ever, kids do need to see teachers who do have honesty and integrity and understanding. All of us are flawed, of course. But as I say to my kids, when you mess up, fess up.

Dr. Christian Miller (53:01): I agree entirely. Yeah, the cover up is often worse than the crime. At least be honest about the wrongdoing.

Vicki Davis (53:06): Yeah, so we've been talking with Doctor Christian Miller. The book is The Honesty crisis. As I always say, we don't play King of the Hill. We make a bigger hill. There's a lot of room for conversation. And these are the things that we need to be talking about in our staff meetings at the lunch table, as we move forward and work to make the world a better place. Thank you, Doctor Miller, for being part of that conversation.

Announcer (53:28): Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (53:32): So as we talk about honesty, let's come back to our opening story by Benno Mueller Hill from 1993. In the Quarterly Review of Biology, about 38 boys in line who looked through a telescope and all claimed to see a planet. But it took the 39th boy to insist he couldn't see anything before the class discovered that the lens cap was still on the telescope. Now is not the time to have blind acceptance of what everybody else is saying. In fact, I want to make a point that the story I've hinged this whole show upon, I wrote down on an index card in 1995 and put it in my quote box.

AI would have never found that article because it is behind a login wall and it's from 1993. I couldn't even use AI to fact check my story, but it did find the journal and I was able to log in and read it again myself before I shared this story. AI and the internet has a recency bias. When you're using AI, it is not searching the wealth of the ages. In fact, there's a new AI that's been trained on everything from the 1800s. We have this recency bias, and if we don't watch out, we're going to leave out the wisdom of the ages and make the same mistakes others have made.

Let's look at when radium was discovered. People believed that radioactivity was a secret to long life. So they made this thing called a revigator. This was a big ceramic holder of liquids. You would dispense the liquids and then drink them, and they claimed it would extend your life. It was lined with radioactive clay. Some people put water in it and other things. But if you were unlucky enough to put juice in your revigator just a few years later, you would be dying a painful death from cancer.

It took time for the truth to be known, to try out AI for lots of tasks, and it might work for a third of them. The other day I was shopping for a 4K webcam to upgrade the quality of the television version of this show, and Claude recommended a certain webcam. Highly rated, and once I got it installed it, I found out that I couldn't shoot in 4K in Riverside, the recording platform I use. I made a mistake. Now granted it was a small mistake, but still think about all of the decisions that people are making using AI that are going to cost them dearly.

Every time I see someone say they are breaking up with their girlfriend of a year or two because of advice from ChatGPT, okay, ChatGPT doesn't date, it doesn't get married, it isn't human. And if you go back and say it was wrong, it will go, I was wrong. Sorry. When you're having terrible consequences for implementing the decisions it so casually gives you, when we blindly follow those looking through the telescope and claiming some sort of amazing insight of AI and how we're going to live longer and happier lives and how we should use it.

And when we look through the telescope and we don't see that and we don't say a word, we're being complicit in more people making blind mistakes. If we've learned anything today, it is that we have a very powerful technology, but we don't know how to use it yet. There is a specific way that we have to operate in times of fast change. We need to be experimenting. We need to be testing. We need to keep what works and stop using what doesn't. Don't play King or Queen of the hill.

We need to make a bigger hill and include more people in the conversations about what AI can do to improve learning, and not kill the hopes and dreams of kids who aren't mature enough to know yet that dishonesty in learning will only cheat themselves of their future. My thanks to Justin Reich at MIT is limited series. The Homework Machine is wherever you get podcasts, and to Doctor Christian Miller at Wake Forest. His book, The Honesty Crisis is out May 19th, 2026.

Wherever you get books, links are in the show notes at coolcatteacher.com/honestai. I'm Vicki Davis and you've been listening to Cool Cat Teacher Talk. See you later, educator.

Announcer (57:55): Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: I'm so excited today for us to be talking with Jean-Claude Brizard. He's a prominent education leader and reformer, and he's currently serving as President and CEO of Digital Promise — a global nonprofit focused on advancing innovation and equity in education. He was born in Haiti, and his early life was shaped by his family's flight from political persecution, which deeply informs his commitment to educational opportunity for all of our students. Jean-Claude, you began your career teaching incarcerated youth at Rikers Island. That's quite a beginning to a teaching career. What do you want to share about that beginning experience?

Jean-Claude Brizard: Vicki, first of all, thank you for having me on your show. How I got to Rikers was interesting — and many teachers I know in New York City understand this. I had a job at a high school in Queens, and I was bumped. I was excessed or displaced. They sent me to Rikers to go teach. So I didn't choose to go there. I was sent there. At the same time, it was a formative experience for me to really understand what happens if we don't do well by young people in our communities. I was sent to Rikers. I was barely 21, 22 years of age, and the young people who were there were up to age 19, maybe even 20. So they were basically my age. I had to grow a beard and put a tie on so I wouldn't be mistaken for an inmate. The experience I had, which has been sort of foundational, was meeting a young man who looked just like me — and he couldn't do basic math. He had stopped going to school in the fourth grade. In one semester I was there, we were doing algebra work. Brilliant young man. I really believe we lost a mathematician. We lost a brilliant contributor to our society. I don't know what he did, but he brought joy to my life and really made me go back and say, okay, I'm going to stay in this profession longer and see what I can do to support young people on the other side, before they get incarcerated. That was 38 years ago.

Vicki Davis: You still remember — because I think sometimes the best educators are those who can picture in their minds that student that we have to reach. We have to be passionate about reaching them. Do people ever say to you, you can't reach all of the children, so why do you even try?

Jean-Claude Brizard: I've heard that. That's what I hear about the average pass rate, the average graduation rate. I always tell people that I have children — and if they're not in the average, if they're the ones who are failing, then I really, really get angry as a parent. So I developed this attitude, this philosophy, that every child is a work of art. Our job is to create masterpieces. Not a single one should be left behind, because that individual child is really important to that parent, to that family. So we have to do everything possible to make sure that we're reaching every single one of our children. One person can't do that — clear about that. It takes a community of adults to really support this push: that every child matters.

Vicki Davis: Jean-Claude, you're speaking my language. My listeners will know that the name of my classroom is Masterpiece Theater, because I believe that every child is a masterpiece. So we are totally connected here. As you work to bridge gaps — reading is a fundamental entryway into every other subject. What's going on with Digital Promise in reading that can impact classrooms across the country?

Jean-Claude Brizard: We work at the intersection of learning science, research, technology, innovation, and practice. We center practice in everything we do. So one example of how we're thinking about reading and technology and learning science is an amazing project that was funded by the U.S. government called the You Gain Reading Center. We're taking a science-of-reading platform, Amira Learning, with a bunch of teachers and principals in seven school systems right now, working with MDRC, Penn Graduate School of Education — and of course, we're leading the effort, with folks who are experts in multilingual learning. So we're taking an existing platform and, through a co-creation construct — meaning teachers are involved with technology developers — we're extending the platform to serve multilingual learners. You think about intonation, you think about dialects, you think about what we face in so many parts of our country around kids who are coming from different places that perhaps the science-based platform was not designed to serve. Right now we've got districts in Texas, in Maryland, Washington, D.C., who are involved in this co-creation project, taking a platform and extending it — using what we know about multilingual learners, what we know about the science of reading, and what we know about AI. All that comes together in a beautiful salad that will serve so many, many young people across this country.

Vicki Davis: So it sounds like you've got your beta testers. When will this be available to a wider group? Because you're going to have a lot of teachers who listen to this and say, Jean-Claude, I need this now.

Jean-Claude Brizard: It's going to be available immediately to those who are using that particular platform — who are part of it. But ultimately, what we do is we codify the knowledge and we disseminate it. It's going to happen over time, meaning that you'll see reports come out in a year, then in two years, in three years. So I believe within three years we'll have this whole thing actually completed. But you'll see iterative development of this. We've already published articles on this. So I would tell your viewers: look at our website, keep track of what's happening, because we produce a lot of information. Ultimately, our goal is to make sure this shows up in every tech platform, in every science-of-reading platform that serves not just our nation, but the world.

Vicki Davis: This is a good use of artificial intelligence — because I know that so many people are critical of AI. But if you look at some of the greatest promises that AI holds, it's for bridging multiple languages, isn't it?

Jean-Claude Brizard: Yes, that's one. There are language platforms doing an amazing job of human and technology together, serving us around global languages, multilingual learners, et cetera. But I am really bullish around Gen AI and what it can do for curriculum, for instruction, for pedagogical practice. I just presented to the Pennsylvania Tech Conference, to about 1,200 educators who are interested in Gen AI and curriculum. We talked about math, real examples in mathematics, real examples in biology, in American history, in reading — where Gen AI has the real potential to revolutionize, to uplift what we do in pedagogy. Let me be clear though: technology is not going to revolutionize education. People will. Teachers will. Principals will. The technology is going to be an enabler. But what we're seeing already in Gen AI and curriculum is that it can bring things to life and make it real. I'll give you an example. In American history, I saw a project at ASU — at Arizona State University — where they are shifting your mental model of American history by actually having a conversation with real Americans who were part of the Revolutionary War. One example was a housewife in Georgia who captured seven British soldiers by herself. And you can engage her in conversation about who she was. So it's not about the founding fathers, but about the average American. And so many of us who teach history, who learn history, don't often get the perspective of the average person on the Hill in World War II. The average person fighting the Revolutionary War. Now we have the potential through Gen AI to have that kind of conversation about figures in history — but yes, also about the average person in history.

Vicki Davis: Yes — and you kind of hit on something that's an opportunity but also a concern. Because there are a lot of folks who say, well, AI makes mistakes, and how do we know that they're authentically representing people, because AI is biased. Do you have a concern of the bias that could come in — that they may be speaking as that person, but what if they aren't truly representing that person well?

Jean-Claude Brizard: That's a great point. We talk about mitigating bias. We can't eliminate it because technology is created by humans, and humans have all kinds of implicit biases. But one of the things we push — You Gain is an example of co-creation. Where you have teachers and principals who are involved in the building and designing, you mitigate the kinds of issues and worries that we have about this. We do a lot of work on AI literacy — for teachers, for administrators, for students, and for parents. We often tell teachers, please be crew and not passengers in this effort. AI is here. It's going to sharpen every tech product you're using, whether you like it or not. We are pushing for transparency, so folks know it's in there and what it's doing. We push very well in our acceptable use policy that we created with the federal government, that if you want the AI to be removed, you have a right to have it removed. But you have to know it's there. You have to be an informed consumer, an informed user. You have to be crew, not passengers. So yes, there are real issues of bias. But fundamentally, if we have systems where learning science exists and the educators are part of the design process, you can mitigate a lot of the challenges and issues that we have in AI right now.

Vicki Davis: What you're saying is so important — that educators are part of the process. We just got on the other side of ISTE when we're recording this, and there's, you know, let's create this or let's create that. I always try to dig and find out — were there educators involved in this process? Because there's so much about teaching that someone who's not a teacher just does not know. Someone who hasn't had that student across the table like you've had, or like I've had — they just don't understand. As we move forward, that's just so important. As we finish up, are there any other challenges that you want to just say to the classroom teacher, to the IT coach, to the principal, who's moving forward with artificial intelligence but just has a little bit of anxiety in the pit of their stomach? “Oh no, this does things that I don't understand.”

Jean-Claude Brizard: We are pushing very hard, and ISTE is a partner in this effort, that everybody needs a coherent instructional system. It is about that particular system. The best relationship in education is between students, teachers, parents, and content. That is the work of education. Technology can accelerate, can enhance, but the technology comes after the fact. It does not design the instructional program. The technology supports. So what I tell people is: make sure you know what you want to teach first. Then bring the tech. And second, make sure the tech is certified. Safe, equitable, done in a way that is research-based. All of that is part of certifications that we produce at Digital Promise. ISTE produces them. CoSN — a lot of us do this kind of work. It's called the Tech Index at ISTE; we all use it. So we tell educators: make sure that what you're using is certified, because then you have a really good chance of this thing doing what it's promising to do. Because there's a lot of fluff, there's a lot of shiny objects, a lot of magical thinking that exists in the tech world. But let's make sure that it exists to serve the children who are in front of you. And the best way to do that is to make sure it is a certified product.

Vicki Davis: Excellent. Jean-Claude Brizard, President and CEO of Digital Promise. Thank you for coming on the show, and thank you for advocating for the way forward — because AI is here. It's not going anywhere. There are wise uses of AI. There are inappropriate uses of AI. As we all have these conversations moving forward, that's what needs to happen. We need to be partners together. So thanks for leading the way for us, Jean-Claude. And thanks for coming on the show.

Vicki Davis (00:00): Some of the greatest memories of my life have been watching a student's whole world open up. The moment they step off a plane in a place they never dreamed they'd stand. That's what today is about. Five teachers who decided their students deserve to see the world and what happened when they did. Today's show is brought to you by EF Educational Tours and their STEM and Career Education Travel opportunities. Welcome back, educator. This is Cool Cat Teacher Talk and I'm Vicki Davis. Today we're talking about changing a student's world through travel.

Announcer (00:38): Ever wondered how remarkable teaching happens? Find out right now Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis. Get insights from top educators, tips and inspiration to elevate your teaching.

Vicki Davis (00:51): Over the past 20 years, I've taken students literally all over the world. Qatar, India, China, Dubai, Hawaii, and even just up the road to Atlanta, Georgia. Today we're going to hear from five educators who have done this too. A middle school social studies teacher in Laredo who is taking economically disadvantaged students to Washington, D.C. A high school science teacher in Denver whose quiet student came home transformed. A rural ag teacher in Colorado who stood in an Irish pasture with 10 FFA kids. A biology teacher from Austin planting mangroves in Panama and a principal in Baton Rouge who's been doing this for years and knows what to look for. By the end of this hour, if you've ever thought I could never take my students on a trip, I hope you'll be thinking differently with some ideas and some practical tips that help all of us be able to travel with students. So first, let's talk about why I travel with students. When I was in eighth grade and my grandmother took me on a trip, I was one of the only grandchildren who got to go before she couldn't travel anymore. She took me to Alaska and we stayed awake late at night. My grandmother told me stories. The thing that she told me that I carried forward was Vicki. You live in a small town, but it's in a big world and you need to have a big mind. You need to know that there are people all over the world who are different from you, and you need to think about life with the whole world in mind. That trip planted a seed, and years later, a school trip to Washington, D.C. led me to jump at a chance to intern for a U.S. Senator. When I was in college, I enjoyed the richness of serving in our nation's capital. Is a teacher. Took me there first, and I'll never forget a boy who wanted to go to Dubai with me. More than anything, he raised every single dollar himself so he could make the trip. And when he finally stood on that beach, as we dipped our toes in the Arabian Gulf, he stretched out his arms and shouted to the sky, Dubai! I'll be back! I knew right there in that moment, his whole life was forever changed. I saw it in the way he walked through the Dubai Mall. I saw it in the way he engaged the conference where he was a co-speaker with me at that moment on the beach. Arms wide and face full of possibility. That's the moment that reminds me why student travel and working with students matters. Not every child has a grandmother or parent who can take them places, but I hope every child has a teacher who can give them that kind of eye-opening experience. And that's why when I heard about my first guest today, an eighth grade social studies teacher in Laredo, Texas, she's been doing this for her students.

Vicki Davis (03:43): Our next guest is Edith Cortez, an eighth grade social studies teacher in Laredo, Texas. She's in her 14th year of teaching and just finished her master's in educational administration. She's passionate about connecting and traveling with her students, something we have in common. Tell us a little bit about the classroom culture that you try to create.

Edith Cortez (04:04): My classroom culture is based on the foundation of communication.

Vicki Davis (04:08): I always say we have to relate, to educate, build those relationships. So Edith, one thing you and I have in common is we both love to travel with our students. What are some of the places that you've taken your students?

Edith Cortez (04:21): My first trip was Washington and New York, so they all had so much fun. Washington and New York for them was just remarkable. I went to San Francisco and LA the following year. After that we went to Boston and New York. Then last year we just had the first STEM trip to Washington, so that was really exciting.

Vicki Davis (04:39): What are some of the things that your students do when they're on the trip?

Edith Cortez (04:42): Specifically in our STEM trip, it was very interactive. Everyone thinks Washington, like monuments and memorials, but the museums that we went to were so hands on and my kids loved it, working together but also competing with one another. They had so many scenarios to gravitate from. It was really neat to go through them. I kept saying like, oh, it's a STEM trip, it's a STEM trip. We're going to do this. They all loved the idea of it, but they didn't really internalize what it really meant. Once they got there: Hey Miss Cortez, this is really cool. I didn't think we were going to get to do all these things. I had no idea we were going to actually build on things or try and navigate through all of these activities or scenarios. There was one that they showed them. It was about terminology, and then they gave them scenarios and they had to build on a story. My boys were so curious, so engaged with it that they had the crowd going. We all recorded it. I have it on video and I sent it to all the parents. I'm that group leader. I have a massive group thread with all the parents, and I'm sending them videos of everything, and the parents are like, we should have signed on to this trip. EF really takes their time finding the right things that student travelers will enjoy. It's well thought out. That's what families are investing in. Their money is definitely well spent.

Vicki Davis (06:42): When I've taken my students all over the world, I always have students who know they're going to have to do fundraising. I'll never forget I had one boy that I took to Dubai and he got his whole family. They did three barbecues. That's what we do in South Georgia. They did three barbecues, raised all this money. I'll never forget him standing there looking at the ocean and saying, I'll be back. It just transformed his whole life because of the process, even the raising of the money, because he had the dream. So how do you help all your students be able to go? Because it's not something that everybody can write a check for.

Edith Cortez (07:15): One of my teacher friends has a club on campus and they fundraise. I tell my students, hey, here are some ideas. There are families that do raffles and any type of activities to raise funds because it's not easy and sometimes they don't have that opportunity. I totally understand. My parents would never have been able to. I always tell my students, if and when you have the opportunity in life, take advantage of it, because there's a whole world outside of Laredo, Texas, and we need to take advantage of seeing it. We really need to see what's out there and the opportunities that the world has for us.

Vicki Davis (08:01): Traveling with kids is not easy. What are some of the tips that you have for teachers who want to travel with students?

Edith Cortez (08:09): Communication is key. Just like in the classroom, expectations have to be set from the very beginning. Even at the meeting that you have with the parents when you pass out the backpacks, the parents need to hear it as well. This is the way that the trip is going to be handled. I express those expectations in front of the parents. Everyone's representing the campus. Even if it's not a district trip, you're a district employee and these are district students, your minors traveling under me, and my expectations are very high. I'm a different mode. My expectation is respect and punctuality, so they know there will be a wake up call and a knock on the door either way, and rooms have to be tidied. Everything goes with trust and respect. Communication goes a long way. It's basically just keeping up with that, being consistent.

Vicki Davis (09:04): One of the things I always tell my students is that I do look for punctuality. If you can't get to school on time when you're tired after a long game, how are you going to show up if we're going out on a desert barbecue or wherever on time? So I also look for punctuality and respect. And if you don't behave in my classroom, I'm not going to take you anywhere, right? In many ways, it's transformative to students to understand that punctuality matters. Cleanliness of your room matters. Staying on track matters. It opens up a world of fun. But there's also a responsibility and accountability that you have personally to be able to have fun. Do you see kids change as you travel with them?

Edith Cortez (09:52): Definitely. Some years back I had a group of kids travel with me. The first two trips, the parents would tell me they came back super different. Miss Cortez, they had never gone away and she was so shy, and I would do everything for him. Now they pick up after themselves. They had to handle their own money. They had to set their own alarms. It's exposure and accountability. I love that for them. When I have a repeated student traveler, it's nice to see them so grown up that second time. They take someone under their wing: I got this, come on, I'll show you. I see they're growing up.

Vicki Davis (10:30): So Edith, as teachers are listening to you saying, this sounds like some work, can I do this? What's your pep talk for teachers about why they should want to travel?

Edith Cortez (10:40): EF handles most of the work. To be honest. All I have to do is handle meetings. Even the simplicity of sending out the emails. My consultant, bless her heart, sends me a template of what to send to parents. I receive everything from email templates, things for social media, posters, campus handouts. They do the itinerary. I can give suggestions or what I plan or would like to do. Everyone's so great and everyone's focused on the student travelers and the group leaders. There's nothing difficult about it other than time. Sometimes as teachers, we feel like there's no time. But we can definitely give an hour to set up a meeting and talk to parents. With willing parents, parents will show up. Sometimes you can just do it through a Google meet and it'll be as easy as that.

Vicki Davis (11:45): I'm a little jealous. I planned my trips myself, and it was a lot of hard work and a lot of stress. If I had been able to outsource that, it still would have been a great experience but easier on me. Our next guest is rural, not urban. Ranching, not social studies. He took 10 FFA kids from Rush, Colorado to a dairy farm in Ireland.

Vicki Davis (12:17): Today we're talking with Nolan Payne. He's an agriculture education teacher and FFA advisor at Miami-Yoder School in rural Rush, Colorado, where he's starting his 15th year of teaching. Nolan and his wife Marissa are raising their two daughters as a fifth generation on their family ranch. This past summer, Nolan took 10 FFA students and his family on a 10-day Agriculture in Ireland trip. Today we're talking about why he did it, what changed, and what it meant to his students. Nolan, when did this idea of taking students out of Colorado and onto a farm in Ireland first enter your head?

Nolan Payne (13:04): We've done things at the local level, district, state and national. We've gone to the National FFA Convention there in Indianapolis. It's been a dream of mine to have kids experience agriculture overseas in an entirely different atmosphere. I started looking, and at one of my professional development workshops that the Colorado ag teachers put on, they had a booth set up. Two young ladies from EF Tours. I started talking to them, and they explained what they do. I took a pamphlet home and shared it with my family, and it just kind of evolved from there. The first thing we did was propose it to my school district. We had an informational parent meeting to see if the kids were even interested. Before long, we started the planning. Not only did we get to do that for our rural community, we also got to travel with a group from California and a group from Utah for ten days.

Nolan Payne (14:14): The first two days we flew into Dublin, Ireland, and we got to do a walking tour of Grafton Street and the Temple Bar District. We got to see St. Patrick's Cathedral and the EPIC Immigration Museum, which was really neat. I found out that I have some Irish descent, so that was kind of neat for me and my family. After Dublin, we did Kilkenny. We got to see a lot of castles. Every day was jam packed with farms, and our kids really enjoyed talking to the farmers. We got to do some sightseeing in Dublin, but the truth is, the most fun that our kids had and experienced was talking with the farmers. One of the farms we visited was a fruit farm where they had greenhouses and apple orchards. Another farm was a dairy farm that also grew potatoes. Our kids got to go on the milking floor and the farmers let the kids hook up all the milking machinery. Then they drank fresh milk. That was an experience in itself. We also got to see an oyster farm where we learned about that and got to see all the marketing and the business side of it. At the end they got to try a fresh oyster. Really neat experiences. Each day was planned by EF Tours. Everything inclusive, from hotel rooms to the food. The hospitality was outstanding.

Nolan Payne (16:17): They put agriculture in perspective. To be totally honest, I don't think it's really still sat in. Even as school's still going on, they bring up different experiences and talk about it. I think the food, they really noticed the food and the culture. Some of the kids wanted to get back to McDonald's and their habits and way of life. The one thing that stood out was how green it is in Ireland. In rural Colorado where I teach, we are a very dry climate, rarely green. Seeing that was really neat. Also, the similarities of the relationships in Ireland to Colorado. It's actually not that different from what a farmer experiences. Putting your heart and soul into agriculture and the legacy that the Irish leave with their family. A lot of the younger fourth and fifth generation kids are running the farms in Ireland, which I thought was really neat.

Nolan Payne (17:26): Yes, definitely. My overall goal is to have this kind of as a legacy project for my ag kids. International travel is huge. Everything from going through an airport, passports, all the little things that a teacher doesn't think of until they actually experience it. I'd like to make this a legacy project, so probably every 3 or 4 years. I'm in the process right now of looking at another destination. I've looked at maybe Belgium, maybe Switzerland or the Alps. I'm working with EF Tours now to see what their plans look like for us.

Nolan Payne (18:23): FFA is one of the largest, if not the largest student-led organization in the world. There's a lot of misconceptions out there from parents to kids that you have to be a farmer or a rancher to be an FFA member. That is not the case at all. I enjoy the leadership, the public speaking, the camaraderie, the networking, the problem solving, the hands-on learning. It's not until 6 or 7 years down the road, when kids go through the program and are in college or in their jobs, that it actually sinks in. As an ag teacher, I really feel lucky and blessed to be able to help kids in a rural school. The kids need more hands-on learning and those experiences. I really can't say enough about FFA.

Vicki Davis (19:39): A fifth generation rancher watching his FFA kids milk a cow in Ireland. The legacy he lives on his own ranch is beautiful. Before I bring on my next guest, let me share a few things I wish somebody had told me before my first trip with students. First: not every student is ready for a trip. If a student doesn't mind me in the classroom, I'm not taking them across the world. 98% of kids will do exactly what you ask them to do, and they will thrive, but you have to be willing to say no until a child can prove their maturity. I once had a parent tell me her daughter was terrified of flying, but it was okay because she was going to give her a sedative and by the time she got to Hawaii it would have worn off. I said no, ma'am. If your daughter is afraid of flying, she needs to be on a trip with you, not with me. That wasn't popular, but it was the right call. Second: talk about the awkward stuff before you go. Talk about the bathrooms. I had a student going to India who refused to use the airplane restroom for the entire flight, and when we landed in Mumbai, the women's restroom was a hole in the ground. 16 hours is dangerous. Prepare your kids ahead of time. Talk about the food. Real Chinese food often has bones in it. Talk about how toilets work in different parts of the world. In the Middle East, you don't put toilet paper in the toilet, you put it in a trash can. These are things you don't think about if you haven't traveled. That's what preparation is for. Third: I always pack cereal bars and granola bars, enough for three people every trip. No matter how you prepare, you'll have a student who just won't eat the food. I had a girl in China who basically lived on those granola bars for two weeks. Teach your kids to pack smart. Two roommates should swap half their suitcases before you leave. So if one bag gets lost, they each still have something. That saved us in China when a student suitcase went missing. And fourth, watch the food and watch the water and have a good local guide. I had a boy in India order some chicken and it didn't look right to me. He said no, it looks great. He didn't get to go anywhere for the next day and a half because of that decision. That's why I always travel with multiple adults, and I love to have parents on the trips. A good local guide can read a situation that you can't. Once with my students, it appeared a protest was forming near a government building. My tour guide sized up the situation and we immediately diverted. That's the kind of insight you only get from someone who really knows the area. Now our next guest is a high school teacher in Denver whose students have been to Great Britain and Belize. She's going to tell you about a student who almost never spoke until he did. Let's talk to Angela.

Vicki Davis (22:52): Today we're talking with Angela Cannava. She's a high school science and CTE teacher in Denver, in her 19th year. She established the CTE Biomedical Sciences Pathway and serves as advisor for HOSA Future Health Professionals. In the last five years, she's been taking her students beyond the classroom walls and leading international tours, including a Health Sciences trip to Great Britain and a Ridge to Reef expedition in Belize. Angela, why don't you start with your first trip?

Angela Cannava (23:34): Thank you so much for having me on. I had my first travel experience with students with EF Tours in Great Britain. The reason I decided to take kids to travel in the first place is because I had actually gone on a tour with EF with one of my friends, Brian Jenkins, the year before. When I was on that tour with him, I saw how much students' eyes were opened and how you could build different relationships with them. So that's what sparked me to lead the Health Sciences in Great Britain tour. I was very nervous leading my first trip. I can't believe I'm taking kids all the way overseas. But EF did a great job easing my anxiety. I had chaperones, I had support, I had a tour director that met us right at the airport. Some of the kids had never left Denver before. The trip was aligned to the curriculum I'm teaching. One of the highlights was a forensics lab where we did real DNA fingerprinting. I remember a student that wasn't always the most excited to be in class coming up to me after the workshop and saying, oh my gosh, Ms. Cannava, everything you taught me is actually what they do in the real lab. We did anatomical museums, anatomical artifacts, brains that were preserved, the old paintings of anatomy that hooked into the anatomy class I teach. We went on the London Eye at sunset. I have a picture of these students just looking out across the skyline, all smiles. I've never seen such happy kids in my life. If you build strong relationships with students, they will want to travel with you.

Angela Cannava (28:37): A lot of the students I had in my class the next year would talk about connections from the trip. For example, when we were starting our anatomy unit looking at some of these historical pieces of anatomy, one of the kids said, oh my gosh, we saw that in Great Britain. I got so many more students in HOSA because of that trip. They saw that traveling beyond and being part of something bigger than your normal school day enriches your life and your learning. We're an IB school as well, so having that international component is really helpful. Building those relationships, kids wanting to come in and eat lunch with me and go back through the pictures from the trip. I was teaching three levels at that time, so it was the third year I had this student who had never said maybe ten words to me. After we went on that trip, he just hit it off with me and told me about his weekends, his baseball games, how he wants to travel the world now and how I inspired him. Moments like that were so incredible and so touching. It's worth it all.

Angela Cannava (31:34): Belize Ridge to Reef was so different. EF offers a very diverse menu of trips, and I wanted to do a STEM trip centered around conservation. I knew most of the kids that were on this tour. I had had most of them in class before, mostly upperclassmen, so I had a strong relationship with them. We landed and our tour director, this Belizean, just full of energy, picks up our group and says, okay, we're going to the zoo right now. Different kind of zoo than what we have here. It's all about saving animals and restoring them in natural habitats. Belize was the ridge part. Three days were in the mountains and four days were in the ocean. One of my favorite memories was a bat workshop in the middle of the night where this NGO showed us how they do studies on bats and untangle these nets. We were ten feet away from it. They explained all of the anatomy about the bats. Zip lining through the rainforest was really cool. Some advice I'd give to teachers thinking of traveling: make sure kids know what they're getting into. The kids kept asking, when are we going to the ocean? It's from Ridge to Reef. Setting students up with the expectation for the trip is super important. And one of my favorite things, one of the students that went on that trip is actually going to work at the NGO this summer that we did the bat workshop. He just told me that last week. So not just classroom connections, but connections beyond that for life.

Angela Cannava (37:37): Yes. My biggest piece of advice is to make sure you go with some sort of travel company. EF is our flagship for our school. Definitely have somebody that can help with the organization and the planning, because we're so busy as teachers. EF makes it so easy. They make my fliers, they make my PowerPoints, they make everything for me. Then it's just ready to go for my promotion nights. They give you deadlines, a website to help kids raise money. Having a tour director with knowledge of the destination, having all the hotels ready, having all the meals ready, suggesting restaurants. Making it doable for the teacher with our workload, I will say that it can be done. I was very nervous at first, but now I am not. I'm not going to stop.

Vicki Davis (39:32): A quiet student who came home from a trip and finally found his voice. A kid who's going to work at the NGO where he did the bat workshop. Travel changed his career path. Our next guest has done 11 trips with her high schoolers, including Panama, Thailand, Italy, San Francisco, and Boston. Today we're talking with Miranda Grabowski. She's been in education for 8 years after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with her degree in biology and English. Most of her career, she has worked in Austin, Texas as a biology teacher and instructional coach focusing on experiential learning.

Miranda Grabowski (40:32): We do 11 trips a year with our students through the school itself, not on spring break or summer, but during school. It has to do with our experiential learning model. Each year I probably go on 3 or 4 trips with different grade levels. Our students can travel 2 to 3 times over their four years.

Miranda Grabowski (41:13): Most recently I got back from our Panama trip with about 40 of our 11th graders. Our students work with local NGOs in Panama to actually help conserve their wetlands. I get to sit back and watch my students learn in real time how science happens in the real world. They're actually doing the science on their own. Boots on the ground, picking up the mangroves, getting on a boat, getting sunburned, going to plant the mangroves to help conserve that natural environment for the country. It's really great to actually see the students not just pretend to like the thing, but actually do the thing.

Miranda Grabowski (42:16): In Thailand, we work with the same elementary school the whole time. We help build a garden the kids can work in, revitalize their classrooms, and build a relationship between our students and these international students. Italy: last year was the first time the kids did “learn how to be a gladiator,” minus the slavery aspect. Foam blood, replicas of armor and weapons. They went to gladiator school for a day. Italy is a lot of eating great food, taking in art and ancient culture. San Francisco and Boston were both STEM trips. My favorite experience in San Francisco was the hike in Muir Woods National Monument. The first time most of our students get to see trees that large. The first year I went, it was also salmon spawn season. We got to see the salmon swimming upstream in the river that runs through the monument.

Miranda Grabowski (45:03): I travel with high schoolers, so this advice is for high school teachers. Even if they're complaining, they're actually enjoying what they're doing. They're complaining about being tired, they're complaining about their curfew. They're complaining, but they're actually having fun and making memories and learning about something. It's okay for them to complain off in their corner. They're teenagers. That's what they do. You don't have to take it personally when they don't like something.

Miranda Grabowski (45:53): First of all, bring other adults with you that you trust. Even if you're the group lead, it is not all on you. I haven't had a bad experience with another adult that I've taken with me. Also, things like make sure you have extra copies of, say if you're on an international trip, the kid's passport. We had to give them to the hotel. I didn't even know I was going to give those to the hotel. A list of the hotel rooms. We carry a med kit. Being overly prepared is one way to help yourself not be stressed. I carry lists of kids' allergies and their hotel rooms. I have their parents' phone numbers. Anything you could think of to prepare yourself means one less thing to freak out about when you're actually on tour.

Miranda Grabowski (47:17): We always call them ten minutes before we actually want them, so that way we can go get the kids who are still asleep 15 minutes after we called them.

Vicki Davis (47:57): What happens when the decision-maker at the top of a school says travel is part of who we are? Today we're talking with Karen Spencer. She's principal of 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.

Karen Spencer (48:46): This is a pre-K through 12 school. We have about 1,100 students from varying socioeconomic levels. We are associated with the Baptists. We are a very mission-minded school. 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 and said, 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. So we said let's bring in a STEM component. Boston just hit us. What I love about EF is that over time, this has evolved from just a STEM trip to a STEM, history and fun trip. It's so much fun to watch the students grow and gain independence. We just got back yesterday from our Boston trip. Watching my seventh graders navigate security at a busy, bustling Boston airport, I was a little nervous, but they did a fantastic job.

Karen Spencer (50:26): We went to MIT and Harvard. Got a glimpse at Harvard, a more liberal arts Ivy League school, then MIT, a more STEM school, to show them options. There are options out there. But it starts now: building that resume, getting your scores up, your transcripts ready so you have options when you graduate. We did a duck boat tour to see all of Boston. We went to FIRST Robotics and MassRobotics and got to experiment with the robotics, turned it into a competition and they were all in. Did you know Boston has a Museum of Ice Cream? We found that one on this trip and it was so fun. We did the Fine Arts Museum, the Museum of Science. We did Lexington and Concord, the Boston Tea Party, the USS Constitution, the Freedom Trail. We walked up Beacon Hill. You name it, we did it. Boston this time of year was stunningly beautiful.

Karen Spencer (51:35): Just one quick overnight marine biology trip on our own. Then in seventh grade we start with EF and do our Boston STEM and history trip. In eighth grade we do Washington, D.C. In high school we add in international trips. We have gone to Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Greece, France, all of Italy. This past summer we did London, Paris and Edinburgh, Scotland. I'm a fan of Scotland. The whole trip was fabulous, but I really love Scotland.

Karen Spencer (53:05): 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, and I have built some amazing relationships with parents and students because they get to see my heart and see me in a different light. I came back this morning, and one of our students. I saw this child who sometimes gets in trouble in such a different light. I saw him come to life in a different way. I had such a new love and respect for him. It's a lot of work, but it is so worth it. 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.

Karen Spencer (54:17): EF has proven time and time again that they're willing to listen. The Museum of Ice Cream was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I looked at my tour guide and said, we have to make this happen. I called EF, how can we make this work? They were like, we're on it. Three hours later, we were there. That's one of the reasons I like EF so much. They want to work with me. One year we had a terrible plane delay. The next year they solved it. They sent security guards to help at night. It just gives me peace of mind.

Vicki Davis (55:21): Edith showed us that when the teacher in an economically disadvantaged border town decides there's a whole world outside of Laredo, Texas, and we need to take advantage of seeing it, students rise to the occasion. Nolan Payne showed us that rural kids who've never left Colorado can stand in an Irish pasture and see themselves in a fifth generation farmer half a world away. Agriculture has a legacy in every country, and as a farmer's daughter, I really feel that one. Angela reminded us that the quiet student who barely spoke ten words in three years is waiting, and sometimes that trip is the key that opens the door. Miranda Grabowski shows us that you can be in the boots with students actually doing the science, and even when they complain they're making memories they'll carry the rest of their lives. Karen Spencer reminds us that when a principal commits to travel as a school value, everyone sees each other in a new light, including the kids who sometimes get in trouble. I'll close with this. I took a group of students to a street school in Mumbai, India. The children there were each given one small pencil and a tiny two-by-four-inch notebook, and that was what they used for the entire year. My students were speechless in that moment. They understood something about the world and their world that no textbook could ever teach them. Travel changes students. It changes lives. So can you travel with students? You do not have to plan it yourself. And I'll be the first one to tell you, I did it the hard way. For too many years, I booked my own flights, I put hotels on my own credit card and waited for parents to reimburse me. Do not do that. Let a good company handle the logistics so you can focus on teaching. But first we have to decide. Decide your kids are worth it. Start small if you need to. A trip down the road, a service project, a single day of field learning locally. But travel with students changes their life. You become closer to the kids and they become your legacy. You'll be so glad that you did. Today's show is brought to you by EF Educational Tours and their STEM and career travel opportunities. You can see the show notes at coolcatteacher.com/travel. This is Vicki Davis. Thank you for listening to Cool Cat Teacher Talk. See you later, educator.

(This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain.)

Vicki Davis (00:05): 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/STEM. And stay tuned at the end of the show to learn more.

Vicki Davis (00:25): Philip Seyfried is a doctoral student in curriculum and teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. And he researches how digital literacy and artificial intelligence intersect in K-12 learning. Phil spent over a decade teaching middle school language arts, but now he works at a higher level with schools and edtech companies about literacy and digital literacy. He is the co-author of AI-Enhanced Literacy: Practical Steps for Deepening Reading and Writing Instruction from ASCD. So Phil, you talk about brain-first practices and learning theory as it relates to AI. How did you start this work and say, hey, we're going to put the brain first?

Philip Seyfried (01:10): One of the things — co-author Mary and I started really working on this project a couple of years ago. We started to really see how AI is the future of education in a lot of ways. If not only for the reason because it's here, right? The kind of technology that really transforms the way that we think about what's possible in learning and education. We've always been really interested in digital literacies — kids read differently on a computer or on a tablet — and so we wanted to figure out what is happening differently with AI that's different than a book or working with a human. There's a lot that we didn't know at first. There was a lot of experimentation. And this is a technology that was just thrust upon all of us and opened up to the world one day. But what's great is there's been some wonderful research coming out of MIT's Media Lab. They had this great study where they took participants and they gave them these writing tasks. Some of them had AI available to them right from the start. Some of them had the internet available. And then others, they only had to use their brain — they couldn't really use any other technology other than their own thinking. And what was really interesting about that study is later on they switched the two groups.

Vicki Davis (02:10): Mm-hmm.

Philip Seyfried (02:18): So what ended up happening is the group that started with their brain ended up getting AI in the back end. And then vice versa, the group that started with AI, they ended up having to use only their brain. And there was a clear advantage of those who started with their own thinking first and then moved to AI. And what was so interesting that I found in that study was that you could build up your cognitive resources — get your brain on fire with your thinking, getting your ideas organized together, getting your best thoughts out there. If you bring in AI after that, it sort of accelerates your thinking, your work, challenges the thoughts that you've already established.

Vicki Davis (02:35): Hmm.

Philip Seyfried (02:57): Versus if you do it the other way around — if you start with AI too soon, before you've done some thinking, maybe even a little bit of writing, maybe some talking to somebody through your ideas — what ends up happening is AI sort of fills you up with all the ideas that it's bringing to you. Your sense of ownership is not going to really be there. And when we think about what's important in classrooms, we're really trying to get students to have a full sense of ownership over their words and their work and their learning — and to be able to see how they can use these tools to accelerate themselves, especially when they are trying to learn something that they want to do with independence later on.

Vicki Davis (03:33): So many times it seems people try to push us into “I love AI” or “I hate AI.” But true application and true teaching is in the middle of “okay, this is a good use, this is not a good use.” It seems like you're saying, your brain — start with brainstorming. So what should that process before you bring AI in look like in a classroom?

Philip Seyfried (03:55): We are so good in classrooms already of things that have been working for decades. We have kids in our classrooms that are using writers' notebooks. They have paper books in their hands. They have pencils. They're set up in partnerships so they can turn and talk to someone. Our classroom spaces are very, very collaborative. And those are things that we know work, and there's years and decades of research behind those practices. And so really what we're saying is don't get rid of that.

Vicki Davis (04:00): Mm-hmm.

Philip Seyfried (04:21): Don't let the excitement of a new technology completely change what you know already works. What we want to do is add what's working from these new avenues and opportunities to the frameworks that already work really, really well. What we're trying to help teachers see is living in this “yes-AND” time period. It's not an either-or with AI. It's “yes, you can do the things that you know work. Yes, you could also dabble and try some new things out and see how that goes — and do that in a measured way. And we can learn from each other at this time.” If we get into the space where we sort of ban it and say “well, you can't use it ever” — I don't know what that's going to mean for these kids as they're growing up and now they're going to be in the workforce. And these are the tools that they're going to be expected to pick up and to use well. And I would so rather see kids learn how to use those tools really well right now in their K-12 education — especially in a safer place where they can make some mistakes, because they will. They are going to overly lean on some of these tools at times because they want to sound smart. But we can address that. If they leave our classrooms, it's almost too [late].

Vicki Davis (05:29): And I have had some students on my show before and they said, “Ms. Davis, the only people getting caught using AI are the ones who don't know how to use it.” MIT — that you just quoted — they found AI detectors don't work. AI detectors don't work. AI detectors don't work. And what happens? You get a letter that says “we're not going to tolerate artificial intelligence. We have the greatest AI detector and it's going to catch all of you hooligans.” And then the kids are just like, “okay, I wrote it myself.” danah boyd, a respected researcher, was just writing on LinkedIn and she was saying that she had written this paper and had been accused of using AI to write part of the paper because she likes em-dashes. I like em-dashes. I've always used dashes. You could look on my blog from 2005 when I started blogging — I have dashes. And now I wrote something for somebody and they said, “Hey, you used AI on this because you have dashes in it.” Okay. Well, I might do that. And I might use the word “delve.” But that doesn't mean I'm using AI. So human AI detectors are no good and other AI detectors aren't any good. So what do you tell the schools that are like, “we want to have academic integrity, but we need some help here”?

Philip Seyfried (06:35): One of the things I've been telling schools — especially since there is so much concern over this — there's the concern that what are students doing after school hours? Are they using AI in ways that are not so productive? I think one of the things we know we can do is we can really control what's happening during the school day. They might go off and use these tools perhaps at home, and that to some degree might concern us, but in other ways that's the way of the world at this point. They're also using video games and other digital devices too. But what really gets teachers is — is that showing up in their classrooms later on? One of the ways we can really address this is to actually give students AI tools in the classroom that we can do some monitoring in. So there's a number of edtech platforms that allow you to set up a chatbot. And then you are able to see behind the scenes how that kid is having a discussion with that AI. And on top of that, instructions that you might say — “prompt the student with some questions to help them do some of their best writing, but don't do the writing for them” — and then the AI doesn't do that. And so if you were to combine that with making sure that students have class time to do their writing while they're there in front of you and getting your support as a teacher, and then doing some peer feedback work with another student in the classroom — there's going to be no question that students are really putting a lot of effort and energy and writing work into the drafts that you're seeing in front of you.

Vicki Davis (07:39): Mm-hmm.

Philip Seyfried (08:03): We don't want to necessarily then say “AI never comes into that process.” I think it's going to be the kind of decision we're going to have to sort of make case by case. And I do believe that it's so great to get away from technology, get away from screens, sit down with a pen and paper — even just a device that's not connected to the internet at that moment — and you're just doing your best writing and you're in that moment experiencing that. I think we need to make sure that we're also creating those moments too. That way we have the best of both worlds, and students do deserve to have those opportunities to sit with an idea that people don't look at just for a little bit before they get feedback. I think we have to really think about all the contours of what it means to be a writer, what it means to be a reader in a school space nowadays. And if we start to do that, what it does is it creates opportunities for us to have relations of trust in the classroom. What I most care about is, if I ask a student “hey, can you tell me a little bit about your writing process? What were the tools that you were using? How did you use those tools?” — I want to be able to have an open and honest conversation. I don't want it to feel yucky. If a kid says “well, Grammarly helped me at the end with some of my sentence structure,” right? Or “I was stuck at this one point, so I asked AI these three questions and it came back with this. I didn't like these three things that it said, but I did like this one. So then I tried it out here.” That's where real learning is happening. And if the kid says “I copied and pasted,” I also want them to feel safe enough to say that. So I can say “you know, as a writing process — let's think about some other things you can now do that you're ready for as a writer. AI might give you something that fills the blank page and some ideas. And now it's a great mentor text for you for the kind of writing you can do later on on your own.” And I think there's that idea of we're always increasing towards independence. We're always trying to boost students' confidence in their own abilities — and to not stigmatize these technologies in a way that kids now use it in secret and that we're not able to give them the actual support that they need if only we just knew how they were using the tool.

Vicki Davis (10:09): Mm-hmm. There are a lot of teachers who say, “hey, I'm grading with AI.” And I'm like, why? I'm teaching my students to take that paper they've written. We've gone through the process together. Give them the prompts to feed in my rubric and feed in their paper, and get a bulletized list of “here are some suggestions for where you might not be meeting the standards in the rubric.” Not having AI rewrite it, but having it give them a bulleted list. And then by the time it gets to me, you've already done your AI stuff. Like — what's the point of me using AI? Why not push it to them?

Philip Seyfried (10:46): Yeah, that's a really great question. And people are trying to work that out right now. I find such a big variety in what people are doing in practice. It really depends on where your students are as learners — and particularly, how old are they? For high school students, absolutely teaching them how to use these tools themselves makes perfect sense. But if you're in a third grade classroom, that's not going to be the same sort of approach we're going to take.

Philip Seyfried (11:17): One thing is we shouldn't just accept any feedback readily. We should really think — what is our purpose as a writer? And the second thing that does is it's actually teaching AI literacy. You want students to learn to speak back to these algorithms and to catch when the algorithm is not really working for them — and what are some things we can do to make sure that it's aligned with my own purposes. And so what that does is when you get to that point, then the teacher's freed up to give some of the human feedback and response that only a human can do.

I heard a teacher the other day say that she likes to give the kind of feedback where she'll tell a student “this here, right here, this sentence — this is where I paused and I lingered and I reread that sentence again and again because it's so beautiful.”

Vicki Davis (12:02): Hmm.

Philip Seyfried (12:05): And I think about — what effect does that have on a young person, a writer, a student, a learner for the rest of their life, to have a teacher say “it was at this moment in your writing that I just had to take a deep breath because it was so beautiful what you were saying right here.” And that's still the kind of feedback that — even if a computer could give that level of feedback, the authenticity of that relationship is so important. We have to remember that we're humans in the room. And as teachers, so much of our value is that we're another person really cultivating other people to become beautiful adults in the future. And I worry that if we're just catching commas and periods and capitalization, maybe we're sort of missing the point of the opportunities that we have. So I hope AI gives us more space to just be really human in the room.

Vicki Davis (12:55): I love how you're speaking about AI. Way too many people anthropomorphize it. I like what you're saying about that — AI is a tool to help the humans in the room become more remarkable humans. But when people start saying “AI is this” or “it is that,” or they start saying “AI got angry at me” — all this anthropomorphism — that's where I, as a teacher and as a human being, start pushing back and saying, hey, this is a great tool, but it's a really sorry human being. It's not a human at all.

Philip Seyfried (13:30): Every presentation I give now, I always show a picture of data centers — like the inside of a data center, because what you'll see is all these servers, and it's really just wall-to-wall servers. We tend to think of AI as this invisible intelligence somewhere in the cloud. And really — what is the cloud? It's us actually accessing a computer that's offsite. That's all that really is.

Vicki Davis (13:54): Mm.

Philip Seyfried (13:55): We can so easily forget that this isn't actually a human, because it's using natural language. But we have to always keep in mind that there's some algorithm behind this — there's training data behind this. And I think if we don't get to those sort of critical literacies of AI, we would really miss an opportunity. We can't be blind to what's going on right now. Otherwise then the teens in the room and the young kids — they're going to figure it out on their own. And they're going to shape it no matter what we do. But we want to be ready to help them navigate this moment, because it is a different moment than in the past.

Vicki Davis (14:35): We can't expect them to be fully developed adults about how to use it wisely. So as we finish up, Phil — for the teachers who are listening to you, they're convinced. Where do you tell beginners to start their journey of finding the appropriate place for AI in their classroom?

Philip Seyfried (14:51): Actually, I wouldn't start with the classroom is what I would tell teachers — if they're just getting started with AI. Ethan Mollick, who's got this great book Co-Intelligence, says that we need three sleepless nights with AI. So I would say get onto an AI system of your choice, whether that's ChatGPT or Claude or Google Gemini. Pick one of the big systems that you know you'll use again — and just test it out. Ask it questions, see how it responds.

Vicki Davis (15:20): We've been talking to Philip Seyfried — the book is AI-Enhanced Literacy: Practical Steps for Deepening Reading and Writing Instruction from ASCD. It has been very insightful. Thanks so much, Phil.

Vicki Davis — Postroll (15:32): EF STEM Tours: 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/STEM and see what an EF Explore America 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/STEM.

Vicki Davis (00:00)
Welcome to Cool Cat Teacher Talk, where we talk about what matters in the classroom. What AI can't do, being beautifully human in the age of AI.

Vicki Davis (00:26)
Today we're talking to us that help us emphasize some of the things AI cannot do. It's important that the age of AI to understand the things that I can help us with, and the things that it can't. We're going to talk to Jeff Bogaczyk, a head of school and rhetoric expert, who is going to help us understand what are some of the things that we need to teach students about communicating and thinking.

Vicki Davis (00:54)
Then we're going to talk to Alan Lipton, who is my editor for my next book, and then we're going back to an older episode of my Ten Minute Teacher podcast. This amazing special needs teacher who had a really incredible way of helping students communicate and treat each other well and build that emotional intelligence with Karen McCallum. Finally, we're going to talk to the head of a school that uses basically no technology, just a little bit of robot building and understand what are the human things they're trying to teach with this approach.

Vicki Davis (01:34)
Let's get started.

Announcer (01:36)
Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (01:39)
Today we're talking with Dr. Jeff Bogaczyk. He's head of school in Wisconsin. He holds a PhD in rhetoric and hosts the Remarkable Mind for Life podcast. His research focuses on media ecology. That's the study of how our communication technologies shape the way we think, relate and learn. Jeff, it's really interesting communication in this age of loneliness, miscommunication in division.

Vicki Davis (02:14)
Like this is a topic that's resonating with people, isn't it?

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (02:17)
Yeah. It's great to be with you, Vicki. But just to address that, there was a French sociologist, Jacques Ellul, who wrote a book a while back called The Technological Bluff. And his basic interpretation of society was that we need to now look through the lens of technique and technology as we look into society. And basically, the technological bluff was about what technology promises humanity in order to advance itself.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (02:47)
I don't know if you remember when back when the social media platforms were all coming out, and these are going to connect us better to human beings. These platforms are going to allow us to interact with other people and facilitate better human connections. That was a false truth. It was a lie. And here we are, more segmented in society than ever before.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (03:09)
People disconnected, as you mentioned, epidemics of loneliness, all as a result of these platforms. They are not bringing us together. They are distancing us. They are pitting one against the other. And it's an unfortunate situation, but quite honestly, the money was worth it for them. When people will do and say whatever they have to do in order to be able to advance whatever their projects are and cash in on it, and that's what we see going on.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (03:34)
Similar, I would say, Elon Musk with the promises of robotics and nobody's ever going to have to work, and everybody's going to have free income, and everybody's going to be driven around by cars and robots. Is that really the world we want to live in? Because work does have a meaningful purpose in our life. We want to be able to do something that's purposeful and working with people and being in relationships.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (03:54)
I don't trust those guys, to be quite honest with you.

Vicki Davis (03:57)
What's the saying? Fool me once. Shame on you for me twice. Shame on me. I was in the cell phone business. And how do we market cell phones? We learned that one reason back in the early 90s that that people would buy cell phones. That was for the safety of their children. Did phones make them safer? No. Social media.

Vicki Davis (04:12)
Did it make us more socially connected? No. It made us lonelier. This is one thing I teach my students. You have to be careful of the marketing line because AI, for example, is it processing? Is it doing data analytics? No, it says it's thinking. It's not thinking, it's processing, it's doing algorithms. And I asked them, hey, would you have used this if it said algorithmically calculating whatever?

Vicki Davis (04:33)
They said, no. I said, but how about when it says thinking. So they've intentionally anthropomorphized AI to make it think that it's like a human brain, which it's not. Now there's some great uses of AI, but this is a really prevalent marketing technique of technology companies to tell us it's going to make our lives better. Oh, don't be afraid.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (04:54)
It's interesting you say that because there is a, I would say, a foundational basis for interpretation of how people think of the human brain. People think of the human brain as a computer. That metaphor then extends to what computers do, that all the brain does is process information. And we know that it's more than that. The brain is connected to our bodies.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (05:18)
It is connected to our nervous systems. The brain allows us to perceive the world in ways completely different, because of its connections to our body that computers can never do. And so people with that foundational interpretation of how the brain works extend it to machines. And I think there's just a fundamental difference. We're not machines, we are creations.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (05:42)
We are bodies. And there is something very unique and distinct about that, quite different qualitatively, you might say it from computers and robots and everything that they're creating to try to mimic or recreate the human.

Vicki Davis (05:56)
So one thing I always tell my students is in the age of AI, emotional intelligence of us humans is far more important, and I always encourage them. We do activities to learn to read the body language of the other people, because they tend to want to look at the screen, and when they look at the screen, everybody around them looks at the screen.

Vicki Davis (06:15)
They're not making eye contact. They're not understanding. You know what? What we're communicating. And you're all about communication. Now you've got a 30 day challenge on your Instagram that by the time we air this, maybe all the way through. But I encourage people to go listen to it. And you had some really interesting statistics you shared about somebody tapping out what they thought was a rhythm.

Vicki Davis (06:40)
Could you share that study with us? Because it just really resonated with me.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (06:45)
The issue is the curse of knowledge, and everybody has internal knowledge of certain things that we often think other people have as well, but they don't. In 1990, study at Stanford, where somebody who knew a song say, for example, Happy Birthday to You would just tap out the rhythm, happy birthday to you of that song and thought, oh, it's so easy, because when you're tapping out the song, you're singing along in your own brain, the melody because you know the song.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (07:18)
And so that knowledge that we have internally of the song, we just think, oh, everybody else possesses that. They don't. They're not hearing the melody of Happy Birthday to You or The Star-Spangled banner, or Mary Had a Little Lamb or anything like that. All they're hearing is taps in some type of rhythmic sequence. Without the internal knowledge, it's very difficult for other people to understand what's going on in our minds. (Read more about Elizabeth Newton's 1990 study.)

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (07:46)
You know, as human beings, we've got a couple of problems. Number one, we think other people can read our minds. Like, you should just know what I'm thinking. In all of my past experiences, past knowledge and past history. Additionally, we think we can read other people's minds. And so that comes back to emotional intelligence that we think people see our emotions and know our emotional states and can recognize those things when they don't.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (08:14)
We often fail to recognize that we don't understand other people's emotional states and emotional intelligence, which I think is wonderful, and how you talk to your students about that, I think it's incredible. That's such a key quality to be able to understand. We're more than just, again, information beings. We are emotional beings. And that emotion comes through and all of that.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (08:35)
So that knowledge goes back to one of the other things I talk about in this 30 day challenge is that illusion of transparency. We just assume that other people know what's going on in our minds and they don't. And so that's why communication is so critical, asking questions to actually hear what somebody else is feeling or what they're going through, and then communicating the knowledge that we have because we just have the expectation that you're going to get it.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (09:05)
You should know this. You should get it. Well, they don't they can't read your mind. They don't know what you're thinking. And so being clear in how you communicate really does help to solve some of those things that prevent us from connecting with one another.

Vicki Davis (09:20)
So, Jeff, you're a head of school. How do you take this to your teachers? Because so often what we think we've communicated to our students, we have an eye opening moment where we realize what I think I just said. They didn't understand what I said. They understood something totally different, especially middle school. They kind of have so much going on so often, and it's like, I didn't say that at all.

Vicki Davis (09:45)
How do you help your teachers with this?

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (09:46)
What we try to do, it's not easy. These are obstacles for communication that we deal with quite regularly and often, but we encourage our teachers to communicate out often and in multiple ways through. You might want to say it, multiple media, the expectations and what's coming, and then to write it on the board to write it in the software system that people are looking at to communicate it to, to students verbally, just communicating out the expectations over and over again.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (10:20)
We do that from a leadership perspective as well, communicating out what we expect and what our vision and what our mission is. Somebody said this before and I don't know who actually, but it does make sense the moment you're sick of saying it, that's the moment they're finally starting to actually hear it. It just needs to be communicated over and over.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (10:39)
And for us, one of our expected student outcomes, which is a part of our portrait of a graduate, is confident communicators. We want to, through our school, through our curriculum, through our environment, produce students who are confident communicators. They can speak well, they can write well. They can think well, thinking to me as a communication event that interpersonal communication, you're having a dialog with yourself when you're thinking for our students that they can negotiate the most important relationships in their life.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (11:15)
And the way we do that is through communication. There is no relationship without communication. Communication is you might even say it is the relationship.

Vicki Davis (11:26)
There's so much to unpack here because as I work to help my students understand, I love how you said that. We think we can read minds, but we can't, you know. And one interesting little tidbit I had come across in one of my body language books, right? As communicators like to study those, was that there's about 10% of the people who give cross messages.

Vicki Davis (11:47)
Unfortunately, a lot of those people end up in prison. I had a student one time that when he was telling the truth, his body language was that he was lying. And when he was lying, his body, it literally was the opposite. Because there were times that I knew for a fact he didn't do it, and his body language was giving me.

Vicki Davis (12:04)
And I tried to talk to his parents. I said, listen, because statistically speaking, in this particular book, it was an FBI profiler interviewer said, you need to help those people that are the 10% because they usually end up in prison arrested for something they didn't do. I was trying to help this parent understand your child is giving off mixed messages.

Vicki Davis (12:23)
You need to help him a little bit with his body language. And it was like not a real understanding with what I was trying to say, that we not only need to learn to try to read body language, we need to learn that not everybody gives off the same body language. And if we're one of those whose giving off mixed messages, we do need to learn and help us with our own body language.

Vicki Davis (12:44)
So when you teach your students and teachers to communicate, how do you pull that in? Because this is an area I need a lot of help.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (12:50)
That's very difficult to do. I would say that alignment between what you're saying non-verbally and what you're saying verbally is the goal. You need your messages to be coherent when what you say does not match up with what your body is communicating. Everyone believes what your body is communicated. We don't believe your words, which goes back to your point of why people can say something and get arrested for something they didn't do, because they're telling people they didn't do it, but their body is communicating something different.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (13:23)
You can of course, practice. You can develop confidence, communication habits, how to look somebody in the eye. And of course, those things require a lot of effort and 60 days of continued practice. But the habits that are really ingrained, quite honestly, communication how we communicate verbally and nonverbal verbally is a habit. It's something we've just learned and done our whole lives so it can take place.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (13:53)
The first step is going back to emotional intelligence self-awareness. If you don't know what you're doing wrong or not doing well, you will never be able to correct it, or at least work towards rebuilding and redeveloping habits. Habits are just ingrained neural networks in our brains that operate on autopilot, if you will, and you can change those, but it just takes a lot of time and a lot of practice.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (14:22)
Con men, con artists, they've practiced how to communicate and align their messages and connect with people and build rapport over a long period of time. They just know how to do that. They practiced it, they've utilized it, and they use it to great effect, albeit to the detriment of people that they're conning out of money. Those things can be built, they can be developed.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (14:43)
And of course, to your point, when you see it early on when someone is younger and growing up, that's the time to really build in and retrain and develop those habits so that over time they start to overtake the ones that are not as effective when it comes to the mixed message part.

Vicki Davis (15:00)
So, Jeff, you built a Instagram following of 224,000 folks. That's a lot. What's the message that's resonating the most where you're getting people saying, wow, that that's true.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (15:10)
Having the message is this a lot of people recognize that they're not great communicators. And if you look at any relational problem, it's always communication. Unfortunately, too many people, I think, want a quick fix. Give me the words to say, give me a quick phrase to say. A lot of it to me is ego driven. I want to win.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (15:33)
I want to get that person when they say something bad to me or make me feel dismissed. I want to be able to have the words to say to get them so that I can, like, boost up my ego and stand up for myself. Standing up for yourself is important, but what are we really trying to do in our relationships?

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (15:50)
What do relationships really mean to us? I think it's about human connection that you are connecting with people and working together with them, and that you're treating people respectfully. The communication space on the internet is weird, of course. Developing practices and strategies and techniques, all of its great, and there's a lot of people that are out there doing that, but there's so many people that just aren't not great communicators, especially when it comes to public speaking.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (16:17)
Like one of the number one fears that people have is getting up in front of a group of people and having to give some type of a presentation. And people long for growth in those areas, and they're looking for that. That's to me, one of the insights I've had since this has only been two years, to be honest with you, of starting on Instagram two years ago and getting to where I am now and on TikTok as well.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (16:38)
So it's unique to see what people are dealing with, and people recognize that it's an issue to grow in, for sure.

Vicki Davis (16:44)
Then you get into embodied cognition, which is one of the things I teach my students is that if you close up and you and you close your arms and you close, you're like that. Your body actually releases neurochemicals that make you more nervous. If you have a more open stance, you get less nervous. And so embodied cognition. How does that fit in this?

Vicki Davis (17:02)
And what is it? Because truthfully, you're probably really popular because there's not a lot of people talking about this stuff. And it's really useful in the classroom.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (17:09)
Yeah. There's actually a study done by Amy Cuddy. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but it's about power posing. And they did a study about how the positions of your body release chemicals into your brain, and that when you are closed off, like you said, it releases the chemicals that lead to greater anxiety when you open up your posture. (See the editor's note above — the felt-confidence effect has held up better than the original hormone-change findings.)

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (17:29)
They actually did the study about developing confidence by power posing. So she's got a TEDx talk. You can watch about that. I would recommend it to your listeners. It's millions and millions of views on that one. But when you actually put your body in a pose that is typically used to celebrate victory or confidence and you're not confident, but you deliberately put your body in that position, it really starts to change the chemical makeup and allows you to be more confident.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (17:59)
So what they did was they had people in rooms practice power posing. These are these Superman poses standing up straight, hands up in the air, those type of things for three minutes before they were going into a job interview just to see. And they measured the actual chemical balances within their bodies. And it really was amazing how your body language doesn't just communicate to other people.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (18:23)
It actually has an internal effect on how you engage the world. So really fascinating stuff and things that we don't often think. But when everybody gets nervous or when everybody gets anxious, they shrink down into themselves. Like you said, they close their arms. They kind of like shrivel up into the corner. And in order to combat that, the answer is not to allow your body to do what it naturally does.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (18:47)
When you're feeling those types of feelings, it's to really take the stance and put yourself in positions to start to reconstruct that chemical makeup in your body, which then ultimately releasing you, having more confidence and feeling better about yourself. When people say, hey, if you're feeling sad or feeling depressed, you should get up and take a walk. There's actual science behind that.

Vicki Davis (19:08)
We could talk all day. We've learned so much. We've been talking with Dr. Jeff Bogaczyk. He has the Mind For Life podcast. He's all over social media, and there's so much we could talk about. And hey, we didn't even get a chance to talk about AI today, so that'll have to be another conversation about sure, technology has changed how we communicate.

Vicki Davis (19:28)
But, you know, here's the thing. In the age of AI, the humans that will be successful are the humans who have the emotional intelligence, the communication skills. I love your profile of a graduate because it's so important to be able to communicate effectively, whether it's like we are online or especially face to face, just so we can have those good, healthy relationships so that we can reduce loneliness.

Vicki Davis (19:57)
If we could move from social media to just being social human beings, we would have a better world, wouldn't we? Jeff?

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (20:04)
I think we would. Depends on how you would define better. I think both you and I would define it differently than some of the people that are advancing these platforms and pushing these technologies on us. So more humanistic, if we can say it that way, not in the secular, humanistic way, but just in the fact that we are connected better at the human level, which is an important thing.

Vicki Davis (20:27)
So, Jeff, thank you for coming on the show and thanks for all that you're sharing. Mind For Life is a really great resource for all of us.

Jeffrey S Bogaczyk (20:34)
Vicki, it's been a pleasure to be with you. Thanks for having me. I've enjoyed it and we definitely have to do it again.

Announcer (20:40)
Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (20:44)
I love the emotional intelligence that Jeff brought to the conversation, but now we want to move to something that people think AI can do editing. So when I first started writing for Edutopia, I met Alan Lipton. It was incredible the things that he could help me write better. I'll admit I've been using Grammarly for years, but nothing has come close to what Alan Lipton can do with my writing.

Vicki Davis (21:14)
I think that true editing is a very underappreciated profession and something that humans, when they know how to do it, can do far better. Let's talk to Alan Lipton.

Vicki Davis (21:31)
Writing is more important than ever. I know everybody talks about AI or AI can write for us. Oh no. AI is real good at average writing, but there are still stories to be told. There are things to be written, and writing is so important. So as we talk about and emphasize writing, our guest we have today is Alan Lipton.

Vicki Davis (21:51)
He has edited some of my pieces I've written for Edutopia in the past. He's had many different clients Deloitte, Fox Interactive, iVillage, The Learning Company, so many others you've worked for Alan, and I know you write yourself and you're also an editor, but talk to us about what do editors do? I've published a couple books. Editors are really important, but I'm not sure people value what editors do.

Vicki Davis (22:20)
So let's talk about it.

Alan (22:21)
Okay. As I've come to editing as as a writer, I've always enjoyed collaborating with other people when I can. And I realize that editing other people's writing is, in a way, a really ideal form of collaboration for a writer, because it's taking something that someone else has said in writing and working with them to make it better, taking what's really good and what's really unique about it, and just making that part really sing.

Alan (22:54)
So I come to editing as a reader and a writer.

Vicki Davis (22:57)
So that's the thing about you that when you've edited my work and I can say this publicly, my favorite editor I've ever worked with is you, Alan, because you do the thing that I didn't know I'm beginning. I haven't written my first book, but I'm doing some work for it. And when you're a writer, you're so close to it.

Vicki Davis (23:14)
And yes, you win awards and all that kind of stuff. Everybody says you're a good writer, but what you don't know is sometimes your closeness to the words interrupt what you're trying to communicate. So what you do is you have the eyes of a reader, but you also understand the heart of a writer because we write to think.

Vicki Davis (23:34)
My husband says, Vicki, you talk to think and you write to think. It's how you think. Because by the time I get to the end of a book, I know what I think about something and then I can speak about it and all of that because it's a process. But I think that's a mistake a lot of us writers make is we don't understand the importance of having a second set of eyes on it, and people can say all they want about ChatGPT being a great editor, but it's not because it always tells you you're right.

Vicki Davis (23:59)
I'm not always right. You're really good at finding the structural things. Hey, Vicki, why don't you put it here? Why not put it there? None of this AI does that. But you do. And there's so many editors like you. Do you think people, Alan, have a misconception about what editors actually do and the value of editors? Do they think they're just for spelling or what?

Alan (24:20)
I think a lot of people think of an editor as kind of a police officer in some way. It's like saying, no, you can't do that. These are the rules. You have to follow them. And to an extent that is true. The idea of getting second set of of eyes on what you've written is that let me put it this way.

Alan (24:38)
You shouldn't be thinking, well, let me run it by this person who will just pat me on the back and say that I've done a really great job. You know, to me, the whole point of editing is constructive criticism. My own approach to it is what I refer to as coming at it from like the minds ear that when I'm reading something, I'm listening to how it sounds.

Alan (25:00)
And what I really favor doing is having something that sounds really close to human speech without the stammering and the, you know, and, and the backtracking and, you know, and the misspeak to have sort of a natural flow to the language in the sense of grammar that is generally perfect if it's not 100% following the rules all the time, that may be okay, because that's natural speech.

Vicki Davis (25:30)
Everybody's going to be saying, okay, Alan, what about the kinds of editing I thought editing was editing? So what are those other forms of editing?

Alan (25:36)
There are five, five different kinds of I've identified, and some of which I practice more than others. At the very, very first step would be conceptual editing, where a writer would sit down with an editor, say, I have this idea, let's brainstorm it. What do you think about these ideas? What do you think is a good way to present these ideas?

Alan (26:00)
That's before anything is even written. Probably an outline would be helpful for that. Then after that would be what is called developmental editing. What you need for developmental editing is you need a first draft. It can be rough as sandpaper, but it's all the ideas are there in whatever form the editor is assessing your first draft. It's kind of an overview of what do you have here before digging in deeper, we have structural editing that's often called line editing, trying to set a structure for the text and clarity within that structure.

Alan (26:34)
The next level after that would be copy editing. That is sort of drilling down on grammar, punctuation, spelling, and just overall consistency.

Vicki Davis (26:46)
You try to get Vicki to fix her commas. You know, the good thing is I have Grammarly. Now, that does help me a little more with my commas so I can focus on communicating.

Alan (26:54)
That's where we look at the commas. Also, another level of looking at the commas is what is called a proofing edit, or maybe proofreading, where the edit has nothing to do with the content at all. It's just are there typos? How is this formatted? Is the formatting consistent? This is sort of a sidebar that there there are two additional features of line editing or structural editing, which are sort of on the nerdy end of things, that it's not always part of the process, one of which is fact checking to make sure that they're accurate about certain things.

Alan (27:30)
The other is what is generally called technical editing. That's not so much specifically about technical writing. What that refers to more is it's about points that are specific to the subject matter or specific to a given industry. Those are sort of subsets of line and structural editing.

Vicki Davis (27:49)
My high school writing teacher said, the thing about movies and books is that the pace moves faster than real life. In real life, there's lots of corners we walk around. There's lots of things we do that nobody would ever read a book or watch a movie about walking around corners. I mean, I'm sure that there are some people who try, but the pace has to be faster.

Vicki Davis (28:12)
Even if you skip a year, you don't take a year to skip a year. You skip a year quickly. You know, that is hard to understand because we put ourselves in our characters. And there's the saying, what? You have to kill your darlings, right? What does that mean?

Alan (28:25)
Basically, if you've created something that you absolutely love, it helps if you just look at it very coldly and say, sure, I love this. I had a lot of fun writing this. This little piece of writing may be a great piece of writing. How does it serve the story that I'm telling? And if it doesn't, you either need to cut it out or you need to retell it in a different way.

Alan (28:55)
That makes sense to the general idea that you're putting out the phrase kill your darlings. It's very brutal sounding. You know it. It suggests that really looking at what you've created from a very technical angle, where there's no room for feeling, feeling takes a back seat to the story and to to the intent.

Vicki Davis (29:18)
Yeah. So the dark night of the soul is a term I've heard in writing groups a lot, and I think that is that's just when you're in the thick of it. You're writing your book and it's not coming together. You're lost and you can't figure out what you're doing. It feels like you're in the dark. Is that what the dark night of the soul is?

Alan (29:40)
Exactly. Yeah, it's that moment, and it might last longer than a moment. It might be a phase where you have lost the thread of what you're trying to do. You're not sure what you're trying to say anymore. You don't have the thread to follow.

Vicki Davis (29:57)
And how do you get out of that?

Alan (30:00)
Well, you could, you could take a break. You could take a breath and let your subconscious do the work. You could talk to someone about it. You could, you could do all of those things. Or you could engage what I would call tacit knowledge. You have knowledge that you don't necessarily even know you have. When you're being a craftsperson, when you're involved in a craft like writing, you learn stuff intuitively.

Alan (30:30)
For instance, when I'm working with a writer, I might ask them, hey, what do you think about this? How does that feel? And when you rely on your gut feel, on your intuition, on your instincts, that is a form of knowledge that you can't necessarily express explicitly.

Alan (30:50)
And I have a friend, I have an Aunt Chandra, and my aunt is a world-famous cook. And when you ask her, how much butter do you put in the cake, she says, well, it depends. She can't really tell me explicitly how much butter she puts in a cake. She knows when it feels right. She knows when it looks right. She has tacit knowledge of cooking that comes from years and years of practice and intuition in the kitchen.

Alan (31:16)
The same thing is true with writing. Tacit knowledge is something that you have developed through experience and through practice and through engaging in the craft repeatedly. It's not something you can necessarily express explicitly. But when you're in that dark night of the soul, you can rely on that tacit knowledge and your instincts to help you find your way back to the thread that you were following.

Vicki Davis (31:39)
Alan, thank you so much for coming on the show. I can't wait to write my first book with you as my editor.

Alan (31:45)
That's going to be amazing. Thanks so much for having me, Vicki.

Announcer (31:48)
Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (31:52)
Now we're going to talk with Karen McCallum. Karen is going back to one of my vault episodes that was called episode 53 from back in 2017. Now, Karen is an elementary vice principal and a kindergarten teacher. She has been teaching for 33 years, and she has some incredible stories about emotional intelligence and how she helps kids communicate.

Vicki Davis (32:16)
Karen McCallum, tell us just a little bit about what you do.

Karen McCallum (32:21)
I'm an elementary vice principal and a kindergarten teacher in Okotoks, Alberta, Canada. And I've been teaching in the primary grades for 33 years. I'm so glad you're talking about the human skills that can't be taught by technology. And I think communication and emotional intelligence and some of the things that we do in our classroom is really important. This year, I had a little girl who is nonverbal. She has never spoken a word.

Karen McCallum (32:51)
But what we did, one thing I did at the beginning was used little puppets. These are little hand puppets. We have two puppets called Matz and Penny. Matz is kind of a happy little guy and Penny is another little puppet. So I used these puppets to build a safe space for this little girl. I would sit with her and I talk through the puppets to create that safe space.

Karen McCallum (33:21)
And over the course of the year, this little girl began to communicate through the puppets with me, and then she began to talk to some of the other children. And eventually she began to talk to the adults, the parents, and other people in the classroom.

Karen McCallum (33:38)
We also used, Vicki, we have a boy who had his finger stepped on at recess. And this little boy, instead of being upset or coming in and being aggressive, he completely shut down emotionally. And so what we did was we used the puppets Matz and Penny to help this little boy process through his emotions and helped him build trust again with his peers.

Karen McCallum (34:01)
These are really important human skills that I don't think that AI or any kind of technology can replicate. And we care about each student, and we want to help them grow and develop as humans.

Karen McCallum (34:14)
What I've found is, as teachers, we really need to listen to what the kids are saying, and we really need to observe the child and see how they're reacting to things. Really be present with them.

Vicki Davis (34:25)
Karen, you're talking about emotional intelligence. Jeff talked about it. Alan talked about it. As you teach your kindergarteners and first graders, what do you think emotional intelligence is?

Karen McCallum (34:37)
I think emotional intelligence is, you need to know your own emotional state, and you need to understand how you're feeling. And then you need to understand how other people are feeling. That means being able to identify emotions in other people by looking at their body language or looking at their facial expressions. And then you need to be able to be empathetic towards them. And you need to be able to handle your own emotions as well.

Karen McCallum (35:07)
And so as a teacher, I model this. I model emotional intelligence in my classroom every single day.

Karen McCallum (35:15)
Thanks for having me back, Vicki.

Vicki Davis (35:17)
Great. Thanks so much for the memories, Karen.

Announcer (35:19)
Cool Cat Teacher Talk with award winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (35:22)
Krise Nowak is the head of school at Ambleside School in McLean, Virginia. I know a lot of people who use Charlotte Mason education, and they love it. Krise, tell us about what makes your school unique.

Vicki Davis (35:36)
What kind of methodology is Charlotte Mason and how does it work?

Krise Nowak (35:43)
Well, Vicki, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm so grateful to be here. Charlotte Mason was an educator and writer in the 19th century, and she emphasized respecting the child as a person. She believed that children are persons, not projects, and she created an educational philosophy that centers around relationships, character formation, and the love of learning.

Vicki Davis (36:06)
Can you tell us what makes the Charlotte Mason school different? Because if I'm honest, the technology piece is one thing that strikes me immediately when I hear about Charlotte Mason schools, is they use very little technology. Talk to us about that. Can you explain that?

Vicki Davis (36:23)
What's the point? Why? What's the philosophy behind it?

Krise Nowak (36:28)
Well, the reason for that is Charlotte Mason had three main tools of education. The first is what she called a living curriculum. Now, this is not textbooks. Rather, it's beautiful, well-written books. She had strong opinions about the quality of the books that students should be reading from, because she knew that when students read rich literature and well-written materials, they're exposed to great ideas and to excellent writing at the same time.

Krise Nowak (37:06)
The second tool is narration. This is the practice of having students tell back, in their own words, what they've read or heard. This is the most important tool. The teacher reads aloud to the students, and then the student narrates back what they've heard. They don't use tests. They use narration as a way of checking understanding. So when a student narrates, they're demonstrating their understanding.

Krise Nowak (37:39)
And then the third tool is what we call habit formation. Character traits and good behaviors are developed through habit. So we focus on things like attentiveness, obedience, and diligence. And all of these habits are developed over time through practice and consistency.

Vicki Davis (38:03)
This is really interesting. I'm particularly interested in the narration piece because when I was teaching, I would sometimes read something aloud and ask students to put it in their own words. And there are multiple things happening. First of all, if they can't tell it back, I know they don't understand it. If they can tell it back, they've processed that information through their own thinking.

Vicki Davis (38:25)
They've changed it to their words. They've had to think about what mattered most and what didn't. It's a much deeper level of engagement than just a multiple choice quiz.

Krise Nowak (38:35)
Absolutely. And students take ownership of their learning when they narrate. They're not just passively receiving information. They're actively engaged in understanding and processing the information. And narration also builds confidence. When a student narrates, they're speaking. They're communicating their understanding. And that's something that has to happen if we want our students to be thinkers.

Krise Nowak (38:56)
Students develop their thinking skills through speaking. It really is the primary tool that they need in order to learn how to think.

Vicki Davis (39:10)
So another thing that I've heard from Charlotte Mason educators is this phrase “I have my child back.” What does that mean?

Krise Nowak (39:18)
Oh, that's a beautiful phrase. And I've seen it happen in my own classroom before I was a head of school. I was teaching middle school, and when we started using Charlotte Mason methods in my classroom, the children started coming back to life. The technology had been fragmenting their attention, and their brains weren't able to focus. And once the technology was removed, we started seeing children who were struggling coming alive. We started seeing their unique gifts and talents.

Krise Nowak (39:46)
We started seeing them develop confidence and joy in their learning. And then we started seeing families transformed, because the parents began to see their children again, not just their children's grades, not just their children's test scores, but their actual children.

Krise Nowak (40:02)
One of our students says, I feel like my brain is working more efficiently now. And another student says, this is peaceful. I can actually think. And another student said, I like this because I can actually be myself. Those are powerful words. And I think that speaks to the fragmentation that technology causes.

Krise Nowak (40:24)
So we have very limited technology. We do teach engineering and robotics, but the foundation, the core of what we do is relational and human-centered.

Vicki Davis (40:37)
So Krise, we have something in common. We both believe that in the age of AI, the humans who will be successful and the humans who will be happy are the ones who develop the soft skills. The human skills. The emotional intelligence. The thinking. The communicating. The character. All those things. So we're aligned on that perspective, and I'm so grateful that you're out there running a school that's aligned with that. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Krise Nowak (41:07)
Thank you so much, Vicki. It's been a joy to be with you.

Vicki Davis (41:10)
So John Davis and I are going to do our closing conversation.

Vicki Davis (41:14)
So John, let's talk about what we're thinking about this episode. We talked to Jeff Bogaczyk about communication. We talked to Alan Lipton about editing. We heard from a kindergarten teacher, Karen McCallum, about emotional intelligence and helping kids communicate. And we heard from Krise Nowak about Charlotte Mason education.

Vicki Davis (41:33)
What is AI absolutely terrible at? What is AI can't do?

John Davis (41:41)
Well, it's the first thing that comes to mind is emotional intelligence. It can't understand, truly understand, what it means to be a human being or what it means to be in pain or to be struggling or to be joyful. It can't really understand context. It can have an idea of context, but deep understanding of context requires experience.

John Davis (42:06)
And experience requires embodiment. We need bodies. We need to feel and taste and smell and hear. We need to have those experiences to understand what's really going on in the world.

John Davis (42:22)
Another thing that AI is terrible at is building genuine relationships. Relationships require trust. Relationships require vulnerability. Relationships require someone to put themselves out there and to take a risk. And all of those things require an understanding of what it means to be human.

John Davis (42:41)
And finally, I think AI is absolutely terrible at something that I think we all appreciate, which is joy. The ability to see the small everyday miracles in life and to appreciate them.

John Davis (42:54)
I think these are gifts that we humans have been given, and I think we need to nurture them. I think that if we focus on the things that AI can't do, and we focus on our strengths, rather than trying to compete with machines, we'll find that we have a lot to offer the world.

Vicki Davis (43:13)
You know, one thing that I think about is that AI can mimic human writing. Right? We know that. And you can see examples of good AI writing and bad AI writing. But what AI can't do is have an idea. You know, ideas come from the human experience. They come from our suffering, our joy, our relationships, our challenges. And so even though AI can generate text, what it can't do is generate an idea that will change the world.

Vicki Davis (43:42)
And so I think as we are in this age of AI, I think what we need to do is empower people. Empower ourselves and empower our students to be idea generators, to be people who think deeply, to be people who connect with other people, to be people who have something to say that matters. Those are the people who will lead the world, not the people who can use AI well.

Vicki Davis (44:06)
Those are the people who can think and who can relate. And I think that the sad thing is that as we've gotten more technology in our schools, we've focused on compliance and on testing and test scores. But what we really need to do is focus on developing the human. And I think what this episode has shown us is that there are schools and teachers and educators out there who are doing that really well.

Vicki Davis (44:33)
And I think what we need to do is empower those people and celebrate those people. So thanks for this conversation today, John. I think it's been a good one.

John Davis (44:42)
You're welcome. And thanks for having me, Vicki.

Vicki Davis (44:45)
Thanks for listening to Cool Cat Teacher Talk. I'm Vicki Davis, and I'll see you next time.