#368 – Ditch That Textbook, with Matt Miller

If you are listening to the podcast with your instructional team or would like to explore this topic more deeply, here are guiding questions to prompt your reflection:

• How have students remained the same despite advances in technology?
• What is different today in the classroom compared to 10 years ago?
• What offline instructional strategies are impactful with students?
• What digital instructional practices are effective?
• How can AI be effectively used in education?
• What resources from Ditch That Textbook would you like to explore?

• Ditch That Textbook (Matt Miller)
• Ditch Summit (Matt Miller)
• AI Teacher Toolkit (Matt Miller)

#368 Ditch That Textbook, with Matt Miller

AVID Open Access
37 min

Keywords
teacher support, blended learning, educational technology, AI literacy, classroom engagement, student curiosity, AI tools, teacher resources, critical thinking, human skills, AI integration, classroom innovation, teacher resilience, student adaptation, future readiness

Transcript

The following transcript was automatically generated from the podcast audio by generative artificial intelligence.  Because of the automated nature of the process, this transcript may include unintended transcription and mechanical errors.

Matt Miller 0:00 We’re going to need teachers more than ever, I think because, as I was saying earlier, it’s those crucial thinking skills, it’s those very human skills that I think are going to really equip us as we go forward into the future, in the near term and in the long term. And teachers are already fantastic at that.

Paul Beckermann 0:17 The topic of today’s podcast is Ditch That Textbook with Matt Miller. Unpacking Education is brought to you by avid.org. AVID believes that we can raise the bar for education. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at avid.org.

Rena Clark 0:37 Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I’m Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann 0:49 I’m Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin 0:50 And I’m Winston Benjamin. We are educators, and we’re here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 0:58 Education is our passport to the future.

Paul Beckermann 1:03 Our quote for today is from our guest, Matt Miller, on his Ditch That Textbook website. He writes, “Hi, I’m Matt Miller. I love supporting teachers and saving them time. It’s all about deep, meaningful, fun, blended learning, and you can do it all.”. Well, Rena and Winston are unable to be here today for the recording, so I’m joined by a very special guest host, Michelle Magallanez. Hey, welcome, Michelle.

Michelle Magallanez 1:29 Thank you so much for inviting me. I’m looking forward to the conversation.

Paul Beckermann 1:32 It’s a pleasure. And what do you think of our quote today?

Michelle Magallanez 1:36 I so appreciate the sentiment behind it, because teachers are juggling so much: lesson planning, student needs, grading. So I appreciate Matt’s mission to lighten that load and bring joy back to teaching and learning. Too often we think of fun and rigor as opposites, but Matt shows us that they can go hand in hand. Teachers are doing incredible work every day, and sometimes all it takes is a fresh perspective to spark new ideas, and that’s where Matt comes in.

Paul Beckermann 2:05 Hey, I totally agree with you, Michelle. And I love the positive intent of the statement, especially that last part, “You can do it.”. Sometimes it feels a little overwhelming, but I honestly believe in the heart of my soul, teachers are amazing, and we can do it. When we feel like we can’t, I think it’s important to remember there are other supports and resources that are out there that we can take advantage of, just to help make that a little bit easier for us. And I do think that’s where Matt comes in, because he’s got lots of resources for teachers, and I’m so excited to welcome him to the show today. So Matt Miller is our guest. He’s a teacher, author, keynote speaker, Ed Tech expert, and creator of the very popular website, Ditch That Textbook. Welcome Matt.

Matt Miller 2:48 Hey. Thank you so much, Michelle and Paul. It’s good to get to spend some time with you today. Awesome.

Paul Beckermann 2:55 You want to just start out by telling us a little bit about yourself, so our audience kind of gets grounded in where we’re coming from, and maybe a little bit about your background in education?

Matt Miller 3:04 Yeah, absolutely. So I live here in Indiana, very rural, West Central Indiana, on about 25 acres in the middle of nowhere, one neighbor in a one mile radius, if you can start to picture it. And that’s where I got into teaching, teaching in little rural public schools out here. I actually wasn’t an education major. When I got started, I was a journalism major, and I thought it was going to be a newspaper reporter or a newspaper editor, and I got out into it, got a job, job covering county politics, and I hated it. And it was time to already, it was already time to make a change. And my wife was teaching. I got to spend some time in her classroom, and something about it just felt right.

So I started going back to school and got my got enough classes to get my teaching credential, and went out into the teaching world, got my own classroom, was teaching high school Spanish, and really struggled with it. It was just kind of like teaching straight out of my textbooks, the questions at the end of the chapters, and assigning worksheets and workbook pages and everything. And it just it wasn’t working. And so I thought, “My goodness, babies learn how to learn a language by just acquiring it, without verb conjugation drills and vocabulary lists.”.

And so I just started trying new things, conversational things, creativity, technology and all of that. And as things started to work, and even as things didn’t, I wanted to share them someplace. And so I created my Ditch That Textbook blog where we’ve been sharing, to this point, I just took a peek at it just this morning. We’ve got more than 800 articles about teaching with technology that we’ve shared over the last 10 plus years. So that’s kind of, kind of where I am right now. I get the opportunity to share that with folks, and. Yeah, it’s been, it’s been a lot of fun.

Michelle Magallanez 5:03 That’s so exciting. And I love your passion for teaching that you’ve discovered. And I’m just curious, can you tell us a little bit more that you wanted to move away from sort of the drill and kill that was corresponding to the textbook, and how did Educational Technology become involved with that?

Matt Miller 5:21 Yeah, you know, as I was saying earlier, it was just the the textbook wasn’t getting the job done. We’re sort of lacking that, that energy and that interest and the the connection to students and everything. And so I really just started trying things as best as I could. And really sort of trying to do something other than just answer those questions at the back of the book. And I struggled sometimes. Some of the things that we tried just absolutely didn’t work and fell flat. And so, as any teacher, I was just trying to learn from that. And I thought, “Well, can I salvage something out of this and make it better the next time? Or is this something that I just need to ditch,” to go back to that word that I use so often?

And so the more that I tried it, the more that I started to feel sort of like liberated from having to just do all of these sort of canned, pre-packaged activities that my students absolutely hated. And little by little by little, the more that I did it, the more that I developed that, sort of creativity. It was almost like a muscle that I had to kind of strengthen over time. And I struggled with it at first, but little by little, the more that I did it, the more that I realized that, it really sort of reflected who I was as a teacher, and almost helped me find my teacher voice. Who am I? How do I show up in the classroom as a teacher? So that I don’t just, I’m not just spouting off all of the stuff that I read out of the book, because I wanted my students to know me and to experience a classroom through me as much as they did through the textbook. So that was that was kind of kind of important to me too.

Michelle Magallanez 7:15 And I love that you’ve shared this experience with so many teachers. So given what you’ve done, can you help our audience understand what’s available through your Ditch That Textbook website?

Matt Miller 7:25 Oh gosh, so much. So it started off as a blog. And so I was just kind of sharing what I was doing in the classroom, what worked and what didn’t, and everything. And so there are, as I said earlier, hundreds and hundreds of posts. And since then, I’ve just been kind of getting a better picture of what teachers are interested in, what their needs are, how I can help, kind of help them to solve problems and help them to save time and everything. So we just have continued to post articles about how technology can do that, about great teaching practices, and how you can actually. I think that’s probably the big thing that we focus on, is, how does it actually show up in a classroom?. Let’s not talk in great, big, vague generalities about things, but let’s actually see how we can, we can implement this.

We’ve got lots of templates. So we’ve created a whole bunch of these Google Slides and PowerPoint and Canva templates, where you can just make a copy of it, adjust it a little bit, and assign it to your students. And that’s been super, super popular. And I mean, there’s all sorts of resources from my conference presentations and just on and on and on: e-books full of teaching ideas. So the goal, really is just to make so much stuff possible, to give away for free as we can, because we know that, budgets are strapped. And what’s a teacher’s favorite price? It’s free. So that we’ve found that there’s really a need for these kinds of things, so that teachers don’t have to just run off and spend all of their hard earned money in Teachers Pay Teachers for worksheet packets and stuff that maybe don’t work all that well in the first place.

Paul Beckermann 9:15 That’s awesome. And one of the free things that you’ve done is your Ditch Summit, which just kind of wrapped up. You want to tell us a little bit more about that, and then maybe highlight something that you learned from the summit this year?

Matt Miller 9:27 Yeah, absolutely. So the Ditch Summit is our free, online conference for teachers that happens every year. I think it was in we’re in our eighth year, so we just wrapped up our eighth year doing this. So it runs from the middle of December to the beginning of January. It’s usually open for about four weeks. And at this point, we have more than 100 recorded sessions from all of these different speakers. It’s basically just, I’m sort of picky about who I invite to be a speaker in the Ditch Summit. But once they do, then we have a recorded session that’s kind of a Q and A, but it’s also very practical and very geared toward what can teachers do with this in the classroom right away.

So, we’ve had a lot of sessions recently, over the last couple of years, about artificial intelligence. There’s always been a lot of stuff about tech integration, about creativity, inquiry, best practices. We’ve had a lot of sessions about teacher wellness, how to be kind of the best version of yourself and all of that stuff.

So, this year we had a variety of different sessions. I think one that really struck me was our first session released on the very first day with Trevor McKenzie, who has written some books about inquiry and curiosity and everything. And he’s published a book recently about using questions to spark students’ curiosity. And I just I loved hearing him talk about the importance of curiosity and how powerful it can be to get students connected to learning, and help them find a reason to want to learn. And once they start to pursue that curiosity, that’s powerful, because then they’re doing it for their own sake, because they want to, because they want to sort of close that loop. They want to resolve that interest that they have in something. And so hearing him talk about all of these very practical ways to do that is fantastic.

So, I mean, that’s really the kind of stuff that you’ve gotten with the Ditch Summit over the years. It’s all of these practitioners in education that are coming in and sharing what they’re passionate about, and sharing what works, and saying, “You can do this too. Here’s how you can do it.”. So anyway, if anybody’s listening to this and that sounds interesting to you, it’ll reopen in December, and you can go to ditchsummit.com to sign up for it for free. It’s all totally, totally for free. I know sometimes people do these summits and they’re “Well, you can watch it for these few days, and if you pay us some money, then you can watch it even longer.”. And with us, it’s “No, we’re just going to make all of it available for free,” and we lock it down to those four weeks so that it feels like an event. It’s an online event. And it’s not just, “I can go back and watch that anytime,” you know. Sometimes when those resources are just sitting there, 24/7, 365, it’s “I know that they’re going to be there. I’ll just go watch them sometime,” and then we never do. So it’s very intentionally blocked into these four weeks so that people realize, “Oh gosh, this is my only opportunity to watch this. I’ve got to go do it.”.

Paul Beckermann 12:46 Yeah, I actually got a chance to watch the Trevor McKenzie one that you did with him, and that was great. I totally agree. There was a lot of great things in there, and practical strategies too, not just theory, as you said. And I would really encourage our listeners, when December rolls around, kind of keep that on your radar and look for the Ditch Summit when that opens up again.

Michelle Magallanez 13:04 Yeah, definitely. And I so appreciated the PDF notes that came with each session so that you could go through and follow along. That was fabulous. So it spoke to many different learning types, exactly. And speaking of continuing improvement and continual learning. Last spring, you went back to the classroom for part of the school year. What inspired and what has that experience been like for you?

Matt Miller 13:29 Oh, yeah, going back into the classroom that was, that was quite a journey for me, because, I had been out for eight years, doing presentations and writing and speaking and working with schools and that kind of thing for about eight years. And then my old job came open temporarily, kind of an emergency one semester fill-in basis. And my sophomore daughter was in the Spanish two class. It was a high school Spanish class, which is what I taught before. And my other daughter, who is a senior, she was a student at the school. My wife taught at the school. So when the three most important ladies in your life come to you and go, “Please, please, please, please, please, please, please,” I mean, what are you going to do? You say yes.

And so I went back in the classroom and taught a full load of high school Spanish classes. And it was great, because I got to kind of remember what it was like. I went through the daily grind of coming up with engaging lessons for students and trying to find ways to make it interesting to them and to help it to stick and help them to get those repetitions that they need. But it also gave me a chance, too, to try out some of the new practices and the new technology that I’ve been talking about. I mean, over the last couple of years, we’ve had all of these AI tools and all of these new advancements in artificial intelligence that are starting to come in the classroom, and I had been talking about them in theory, but hadn’t actually used them in practice, in class.

And so I was able to start using some of those and find out what really worked for me, and what I liked and that kind of thing. And, I mean, it was just a fantastic experience, and I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I started doing it again. All of those little interactions with the students and building relationships with them, and going to the events and just getting to know the kids and everything. And I left after the semester, and even even to this, to this day, I still have students going, “Will you please come back? Please.”. And they were able to hire somebody full time who could, who could teach Spanish full time again. And it breaks my heart, and I miss it, but I also do love the work that I get to do now. And so yeah, it was, it was a really, really rewarding experience overall.

Paul Beckermann 15:56 So I got to ask you, after eight years not being in the classroom and then going back again, what did you notice that was different, or what changed, or what surprised you?

Matt Miller 16:09 I’ve gotten this question a decent amount. And, I almost kind of expected. I thought, the AI stuff. Cell phones are a much bigger deal over the last eight years than they were when I was back, and there was COVID. We went through remote teaching, and I keep seeing people post on social media. They’re like, “If you didn’t teach after COVID, then I don’t want to hear anything that you have to say.”. And so there’s all of this stuff. And it actually made me nervous going back in the classroom a little bit. I was, “Is it going to be totally, totally different?”.

And I mean, from the time that I taught last, the students are on their phones more, and the phones are more of a struggle. And I know the implications of social media and all of that stuff. I noticed a little bit of, a little bit more inattention than, in some ways, than maybe there were before. But, I mean, the similarities were the thing that struck me the most. That, kids are kids, the content is still the content, the stuff that interests them. The little things that they love to spend their time doing has changed. But the core engagement in the lessons and the stuff that that helps them to really click and connect with the content and everything. A lot of that stuff still works. So, I mean, even though technology changes and social media changes and the influences on students and all of that stuff. The thing, the beautiful thing that I loved about it is that they were still kids. They were still teenagers, wrestling with the same issues that teenagers have always wrestled with, and laughing at the same dumb jokes. And just some of those similar things, all stayed the same. So, yeah, there were some differences, but I think the similarities were the thing that struck me the most.

Paul Beckermann 18:05 Did you get to reuse some of your jokes then?

Matt Miller 18:07 Oh, yes, absolutely. And they still rolled their eyes out on just the same as before. But the added benefit was in one of the classes, my daughter was in there, and I got to mortify her by embarrassing her with all of the dumb jokes that she never heard. And there were so many times when her her hand just went to her forehead. She’s just “Oh gosh.”.

Paul Beckermann 18:27 Dad, that’s a success story, right there.

Michelle Magallanez 18:30 Dad jokes for the win. Yes.

Matt Miller 18:34 Exactly. That’s right. Probably in a small way, anyway, my daughter’s probably relieved because she doesn’t have to worry about, well, what’s dad going to do to embarrass me in front of all of my peers?

Michelle Magallanez 18:47 Always very important when you’re a teenager. And so with that, I love it that there’s some changes, but kids are kids at the heart. And with that, do you have an example of something that happened within your classroom during that semester that just lit up the whole class, where you just saw all the kids go, “Oh my gosh, this is an awesome experience. We got to do this again.”? Yeah.

Matt Miller 19:11 It had to be storytelling in my Spanish classroom. And that was something that was a hit for me when I taught before. That is still a hit now, because it gives us an opportunity to bring in some creativity and some fun and some spontaneity and even kind of improv, to be able to practice some of the things that we do in a very conversational way. And I have found over time that that stuff just sticks. And so some of the wild and crazy stories that we used, where we pulled in the students, and they got to be characters in the story. And making up ridiculous things. As, they were on a cruise ship with this celebrity, and their friend the duck was involved in it, and they were playing shuffleboard to get, I mean, just all sorts of wild stuff like that. Where we could just get repetitions in the in the language. That’s some of my favorite stuff. And that worked when I was in the classroom before, but it still works now.

But then we even did some extra things that didn’t exist before. For instance, I talked about artificial intelligence earlier. I’ve been really getting into some of these AI image generators, where you just give them a description and they create images for you. And so what I’ve been able to do now is take all of my we’ll take some of my Spanish vocabulary that my students need to learn, and just pack them into an image, and then I’m able to put that image up on the screen, and then just ask the students a million questions about it. And just those those repetitions where they’re hearing me speak the language, and even when they respond in short sentences and things like that, it just gives them all of this conversational practice. Where, before I had to go out on Google images and just go fishing, just in hope of catching the right image that had the right words and everything.

Now I can just ask for those images. And the other thing that was cool about that too. With those AI images, one of the things that I hear a lot of people talk about now is AI literacy, preparing students to understand about AI and understand about some of the implications around using it, and trying to learn how they can use it responsibly and everything. And there I started to find that there were little ways that I could introduce AI literacy concepts into class without teaching a unit on artificial intelligence, and without having I mean, within the confines of my curriculum. I think that was one of the things I was most excited about.

And a little way that that did show up in my class was whenever I would put one of those AI images up on the screen, I would ask the students, I would say, “Okay, before we even start talking in Spanish about this, where do you see the AI weirdness?”. Because if you’ve ever seen AI generated images, there are little artifacts, or you’ll see six fingers instead of five or whatever. And that was just a little teeny, tiny lesson in my high school Spanish classes where AI isn’t part of the curriculum, but I could just squeeze it in in 30 seconds. And it gives them an opportunity to identify, what’s created by AI and what’s created by humans. And how can I tell? And the fact that Mr. Miller identified that these were AI generated images so that I didn’t have to wonder. All of those little things are little things we can do in the confines of our classrooms to help students develop those AI literacies without having to say, “Okay, now we’re going to do a three day unit about machine learning.”. It’s that that doesn’t apply to me. It doesn’t apply as much as well. Let’s just bring it up whenever it comes up in the context of conversation. And again, I kind of got off on an AI tangent here. But I really feel as if we’re going to help students understand those AI literacies and develop those AI literacies in the confines of the classroom, in the normal day-to-day conversations of class. I think that’s huge.

Paul Beckermann 23:14 Let’s stay on the AI tangent for just a little bit. What are your thoughts about AI and education: benefits, concerns, best practices? What are you what are you thinking about when you think about AI? Because I know you’ve done a lot of work with that, in your role with Ditch That Textbook.

Matt Miller 23:31 Yeah, oh gosh, Paul, that is such a huge, huge question.

Paul Beckermann 23:40 What’s the tip of the iceberg for you? What’s the low hanging fruit there?

Matt Miller 23:44 Yeah, I think that for so many people, when they started seeing what ChatGPT was capable of, and what some of these AI models were capable of, and everything, the first thing they thought of was, “Oh my gosh, kids are going to use this to cheat.”. They’re going to use it to do all of the work that I want them to do, and we’re still wrestling with that narrative in schools.

But, AI, AI large language models were not put into the world to help students cheat on their English essays. They’re being used for so much more. They’re being used as as brainstorming partners and creative collaborators, and to help make new things and bring new things into the world, and to ask questions and to reflect. And just all of that great stuff, and so much of it supports the education that we want. We just have to figure out how it fits and where we should use it and where we shouldn’t use it, and how do we protect students’ data privacy, and how do we protect ourselves against the bias? And when do we use it? When don’t we use it? It’s that, that balance issue is huge.

And so I think we’ve sort of come into this AI in education discussion with the nuance of a sledgehammer. It’s just “AI is terrible,” and “I can’t, we can’t do this.”. But it’s been that way with innovations that have come into education, with technology and even beyond. I mean, for goodness sakes, you go hundreds of years back to Plato. Plato bemoaned the creation of books because we wouldn’t memorize things, and we wouldn’t remember things anymore. And it’s like we’re still kind of having that same conversation about artificial intelligence.

And what happens with so many of these innovations? They come in. We are concerned about them. We talk about how they’re going to ruin education. We did the same thing with calculators. I know lots of people throw around the calculator connection. We worry about it, we wring our hands, and then we start to try it, and we start to use it. We start to realize, “Oh, wow, the real world is using this. We’re going to have to respond.”. And so we we try and we fail and we stumble and it’s messy and it’s inaccurate and it’s complicated, but we start to find ways to do it, and little by little out the other end, we start to find ways that it fits, and then it becomes a natural, meaningful, constructive use of that new innovation. And we’re very much in that in AI right now.

And so there’s all of these conversations about, “What about AI chat bots and AI tutors? I hate them because of this, but I love them because of this.”. And as educators always do, we look at it critically. We figure out how it can be best for kids. We throw out the stuff that isn’t best for kids, and we start using it in meaningful ways so that learning continues forward, so that students’ thinking skills continue forward. And I’m very confident. I believe in educators. I believe in teachers. Throughout the ages, our ingenuity and our ability to adapt to all of this stuff has been unparalleled. We are undefeated at being, well, I shouldn’t say undefeated. Maybe there’s some examples, but I feel as if for the most part, we are undefeated at our ability to adapt to the way that the world is and prepare kids for it. And so I really, really believe that we’re going to be able to do that with AI as well.

Michelle Magallanez 27:18 I love that. That’s awesome. So as you’re thinking about 2025, what are some of the top two to three things that you’re keeping your eye on in education that you think are going to continue to move that needle in a hopeful, optimistic way for kids?

Matt Miller 27:32 So a couple of things we were talking about, AI, and I know that, especially AI, chat bots, where students are interacting directly with AI. Those were kind of like, it’s funny, because those were kind of like 2024, new technology. But yet, the critical mass of teachers don’t get it when it’s originally comes out. So I think more and more teachers are going to figure out, “Do I like this? How can I use it? How can I use it effectively? How can I do it so that it’s not replacing thinking, but it’s augmenting thinking?”. So I think that’s definitely one thing.

But then here’s another one. Since I’m still sort of thinking through the lens of AI, I’ve read a lot about AI and about the future and about where we think that it’s going. In fact, I’m looking around my computer screen right now and I see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 books stacked up on my desk all about AI in the future. And the more that I hear the people who are very involved with this technology talk about it, the more that I realize that the technology is going to evolve so much, even in just a handful of years. And I feel as if, if we want to really, and I highlight this based on your question, Michelle, because I think this is a 2025, thing. I think, if we really want to prepare students for this AI future, the thinking and problem solving and resiliency and some of those very, very human skills, those timeless human skills are going to be so important because we’re going to need to be able to be nimble and to adapt and adjust to whatever comes our way. And if the workforce changes, we’re going to have to be willing to do that. So we’re going to have to be able to solve problems and think on our feet, and to be able to think critically about something, to figure out, “Is this good or bad, do I use it or do I not use it?”. And the more that we can equip students with that, they’re going to need a fundamental baseline understanding of how AI works, so that when they’re able to work inside of it, they know what it’s doing and what it’s capable of. But, on top of that, I think a lot of those timeless human thinking skills are going to be so, so important. And I know that that’s right at the core of what AVID is all about. And so, I think that, we’re all hopefully, very well equipped to help prepare students for that.

Michelle Magallanez 30:06 Exactly. Executive function and computational thinking for the win. Definitely. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing.

Paul Beckermann 30:18 Yeah, well, Michelle, you know what time it is.

Michelle Magallanez 30:21 What’s in the toolkit?

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 30:27 Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What’s in the toolkit? Check it out.

Paul Beckermann 30:34 All right, toolkit time. I’m going to cheat today, and I’m just going to throw out the Ditch That Textbook website. So ditchthattextbook.com. It’s a great resource, and I sign up for the newsletter, so you throw your email in there, and it just comes to your inbox every so often. And there’s lots of great tidbits in there. And it’s nice to get that reminder in the inbox, because it’s easy to forget, to go and look and check and things like that. So kind of comes your way. So I would encourage you to check that out.

Matt Miller 31:04 Can I actually throw a little specific part of that out to everyone, since we’ve been having this conversation about about AI? I actually have, and it’s funny because we’re almost using the exact same word here. I call the AI Teacher Toolkit. And so if your listeners want to get their hands on that, it’s got AI tools. It’s got lessons that you can use, that are kind of supported by AI prompts. It’s even got a printable guide for parents. If you print it off and send it to parents and say, “Here’s how this can this technology can help you support your kid and learning,” you can go to ditch.link/toolkit.

So anybody listening can just go to ditch.link/toolkit. You put in your email address, and it just kicks it right out into your inbox, and you can go check it out. It’s this, 25-page PDF with a ton of great stuff, and it also is a teacher’s favorite price. It is also free. So anyway, the AI Teacher Toolkit, if folks are interested in it, again, it’s at ditch.link/toolkit.

Michelle Magallanez 32:12 I love that. And so I’ll reinforce that. I think that’s an awesome opportunity, something that, because a lot of times the conversation in the classroom is parents are worried. They’re “Well, I know this is going to change the world, but I fear of how my kid is going to use this.”. And so being able to provide free resources that you can just say, “Here, parent, here’s a starting point,” that’s huge. Thank you. That is awesome resource.

Paul Beckermann 32:39 All right, well, let’s hop into our one thing today.

Transition Music with Rena’s Children 32:41 It’s time for that one thing. That one thing.

Paul Beckermann 32:54 All right, one thing time. Final takeaway for today, what are you thinking? Last thoughts, Michelle, we’ll start with you.

Michelle Magallanez 33:01 This has been such a rich conversation, Matt. Thank you so much for joining us. For me, because I’m someone who’s working on computer science and AI standards for nationwide, and I love what you said, because I don’t think these concepts should be relegated to the other class that ends up being an elective. And you put it so beautifully. In a world languages class, you can talk about AI and build students, not only literacy of it’s going to be so important in the coming years. Media literacy, how do I know if something’s real or not real, as well as the technological information of, okay, I know how, basically, AI functions and how I’m supposed to integrate it in a Spanish class. That’s so huge for teachers to understand. It’s not something that another teacher has to do. But if you’re interested, and this is something that you’re passionate about, your kids are definitely passionate about it. How can you integrate it within a context that’s going to resonate with them in your classroom? So thank you so much for sharing that story. I thought that was beautiful.

Paul Beckermann 34:12 I’m going to dwell on something that Matt said, going back into the classroom last spring, kids are still kids. They might be facing new tech. There might be some news, context around the world that they’re living in, but they’re still kids. And if we want them to continue to be successful and really be able to adapt in this really rapidly changing world that we live in, especially with AI and everything. We still need to give them the same skills that have always been important: that ability to adapt, that ability to observe, to think critically, to be creative. Those are still the same kinds of skills, and I think if we instill those in kids, are going to be successful. So I’m thinking about that a lot after Matt’s comments today. And Matt, you get to join in here on the fun, too. What would you like to leave our listeners with here as we get ready to sign off today?

Matt Miller 35:05 You know, there’s all of this talk about with AI coming. People are wondering, are teachers going to become obsolete? Am I going to lose my job? Are we going to need teachers anymore? And after having read about it and thought about it and spoken about it and written about it and everything, my answer is, we’re going to need teachers more than ever. I think because, as I was saying earlier, it’s those crucial thinking skills, it’s those very human skills that I think are going to really equip us as we go forward into the future, in the near term and in the long term. And teachers are already fantastic at that. So I really think, if anybody’s worried about the impact of AI on the teaching profession, I think if we really want to equip kids for the future, we’re going to need teachers, and we maybe need them more now than ever. So I just want to leave folks with that encouragement that you are definitely needed.

Paul Beckermann 36:00 That’s great. It’s a fantastic message, Matt, and thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate you being here.

Matt Miller 36:05 This has been a fantastic conversation. Thanks for inviting me.

Paul Beckermann 36:09 You bet. And for all our listeners out there, don’t forget to go and check out DitchThatTextbook.com, and take care, Matt, maybe we’ll connect again sometime.

Matt Miller 36:17 Sounds great. Thanks.

Michelle Magallanez 36:17 Yes. Thanks for your time. Take care.

Rena Clark 36:21 Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin 36:23 We invite you to visit us at avidopenaccess.org where you can discover resources to support student agency, equity and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann 36:37 We’ll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education.

Rena Clark 36:43 And remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin 36:47 Thank you for all you do.

Paul Beckermann 36:48 You make a difference.