Teaching About AI: Insights from ISTE 2026

Read the full transcript — Part 2: Humans Teaching Humans About the Machine (S7E1)

Karim Meghji · Kimmie Fink · Brandie Wright

Vicki Davis (00:00)

Classroom AI ideas — teaching kids how AI works. ISTE 2026, AI and EdTech Supershow, Part Two. This episode is brought to you by CodeAI and BBC Learning.

Announcer (John Davis) (00:15)

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 (00:28)

Back in June, I was sitting at the ISTE keynote on Sunday night, and a teacher named Brandie Wright was telling a story about a student of hers named Kamari. He was such a curious young man. He was a boy who would grab a whiteboard marker and say, “Hey, Miss Brandie, give me some math problems to work for fun.”

Vicki Davis (00:49)

And it was a beautiful story about how she sparked curiosity with him. And while she was telling it, I have to admit something. I was texting my son John, who produces this show, and I typed: “This is an amazing teacher. I just hope the student is real.” I’m not proud of that. But it turns out that I wasn’t alone, either.

Vicki Davis (01:15)

When I finally sat down to interview Brandie two days later for this show, she told me that her friend said the same thing to her — that everybody was asking if she made him up, or if he was real. Well, he was real, because he was sitting on the front row with his dad. And that’s where we are. This is the world we’re teaching in.

Vicki Davis (01:40)

A woman stands on a stage and tells the truth about a real child, and a room full of educators — at least some of us — wonder if a machine wrote it, and if the child was real.

So this is Part Two of our ISTE, EdTech, and AI Supershow. This is recorded at the conference in Orlando on Monday and Tuesday, in between sessions, with a camera and a folding table and a whole lot of coffee.

Vicki Davis (02:06)

And before we go further, you need to know something that happened that Sunday night. ISTE has a new name. Richard Culatta and board president Jeremy Owoh announced it from the main stage. Now, Jeremy is going to be on Part Three of the Supershow.

So ISTE+ASCD — the Association for Curriculum Directors — of course combined several years ago.

Vicki Davis (02:31)

But now it’s the International Society for Transforming Education. So the acronym stays, but the T changes. It used to stand for Technology, and now it stands for Transforming.

So that’s really this conference in one letter. Because here’s what I found walking the halls for four days: the people who are thriving in this new AI world are not the ones with the shiniest tools.

Vicki Davis (02:57)

They’re the humble people. The ones who say “I don’t know.” And the ones who can say “I don’t know yet.”

The ones playing AI whack-a-mole, trying to detect their way out of this — they’re the ones struggling. I’d rather have learning detectors than AI detectors any day. Detecting AI is going to be like detecting oxygen. The question isn’t whether it’s in the room.

Vicki Davis (03:20)

The question is whether a person is breathing.

So let’s talk about how we actually teach kids in this world. First up is Karim Meghji. He’s been on the show before, and he’s president and CEO of CodeAI — that’s the nonprofit that we have known for years as Code.org. They are the folks behind Hour of Code, which is how I first got started with Python. And now they’ve launched Hour of AI.

Vicki Davis (03:48)

But they have tons of free resources available to all of us, all year long. So John and I sat down and actually took one of their classes Monday of the conference. They asked us to generate a healthy meal, and the cultural bias came pouring right out of the machine. That was the design of that lesson.

So let’s learn from Karim.

Announcer (John Davis) (04:10)

Cool Cat Teacher Talk, with award-winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (04:13)

Our guest today is someone that I first sat down with about a very big idea — that AI literacy belongs in every classroom, not just the computer science lab.

Vicki Davis (04:26)

Karim Meghji is president and CEO of CodeAI, the nonprofit formerly known as Code.org, and the organization behind Hour of Code — which got me started on Python, by the way. Thank you for that. And now, Hour of AI.

When Karim was on the show earlier this year, we dug into why students needed to understand what’s happening under the hood of these tools, and not just use them.

Vicki Davis (04:53)

We talked about computational thinking, unplugged activities, and a wonderful line that you said — that you don’t have to be a mechanic to drive a car, but it does help to know how the car works. So CodeAI has stepped into a brand new chapter, and we are filming this at ISTE 2026, and really trying to help students understand AI and not just use it.

Vicki Davis (05:18)

So Karim, thanks for coming back to the show. So you spent three and a half years in product development for Code.org. What made you decide that, okay, we need to focus on kids understanding AI? Like, now is the time.

Karim Meghji (05:35)

That moment began years before we rebranded. It began when we started thinking about computational thinking and computer science as a foundational skill that every student needed to have as they went through their K–12 experience, given that our world is so digital. And so understanding the world is why we started teaching computer science to begin with. We actually wrote our first AI curriculum in 2018 for middle school students.

Karim Meghji (05:59)

And then another AI activity that we built called AI for Oceans — it’s for slightly younger students. Those moments when we put that curriculum into the classroom in 2018, 2019, 2020, we really saw the power of showing kids how to think about demystifying technology, and how important that is in their lives. As generative AI has come on the scene —

Karim Meghji (06:23)

I think that just underscored even more the need for unboxing this technology. I think when we last talked, we talked a little bit about the glass box versus the black box. And so our brand change is really to reflect that — that now, in addition to demystifying computer science and technology generally speaking, demystifying AI, and getting into a situation where students can look at the glass box and see how it’s working, and maybe have a screwdriver and take it apart, is as important in a world with AI as it was in a world of just computer science.

Vicki Davis (06:52)

So, Karim, I was in your classroom today and I took a class.

Vicki Davis (06:57)

I thought it was really interesting how you designed it because, for example, they had us generate a healthy meal — and there was definite cultural bias to that healthy meal. And we got to talk about the bias that we saw. We can talk to kids all day long, but if they don’t experience it, they don’t understand it. What are your thoughts behind how you designed the AI interactions that you have for free on CodeAI?

Karim Meghji (07:21)

So we do think a lot about not just how AI goes right — works well, answers the question, whatever the case may be that a student may be looking for — but we also try and build into our curriculum moments where it does something that’s worth inspection, worth looking at a little more closely. Whether it’s, in this example, a bias situation, or we have other lessons where we actually have the AI answer incorrectly. The answer to the question is to show them what it would look like when AI doesn’t answer correctly.

Karim Meghji (07:51)

And then we inspect that through the curriculum, through the teacher-led experience, and through the classroom discussion that occurs. And you might have noticed that today, actually, as you went through our curriculum and our little setup — a lot of our work is not just the curriculum online, it’s actually the discussions that occur next to the curriculum. And that’s where there’s a lot of rich activity for students to learn about the nuances, especially in a world where this technology is not deterministic.

Vicki Davis (08:16)

You said a couple of times — they said, “Who is in control, you or the AI?” Where did you come up with that line? I love it.

Karim Meghji (08:24)

A lot of this is about leveraging the language around “human in the loop.” But there’s another step — the human shouldn’t just be in the loop, they should actually be driving. Human in the loop could be sitting in the passenger seat, if we’re going to use the car analogy, which we’ve talked a little bit about, I think, the last time.

Karim Meghji (08:41)

And so this idea that you actually control, direct, steer, guide, lead an AI system to solving a problem, to engaging in a new learning experience — but it should be you, as the student, as the adult, that guides what the outcome is. Not sit passively. We want an active participant, not a passive participant, in this experience.

Karim Meghji (09:03)

At the end of the day, these systems produce so much content. It shows how important it is to teach kids not to accept the first answer — to actually question it, to push on it, to make it better, to sharpen the outcome for their own benefit.

Vicki Davis (09:17)

And understanding that the less I know about a subject, the more likely I am to trust AI. And the more I know, the more I realize it’s wrong.

Vicki Davis (09:26)

So it’s kind of unveiling our own blind spots — that, hey, I don’t know a lot about this. Maybe I shouldn’t be trusting AI, because I don’t know enough to know what I don’t know.

So my student last week — he’s at a college in Georgia, where I’m from — and he was like, “Miss Davis, here’s the difference. I took this class and I was so excited.”

Vicki Davis (09:46)

“Number one, I needed to know spreadsheets. And I was able to interact with AI inside those spreadsheets. So I had a superpower.” And he said, “But the other thing is, we had to use artificial intelligence. And all my friends admitted that all they knew how to do with AI was cheat — just being honest. But I actually understood how AI worked, and so I was able to ace the class.”

Vicki Davis (10:07)

But you’re really talking about there being a difference between a student using AI and a student understanding it. What’s your message to teachers about helping kids understand AI, and not just say, “Oh, I can type in the box”? I mean, there’s such a difference there.

Karim Meghji (10:24)

It starts with understanding what’s happening under the technology itself — demystifying it. It’s not magic. It doesn’t just have the answer. It’s going through a particular mathematical process and structure. Do we need to get to the level of understanding the post-secondary math that’s occurring underneath? No, we don’t need to get to that level. But we need to understand that probabilities are an important component of how AI systems work.

Karim Meghji (10:45)

We have to understand that training incorporates massive amounts of data. Like, what does that look like? And what does a good data set look like? How does that come together to actually produce an AI system that you can interact with? So just the basics of it. You don’t have to be a mechanic to drive a car, but you need to understand what’s happening a bit under the hood. Like — gasoline goes in the car.

Karim Meghji (11:08)

Why? Well, there are these things called pistons, and they generate force, and there are wheels. And I need to change my oil for it to keep going. And there has to be air pressure. You know, these things. That level of understanding is really helpful to think about — how do you take a student from using a tool?

Karim Meghji (11:23)

There’s a baseline there. But then how do you increase their ceiling? How do you actually get back to your student who said, “I could really ace this class because I understood what was going on. I didn’t just know how to use it, I understood the tools.” That level of understanding raises that student’s ceiling. It enables them to do more, push the system further, question it when they actually have an instinct that something doesn’t feel right about this.

Karim Meghji (11:44)

I think these are the kinds of capabilities students get out of learning what’s happening under the tool.

Vicki Davis (11:49)

Karim, eighteen years from now, when somebody’s done CodeAI from kindergarten all the way up — what is that student able to do when they graduate from high school? What does success look like there?

Karim Meghji (11:59)

The first thing is, they will be able to look at outputs from AI and question: What am I seeing? Should I accept the first answer? Should I push it? Should I question it? How do I question the system to produce hopefully a better answer — and an answer that they can maybe actually go validate separately? So, learning the art of validation, which I think is a general media literacy skill. Because they’ll have — skepticism isn’t the right word — but a healthy relationship with the system, because they understand what’s happening under the hood.

Karim Meghji (12:28)

Part of the challenge is that because AI systems sound so authoritative, and they sound so human, as a human — young or old — we accept it. But if you understand it’s a machine, it reduces that level of trust you have with that machine, and gets you to a place where maybe you have a healthier relationship. So I think that’s part one.

Karim Meghji (12:44)

The other thing that I think is going to be really interesting, to your question about what happens after eighteen years of learning about AI — we’re going to see a transformation and democratization of building technical things. There are a lot of students out there who now vibe-code games, or adults who are putting together vibe-coded solutions for products they want to build.

Karim Meghji (13:05)

I was speaking with someone earlier today — an entrepreneur who has no technical background. After just a few courses, a little bit of learning about AI and computer science, just a little bit, now is building a business around a product they’re excited about. Designing the product, designing the marketing, creating videos — all of these things that otherwise they wouldn’t be able to do as a single individual.

Karim Meghji (13:28)

So I think it’s going to really democratize the ability to build and create. Which puts us in a world where, again, what we’re building and creating are technical artifacts. And so understanding how they work is going to be important as they proliferate. I think we’ll have a lot of builders in eighteen years. I think it’s going to look very different.

Karim Meghji (13:45)

And then I think the third thing is — and I think this is the interesting question — we’re going to have AI systems talking to other AI systems. And what does that look like? At some point AI systems are going to interact, and we’ll have to cross that bridge — what that looks like in terms of learning, and how to work in a world that looks like that.

Karim Meghji (14:00)

And part of it, what I mean is not only human-to-human, human-to-AI, but AI-to-AI. What does that all look like? And I think the student who’s gone through their K–12 education learning about AI is going to be more comfortable understanding how to manage and work in that world than the student that doesn’t.

Vicki Davis (14:17)

Karim, you have a panel — as we’re recording this at ISTE 2026 — about putting students at the center, and what responsible, trustworthy AI education looks like. Because I will say this: one of the things that pleased me the most about the class today was your definitions of artificial intelligence. Because I have warned teachers, in a session this morning — if you use AI to write the definitions for AI, it anthropomorphizes itself terribly.

Vicki Davis (14:46)

I loved how you said AI is a machine. And I think that’s trustworthy, as a teacher. So what does it look like for you? What do you want that to be?

Karim Meghji (14:55)

Yeah, I think trustworthy AI education starts with the fact that AI isn’t building the education itself — to your point. If you’re going to start anywhere with AI education, it starts with humans teaching humans about what the machine is doing.

The other thing I was going to say is, there’s a lot of talk, especially at this conference, about safety in the classroom and safety of these tools.

Karim Meghji (15:14)

And I think it’s a really important conversation. There’s an interesting anecdote from Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, where he talks about how we sometimes over-protect in the physical world and under-protect in the digital world. I think a lot of folks that are listening — that will resonate with them. And I was thinking about the fact that I think the same applies to education.

Karim Meghji (15:35)

I think we might be over-educating in some spaces and under-educating in the digital space. So I see that as an important step to trustworthy and safe AI education — which is, let’s educate our students. Not using the tool. Tool use is not the same as educating students about how these tools work. That, I think, is safety. So I want to see more of that. That’d be my definition.

Vicki Davis (15:58)

I love the prompts today that I did in the class, but I’m curious — what guardrails do you have on the back end to keep kids safe when they’re using your free resources at CodeAI?

Karim Meghji (16:09)

Yeah, so we have a whole set of technology. When a student enters the prompt, there’s a set of filters that that prompt goes through even before it sees an AI system. Then an AI system kicks in to look at the prompt, to check it. Then it goes into the actual model where we’re asking the question. And then, as the response comes back, it has another AI system and filtering.

Karim Meghji (16:33)

So both on the input and the output side, we’re looking at and inspecting what interaction is about to occur. And we test hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of prompts, and set a very high threshold for the success rate — or failure rate, as the case may be. These systems are never going to be at the level where we can get 100% success, because we can’t cover every possible prompt.

Vicki Davis (16:55)

And kids —

Karim Meghji (16:56)

And they’ll break it. We call it jailbreaking. They will jailbreak our products. But by running hundreds of prompts — you put your mind in the context of a young person, and then you try a lot of those prompts, and you automate these things, and then you redo these things again and again and again. So the combination of having a good data set, growing that data set, testing, and then having these — what we call a pre- and post-filter — is how we ensure that we maintain a very high bar on the safety of the product itself.

Vicki Davis (17:22)

I’ve always recommended, for years, Code.org for learning how to code. And now it’s CodeAI — because you’ve already done a lot of really hard work, and it’s not easy to just bring AI in. I would never just bring AI into a school without considering these things. But when we choose not to have a plan, that’s what we’re doing. Because it’s already there.

Vicki Davis (17:47)

I mean, the statistics on how many kids are using AI — it’s up in the 70% range, from what I’ve read recently. They’re using it. So, using your tools at CodeAI — I’m really a fan of the prompt method and all the stuff I went through today. And you can’t do all that in fifty minutes. So if you are talking to a teacher, and they’re not a computer science teacher, but they’re like, “It’s the right thing to do to teach my students about AI” — where do they start on your site?

Karim Meghji (18:17)

Yeah, the first thing that they can do is take our professional development courses. We have a set that just gets teachers going — gets them comfortable. I’m sure a lot of teachers have experimented on their own. But if you want to get to that next level of understanding about what’s happening with these tools, step one is take a little bit of the professional development courses.

Karim Meghji (18:35)

The other thing you can do is actually take the student-facing curriculum, like you did today, and like many teachers have been doing at the conference. The best part about it is, we’re all kind of beginners at this point. It can be difficult to be a teacher in a classroom right now, because we come into that mindset as a teacher that we’ve got to be able to answer the questions that our students are going to ask us.

Karim Meghji (18:54)

This is a moment where — and even CodeAI, we are beginners right now, as we learn how to build curriculum and technology around AI. But the more we’re willing to do it with the community, and the more teachers are willing to do it with their students — I’d say start. That’s the name of the game at this point, right?

Karim Meghji (19:12)

Get in there and learn with your students. I think that’s step one. I think the other thing — if you’re not using AI, you’ve got to start. It’s so simple to say that, but it is important. And I think using the tools is also one great way to understand how these tools can go really well, and where they can go wrong.

Vicki Davis (19:30)

As we finish up — what’s your dream for CodeAI? I mean, you’re leading the organization. Where do you want it to go? What impact do you want it to make in classrooms?

Karim Meghji (19:40)

Yeah, I’m glad you asked that question — especially across the world, I think that’s the piece. You have to have an aspiration that’s sometimes lofty and big and audacious, and one that the organization will keep striving towards. And that is that every student across the globe — K–12, primary and secondary in a lot of markets outside the US — has the opportunity, the ability, and the access to foundational AI education that teaches students not just how to use AI tools, but teaches them how the tools work.

Karim Meghji (20:10)

That’s ours.

Vicki Davis (20:13)

And it’s really a big deal. Because if these kids are making decisions that change our whole world and they don’t understand how artificial intelligence works — I still know so many adults who think AI is a search engine.

Vicki Davis (20:28)

And now we have a search engine that is AI, which is — but you used the word skepticism. Or just that intelligence about how it works. Sometimes it’s right, and it’s really right, and it’s truly wonderful. But these are the things that are going to make a huge difference for our future.

Vicki Davis (20:48)

So what’s your last encouragement for educators everywhere about why it’s time now to bring AI education into their school, and not wait?

Karim Meghji (20:58)

You know, I think a lot about the world that our kids are in today. It’s a digital world. The devices that we have in our pockets, on our desks, in our living rooms, in our cars — we’re surrounded by digital technology. A thousand years ago we worked in a physical world, an agricultural society, or we built things out of rocks and sticks and things around us, and we had to learn about the physical world so we could operate in it.

Karim Meghji (21:22)

And I think it’s an incredible moment right now where the digital world is the world we live in. We need to teach our students about the digital world. So the digital sciences — computer science, AI science, and data science — I think are really critical. That’s the message I would leave with our teachers: if you want your students to succeed in the world that they’re in today, and that they are going to be living in as they enter the workforce, embracing the digital sciences as part of that is going to be important.

Vicki Davis (21:47)

And it doesn’t mean you have to be on the screen all the time.

Karim Meghji (21:50)

It doesn’t mean screens all the time.

Vicki Davis (21:52)

In my AP Computer Science Principles class, we go lids-down a lot of times, and we teach XY coordinates. They’re in costumes, and mapped out with painter’s tape on the floor, making their robot moves.

Karim Meghji (22:03)

So some of the best learning occurs when you actually do something and then discuss it. You have a conversation about it. You have different viewpoints on it. So — absolutely not a screen-oriented activity, but still learning about how the digital world works.

Vicki Davis (22:17)

We’ve been talking with Karim Meghji, head of CodeAI, about artificial intelligence education. They have a lot of great resources. And thanks for talking with us today.

Announcer (John Davis) (22:29)

Cool Cat Teacher Talk, with award-winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (22:33)

“Humans teaching humans about what the machine is doing.”

Okay. I want to replay that over and over. That is what trustworthy AI education sounds like.

Vicki Davis (22:45)

But here’s the part that I keep thinking about over and over. The less we know about a subject, the more likely we are to trust AI on that topic. The more we know, the faster we spot that it’s wrong. So our blind spots are exactly where the machine is the most dangerous — to us, and to our kids.

Lots of numbers were flying around the conference — anywhere from 40 to 60% of assignments in high school are being done by AI.

Vicki Davis (23:17)

Okay, nobody really knows what that number is. But I think most of us can agree things need to change, because we want to educate. We need learning detectors, not AI detectors.

So this is why “Who’s in control, you or the AI?” is such a good question to hang on our classroom wall.

So teachers, understanding AI is only half of it.

Vicki Davis (23:42)

The other half is what we actually put in front of the kids. The story. The video. The thing that makes a nine-year-old get excited about learning. And good content can get really hard to find. So where can we find some free, safe, quality content? That can be pretty tough.

So I went looking at the expo, and found a booth that was hopping.

Vicki Davis (24:05)

Kimmie Fink taught for thirteen years. She was named Puget Sound Teacher of the Year, and now she’s a senior editor at the BBC Learning Hub. Our next thought leader — let’s learn.

Announcer (John Davis) (24:17)

Cool Cat Teacher Talk, with award-winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (24:22)

So our next guest knows both sides of the classroom door. Kimmie Fink spent thirteen years teaching. She was named Puget Sound Teacher of the Year, and now she’s senior editor at the BBC Learning Hub. She helps bring BBC’s world-class storytelling — from Planet Earth to Walking with Dinosaurs — to everyday classrooms with free, ready-to-use resources.

Vicki Davis (24:39)

So we’re at ISTE 2026, and we’re going to talk about what great storytelling does to change engagement, and also how a former teacher thinks about building the resources she once wished she had. So thanks for coming on the show. You spent thirteen years in the classroom, and you won a lot of awards.

Vicki Davis (25:05)

So, okay — first of all, these resources are free. And a lot of us teachers, we just need free. So as you’re pulling together content, what did you start looking at to design the content to bring it to classrooms?

Kimmie Fink (25:19)

Yeah. You know, I think for me, getting to work for the BBC is kind of a dream, because there’s so much amazing content out there — and you know that it’s trusted, that it’s accurate, that it’s well produced. And I know how much my students enjoyed engaging with video in particular, and how hard it was to find quality video. Especially on YouTube.

Kimmie Fink (25:43)

It’s full of ads, right? And so having something that is just safe for my students to watch, and that I know is of great quality. We’ve looked through this massive library of BBC content and looked for things that we know are going to be engaging to students. And I am using my experience from the classroom of what I know engages students — also my experience as a mom. I see things like the racer snakes chasing the baby iguanas, and I’m thinking, my eight-year-old is going to eat that up.

Kimmie Fink (26:05)

And I know that all kids will, because that content is so engaging. And so we’re really looking to provide supplemental resources for teachers, but that are just ready to go, like out of the box. So you don’t have to do so much. I also knew that as a teacher I had my curriculum that I was teaching, and so I was really looking for things to supplement, and to make the experience come to life.

Kimmie Fink (26:28)

So the idea that we have this home for that, where you can come, is just really appealing to me.

Vicki Davis (26:33)

Because it used to be you’d find a video and you’re like, okay, I’ve got this lovely video, and now I’ve got to do all this stuff. But when I was at your booth, you had the videos, and you have lesson plans, and you can download it. So describe — if a teacher wanted to use stuff tomorrow, what would be the kind of things he or she could expect to be able to get from your site?

Kimmie Fink (26:53)

Oh gosh, it’s hard to know where to start. But for ELA, we have these wonderful articles that are pulled from BBC magazines like Science Focus, History Extra, and Discover Wildlife. And what we’ve done is we’ve leveled them. So it’s the same article, but it’s written at a grade three-through-five, grade six-through-eight, grade nine-through-twelve level. So your students can access it at whatever level.

Kimmie Fink (27:14)

And we know that in every classroom, just because it’s labeled a fifth grade classroom doesn’t mean everybody’s reading at a fifth grade level, right? But they’re able to access that at any level. I really love that. There’s vocabulary built into that. Every single one of our videos has a writing prompt attached to it. So you just pick something you think your kids are going to be super interested in.

Kimmie Fink (27:31)

Maybe it’s polar bear cubs, right? And there’s a writing prompt that goes with it. So that’s where I would start with ELA. With science — Walking with Dinosaurs came out in 1999, and they came out with a completely new version last year, and we got our hands on it first, which was so exciting. And so it follows six different dinosaurs, and you go back and forth in the episode between the dig site and then the CGI dinosaurs.

Kimmie Fink (27:55)

What I did is I went through it — I got to watch all the episodes and then pick out the learning moments. So I paired a dig site clip with this CGI clip of the actual dinosaur. And then we created a paleontologist field journal.

Vicki Davis (28:08)

I saw that.

Kimmie Fink (28:09)

It’s very cool. It’s so fun. And then we made an interactive map. So students get this interactive map, and you can visit the dig sites in any order, and you watch each of these videos, and you take a quiz on it, and you fill out your paleontologist field journal. And there’s some extra fun content in there.

Kimmie Fink (28:26)

Like, what dinosaur are you? Because obviously you need to do a personality quiz to figure out what kind of dinosaur you are.

Vicki Davis (28:33)

I don’t even know what that is.

Kimmie Fink (28:33)

It is a massive, massive dinosaur. But for me, just having students make that connection and almost put themselves in that role of paleontologist — because they’re showing you the spinosaurus’ tail, and then we’re asking you to make some predictions about what do you think that meant about it.

Kimmie Fink (28:50)

And then you watch it and you realize that the spinosaurus was aquatic. So there’s this real kind of role-playing and figuring things out as you go. And I just think that’s such an exciting experience for kids.

Vicki Davis (29:03)

So a teacher can just go and download all this, have all of this posted in their learning management system, and then their kids can be paleontologists. Now, how long would it take to do the virtual field trip? Is that something where teachers say, hey, one day a week for six weeks — or what’s the time span?

Kimmie Fink (29:22)

I think that we estimated it was sort of a 45-minute to 60-minute exploration for the students themselves. But we also have this full teacher guide, so you can do it as part of a larger unit. Something that I felt like as a teacher I needed was — I need to be able to take the piece that I want and not have to do the whole thing. Because it’s just like, well, I’ve got to print this, and then I’ve got to download this, and it’s too much.

Kimmie Fink (29:43)

So maybe you just want to watch the baby triceratops video. You can do that. You can watch that individually. It’s really “take what you need.” So everything is not like a massive production. But if you want to do the whole thing, you can do the whole thing.

Vicki Davis (29:56)

And they’re free.

Kimmie Fink (29:57)

It’s really fun. Yeah, it’s a really fun job.

Vicki Davis (29:59)

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

Kimmie Fink (30:18)

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

Vicki Davis (30:42)

Body language.

Kimmie Fink (30:44)

Oh, gosh, yes. Recognizing emotions, right? All of that stuff.

Vicki Davis (30:48)

There is something called a nonverbal learning disability, which is a struggle a lot of kids have. And learning to read that body language is just vital to help kids.

Kimmie Fink (30:59)

So we’ve got fifteen lessons. They’re all free.

Vicki Davis (31:01)

They had these cute little books, because I was looking — and you can print them in color or black and white. Either way, but they’re really nice.

Kimmie Fink (31:09)

So that’s been really popular. One of my other favorite experiences has to do with Planet Earth. I mean, if anybody knows Sir David Attenborough — he’s a British national treasure. He’s just incredible. He just celebrated his 100th birthday, and we have so much content from him.

And then we did a collection of the eight most popular Planet Earth videos, and we made a little Planet Earth passport, so that kids can go through and watch the clip on lemurs in Madagascar, and then go into their passport and answer questions and illustrate it, and just kind of explore on their own.

Kimmie Fink (31:42)

So that’s been a really popular one as well.

Vicki Davis (31:44)

So it sounds like the virtual field trips are really popular with teachers.

Kimmie Fink (31:48)

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

Vicki Davis (32:03)

Well, think about it. You could go to a dig, but archaeological digs are not usually the most exciting places, and you can’t guarantee that they’re going to find something on the day you’re there. Otherwise it’s just going to be dirt, right? So this way you can actually go on a field trip and expect it’s going to be consistent, and you can really do some cool things, and all that material is there — which is just really cool.

Vicki Davis (32:26)

You have a booth here at ISTE, but it has been hopping — largely because of Bluey, but also the other stuff.

Kimmie Fink (32:30)

I think Bluey draws people in, and then we say, here’s everything else that we have — and people kind of go, wow. And somebody asked me, she said, “So is there a free version in addition to a paid version?” And I said, “No. There’s only free.”

Vicki Davis (32:45)

Really? I know it.

Kimmie Fink (32:47)

Yeah. So it’s great.

Vicki Davis (32:48)

It’s free and it’s wonderful. So — you have seen this from both sides of the desk. I want you to describe a time that something really changed in your classroom because you had the right piece of media.

Kimmie Fink (33:03)

I think we were doing — so we had an anthology, a reading anthology for our ELA program, as a lot of people do. And it could be a little dry. And so it was about chimpanzees. And we were engaging with it, and it was fine. But I had found some videos of Jane Goodall in Gombe with the chimpanzees. And I just felt like it made that connection for my kids, because they could actually see this person.

Kimmie Fink (33:32)

And we think about — we’re reading about chimpanzees, and of course the goal is comprehension and things like that. But I also want kids to care about conservation and things like that. And sometimes just seeing that — we talked about storytelling, right? And I feel like it’s the way that we access experiences that we don’t have first-hand knowledge of.

Kimmie Fink (33:50)

And so I think that really high-quality video can do that often. And I don’t think it takes away from getting the information as a reader. I think it amplifies it.

Vicki Davis (34:01)

I’m dating myself here, but I remember the day when we used to go to the library and watch the films. And those were always my favorite days, because I loved the videos. Libraries used to have rows and rows of that, but we don’t have that anymore. We can just access it. But accessing the quality is the challenge.

Vicki Davis (34:19)

And this is a great resource. So when you talk to teachers, and when you’re talking to them at the booth — what are they most excited about, besides Bluey, obviously?

Kimmie Fink (34:27)

I’ve had a lot of excitement around our newsroom. So I think that a lot of people hear BBC and they think news, right? Because of course BBC News is quite well known. And we have just launched our newsroom, and we have a daily news bite. And so you come in every day — every school day, we have a new one.

Kimmie Fink (34:47)

It’s like a five-minute clip. It’s about some kind of relevant news story, and then there are questions that go along with it. And people were really excited about it, because — again, there’s so much on there, and you were asking, where can I start? That’s a great place to start. This is a great way to start my day.

Kimmie Fink (35:01)

And we know that media literacy is so important right now, and, quite frankly, really lacking. And so that’s been something that teachers have been really excited about as well. And then we are planning, as we move into back to school, to really gamify that more. We really want to give teachers that — I mean, I’d play all the New York Times games — give them that Wordle experience, where they can see how they’re doing compared to other classrooms, and they can maybe have a streak or something like that.

Kimmie Fink (35:28)

So that’s coming as well. So we’re getting some good feedback on that.

Vicki Davis (35:30)

So if a teacher says, okay, I want to try out these resources — where do they start for what they could use right away?

Kimmie Fink (35:38)

Yeah, I mean, I think the news bites is something that can be used right away. I would also recommend just go to our homepage. We have a new top nav that we just launched, and I think it does a really good job of showing the breadth of what’s available. So you can go in, and there’s science and environment right at the top.

Kimmie Fink (35:54)

There’s social studies, global, international kind of content. And then we have other topics where you can explore what we have for SEL, math, and ELA, which we are still building out. But I think that’s a good place. And we are always updating. So every month I’ll put something that fits — like we have an article on the Fourth of July, and the history behind that.

Kimmie Fink (36:13)

And so if you go to each of those places, we’ll have things that are germane to whatever time of year it is. And I think that could be a nice entry point as well. So if you’re coming in in October, you’re going to see some videos on bats, because Halloween is coming. Or you’re going to see a Bluey worksheet that’s on Halloween.

Kimmie Fink (36:30)

So we definitely try to have content that’s relevant to the time.

Vicki Davis (36:34)

Okay. Now, you said math. So could you give me at least one example for math? Because a lot of times people don’t think of math as having great videos. But there are some out there.

Kimmie Fink (36:45)

So what we have for math currently — we have Numberblocks. Do you know Numberblocks? No? Okay. So there’s Numberblocks, and Alphablocks are shows that are distributed by the BBC. And we have licensed a lot of their magazine content as printables. So we have a lot of math printables that you can use.

Vicki Davis (37:02)

What kind of guides the content that you select?

Kimmie Fink (37:06)

So we have developed our global knowledge framework, and there are really five pillars to it — things that guide us. You were asking before about how I make selections, right? So I’m looking at these things. The first one is media literacy. And then second we have sustainability and environment, which of course makes a lot of sense with what the BBC produces.

Kimmie Fink (37:24)

We have global citizenship — so knowing more about the world, cultural awareness, cultural relevance. And then financial literacy and digital literacy as well.

Vicki Davis (37:33)

So we’ve been talking with Kimmie Fink from the BBC Learning Hub about their free resources. And they’re free. It’s not just videos — it’s a lot of incredible content. And can teachers sign up, and sign in, and then get announcements when you release anything?

Kimmie Fink (37:50)

Yes, absolutely. So we have a mailing list that you can sign up for and get updates on everything that’s new and everything that’s timely and topical. When you go to the website, you can view all of our videos. You don’t have to be signed in or anything like that. In order to download a printable or something like that —

Kimmie Fink (38:07)

You’re going to go ahead and log in. It’s really easy. It just takes a few minutes, and it’s free. And then when you are logged in, you can do things like create your own playlists. So we have curated playlists — like we have a great penguins playlist. But if you want to do your own, and then assign it to students via Google Classroom, you can do all that.

Kimmie Fink (38:23)

Once you’re logged in, download all the printables that you want, print them off, copy them — you’re good to go.

Vicki Davis (38:29)

Okay. So we’ve been talking with Kimmie from the BBC Learning Hub. Thanks for coming on.

Kimmie Fink (38:34)

Thank you so much for having me.

Announcer (John Davis) (38:36)

Cool Cat Teacher Talk, with award-winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (38:40)

Walking with Dinosaurs. Planet Earth. Bluey. Leveled articles at three reading levels. A daily news bite for media literacy. Some great free resources.

So now I want to bring you back to that keynote. Because here’s what’s been rattling around in my head ever since. Kimmie’s resources work because a real human being — a teacher, and a mom — sat down and watched every episode and said, “Where’s the learning moment?”

Vicki Davis (39:05)

Karim’s curriculum worked because a human being deliberately built in the moment where the machine gets it wrong, so a teacher could talk about it. The craftsmanship is human. Every single time.

So if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, it’s that a kid alone with a screen and a set of headphones does not make progress. It’s teachers — artisans and craftsmen who love kids — who help move learning forward, along with supportive parents.

Vicki Davis (39:34)

So let’s go meet the teacher I talked about at the beginning of the show. Brandie Wright is a STEM educator and AI coach at YELLOWHAB, a tuition-free micro school Pharrell Williams founded in Norfolk. And I have to tell you — this conversation went somewhere that I didn’t plan.

Let’s learn from Brandie.

Announcer (John Davis) (39:57)

Cool Cat Teacher Talk, with award-winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (40:01)

Our next guest believes that every kid deserves a school built around what they can do, not what year they were born. 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 here at ISTE 2026.

Vicki Davis (40:29)

But you’re at a school. 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 (40:40)

I was blown away. This was actually a dream of mine, to be on the main stage. You come to ISTE each year and you see these people tell these stories. And a few years ago I told my friend, I said, “Take a picture of me in front of the stage. I’m going to do that one day.”

Brandie Wright (40:56)

And I did. But I didn’t know what it would be. Even if it was something as simple as introducing someone — like saying, “Hi, welcome, Vicki Davis. She’s a podcaster, blogger, teacher” — I would have taken that.

But they asked me to share a story around curiosity. I love that topic. People tell me that I ask a lot of questions — and not like in a bad way, but I’m that person in a meeting, in a conversation, whatever it is in the discussion.

Brandie Wright (41:21)

I like to ask questions because I am curious. So when they said, “Well, we want you to talk about curiosity,” I didn’t know — so is this about my curiosity? How do I help students to be curious? But then they said to pick a student.

Brandie Wright (41:34)

They’re like, “We want the teacher’s story. We want —”

Vicki Davis (41:37)

A real story of a real student.

Brandie Wright (41:39)

He was here.

Vicki Davis (41:40)

Oh, he was here.

Vicki Davis (41:42)

So, see — that’s my thing. You know how AI is always making up stories? So when I hear stories, I want — yes.

Brandie Wright (41:50)

A real student. 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 that was going to be possible. I didn’t think that 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?”

Brandie Wright (42:07)

So, around the story — once I got the full story and how I wanted to tell it, then I gave them pictures. That picture of him looking up, that’s a real picture that my coworker took. We were in the aquarium, and she took it.

Vicki Davis (42:20)

That’s a whole other issue that we can talk about in a minute. Because I was sitting there, and I was messaging my son John, and I was like, “Okay, this is an amazing person. I just hope the student is real.”

Vicki Davis (42:26)

I did — because of all these stories that are being shared now on social where AI has made up people, and you find out they’re not real.

So tell a little bit about this student. Did you get to use his real name?

Brandie Wright (42:42)

That is his real name.

Vicki Davis (42:44)

So tell a little bit about this student. You don’t have to give the whole keynote — just tell everybody who’s listening a little bit about the student, and we’ll go into the other topic here, because this is an interesting thing.

Brandie Wright (42:52)

First of all, when I first met Kamari — the school had only been open two years. I came in in year two, so he was in third grade. And 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.

Brandie Wright (42:58)

So you could imagine — they were already at a new school that 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.

Brandie Wright (43:16)

He was just one of those kids. He was very busy, but he was talkative, and I could tell he loved basketball, he loved football — that was the thing, and they always wanted to play. It didn’t take very long for us to really develop a connection. And I think it came around because I also love football.

Vicki Davis (43:31)

Some kids just have connections with different people.

Brandie Wright (43:35)

Yes, they do. And so we have a format at our school — we call it crew. Some schools do this, where it’s not just homeroom. Crew is very much like your school family. So you have a crew leader. I was his crew leader.

Brandie Wright (43:49)

What it is is they come to us first in the morning, but then 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. So he’s been in my crew — this is his fourth year.

Brandie Wright (44:04)

So you could imagine the relationship that 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?” And we just developed a real connection.

And I love how inquisitive he is. Literally, when they came here for the main stage — right outside the main stage there’s a sign.

Brandie Wright (44:25)

And it has this thing standing up, and there are things sticking out of it. And I said, “Let’s go take a picture in front of the sign.” And he looked up and he 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. Oh, I love it.

Brandie Wright (44:39)

That’s just his thing. And he doesn’t mind — he knows he can say, “Miss Brandie, what about this?” And that’s really how I was saying my name. That was intentional, because that’s how he says my name. So at our school, they can address us however we allow them to. They don’t have to say “Miss Wright.”

Brandie Wright (44:57)

I thought that was great. And so I told them, they can call me Miss Brandie. I said, “You can call me Miss B.” Most of them say Miss Brandie. And how he says my name, it’s like it’s one word — MissBrandie. I love it. He literally is that inquisitive. He loves to try new foods.

Brandie Wright (45:15)

Anything I say — like, “Let’s try this,” or “What do you think about this?” — and he’s like, “Okay.” Like he’s ready to try it. And math has been a real challenge, where he loves it, but sometimes he gets frustrated. And I have to remind him. I was his math teacher in the beginning, because we had kind of a blended learning environment where all of us taught two classes. Micro schools.

Brandie Wright (45:37)

That’s what happens. So I was teaching missions and numeracy, so I was his numeracy teacher also. But now I’m not his math teacher, and he’ll still, during crew, grab the whiteboard marker — that’s what I mean when I said it’s magical. He’ll go get a whiteboard marker, because our table is a whiteboard, and he’ll say, “Miss Brandie, give me some multiplication facts.”

Brandie Wright (45:55)

“Hey — we’re learning multi-digit, right?” And he’s like, “Can you give me some problems?” If we’re just sitting there, he’s like, “Hey, can you write some problems on that?”

Vicki Davis (46:05)

He goes from a kid who doesn’t like math to just working math for fun.

Brandie Wright (46:08)

He loves it. With you. Loves it. And I’m not even his math teacher anymore.

Brandie Wright (46:10)

But sometimes when he’s in math — she has to really push him in some things and teach him some new things. When he gets frustrated, she sends him to me. Because you have to remember, crew is very much like family. So I’m his school mom, right? And they know. So if you’re having issues with Kamari — if he’s frustrated, if he’s stuck in the mud, if he’s a little rambunctious, maybe he needs to be calmed down —

Brandie Wright (46:29)

They send him to me. Or they’ll say, “Hey, go talk to Miss Brandie about this.” Or they’ll come and talk to me, and then I talk to him. But when he’s learning something new, he’s so excited about math. Like, that is his thing. He’s like, “I can do this, I love it.”

The whiteboard marker — it’s truly magical.

Vicki Davis (46:48)

I’m so glad, Brandie, that I found you yesterday at the Portrait of an AI Graduate pavilion. Now I want to talk about that pavilion, because they have these big posters about what it looks like to be an AI-ready graduate. But then you had a lot of your friends demonstrating.

Vicki Davis (47:04)

So what is happening at this pavilion right as we’re speaking? Because I think this is a really neat thing to do at a conference.

Brandie Wright (47:13)

One hundred percent. So 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 one, and they are educators teaching grades four through twelve. So we had two communities of practice, but the STEAM, grades four through twelve — that’s the one I facilitate.

And what they had to do was pick a strand, one of the roles, and they created a proposal to say, “How are you using generative AI to address a particular problem of practice?”

Brandie Wright (47:43)

So they could look at their class, or maybe they’re a coach — they could look at educators that they’re training and say, “I’ve identified this issue, and this is how generative AI can help me with this issue.” So then they go through a design-thinking type process, right? Just like we try to teach students to do. And they had to submit that as a proposal.

Brandie Wright (48:02)

Some of them were actually able to test it, implement it, get data, and show that. Some of them are in the middle — because clearly we started this in February, so maybe they didn’t get a chance. They’re kind of still in the planning phases.

So the way the AI pavilion was set up — I thought this was genius. Whoever created it and designed it is genius.

Brandie Wright (48:21)

So on one side of the board it’ll say “problem solver,” and it has some Chromebooks there for you to go through a little exercise. But on the other side, it was one of our community-of-practice members, and they were showing how they used their problem of practice to do problem solving.

Vicki Davis (48:35)

So it sounds like you might have a team, and sometimes it was three or four. But what I like is — it is the humans communicating with humans about how to use the machine. And I got that quote from Karim Meghji from CodeAI yesterday. But it feels very teachery.

Brandie Wright (48:51)

Absolutely. And people could walk around and ask questions. And we explained to them, this is science-fair style — meaning you’re not here to stand and just do a presentation. You are here so that people feel like, “Oh, that topic — 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 then they can also just talk to you.

Brandie Wright (49:13)

“Show me how you did that.” So that’s what it was.

Vicki Davis (49:16)

Since I sat there — you, and then the lovely lady after you — I literally texted our cameraman John and was like, “Okay, this would be great, except I think that AI wrote these stories. I think these kids aren’t real.”

Okay, so what makes me, as a teacher, listen to a teacher? And there was nothing about you that was disbelievable.

Vicki Davis (49:35)

You were telling that story like it was real. But what makes me — and others, it sounds like — 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? Why do we have to prove it? That bothers me.

Vicki Davis (49:52)

It bothers me that I made the mistake of thinking that that was not a real student. So why? Why is it where you are telling a story —

Vicki Davis (50:02)

— and you’re having to prove that it’s real?

Brandie Wright (50:04)

And 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 are 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 are so real.

Brandie Wright (50:30)

It’s sad sometimes that it’s so believable, because it makes people think that 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 (50:41)

Are we going to have to have a stamp now? “Real human. Real human story.”

Brandie Wright (50:45)

Like, we shouldn’t have to do that. But, you know, think about food. I’ll give you an analogy. Back in the day, we knew that when we got a potato chip — or when we went to McDonald’s, when we were kids — the french fries were french fries. We knew they were from potatoes.

Brandie Wright (51:00)

Do we think they’re from potatoes now? Who knows? That’s the point. So I would give that same analogy. I think that there was a time where you knew when someone wrote a book that 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 that picture.

Brandie Wright (51:17)

Now, because of the progression of technology, when you look at it, you do have to wonder. At some point I think it’s going to get to where people won’t care, unfortunately. But now, we have to question. People won’t question — they’ll just say, “Well, maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t.”

Vicki Davis (51:35)

We don’t want to be deceived. I’ve seen so many people reshare stories about “that teacher who quit for that reason.” And it was a fake teacher. And it was a fake reason. And it was just being shared, for whatever reason, to get clicks.

But Brandie — it makes me feel good as a teacher to have a human connection, because we relate. And I do have to say this about one of your founders.

Vicki Davis (51:52)

I’ve been through a couple of hard years with the pandemic, and I’m going to tell you — I’ve probably half funded your school for how many times I have played “Happy.” And my son can attest to that. Because it’s like, I’m having — my parents pass, all the different things — but it’s like, okay, I’m going to be happy. And I would play that song, and if I had a crabby person in my house, I would turn it on and leave.

Vicki Davis (52:14)

Because it’s a decision. And you know so much about thriving in this age.

Brandie Wright (52:19)

Absolutely.

Vicki Davis (52:20)

It’s the decisions that we as humans make, that nobody can make for us. And the human connections we have, and asking the questions. Because — how would I have known? Remember how the keynote speaker said, we have to admit that we don’t know we don’t know? If I hadn’t actually asked you that question —

Brandie Wright (52:37)

Yeah, you would have thought he wasn’t real.

Vicki Davis (52:40)

Then how would I know? Because we’re going to move forward with real conversations and real questions. Being real.

Brandie Wright (52:46)

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

Vicki Davis (52:54)

It does make a difference. Because AI is supposed to help us be better humans — not pretend to be human. And when we feel like there’s something artificial in it —

Because I think we’re so hungry for human connections since the pandemic. We want a connection with a real woman on stage. And see, now, as I’ve talked to you, I have that connection.

Vicki Davis (53:14)

I love the story enough to reach out to the media team to say, “Hey, can I talk to her?” There was enough — because here’s the thing. Even though I wasn’t sure if the story was true, I felt like you were real.

Vicki Davis (53:24)

There had to be a story behind the story. Does that make sense?

Brandie Wright (53:27)

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think even to your credit, doing this — I really strongly encourage you to continue to do this in this age of AI, where tools such as Notebook LM — 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.

Brandie Wright (53:47)

Like you said, you know this is me. I could have — if you had sent me the questions over email, I could have typed anything.

Vicki Davis (53:54)

They’ll send people the questions for that very reason. See — this is important.

I don’t want AI slop.

Brandie Wright (54:00)

You want the real —

Vicki Davis (54:01)

Real human connections. 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, because he interacted with AI.

Vicki Davis (54:15)

It’s the craftsmanship of being a teacher.

Brandie Wright (54:18)

And they prefer that. I will say, I think the kids, they prefer to be with the teacher physically.

Brandie Wright (54:24)

That’s one of the big things about our school. That’s why it’s small. That’s why we keep our classes small. That’s why we understand that there’s power in these small groups and small classes — so that they don’t get lost. They’re not going to depend on the technology. They would much rather grab a whiteboard marker — and that’s most of the kids — and work out the problem.

Brandie Wright (54:44)

We use iReady 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’ve got to maintain that — if we could really maintain their desire and keep feeding it so that they don’t lose it. Because guess what: if we starve that from them, if we keep it from them, then it’ll dwindle.

Brandie Wright (55:03)

They won’t have it anymore. So we’ve got to keep it.

Vicki Davis (55:07)

Well, 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 are loving the kids and who are helping us move forward.

We have been talking with Brandie Wright, STEM educator and AI coach at YELLOWHAB — a tuition-free micro school Pharrell Williams created in Norfolk. And this has been a joy.

Vicki Davis (55:31)

Thank you for letting me find you yesterday at the AI pavilion, and changing your schedule so we could sit down and talk. This is great. It went in a direction that we didn’t expect.

Announcer (John Davis) (55:44)

Cool Cat Teacher Talk, with award-winning teacher Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (55:48)

“AI is supposed to help us be better humans, not pretend to be human.”

Okay, so that’s something I said in that interview, and I meant it. And I think that’s the test for every tool that we’re going to be handed this school year. Is it trying to help us, or is it trying to be us? Because we know AI is not a great teacher.

Vicki Davis (56:08)

I don’t want AI slop, and our kids need better. We want AI that knows what we’re doing and helps us do it better. We want kids who can look at an answer on a screen and say, “Wait — is that right? Should I blindly accept this?” Because AI is a tool, but we need the users of the tool to have taught skills.

Vicki Davis (56:29)

We need them to have the skills of skepticism, and the skills to understand what blind spots are, and how we can make real mistakes when we trust AI in those blind spots. And we are the ones who teach this.

We all know what’s happening right now. You just heard about a curriculum, a library of resources, six AI-ready graduate roles, dinosaur field trips, news bites — and we’re like, my goodness, there’s so much.

Vicki Davis (56:57)

So my husband has a line that he uses on me when I feel like there’s too much going on. He says, “Vicki, you can’t boil the ocean.” So you can’t, and I can’t. So we’re not going to try. We’re going to innovate like a turtle.

Pick one thing from today’s show. Just one. Maybe it’s an AI lesson from CodeAI, where kids see bias for themselves.

Vicki Davis (57:20)

Maybe it’s a short video that’s been curated that you can use on Monday morning. Or maybe it’s — go find the kid that nobody’s connected with yet, and be their Miss Brandie. But do one thing this week. And that’s how it happens. And when it happens, it sticks with us.

You can find the show notes and every link and the rest of this series at coolcatteacher.com/iste2026.

Vicki Davis (57:42)

I’m Vicki Davis, and you’ve been listening to Cool Cat Teacher Talk. See you later, educator.

Announcer (John Davis) (57:50)

Cool Cat Teacher Talk, with award-winning teacher Vicki Davis. Follow @coolcatteacher everywhere you connect.