Schools are funny. The weirdest things happen. But even in the midst of all of that hurry and scurry, we still have jobs to do, and AI for teachers can help get things done. Maurie Beasley, author of Teachers Have Bigger Fish to Fry, has some great perspectives to share with teachers.
Maurie is a former teacher, counselor, and assistant principal who now directs technology for a rural Texas district. She shares how you can still figure out the best uses of AI even when you have bigger fish to fry!
In short: AI for teachers works best when it starts with efficiency: leveling a story for a reader, drafting a parent email, or theming an activity around a student’s interest. Maurie Beasley calls the next step opportunity AI, when teachers use it to do things they never thought they could.
A snake fell on a teacher’s desk, and the AI answer didn’t always help. Here’s what Maurie learned about where AI really earns its keep.
Here’s where the facts in this episode come from, with the time stamp so you can hear each one. Checked October 21, 2026.
This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki
Vicki Davis (00:00): What happened when a snake fell out of the air conditioning vent onto a teacher’s desk? Today, we’re talking about AI for teachers who have bigger fish to fry than fighting with AI. For our Wonderful Classroom Wednesday, episode 1013.
Announcer (00:19): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.
Vicki Davis (00:23): My guest today is Maurie Beasley. She knows that a school is less like an inspirational movie and more sometimes like a season of Survivor. We have surprise assemblies, caffeinated lesson plans, and the occasional airborne object. Her new book, Teachers Have Bigger Fish to Fry, is packed with hilarious, wild, 100% true stories that’ll make you say, Wait, that actually happened? Whether it’s chaos in the classroom or using AI. And yes, this is actually an AI book. So Maurie, why did you design it that way?
Why would a book about AI for teachers include coloring pages?
Maurie Beasley (00:57): I was in the classroom for a long time, and then I ended up becoming a counselor. With a counseling background, I realized that it wasn’t just the students that I was counseling. A lot of times it were the teachers. They would come in and they would sit down in my room and they would just need to vent, or they would want to pick up one of the coloring pages that I had for one of my students to come in and sit down. They would literally come in and just sit there for their little 15-minute break in between taking a kid to PE versus going and picking them up and just sit there and relax.
Maurie Beasley (01:25): And that’s why when I first came up with the concept of this book, I was like, this needs to be more than just a whole bunch of stories that I had collected from all over the United States and from Australia. Just all that packed into one book. It needed to do something else for the teachers. So I went ahead and put a color page with each title, put a reflection section after each story.
How do I know if AI could have helped with a real classroom problem?
Maurie Beasley (01:47): And then I asked the important question, in today’s environment, could AI have helped in this situation? I literally put a prompt into an AI, one of the big four, and I copied that prompt and I put it into the book. And then I copy and pasted what the AI said as a response. If I thought the response was good, then I was like, hey, you know, that sounds like a great response.
Maurie Beasley (02:13): If I thought the response was bad, then I pivoted and put a good recipe for a margarita because occasionally AI is just not going to help with everything. But a lot of times AI can help with something that the teacher might not think to even ask to begin with.
Vicki Davis (02:28): So what’s the story in the book? Pick one that you feel like people respond to the most and just tell us that story.
Maurie Beasley (02:34): Depends upon the response that you’re looking for, actually, Vicki.
Vicki Davis (02:38): Laughter. I need some laughter.
What do you do when a snake falls on a teacher’s desk?
Maurie Beasley (02:39): If you need some laughter, one of the stories, a snake had fallen from the air conditioning vent located right above their teacher desk and had landed on their desk. They call down to the office and they’re like, I don’t know what to do. There’s a snake on my desk. It’s under the papers. I was an assistant principal at the time and I grabbed our security officer that was standing right next to me.
Maurie Beasley (03:04): And here we go, you know, down the hallway, grab the broom, grab the scoop, going and figuring it out. That’s kind of what teaching it is. You have to pivot all the time. That’s one of the ones that gets a lot of the repeat because it’s just so out there.
Vicki Davis (03:19): One of my teaching situations, a bird got loose in the building during tennis season. Everybody’s going after it with a tennis racket. And you’re like, no, a little bird. Oh, goodness. I mean, all these things that happen in teaching that you just can’t make up. It’s good to tell those stories and laugh. Since you’re talking about frying some fish and it’s the end of the school day as we’re recording this.
Vicki Davis (03:39): And I’m actually kind of hungry. But what are the biggest AI fish you’ve been frying lately? Like the places where you’re like, okay, this can really help teachers.
What is the difference between efficiency AI and opportunity AI?
Maurie Beasley (03:50): I like to look at artificial intelligence as two different ways. Efficiency AI and opportunity AI. Efficiency AI, I think, is how most teachers can use it immediately. I’ve got a kid who’s on a different reading level. Can I go ahead and do something or make a story specifically for that student that’s on this other reading level?
How can AI help teachers with parent emails and student engagement?
Maurie Beasley (04:12): I’ve got a parent that I need to do an email for. I mean, all of that low-hanging fruit that everyone talks about that AI can help with. One of the big things I saw last year, we had a big pilot program at my district, and I had six teachers that I adopted, and I helped them every week with artificial intelligence integration. Mainly, it was engagement. I have a kid who loves soccer. Let me take this activity and make it geared for soccer because the kid doesn’t like to come to school.
Maurie Beasley (04:37): I have a kid who throws chairs. Let me come up with a plan or a contract that we can sign to try to get the kid to understand this is what’s going to happen if you throw a chair. Those little things. That’s all the efficiency stuff that it can help teachers with. Then you go to the opportunity stuff. That’s when your fish become even bigger, because that’s when you start doing things that you never thought you would do.
What does opportunity AI look like in a classroom?
Maurie Beasley (05:03): It’s when you start looking at it as a new opportunity. How can I add additional centers? How can I add additional engagement stuff? How can I pinpoint specific TEKS, which is what we have here as our standards in Texas? There is a transition from efficiency to opportunity. Right now, I think the biggest fish that teachers are frying is literally just saving that time and effort that they’ve been having to put into things for so long.
Vicki Davis (05:29): We do a lot with AI in my classes, but I’m also working really hard to teach emotional intelligence at the beginning of every class. How do you celebrate good news with somebody? How do you meet somebody for the first time? How do you have conversations with people? How can gratitude impact your own life? These are some of the things we’ve done so far in school.
Vicki Davis (05:47): And the kids are like, wow, I’m looking for good things in my life now instead of negative.
Maurie Beasley (05:52): My daughter put a device in her car probably 10 years ago so that she could save $15 a month on her car insurance. Records when she brakes too fast or she takes a turn too quickly. And when she did that, I was like, my goodness, that is such a huge invasion of your privacy. She didn’t care. She just wanted to save the $15 a month on her car insurance.
Why is AI making us ask what it means to be human?
Maurie Beasley (06:14): With AI, we are finally starting to have some of these conversations that we should have had when the internet came on the scene and when social media came on the scene and all of those things that we just kind of let it slide. But now, because of AI, we’re like, you know, what is it to be human? How do we define human? How do we reinforce those human connections that an AI can never do?
Maurie Beasley (06:42): I am glad that AI is out there because I think for a long time we were ignoring some of those questions and just kind of letting it go on by just kind of like gliding on through life. I’m glad it’s finally making us have those tough conversations. And Vicki, they’re going to be tough because no one’s going to agree.
Vicki Davis (06:58): We had a great conversation in class the other day. We were talking about concerns with Roblox. The Roblox situation is a bit of a mess that we won’t go into. And they’re like, oh, I can connect with my friends and this and that. The kids were like, well, what are we supposed to do besides play games? And I was like, you know, it’s eighth graders. Girls, you get together and giggle sometimes. And guys, you get together and hang out. And they’re like, Well, we hadn’t done that. I know kids who hang out. I know kids who get together and giggle. I know kids who are kids and spend time together. They tend to be happier.
Vicki Davis (07:30): They tend to be better adjusted and they tend to be less lonely. We all are truly in agreement at my school. We have made it so that it’s a no cell phone whole day. I have less kids who go to the bathroom. I have more paying attention. I have more engagement. My freshmen are like, hey, the upperclassmen are talking to me. That’s so cool. They don’t have their noses in their phones in the hallway. And even from an AI perspective and being able to control, okay, lids up, lids down, we’re going to use it.
Vicki Davis (08:00): We’re going to use it when we’re ready to use it.
Why do some parents push back on school cell phone bans?
Maurie Beasley (08:03): I am 100% with you there, 100%. I think the biggest pushback that we got at my district is coming from parents. It’s not coming from the students because the parents are like, what if I need to text them to tell them I’m going to bring them their lunch? It’s like, well, we’re going to have to do it the old-fashioned way. You’re going to have to call the office and you’re going to have to leave a message. I know that we’re going to have some growing pains with that new law, but overall, I 100% agree. And the fact that you said lids up, lids down,
Who should be in control when students use AI in class?
Maurie Beasley (08:31): Who is in control when the lid is up? The adult is in control. The adult can help with the AI literacy. The adult can help guide the student to use it appropriately as a tool, not as a crutch.
Vicki Davis (08:44): Tell us about your resources and where people can find you.
Maurie Beasley (08:47): Really appreciate you having me on, Vicki. So my website, of course, if you are a teacher, you know that you have to have a side gig, right? I mean, you sell Scentsy candles, you do Pampered Chef, you know, whatever it is that you do. My side gig was I drove a bus for the year when I was paying for my master’s degree. We do have a little side gig. It’s called AI Education Professionals or AIEdPro.com.
Maurie Beasley (09:09): We do travel over the United States and do professional development with a little bit of humor in there about how to use artificial intelligence in the classrooms. I have my book. It’s called Teachers Have Bigger Fish to Fry and it is on Amazon. I do have an e-book, but of course the e-book doesn’t have the coloring pages or the reflection pages. It only has the stories and how could AI have helped. So other than that, I’m the only Maurie Beasley on LinkedIn.
Maurie Beasley (09:32): I do tend to be a little opinionated and I do tend to be a little sarcastic, but you know, sometimes you have to be to survive, right? One of the reasons I stopped teaching kindergarten and I started teaching at the junior high level a long time ago is because the kindergartners never got my sarcasm.
Vicki Davis (09:50): Oh, yeah, they can’t. They’re so literal. They look at you with blank, blank, like what? Thank you for coming on the show. We all need to be forming our opinions and having the conversations with the kids because that’s really the way forward. So thanks for coming on the show, Maurie.
Maurie Beasley (10:04): Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Announcer (10:05): Thank you for tuning in to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. Join us here every weekday and subscribe to the Classroom Matters newsletter. See you later, educator.
Maurie Beasley is an educator-turned-tech administrator who blends two decades in K-12 classrooms and counseling with hands-on work in the computer industry. By day, she directs technology for a rural school district, staying rooted in real-world classroom chaos; after hours, she is CEO and co-founder of AI Education Professionals, guiding schools and small businesses nationwide to use artificial intelligence as a practical, human-centered ally, especially in the under-resourced communities she calls home.
Maurie sits on the boards of the Austin AI Alliance and Cowboy Christmas for Kids, advises Tech & Learning, and is a founding member of the Human Intelligence Movement.
Her debut book, Teachers Have Bigger Fish to Fry, dishes up laugh-out-loud true stories and savvy AI tips that help educators reclaim time and sanity. When she isn’t working with teachers in her AI Trail Blazer pilot program or plotting the next “fish” volume, you’ll find her coming up with new ideas over strong coffee and cheering on the exhausted teachers who inspired every page.
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