A Real Teacher Sparking Curiosity Makes All the Difference

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

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

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

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

Vicki Davis: The story of a real student.

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

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

Brandie Wright: That is his real name.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brandie Wright: See — so this is important.

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

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

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