AI Agents Explained: What Teachers Need to Know

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.

I find this conversation interesting because it tells a story from when ChatGPT was released about how a college student responded to it. Zach Kinzler was a junior in college. He was sitting in the front row of a systems engineering class when a friend punched him in the arm and said, “Look at this.” The student had just used ChatGPT to solve the problem on the board. And Zach’s journey began as he not only used ChatGPT to help him in his work but also talked openly with his professors about it.

He did write his papers with ChatGPT. (OK, now I’m not for this, but this is Zach’s story, and it is worth a listen.) Understandably, professors got upset. But when they did, Zach asked them to quiz him on what he wrote and what he had learned. He felt like he was learning faster.

Zach leads academic sales strategies at Boodlebox and hosts the Smarter Campus Podcast. We discuss the difference between using AI to learn and using AI to skip learning. He also discusses AI agents and how they work. But here’s a point I want us all to understand – Zach has struggled with reading his whole life.

As I told a commenter today, not all uses of AI are good. However, not all are bad. I believe AI should improve human flourishing and never detract from it. Yes, AI is a flashpoint issue. People who are angry and hate it really hate it. And some who are fans really love it. I find myself somewhere in the middle. Just like in Web 2 days, actually, when I knew that social media could do good but also had the potential to do great harm.

And I don’t like to call AI a brain, but I also know that there is (and should be) room for different opinions and the voices should be heard. I’ve aired interviews of pundits and pro-AI advocates. But we need to listen, because often the way forward is in the conversation that helps us see what the future can look like. All the AI haters in the world, I don’t think, can make it go away. Nor can all the AI advocates every convince me that AI should be student-facing for many of our younger students. I am interested to see what you think after you listen to this show.

I do want to note that, as I cared for my Dad last year, I fell behind on airing some of my shows. This interview was recorded in 2025, but we’ve worked to preserve the story and relevant arguments. That delay was all mine, so if you hear anything dated, just know that’s on me. As always, thank you for listening to the show!

AI is really just a second thinking brain, if that makes sense.

Zach Kinzler, Head of Academic Sales Strategies, BoodleBox

Listen to the Show

Watch this video on YouTube.Subscribe to the Cool Cat Teacher Channel on YouTube

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• BoodleBox — the company Zach works for. Kinzler and the company describe it this way: a collaborative AI workspace that puts multiple AI models in one place so a team, a class, or an institution can work in a shared space rather than in separate private chat windows. It offers a free tier and paid institutional plans. They didn’t sponsor this episode and all opinions are his own.
• The Smarter Campus Podcast — Zach’s own weekly show, where he interviews students, professors, and administrators around the world about what is actually working with AI on campus. Vicki has been a guest on it.
• Zach Kinzler on LinkedIn — where he posts short explainers and clips, and the place he named on the show as the best way to reach him.
• ChatGPT — the OpenAI tool Zach got on the waitlist for as a college junior, and the one he was using when he told his teachers about it. Free and paid tiers.
• Perplexity — the AI answer engine Vicki mentions offloading research to so she can spend her own time writing instead of reading for hours.
• NotebookLM (now branded Gemini Notebook) — Google’s research and study tool. You load in your own sources, such as the PDFs Vicki gives her students, and it works only from those documents. This is the tool Vicki calls “fantastic for studying.”

A note on the first item: Zach Kinzler works for BoodleBox, and this is an editorial interview, not a sponsored one. The description above comes from the company’s own materials and from what Zach said on the show. I have not independently tested or verified BoodleBox’s security, privacy, or compliance claims, and nothing here should be read as an endorsement. Evaluate it the way you would evaluate any vendor describing its own product.

The most useful thing in this whole episode is not a tool at all. We know that tools like Google Notebook LM can do this, but this is something worth testing when you’re learning.

Make the AI ask you the questions. Zach’s habit is the reverse of what most students do. Instead of “write this for me,” he types “ask me questions about this and I’ll answer them.” Then, when something still isn’t landing, he climbs a ladder: explain this to me like I’m five, then like I’m 10, then like I’m 15. Give your students both moves at the start of one class period, in any subject, with whatever tool your school already allows. Neither one produces a single sentence a student could turn in as their own work, which is exactly why they are worth teaching first.

About Zach Kinzler

Zach Kinzler

Zach Kinzler is an education and AI enthusiast with a unique blend of industry and academic experience. His career has focused on empowering students and educators through innovative technology, including his current role leading academic sales strategies at BoodleBox.ai, where he helps higher education institutions prepare students for an AI-powered future. He holds a BS in industrial engineering and a master’s degree in business analytics from the University of San Diego (CA).

Connect with Zach: LinkedIn · The Smarter Campus Podcast

Other Shows for Teachers Working Out Where the Line Is With AI

• AI in the Classroom: Assignments Students Can’t Fake with Nancy Frey — the closest companion to this episode. Zach describes what honest AI use looks like from the student’s side; Nancy takes the same problem from the assignment-design side and her expertise in learning science. Another one to listen to as well.
• Brain First, AI Second: Teaching Writing in the AI Era with Philip Seyfried of Teachers College, Columbia shares information on MIT Media Lab research, why AI detectors fail, and building classroom trust around AI. It is the research backbone under Zach’s “want to learn” argument.
• Vibe Coding, Agentic AI, and What Schools Must Teach Now — the full-hour Cool Cat Teacher Talk show on agents, if Zach’s ninety-second explanation left you wanting more.
• Honest Conversations About AI: The Need for Truth — a full hour on honesty, integrity, and transparency with AI, which is the thread running underneath everything Zach says here.

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
• All 10 Minute Teacher Episodes

If this one gave you something you can use tomorrow, share it with the teacher down the hall who is still deciding what to do about AI — and leave a review wherever you’re listening. It genuinely helps other teachers find the show.

Episode Transcript

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

Click to read the full transcript

Vicki Davis (00:00): Happy Tech Tool Tuesday. This story from when ChatGPT came out lets us examine the question, can AI be used to learn and not just to cheat?

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

Vicki Davis (00:15): Today, I’m so excited to be with Zach Kinzler from BoodleBox. A lot of research is coming out about the need for transparency with teachers. We need to help our students know how to use AI in the right ways, how to hold them accountable when people just have AI write for them and turn it in as their own work. That’s not only dishonest, but it defeats the whole education process.

Zach works with BoodleBox, and I really like it for some different reasons in that you can use all the different AI models. And we’re going to dig into it a little bit. But Zach, first, talk a little bit about what you do. And because you’re a young person involved in an AI startup, BoodleBox, and you’re working with higher education institutions. And now a lot of us, well, what’s your job like every day?

Zach Kinzler (01:05): Thanks for having me. First off, it’s a very fun day today. What I get to do is I get to talk to educators from all over the world. I work with students in Africa, the US, Australia. And pretty much what I do is just figure out what’s working, what’s not working, show them BoodleBox, do some general AI education, right? Prompt engineering, safety. I have my own podcast, which I’ve had you on one time, which is awesome.

And really what I get to do is just work with people and actually help them use the tool. My job’s kind of transitioned from introducing it to implementing it. So I get to go into education systems and kind of say, hey, here’s an example of how you can take what you had before and make it better with AI in a safe, kind of ethical manner.

Vicki Davis (01:48): So tell everybody the name of your show.

Zach Kinzler (01:48): It’s called the Smarter Campus Podcast. So I have teachers on from all over the world. Lots of kind of interesting conversations of just learning about how people are actually doing it the right way, which is super, super cool to see. And I learn a lot from every single one that I do, which is fun.

Vicki Davis (02:03): One more question. How did you decide to go to the AI direction? Because, you know, there are a lot of people your age in their 20s actually hate AI. When you talk to them, they don’t like AI and they’re scared of AI. What led you to embrace AI? How’d you come across it, and why are you jumping in?

Zach Kinzler (02:19): I was a junior in college when ChatGPT came out. And one of my friends was very like Discord, Reddit, always super interested in like how technology is changing and stuff. And we both got on the wait list of ChatGPT because I was like, I don’t even know what this is. This kid just thinks this is going to be really cool.

And I’ll never forget, we were like sitting in the front row of a systems engineering class and my friend like punched me. Look at this. And ChatGPT did the problem on the board. And I just like — both of us got so infatuated with it, where I did every single thing with ChatGPT when it came out. And it was really bad then. Luckily, I had a teacher that was super interested in it, an engineering professor, that kind of helped us.

And then what we ended up doing was just go tell my teachers that I like wrote my paper with AI, and then they would get upset about it. But then I’d be like, I guarantee you if you ask me questions about this versus everyone else in the class, I probably know a lot more about it.

Like ignited the passion. Wow, no one has any idea what’s going on and this is going to be a big mess, right? I just started interviewing college students and teachers, really anyone that would talk to me, so that when a teacher would be like, this stuff’s bad, I would like show them interviews of other people, which is really cool.

I didn’t have thought it was super cool. I’ve always been a very ideas person, where I have lots of business ideas and I have lots of things that I like to do. But I would hinder myself a lot of the time because I couldn’t do the technical part. Like I couldn’t finish the idea that I had. And that’s why I love this thing so much, is that I can do anything and anyone can do anything.

Vicki Davis (03:43): You feel like you were very transparent with your professors. How did you use ChatGPT or any AI tool and not cheat yourself out of the education? What’s the difference between how you used it when it started and how people are using it now?

I had a kid I was talking to anonymously. He’s like, I can’t even write a paragraph anymore. I’m like, okay. And I was talking to him about what he’d written about and he couldn’t even recall anything he’d written about. There’s obviously a difference between what you did and what this student did.

Zach Kinzler (04:10): Really, I made a video about it this morning. It’s like just the want to learn. If you don’t care about something and you don’t want to grow from that, you’re not gonna be able to write a paragraph. I think it’s more of a reflection of self than people talk about.

AI is really just a second thinking brain, if that makes sense. Like the thing that I do a lot more that I don’t think people do is I get it to ask me questions. What don’t you understand about this? Ask me questions and I’ll help you with this. And then it’s like the other, explain this to me like I’m a five-year-old. I probably use that more than just about anything else on AI.

And just to explain something super simply, and then it’s like, okay, explain this to me like I’m 10. Explain this to me like I’m 15.

I struggle with reading. I always have struggled with reading. I’ve been a terrible reader and writer my whole life, but now I really like writing, reading and creative stuff, when I didn’t like that, because a lot of the things that would hinder me or just the actual doing of it. But you know what a good paragraph sounds like. And if you read, you can’t not read what you do. And that’s the other thing that people do shockingly so often. They just make things and then get rid of it.

Vicki Davis (05:09): This is a great example for those who are dyslexic or dysgraphic, like a lot of students I work with, to understand that if you use this as a learning support, you’re still learning. We’re the only place you can learn is in your brain, right?

If you’re truly supporting learning and you’re holding yourself accountable that I’m going to learn this, I’m going to use it to help me where I’m weak. I’m actually a very good writer. I love writing. I love reading. So for me, writing is a different experience with AI, because I love researching, but I can research for hours. Offloading the tools like Perplexity and some of these other tools, the research piece frees me up to write.

You and I are both using it in different ways, but we’re using it to support places that help our unique needs as a human being.

Zach Kinzler (05:58): I think that’s it. That’s what it’s all about. Taking what you’re good at and freeing up time, using what you’re good at to use the things to effectively do what you’re not good at.

Vicki Davis (06:07): Well, this conversation makes me so happy, Zach, for my kids, my students. I call them kids. They’re adults now. To hear this conversation about the effective use of AI I think is as important as the BoodleBox face.

[Editor’s note: the word after “BoodleBox” is unresolved. All three transcription passes render it as “face,” which does not make sense here. It is left exactly as transcribed rather than replaced with a plausible guess, and will be corrected from the audio.]

Agents are — so my personal learning objective for this summer 2025, as we’re recording this, is I made this my summer of agents. So I’ve been digging into just creating agents, using agents, understanding agents. Could you give a simple explanation of what an agent is and why it’s so important?

Zach Kinzler (06:39): That’s high level BoodleBox. So an agent is super important for people to understand, because the difference between a bot and an agent is a bot, you have to prompt it, right? So you have to tell it, hey, complete this task. But an agent, you can set up where, hey, every time I get an email, you’re going to read it, you’re going to give me a draft, and then you’re going to put it in an Excel sheet so I can see the emails that were sent today. So as you can see, there was only one instructions and lots of tasks were accomplished afterwards.

And agents are a very interesting concept. I totally recommend everyone going to read into it further on, because there’s lots of misconceptions that agentic AI is here right now, but a lot of it and the real value of it is just stringing together large language models. Very interested in it as well right now.

Vicki Davis (07:22): Specifically strange tasks. So thank you, Zach, for helping me create the first assignment for my AP kids. And you know what, kids, you’re probably — students, you’re probably going to end up creating some of your own bots.

I love that. I started giving all my kids a lot of PDFs, because not only are we using tools like this, but honestly, Google NotebookLM, fantastic tool for studying. So I want to give my kids the content they need to effectively train.

So thanks for coming on, Zach, for sharing this, for teaching my students, for sharing all those out there. And what’s the best way to get up with you if they want a demo of BoodleBox?

Zach Kinzler (08:00): Totally reach out. I’ll send my LinkedIn, email, all that stuff, and I’d love to connect and stay in touch.

Announcer (08:06): Thank you for tuning in to 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. Join us here every weekday and subscribe to the Classroom Matters newsletter. See you later, educator.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is not a sponsored episode and this post contains no affiliate links. No company paid for or influenced this conversation. Zach Kinzler works for BoodleBox, which is discussed in the episode, so his description of that product is his own and I have not independently verified the company’s product, privacy, or compliance claims. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The post AI Agents Explained: What Teachers Need to Know appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

If you're seeing this on another site, they are "scraping" my feed and taking my content to present it to you so be aware of this.

from Cool Cat Teacher Blog
https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e976/

Teacher Burnout: Go 10% Slower and Get Your Joy Back

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.

When you’re busy, it can be impossible to see the smoke. The smoke of your own burnout. As a teacher, for so much of my career, I’ve been busy. There have been seasons when I described the feeling to my husband as “hyperventilation.” There were times I wore the lack of sleep as a badge of honor.

Today’s guest, Dr. Jen Rafferty, was a middle school music teacher for fifteen years. Then, when she reached what she thought was the top of her career (she published her first book, was presenting all over the country) – her marriage was falling apart, her back was debilitated with pain, and she had odd red splotches on her skin that seven doctors couldn’t explain. In the end, it was stress. Looking back, she realized it was burnout.

So, in today’s Motivational Monday, we talk about what can help a teacher move out of burnout without having to quit or just try to make themselves into a different person. I find her arguments about emotional intelligence interesting, and they offer another view as we grapple with the realities and challenges of living a life of personal and professional balance and joy. Jen shares the brain science, tells her own story, and then gives us something we can do tonight. I’ve included links in the show notes below.

If this is you and you’re really struggling, remember, get help from a professional mental health professional, doctor, or minister. But if you’re deaing with life management as all teachers do, I hope you’ll find this show encouraging.

And who you were is no indication of who you can be.

Dr. Jen Rafferty, founder of Empowered Educator

Listen to the Show

Watch this video on YouTube.Subscribe to the Cool Cat Teacher Channel on YouTube

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• The Empowered Educator: 10 Lessons to Prevent Burnout, Reclaim Your Joy, and Unlock Your Teaching Potential by Dr. Jen Rafferty — the book behind this conversation, published August 4, 2026 by Tarcher/Penguin Random House. It is where the “space between what happens and how you respond” idea gets worked out chapter by chapter. You can also read a sample and see all three formats at Penguin Random House.
• Empowered Educator — Jen’s organization, built on the idea that the well-being of a school depends on the well-being of its educators. There is a hub for teachers and a separate one for school leaders, so start with whichever chair you sit in.
• Generational Change Begins with Empowered Teachers — Jen’s TEDx talk, given at TEDxIthacaCollege. The shortest way to hear the whole argument in one sitting, and a good one to send a colleague who thinks this is soft stuff.
• Unlock Your Teaching Potential — Jen’s own podcast. Short episodes, one idea each, still publishing weekly. If today’s show helped, this is where the next ten live.

The whole episode comes down to one small move you can make before you walk into school tomorrow, so here it is on its own.

Do the two steps Jen gives, in order, starting tonight. First, give yourself grace. Not as a slogan — as a sentence you actually say. “Of course I am feeling like this. Look at everything that is happening.” Jen’s point is that the exhaustion is your biology working correctly and asking for attention, and the trouble starts when you fight it. Then, second, go through the rest of your day 10% slower. Just 10%. Move 10% slower, talk 10% slower, answer that text 10% later. She says that small gap is what makes room between what happens to you and how you respond, and that is where all your choices live. Try it for the rest of today only. If you like it, try it again tomorrow.

About Dr. Jen Rafferty

Dr. Jen Rafferty

Dr. Jen Rafferty is an educator, author, TEDx speaker, and the founder of Empowered Educator, an organization focused on transforming school culture by placing educator well-being at the center of student and school success. She holds a PhD in educational psychology, degrees in music education and vocal performance, and certifications in emotional intelligence and neuro-identity evolution.

As a former middle school music teacher, Jen understands firsthand both the joy and the pressure of life in the classroom, and what happens when educators continually place themselves last. Her own journey from burnout to balance sparked a mission to help educators reconnect with their purpose, restore their energy, and lead with greater clarity, steadiness, and intention both inside and outside the classroom.

She is the host of the podcast Unlock Your Teaching Potential and the author of The Empowered Educator, available now through Penguin Random House. Her work has also been featured in Forbes, Authority Magazine, and Best Holistic Life Magazine.

Through Empowered Educator, she has partnered with school communities across the country to navigate the real, messy work of organizational change, helping leaders build the internal capacity their teams need to move forward, by creating the conditions where educators feel supported, steady, and ready to lead.

Connect with Jen: Empowered Educator | JenRafferty.com | LinkedIn | Instagram (@jenrafferty_) | TikTok (@jenrafferty_) | The Empowered Educator Faculty Room on Facebook

Other Shows for Teachers Who Are Running on Empty

• How to Stop Teacher Burnout Before It Stops You with Dr. Patrice Buckner Jackson — the closest companion to this episode. Dr. PBJ on catching burnout early, naming what you are unwilling to lose, and why schools carry part of this and not just individual teachers.
• Teacher Burnout: How to Reconnect and Feel Fulfilled with Dr. Michelle Chanda Singh — on serving from fulfillment instead of sacrifice, plus a clarity audit you can run on your own week.
• Habits of Hope to Help Educators with Dr. Julia Garcia — hope as a practice you build rather than a feeling you wait for. This is the one I recorded shortly after my dad died, and it is honest about hard seasons.

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
• All 10 Minute Teacher Episodes

If this episode helped you breathe a little easier, share it with the teacher down the hall who is running on empty right now.

Episode Transcript

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

Click to read the full transcript

Vicki Davis (00:00): Happy Motivational Monday. I was killing it, but it was really killing me.

Announcer (00:06): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (00:12): Today, we’re talking with Dr. Jen Rafferty, founder of The Empowered Educator. She’s a former middle school music teacher of 15 years, and she burned out, rebuilt herself, and now she helps teachers protect their joy and their energy. Her book, The Empowered Educator, will come out August 2026.

Jen, we’re going to talk about emotional intelligence and why taking care of the adults is how we take care of the kids. Why do you think that this emotional intelligence can be such a struggle for so many of us?

Dr. Jen Rafferty (00:51): It’s because none of us were ever explicitly taught how to do this. It’s a skill just like learning how to ride a bike or knowing how to properly put together the dishwasher. It’s a skill that we learn.

And unfortunately, so much time has passed and we’ve missed the memo. Brain science that we’re studying now of neuroplasticity, and the ability that we have to change our brain, hasn’t really been part of the conversation until the last 30 or so years. So emotional intelligence and your ability to be malleable in how you are is new. So these skills were known, let alone taught by our parents or their parents or their parents before them. And this is why it’s been such a big part of this conversation right now. And my message, of course, is to amplify those skills, particularly for teachers, since we spend so much time with our kids and we have such a big influence on how they grow up in this world.

Vicki Davis (01:55): And for those of you listening who think, no, just another soft thing — you know, I’ve been working on my next book, and as I have a piece on emotional intelligence, but businesses that have emotionally intelligent leaders tend to be more profitable than those that don’t. So emotional intelligence is actually a very real world thing that we all need.

So how do you address that, Jen? It’s real. We need emotional intelligence. What does the neuroscience say?

Dr. Jen Rafferty (02:24): It’s showing us that we have this beautiful ability to be flexible in how we show up, that we’re not fixed in our personalities, we’re not fixed in our choices and our beliefs, even in our values. The saying, I just am the way I am — that’s actually not true. The science shows us that you are who you think you are.

And if you’re able to adjust the way that you think, then everything starts to change for you. And who you were is no indication of who you can be.

So to put this in a real life example, if you’re someone who goes to work completely stressed out every day, this isn’t just change your thoughts and think happy things and everything will magically change for you. It’s leaning into your neurobiology, understanding that that stressful way you feel might not feel good, but to your system it feels normal. So it’s going to keep you that way because it’s trying to keep you safe, and normal equals safe.

But if you’re trying to move into a place of feeling at ease and calm, or even excited about going to work, that requires you to look at your thoughts and know that your thoughts are options and not facts. And it also invites you to lean into listening to the signals that your body is sending you all the time and start paying attention and making different choices so that you can become someone different.

Vicki Davis (03:44): Now you faced burnout. What’s your story?

Dr. Jen Rafferty (03:47): So at the time, I don’t think I would have even admitted to feeling burnt out, because I was so in it that part of that burnout was part of my identity. You know, so many of us walk around with this badge of honor of how little sleep we get and how busy we are. And my struggle was part of who I thought I was.

And I was at what I consider to be the top of my career. I had published my first book about teaching music. I was giving presentations all over the country about the cognitive development of adolescent kids and how to create responsive classroom materials and curriculum for them. And I was killing it, but it was really killing me.

You know, my marriage was falling apart. I wasn’t sleeping well. I was a new mom, and I thought there was something wrong with me because I didn’t feel like I could handle it. So what did I do? I did what everyone does — numbed myself, ate a lot of chocolate. I zhuzhed my feelings down. And ultimately, the signals that were coming from my body kept getting louder and louder. I was constantly sick. My back was going out with debilitating pain. And I had developed these red splotches all over my skin that seven doctors could not tell me what was wrong with me. It turned out all of this was stress-related.

It wasn’t until recently, Vicki, that I looked back and I was like, oh, that was burnout. And I couldn’t even see it for what it was. My mission now with the work that I do in Empowered Educator and with my book is to give teachers a lifeline, even when they might not recognize it fully for themselves. They can maybe identify a symptom or something they’re going through that they can pull on to.

Vicki Davis (05:30): So you do talk about burnout to balance. But you know, some are like, well, the only way I’m going to have balance is if I don’t teach. Is it possible to stay a teacher and move from burnout to balance? And if so, how?

Dr. Jen Rafferty (05:42): That is such a good question. Yes. And the reason why I can say yes with such fervor is because I’ve seen it thousands of times with the educators that we work with.

Life is always going to be lifey. Whether you’re in the classroom or not, it’s always going to throw things at you, and there will always be challenges and stressors. While, yes, there are going to be some stressors in your life that you decide you’re not available for, and that might inform your decision to leave — and there are other ways to function in this life, to meet the moment as the person you want to be instead of a victim to your own circumstances.

And that’s what we really do here at Empowered Educator. And it really outlines in the book, you know, that moment between what’s happening externally and your reaction, there is a moment, there’s a space there, and that space is where all your agency is. And we forget, or we haven’t even been taught or told that we have that power, that we have that agency.

So when you get that angry email, or when you have that challenging student, identifying that space and knowing what choices you have in that space make all of the difference between a burnt-out teacher who is perpetually feeling overwhelmed and exhausted and frustrated, to an empowered teacher who knows their agency and knows I can meet this moment as the person I want to be instead of the person who I’ve always been.

Vicki Davis (07:10): So Jen, you’re talking to somebody, they’re listening to you in the car and they know they’re right there. They’re burned out, they’re worn out. They don’t really want to go to school tomorrow. What’s one thing that they can do right now when they get out of the car and they slam the door that can help them move towards balance?

Dr. Jen Rafferty (07:26): It’s a great question, because it’s a big leap to go from I’m sick of this and slamming the door and going inside your house, to I’m going to feel empowered, right? This isn’t a magic pill. This is not something that happens overnight. And so there needs to be baby steps. And I’m going to actually give two, because they go together.

The first one is give yourself grace. Give yourself grace. There is nothing wrong with you. The responses that your body is giving you, and that stress — it’s there for a reason. That’s your biology telling you, hey, pay attention to me. I need attention. And it’s actually working really well. The problem happens when we fight it. And so leaning in and give yourself grace. Of course I’m feeling like this. Look at all of these things that are happening. Of course I’m feeling like this.

And when you give yourself grace, then there’s one thing that you can do that I know changed my life: is give yourself permission to move and speak and go through your day 10% slower. Just 10%. When you give yourself permission for that 10% less busyness and rushing and hustling, you start to notice things that you hadn’t noticed before. That’s so interesting. I feel like I immediately need to respond to this text messages. Wait, wait. No, I don’t. I’m going to go 10% slower, and I can take a moment.

And what that’s going to do, it’s going to make that space that I just talked about longer. Try it. And don’t try it forever. If you’re listening to this in the car, try it the rest of today and see what happens. And if you like it, try it again tomorrow. That’s going to change everything for you.

Vicki Davis (08:58): Give all our teachers a little bit of a pep talk as they deal with the challenges of teaching.

Dr. Jen Rafferty (09:03): I think sometimes, again, well-intended folks are giving the pep talks without validating how they feel right now. You know, I think it’s similar to when administrators say, well, just remember your why. You can’t be in a place of burnout and have all of these feelings of overwhelming frustration and, like, slamming the door when you get home of your car, and then, just remember your why back into your inspiration.

It doesn’t work that way. Bridging that gap means validating your feelings, remembering that you have agency, and making choices that feel aligned with who you want to be, not who you currently are.

Vicki Davis (09:42): So many things we could talk about here. We have been talking with Dr. Jen Rafferty for her book, The Empowered Educator, coming out August 2026. So, Jen, thanks for coming on the show.

Announcer (09:56): 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.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post Teacher Burnout: Go 10% Slower and Get Your Joy Back appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

If you're seeing this on another site, they are "scraping" my feed and taking my content to present it to you so be aware of this.

from Cool Cat Teacher Blog
https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e975/

📸 AI Photos and Deepfakes, Quantum for Littles, and Real Help for Behavior

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Saturday, August 22 I sent this Classroom Matters newsletter. Sometimes I share this on my blog, but if you want to get every newsletter, subscribe at www.coolcatteacher.com/newsletter.

Welcome back, educator,

So many are returning to school. The super busy schedule. Learning the new names. All the things. But I hope you enjoy it. Kids are great. It is easy to forget all of the great things about teaching amidst the exhaustion. I hope you remember the great things.

I had a former pastor who used to say, “blessed are the flexible for they will not get bent out of shape.” I adopted this as a quote I lived by for the last ten years and it helped me pace myself and remember what was important better.

In today’s newsletter, which I’m writing by hand here in the night – since I’m awake and I know you need ideas for the week ahead (whether you’re a principal or teacher), I want to have this ready to go on Saturday morning so you have time to put it into practice this next week.

Table of Contents

• Urgent information about AI image manipulation and AI Nude Deep fakes – and why I’m rethinking how we should handle student images. I want to give you the info you need to be reading and considering. (Plus the Take it Down Act went into effect over the summer and we should know about it.)
• Helping students. Boundaries, absenteeism, and how to help LD students self-advocate before they move on to college.
• On the radio/TV show. Two national Principals of the year and what kids actually say about screens (and some tips for parents)
• AI You Can Actually Use (and some warnings about trends on TpT and pushback on using student images with AI)
• Some new things to teach. Quantum computing for littles, using podcasts for transition time in elementary and more.

Sponsor

Today’s newsletter sponsor is Ellis, a program of the Children’s Health Council. Ellis is a free resource that uses AI to pull from a knowledge base of evidence-aligned content and trusted partners like CAST, CASEL, Understood, and others. (Not the “open Internet” like other tools.) This can help you with kids who are struggling with learning, behavior, or the emotional side of school (but not clinical advice). If you’ve got a student (or two) who you can’t stop thinking about, try it and see what it brings you. No personally identifiable student information is collected, and it is a much better place to start than “brainstorming” with your general purpose AI chat tool.
TRY: Ask Ellis – a tool to help figure out class situations with research based best practices.

Episode 971 · Sponsored

Free Teacher-Facing AI for Behavior and Learning

Natalie Tamburello, MPhil — Community Engagement Manager, Children’s Health Council

Most teachers reaching for AI to help a struggling student are reaching for the wrong kind of AI. Natalie explains what “teacher-facing” means in practice, and how to describe a student situation without typing anything that identifies the child.

Resources from this show

• Ellis — free, create an account and start with one student

• My AI Vocabulary List: I update these when new vocabulary words are used on my shows. The new words this time are: student-facing and teacher-facing AI, RAG, Prompt Scaffolding, wrapper, and PII Redaction.

• Spy the AI — the free vocabulary game I built (people are liking this one)

• CAST · CASEL · Understood — three of the content partners behind it

Listen and read the show notes →

The AI Slop Controversy

​NBC covered the TpT controversy with “AI Slop” and it turned out it wasn’t nameless, faceless people who uploaded the content. This was after Lily Altavena, a reporter for Chalkbeat, broke the story on August 3. With the company claiming in a 2023 press release that 85% of PreK-12 educators in the US using TpT this is a big deal. Interestingly, when Chalkbeat asked one seller about AI use, they got a reply that the seller “reviews everything personally.” Then, the reporter posted the question she asked and got nearly identical language including the claim about reviewing before publishing. There’s a whole coaching industry teaching TpT sellers to “scale up with AI.”

​Another school printed agendas for students that were apparently AI generated where Kentucky was labeled “Venecky” and Louisiana was “Lookoong.” (See the thread.) They sold them to parents for $10 each!

A Baton Rouge area school yearbook used AI generated photos for superlative pictures and received criticism. Meanwhile in Utah, the state board says parents can ask to opt their child out of AI tools. That said, it is part of the state’s AI framework, and not a statutory right and districts control this.

Warnings About AI Image Manipulation and AI Nude Deep fakes

I guess I wonder how that is even possible to “opt out of AI” but it needs to be something everyone is ready for as some parents don’t want their kids info being used to train AI. (Of course some of the same parents upload pictures to Facebook, which is, you guessed it, training AI.)

​A criminal gang scraped one UK school’s website, generated 100+ sexual images of its pupils , and tried to blackmail the school. As a result, UK organizations warned parents to stop posting children’s photos publicly – lock the accounts down, limit who can see the images and review what is already up. Offenders are increasingly scraping ordinary photos to generate AI child sexual abuse material. (CSAM)

​Thorn reported in March 2025 that 1 in 8 Teens know someone targeted by nude deepfakes. But only 30% of young people in an August 18, 2026 CNN article say their teachers are talking about how to use AI safely. In that same article, CNN reported that creating nude deepfakes is rampant among young people now. In the article Justine Carino, a psychotherapist based in New York’s Westchester County says if kids start talking about sexualized content in third or fourth grade, that’s your cue to have the conversation. Otherwise, by fifth grade, initiate the conversation yourself.” You might ask, but why so young?

​A 2025 literature review of nonconsensual deepfake pornography and can give an overview if you’re looking for a place to start. The authors point out Liz Kelly’s concept of the continuum of sexual violence (1988) which McGlynn (2017) extended to include image-based sexual abuse.

​Deeptrace, now Sensity AI, found that 96% of deepfake videos online were pornographic and that 99% of those target women. (This was a 2019 study but a 2023 study said it was still at the same level.) Many deepfake victims feel like they lose control over their own image. Additionally, there is a global rise in sextortion cases often done by organized crime. The 2025 review I cited earlier also points to the global rise in sextortion, much of which is run by organized criminal networks.

Some Legal Notes and Recent Laws on CSAM

I’m a teacher not a lawyer. I’m linking to current statutes and the FTC for you to read for yourself. Your district or school’s legal counsel is the right person to ask about your location.

Not free speech. This is serious. Educators and parents have got to stop and take a look at the facts and determine what is appropriate. That said CSAM is NOT a protected form of expression and is a federal crime in the US which prohibits “the knowing receipt, distribution, reproduction, or possession of CSAM – including computer-generated or digitally altered material that is indistinguishable from a real child.”

A new way to report it. The TAKE IT DOWN Act happened in 2025 and platforms must remove reported images and any known identical copies within 48 hours of notification from the depicted person. If a site doesn’t do it or respond, you can report it to the FTC here in the US and this went live May 19, 2026. https://takeitdown.ftc.gov​

There’s a larger concern that if someone collects these on their phone in high school and then gets older and is caught with the material, they could end up being a registered sex offender for that. (We’re talking deepfake nudes, which is not the same thing as sexting although some schools lump them together. The student in the picture never took or sent it.)

Talk to kids. Again, can I say talk to your boys and your girls. Your girls, because likely their photos will be the ones manipulated without consent. Your boys, because if they possess those photos, it can be a criminal offense. Bigger picture though, the morality of such things is important to discuss. Right and wrong matter. And, when it happens (not if, sadly), your child knows to talk to you and doesn’t harm themselves with the stress of it.

My Take on Student Photos

OK so I know full well that Facebook and social media are big ways that schools are marketing and the emphasis on having happy kids at events and cool sports shots are all the rage. But we have to accept that if we choose to allow a child’s photo (or our photo) on the internet that it is easy to manipulate the photo.

I believe we will see many more parents opting out of school photos for this reason. You can also expect AI generated photos of kids will get pushback and this is definitely something administrators need to decide about for their classrooms. Although I did it in the first days of chatGPT, I would steer clear of doing it now knowing what I know now.

I know many parents who aren’t even posting newborn photos online.

That said, if we as teachers manipulate photos with AI, albeit for cute purposes, we’re also opening up those images for CSAM’s possibly. And if we do it without permission, what message are we sending? And if we post regular photos to any platform, we’re making it possible for others to manipulate those photos, even if we didn’t.

I think that soon schools will be forced into private platforms for their sharing perhaps on their own website with a login of some kind. I don’t know how we can share photos of the third grade field trip on Facebook or Instagram with the direction this is heading UNLESS legislation or social media companies step up and determine what to do. And yes, we’re supposed to be able to report it, but social networks are global. Someone from another country other than your own can take that photo, and while you can tell the social network to take it down, it can still be used and bought and sold.

We must protect our children. Right now, an image online is an image that can be manipulated. We need to be advocates and part of these conversations. RAINN has some prevention materials.

Ok, I know this is not a pleasant conversation but it is one we have to be having. And directly impacts if we’re going to let people manipulate photos of students in our schools. I know everybody thinks it’s cute but not everybody does and it could have long term repercussions. It isn’t just manipulation that is the problem, it is the posting of photos altogether. This is not an easy one.

Resources of the week.

How did I write these? So, my content on my blog I write and vet the resources. I do have my Claude Cowork tool go through my blog and summarize and pull what I consider my most useful resources from the show for the newsletter as printed below. It writes the html and I edit it in coderunner and paste the html blocks in below when I’m done. As with everything, I read it all. Sometimes people see something formatted like below, which looks like Claude Cowork, and immediately assume it wasn’t written by a human. I’m responsible for everything in this newsletter. Do I make mistakes, yes. But if it is here, it is because I recommend it and if you find a mistake, email me! I love to learn and get better!

AI Conversations for Teachers and Admin

Vibe coding, companies and nonprofits are moving towards teacher-facing AI, and what principals are saying about effective AI implementation.

Episode 966

Vibe Coding with Gemini: Build Your Own Classroom Tools

Alice Keeler, Google Developer Expert for Google Workspace, creator of 37 Google-approved add-ons

Alice built a Sheets add-on in two days that collects no student data, and makes the case that building your own beats signing up for a pile of outside products. The show notes walk a beginner through building a Gemini Gem, with a copy-paste prompt that checks a lesson plan against a standards PDF you attach.

Resources from this show

• Educator AI Assistant – free Sheets add-on, collects no data

• Alice’s shared Gem site – ready-made Gems to try before you build one

• Edugems – Eric Curts’ free library of teacher Gems

• Gemini for Teachers Quick Start Guide: free, with 10 starter prompts

• Getting Started with Vibe Coding: step by step (not Chromebook compatible)

Listen and read the show notes →

Episode 968 · Sponsored

Keeping the Teacher at the Center of Classroom AI

Todd Brekhus, chief product officer at Renaissance, creator of the myON literacy platform

For twenty-five years we sent the struggling kid to the back of the room with headphones on and called it personalized learning. Todd argues for personalized teaching instead, and explains why they chose not to ship student-facing AI: a fast answer interrupts the productive struggle where the learning happens.

Resources from this show

• AR BookFinder– free, no login, look up any book’s level

• Focus Skills: free, the highest-leverage skills for your grade

• What Kids Are Reading: free annual report by grade level

• Where AI Meets Learning Science: free whitepaper

Listen and read the show notes →

Episode 973

Principals and AI: 7 in 10 Are Already In

Ronn Nozoe, CEO, National Principals Association

Only 18% of principals said they feel very confident leading AI this school year, and seven in ten are already in the middle of figuring it out. That gap is the whole conversation. Ronn’s advice to teachers is specific: go to your principal privately, not in a faculty meeting, and offer to help.

Resources from this show

• Episode 973 discussion guide (PDF): free, made for a staff meeting

• AI Guidance for Schools Toolkit – free editable guidance, staff deck, parent templates

• CoSN AI hub – free maturity tool and a one-page “our AI approach”

• Common Sense Media AI hub – free AI literacy lessons, grades 6 to 12

• State AI guidance – 30 states, including Georgia

Listen and read the show notes →

New Things to Teach

Two shows for the part of you that still wants to try something you have never taught before.

Try This Tomorrow

Take a penny and a paper plate into class and teach superposition. Spin the penny on the plate. While it spins it is neither heads nor tails, and the moment you slap your hand down it becomes one. That is a measurement, and five-year-olds get it. Dr. Nneka McGee’s full unplugged lesson plans are in the show notes below, no computer required.

Episode 967

How to Teach Quantum Physics to Littles (and Older Students Too)

Dr. Nneka McGee, founder, Muon Global; former middle school math teacher and chief academic officer

Quantum computing today, she says, is roughly where AI was nine years ago, which means waiting for the breakthrough means waiting too long. She teaches superposition, entanglement, and coherence with objects already in your room. The post includes two written-out unplugged lessons and a terms list mapped to the federal framework.

Resources from this show

• QuanTime: free K-12 quantum activities, one class period each

• National Q-12 Education Partnership: all free

• QISE K-12 Framework : what students should understand by grade band

• QCaMP: teacher camp at Sandia National Laboratories, with a stipend

• AI and Learning Differences (PDF): free Stanford report, Dr. McGee was project lead

Listen and read the show notes →

Episode 969

Who Smarted? Why Human-Made Kids’ Media Still Beats the Bots

Jerry Kolber, creator of Brain Games for Nat Geo and Brainchild for Netflix

He built two hit science shows and then moved his team off screens entirely. Teachers use the podcast at transition times, after lunch or between subjects, pausing at the built-in quiz question every three or four minutes so students answer out loud. One caution: the free public feed carries adult-targeted ads, so get the educator version first.

Resources from this show

• Who Smarted?+ educator subscription : free and ad-free with a school email

• The episode archive: browse by topic to match your unit

• Common Sense Media review: age rating and content flags

• ASHA listening benchmarks : free, what is typical by grade

Listen and read the show notes →

On the radio and TV show

Two full Cool Cat Teacher Talk episodes posted, and both come with a discussion guide you can take straight into a staff meeting.

Cool Cat Teacher Talk

Kids and Screen Time: What Kids Actually Say

Betty Ray, founder and director of Boss Battle Labs · Lawrence C. Harris, youth speaker and teen author · Patty Tucker, director of Jump Start Bridge

Three angles on screens and connection: Betty’s red, yellow, green Signal Check system for earning device privileges, Lawrence on noticing the student who is always “fine,” and Patty on free classroom bridge as a screen-free way to build cooperation. The show notes include a five-question staff meeting guide and a six-question version for the dinner table.

Resources from this show

• Betty Ray’s free resources — the Signal Check downloads

• Jump Start Bridge — free workbooks, teacher manual, and playing supplies shipped to you

• The Luddite Club — student-started flip-phone clubs, 30+ chapters

• ACBL Teachers’ Lounge — support, stipends, and textbooks for teaching bridge

• The discussion guide — in the show notes, staff version and family version

Watch, listen, and read the show notes →

Research Note

Nearly 74% of teens say they feel happy at least sometimes when they do not have their phone, and 72% say they feel peaceful. From a survey of 1,453 U.S. teens ages 13 to 17, conducted September to October 2023. Pew Research Center

Cool Cat Teacher Talk

Leading With Love: Two National Principals of the Year on What Actually Works

Amanda J. Jamerson, 2026 National High School Assistant Principal of the Year · Sonia E. Ruiz, 2026 National Middle Level Principal of the Year

Ask either of them how they did it and they use the same word. Amanda walks through the restorative framework behind a 69 percent drop in office discipline referrals over three years, and a phone policy that held because the adults stayed consistent. Sonia wrote belonging into the school improvement plan and threw out the Likert scale in favor of survey questions her students wrote.

Resources from this show

• Center on Multi-Tiered System of Supports — free tiered-support resources

• What are restorative practices? — the background behind Amanda’s framework

• Check & Connect — student engagement intervention inside MTSS

• AJAM the Advocate — Amanda Jamerson’s site

• Part One: Who You’re Becoming — with Ronn Nozoe and Muriel Summers

Watch, listen, and read the show notes →

Cool Cat Teacher Talk airs on 13 FM radio stations and 13 public access television markets across the United States and the United Kingdom. This fall we are adding eight more FM stations and three more TV markets, including our first markets in Canada.

Coming this fall

Radio: WPPM 106.5 Philadelphia · KPFT 90.1 Houston · KEDM 90.3 Monroe, Louisiana · KCNP 89.5 Ada, Oklahoma · KOOP 91.7 Austin · KSSZ 93.9 Columbia, Missouri · KTAL-LP 101.5 Las Cruces · AccessNow Radio 91.3 Regina, Saskatchewan

Television: PhillyCAM in Philadelphia · MetroEast in Portland, Oregon · AccessNow TV, reaching more than 110 communities across Saskatchewan

Philadelphia, Portland, and Saskatchewan launch the week of September 21. When every launch is complete that will put the show on 21 FM stations and 16 television markets in three countries.

You can also watch or listen anytime on the Cool Cat Teacher Talk page, on YouTube, or in your favorite podcast app.

I know that there is so much going on and things are so busy, but I do hope you take a moment to be still this weekend and rest. I hope these resources help you focus on what is important. The discussion guides are crafted for leadership teams. I want what I share with you to be something you can apply tomorrow.

OK it is late – like 2 am late – and I have a wedding shower to help do tomorrow so I think it is time to wrap it up. I don’t usually stay up this late but I fell asleep on the couch way too early and woke up thinking about the things I have been studying this week that you need to know about. I just couldn’t rest. I hope you know that it isn’t an easy season right now, but that makes teaching more important than ever. Thank you for working to educate today’s students and thank you for reading about what matters in the classroom.

I remain joyfully in your service,

Vicki

PS. If you haven’t tried it already and need a seating chart, work with the seating chart generator from Taskade.

Thank you so much for subscribing to my Classroom Matters Newsletter and for subscribing to my 10 Minute Teacher podcast Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Pandora | Spotify | YouTube | ​Audible and the weekly one-hour talk show YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Audible | IHeart Radio ​

​

The post 📸 AI Photos and Deepfakes, Quantum for Littles, and Real Help for Behavior appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

If you're seeing this on another site, they are "scraping" my feed and taking my content to present it to you so be aware of this.

from Cool Cat Teacher Blog
https://www.coolcatteacher.com/ai-photos-and-deepfakes-quantum-for-littles-and-real-help-for-behavior/

Chronic Absenteeism: How to Get Kids Back in School

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Dr. Leah Marsh is an award-winning assistant middle school principal who has worked with PBIS, attendance improvement and suspension reduction programs. She shares the process they use to tackle improvements and how the whole school pulls together to help kids know that they belong and that they matter. Relationships are key and give purpose to everyone involved.

Sponsored: Ellis, a program of Children’s Health Council, sponsored this podcast episode. All opinions are my own and that of the guest. Ellis pulls from a knowledge base of content from trusted partners like CAST, CASEL, Understood and others, and gives you evidence-aligned ideas for students who are struggling with learning, behavior, or the emotional side of school (but not clinical advice). If you’ve got a student (or two) who you can’t stop thinking about, try it and see what it brings you. No personally identifiable student information is collected, and it is a much better place to start than “brainstorming” with your general purpose AI chat tool. Try Ellis today.

Not every idea may be for you, but the process of coming up with the ideas as a team is vital. Meeting, discussing issues, working to improve, these are all things you notice that great schools do. They build teams. They work together. They figure out what works and what doesn’t and how to help kids know that being at school matters. I hope you’ll find today’s show inspiring and encouraging and full of ideas. As always, I’m now curating and putting resources, discussion guides, links to free resources, and links to other shows in the show notes for each show. Let’s get our students to school!

I don’t come in with all the answers, but I do come in with an open mind. And I want to leave here knowing more and being better today than I was yesterday, because that’s our goal.

Dr. Leah Marsh, Assistant Principal, Niles Middle School

Listen to the Show

Watch this video on YouTube.Subscribe to the Cool Cat Teacher Channel on YouTube

Middle school teachers and administrators, attendance teams, PBIS teams, and anyone who has watched a student disappear from the roster one day at a time.

A note from Vicki: My philosophy is to give you lots of viewpoints on how to tackle issues. I believe in and respect the intelligence of listeners and their ability to make up their own mind as they listen to many viewpoints on a topic. I know that PBIS is a hot-button issue with many, and some have perhaps implemented this philosophy in a way that has removed all consequences for misbehavior. If you’ve listened to me long, you’ll know I wouldn’t advocate that. We need discipline, but we need progress. Kids need to know that they matter!! And we need to work together. I’ve seen as many schools have good success with PBIS as some who have not. As with any program, there’s a human aspect to how things are implemented to observe and discipline can bring out the greatest improvements and the biggest criticisms of schools.

Key Takeaways for Teachers from Dr. Leah Marsh

• Numbers are the question. Not the answer. Leah keeps coming back to why. “why are they absent?” One answer they found was a bus driver shortage. Their superintendent was able to fix that problem. We can’t solve a number. We can solve a reason. That is why “why” is such an important question to ask.
• Every adult in the building might be a mentor. Their mentoring program paired struggling students with an adult who would be happy to see them and encourage them. Everybody was involved.
• Creating a space and place for kids who are struggling. Their “dragon den” became a place for those kids who were struggling in different ways. Sometimes a kid having a hard time might come to school and ask to go to the “den” instead. That way the child was at school but also had some space.
• How can more tardies be a win? Attendance improved, but so did the tardies. But Leah reminds us if that child is at school for most of the day, that is a win. They are in class and they are learning.

Chronic absenteeism means missing 10% or more of the school year. It ran at 14.1% in 2018-2019, before the pandemic. In 2024-2025 — the most recent school year with national data — it was 22.6%. It peaked near 28% in 2021-22, so the trend is down, but progress has nearly stalled: the latest analysis from AEI’s From Attendance Crisis to Chronic Condition? found improvement of less than a single percentage point in the most recent year. The Return to Learn Tracker follows this across more than 14,700 districts and charter schools.

If you want the research on whether any of this actually moves attendance, the Center on PBIS published a practice brief in February 2025 — Effects of PBIS on Attendance and Behavior Outcomes — drawing on years of data from the Missouri Schoolwide Positive Behavior Support initiative. It focuses on exactly the two things Leah’s team moved: student attendance and exclusionary discipline.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Check & Connect — the mentoring model Leah’s school uses. Developed at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Community Integration, it pairs a student with a mentor who monitors attendance, behavior, and grades and stays with them over time.
• Center on PBIS — the national technical assistance center for Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, the framework behind everything Leah describes. Free implementation guides, tiered-support resources, and a searchable research database.
• NASSP 2026 National Assistant Principal of the Year Finalists — where Leah is recognized as one of three finalists in the country.
• Ellis — the free tool from Children’s Health Council that sponsored this week’s shows.

About Dr. Leah Marsh

Dr. Leah Marsh

Dr. Leah Marsh is an assistant principal known for her work in strengthening school culture, student leadership, and career-connected learning. A 2025-2026 Middle School Principal of the Year for the Ohio Association of Secondary School Administrators, and finalist for the National Association of Secondary School Principals Assistant Principal of the Year, she is passionate about increasing student engagement and empowering both students and staff to lead meaningful change.

Free Tools to Reduce Absenteeism and Suspensions

Everything below is free and was verified the week this episode published. Most of it comes from Attendance Works, the national nonprofit that has been working on chronic absence longer than almost anyone.

Start with your own data

• Classroom Attendance Calculator – a free, self-calculating spreadsheet that sorts your roster into satisfactory, at-risk, and chronic absence. Built for teachers whose district does not hand them chronic absence reports. It reminds you to count excused absences and suspensions as missed school, which is the whole point of this episode.
• Identify the Root Causes of Absence – this is Leah’s entire method on one page. Attendance Works sorts every reason a student misses school into four buckets: barriers, aversion, disengagement, and misconceptions about whether absences matter. Grab the free Identifying Root Causes worksheet (updated September 2025) and mark the ones that apply to your students.

Here’s a quote I think it is important. “when you see a high level of chronic absence in a school, the root cause may be a school policy or practice.” If suspensions for minor infractions are pushing kids out of the building, the answer isn’t an intervention. It’s changing the practice which is what the Dragon Den is.

Then build the response

• The Three Tiers of Intervention – the tiering framework behind Leah’s “we would love to connect with all 450 to 500 students, but we have to prioritize.”
• Check & Connect – the research-based mentoring model itself, developed at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on Community Integration and now in its fourth decade. A trained adult checks in on one student’s attendance, behavior, and grades and stays with them over time. Their site opens with two words that could be the title of this whole episode: One Caring Adult. It is also the only program the U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse has found to have positive effects on staying in school.
• Strategies to Address Chronic Absenteeism (PDF) – the single best free document I found. Published by the Institute of Education Sciences’ Regional Educational Laboratory, it walks through four strategies early warning systems, mentoring, Check & Connect, and nudging families and for each one tells you what it is, what the research found, and where to go next. If your team wants the evidence base in one place before it commits to anything, start here.
• Center on PBIS – free implementation guides and a searchable research database for the framework underneath all of it.

Mark your calendar

The Attendance Awareness Campaign runs every September, with free posters, family letters, and messaging you can put in a newsletter the first week of school. If this episode gave you an idea, September is when to launch it.Take five minutes and list every student you teach, from memory, without your roster. Then open the roster and see who you left off. That is the exercise award-winning principal Nancy Blair had her whole staff do, and it is the one I thought of while Leah was talking. The students nobody listed are the students who already believe nobody would notice if they stopped coming. Pick one of them tomorrow and tell them you are glad they are here.

Other Shows on Belonging, Culture, and Getting Kids to School

• How to Make Every Student Feel Valued with Tom Hierck is the closest companion to this episode. Hierck’s argument is that once a student feels they belong, “literacy rates, numeracy rates, attendance” go up and office referrals go down. He is also the source of the “every student is a success story waiting to be told” line.
• Principal Leadership: Carlos Ramirez on Including Everyone and Keeping Everyone Safe a principal on rebuilding attendance and belonging after the pandemic.
• The Energy Bus: 5 Ways to Elevate Your Campus Vibe with Dr. Jim Van Allan how school culture gets built on purpose, and why attendance is one of the ways you measure whether it is working.

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
• All 10 Minute Teacher Episodes

If this episode gave you something to try, share it with the teacher down the hall who needs it and leave a review wherever you’re listening.

Episode Transcript

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 Davis (00:00): Chronic absenteeism, or kids that miss more than 10% of school days, was around 22.6% in the 2025-26 school year, compared to 14.1% in 2019. Because we’re trying to keep kids in school, many schools have taken a close look at their suspension policies, which often take troubled kids and send them away from school for even more time. But how can it be done? Today’s guest shares how her middle school cut suspensions by 32% and worked with improving student absences.

This is Fab Idea Friday, episode 974.

Announcer (00:45): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (00:50): Today’s show is sponsored by Ellis, a free tool from Children’s Health Council that helps teachers think through tough student moments and find practical next steps. Tune in at the end of the show, and I’ll tell you more about Ellis. Today, we’re talking with Dr. Leah Marsh, Assistant Principal at Niles Middle School in Ohio, named one of three finalists for the National Association of Secondary School Principals Middle Level Assistant Principal of the Year.

Under her leadership, Niles Middle School has reduced suspensions by 32% while increasing student attendance and engagement. And she’s going to tell us how. Welcome to the show today, Dr. Marsh.

Dr. Leah Marsh (01:41): Thank you so much for having me.

Vicki Davis (01:43): So Leah, when you first walked into Niles Middle School, what did you see that told you this is what we need to work on?

Dr. Leah Marsh (01:50): There wasn’t anything that jumped out we need to work on. My first year I came in and I observed and I built rapport with the staff and students. I learned my job. I didn’t come here to make any changes, but there’s a fabulous staff here And their priority really is the students.

They were seeing that students were absent. We needed to find out the why. Students had some behavior issues. You’ve got to get to the why they’re acting this way.

And we really worked as a huge team to implement our PBIS, our Positive Behavior Interventions and Support System. And find out the whys and what we could do to help address this. There is no absolute cure-all, fix-all for anybody in the country. We’re all struggling with the same stuff.

Vicki Davis (02:33): Leah, you know there’s a lot of controversy surrounding PBIS because not all schools get the same results. And sometimes teachers say, OK, I don’t know what happened, but my principal was giving the kids a lollipop when they misbehave and sending them back to class. But the educators I’ve talked to that have effectively implemented this method, that’s not what it’s about. So help us understand what PBIS looks like at your school.

Dr. Leah Marsh (02:57): At our school, it’s a lot about team meetings and data. And I learned from my fabulous administrative assistant that you can look at data in different ways. I always looked at it straight on. We have X amount of chronic absenteeism.

So the problem is absenteeism. She goes, why are they absent? What are the reasons they’re absent? Let’s go deeper into the data and then you can only solve it.

I’m like, so we need to do more with data. So we bring that to the team. One of the issues we found was there was a change in busing because we didn’t have enough bus drivers. And students weren’t able to get here.

So that was an issue that we brought to the superintendent who went out of her way to make sure that that was no longer one of our obstacles. We got more kids here. Another piece of the data we found out is students didn’t feel like they had connections here at school. So that was part of a PBIS.

Well, nobody cares if I’m there or not. And I have no reason to be there. Again, you have to have a staff that buys in and really has the heart for students. Otherwise, it won’t work.

And our staff here said, let’s make a program, a mentoring program, where we find who those students are from the data that we’ve really analyzed and connect them with an adult in the building. It could be a teacher, an administrator, a staff member. We have students that come because they love working with our custodial staff, and those are life skills that they’re doing. And then making those connections, hearing those adults say, I am so glad you’re here.

Oh, my goodness, let’s talk about your accomplishments. Just getting here today was an accomplishment. Making those students feel welcome, feel a part of something. And that’s really where the increase came.

And once they feel they’re a part of something and they feel that they have some ownership in their schooling, the behaviors begin to decrease. Now we move from punitive behaviors to restorative practices. And it was just all the team. Where do we go from here?

We’re always working on it. Then we do feedback surveys, staff and students. What’s working for us? What’s not working?

This year, we started a LEAD class. L-E-A-D, it stands for Learn, Engage, Act, and Deliver. And our students are the ones going and saying, here’s how we can, as students, change the climate and the culture. We have staff members that facilitate and lead this.

Students are planning dances and spirit weeks and food drives, drives for community services. They are doing peer tutoring. These were all brought by the students saying these are what we want to do. So PBIS started with an initiative.

And turned into such fabulous things that the school is doing, all because we have buy-in from staff and students.

Vicki Davis (05:47): We have to relate to educate. What you’re saying reminds me of an award-winning principal from some years back in my interviews, Nancy Blair. And she had everybody at the school list every single student they could think of in five minutes. And they identified the students that nobody listed.

And you’re really doing that by figuring out who can these kids connect with? Who can they relate to? Kids want to know they matter. Adults want to know they matter.

Do you feel like that even your custodial staff and your lunchroom and all on your campus feel like they have more purpose because they’re needed to connect with kids?

Dr. Leah Marsh (06:23): I feel like they appreciate coming here more because it’s not just a job. It is the connections. It is the relationships. I’ve had multiple staff members, including our cafeteria staff, get very excited and realize their purpose when they get nominated.

Students are able to nominate a staff of the month and they get their little certificate saying who nominated them and why. And that’s a big deal. Students get it from the staff and staff members each month get it from the students. And sometimes it’s just nice to know that you’ve made a change in a student’s life that you didn’t even realize because you come in, you’re here, I’m going to do the best I can.

And somebody sees that. Even our student teachers from Youngstown State University that come in to do some of their practicum, they’re getting little nominations, even though they’re not full-on staff, and our substitutes get them. Our students are very generous. Each grade-level teacher has a spreadsheet to see who’s been nominated to make sure the same children aren’t continually being nominated.

We spread the wealth because everybody brings something to the table.

Vicki Davis (07:33): If you have a 32% reduction in suspensions, now that’s not just a number, that’s children. Do you feel like that your discipline is holding steady or improving? Or do you feel like you’ve had to relax your standards to decrease your suspension rate?

Dr. Leah Marsh (07:50): We didn’t relax anything. Instead, we have actually implemented a new room and position. We call it the Dragon Den. And it’s kind of an all-purpose room.

So in the past, I mean, this is middle school. They horseplay, let’s be honest. They run in the halls.

Vicki Davis (08:08): Yeah.

Dr. Leah Marsh (08:10): He slapped the top.

Vicki Davis (08:11): I mean, how many times do I have to say, keep your hands to yourself and do not touch anyone? Because that’s what they do.

Dr. Leah Marsh (08:18): Before that would have been a detention after your first warning. And now we have our dragon den and it’s, you know what? You need kind of a time to reflect. Go to the dragon den.

They fill out a little PBIS reflection form. They re-regulate the, and they have time to reflect, and then they’re back to class. So now that’s going from a discipline to a restorative practice. But that room isn’t just for students serving a purpose for consequence or reflection.

Sometimes we use it as our quiet room because kids might have had a rough night at home, things are going on, and they just can’t get to class and focus. They need that calming space for a little bit. I have one student who comes, and we know what’s going on at home, and he’ll say, can I please just go to the Dragon Den today? Just for today, I’ll do my work in there, and we’ll try again tomorrow.

The child is showing up to school regardless of what’s going on at home. And it’s great that we have that space where they want to be here, they want to do the work, but they might not be able to be in the traditional classroom that particular day. It’s another way to bring students to school and make sure that they have what they need while they’re here at school. So then the behaviors don’t amp up because they don’t want to be in the class for whatever reason.

Again, was a beautiful suggestion from our PBIS team. We took it to the superintendent who was able to implement that.

Vicki Davis (09:43): So let’s just shift and go back that your Check & Connect mentoring program. What does that look like on a Thursday morning at Niles Middle School?

Dr. Leah Marsh (09:54): The teachers, the staff members actually connect with the students. They set their own time. We just ask for, twice during the week. Do a check-in, like, what are your goals for this week?

What can you talk about at the end of the week to see if you met them? Other students, we’re just going to meet daily because I know you have a study hall and it’s the same time as my planning and I love meeting and chatting with you. So we leave it up to them. Some teachers have taken on three and four students at a time, while others are more comfortable connecting with one.

Vicki Davis (10:24): How do you determine which students become part of Check & Connect?

Dr. Leah Marsh (10:29): Attendance is one of our priorities. Who are our chronic absent kids? Let’s meet with them. Let’s find out the whys.

Why are they tardy? Teachers fill out a sheet saying who’s struggling in what subject, and we tier them. Is a child struggling in, let’s say, three out of the four core contents? They’re going to become our priority versus a child who’s just struggling in one subject during this particular term.

So we have to prioritize. Then, of course, we look at our behavior data, you know, who are our primary offenders that are recurring the same behaviors. And let’s make connections with them. Our biggest increase in attendance came from our small tiered group of chronic absent students.

Because now that they have those connections and somebody who’s calling home and praising them or calling home and finding out what we can do. Maybe they just need an alarm clock. Maybe they need a wake up call. I’m going to be honest.

Our attendance has increased. But so have our tardies. and our thoughts are at least they’re coming. They’re not out a whole day missing hours of instruction.

Vicki Davis (11:41): Leah, having your teachers have to make a wake up call to a kid Like, isn’t that the parent’s job? And I mean, I’m all for it. I’d do it if I had to, right? But I could hear some folks say that.

Dr. Leah Marsh (11:54): I want to respond with, it’s not a, we don’t make. That was something they wished to do. And we would never stop them from going above and beyond. Number two, we don’t know what’s going on with the parents or their struggles.

It takes a village to raise these children. And why would we stop any support that can be offered?

Vicki Davis (12:15): So Leah, could you give a motivational pep talk to all of the administrators as well as the teachers, particularly those who work with middle schoolers right now?

Dr. Leah Marsh (12:26): I would just get through the day, but every day looks different. Enjoy it. Like, we’re all on this journey. It’s never the same.

Even in my teaching position, it was not the same. I could say, we’re going to read the same books and do the same questions in the same assignment. And you get those children that come in and they ask questions and they take you on a different route. And that’s the fun thing.

Let’s learn from each other every day. I don’t come in with all the answers, but I do come in with an open mind. And I want to leave here knowing more and being better today than I was yesterday, because that’s our goal.

Vicki Davis (13:00): I love that. Knowing more and being better. The person who got me into teaching said great teachers and great educators are repeaters. Knowing more and being better.

That’s a great one to repeat. Dr. Leah Marsh, Assistant Principal at Niles Middle School in Ohio. Thanks for coming on the show.

Dr. Leah Marsh (13:16): Thank you for having me.

Vicki Davis (13:17): Thank you, Ellis, for sponsoring this week’s shows on the 10 Minute Teacher. Ellis is a free tool for K-12 educators from the Children’s Health Council. Here’s how it works. You type in what actually happened with a student, what you saw, what you already tried, and where you’re stuck.

Then Ellis gives you practical, evidence-aligned next steps. From a knowledge base of content, from trusted partners like CAST, CASEL, Understood, and others. Ellis gives you information, not clinical advice, and it doesn’t collect personally identifiable student information. It’s a far better place to start than general purpose AI tools because Ellis isn’t pulling from the open internet.

So the next time you leave school still thinking about that one student, go to coolcatteacher.com forward slash Ellis. That’s CoolCatTeacher.com forward slash Ellis. Thanks for tuning in to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. Watch the video version of this podcast and catch my new radio and TV show, Cool Cat Teacher Talk, on YouTube and a radio or TV station near you.

Join my Cool Cat Teacher Classroom Matters newsletter at CoolCatTeacher.com forward slash newsletter. Leave a review if you found this helpful. See you later, educator.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a sponsored episode and blog post. Ellis, a program of Children’s Health Council, has compensated me to share information about Ellis. However, all opinions expressed are my own. I have personally reviewed these resources and only recommend tools I believe offer genuine value to classroom teachers. My endorsement is limited to the educational products and services discussed in this episode. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” The sponsor has no impact on the editorial content of this show.

The post Chronic Absenteeism: How to Get Kids Back in School appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

If you're seeing this on another site, they are "scraping" my feed and taking my content to present it to you so be aware of this.

from Cool Cat Teacher Blog
https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e974/