This week: two habits I’ve never fully explained on the show, a real fix for a problem I named last week, and a study that’s been stuck in my head since Thursday morning.
The selfie video. Early in the year, every student records a 2–3 minute video answering a few prompts: tell me about yourself, your hobbies, how you learn best, anything going on at home I should know. I watch every single one and build a grid document — name, photo, a few notes per kid. Then I send a personal welcome email that references something specific from their video (”you play harmonica? So do I”). That one small detail does more for the relationship than almost anything else I do all year — and later, when I’m walking the room during Vivas, that same grid becomes my cheat sheet.
The Friday parent video. Every Friday morning, three two-minute videos — one per class — recapping what we studied that week. I upload them to a shared Google Drive folder, no YouTube needed, and BCC the whole parent list. Total time: about fifteen minutes for three classes. The payoff is disproportionate — parents stop me at football games to say thank you, and when a student is struggling, that relationship is already banked before I ever have to make the harder call.
The Mastery Viva fix. I’ve been jumping straight to the level-4 question instead of guessing which level to ask first. If a student nails it, that’s a 4. If they need help getting there, that’s a 3. Separately — and this is a different thing entirely from the student-facing AI tool that’s still waiting on school approval — I used Claude to draft a bank of Viva questions from my own curriculum. It worked well after editing: about 6 of every 10 questions it generated were genuinely good, which meant previewing and cutting the rest myself.
Analog isn’t really about paper. The more I read, the less this looks like a paper-versus-screens argument and the more it looks like an attention argument. Devices pull focus through notifications and the pull to multitask, not through some inherent flaw in digital ink. I still do plenty of my own work on an iPad. The real fix is removing the ping, not the pixel.
A new study I can’t stop thinking about. Not yet peer-reviewed, but making real waves: 26,000 students in China, grades 7–12. Open AI access raised homework scores and cut homework time — and then tanked exam scores. The damage wasn’t spread evenly, though — it concentrated in students using AI as an easy button, while students who still put in the work alongside AI use barely lost ground at all. I dug into this further after recording and wrote it up properly here: [link to Substack piece].
One more thing. I want you on this podcast — not another expert, a real teacher with real kids in your room. Link to the guest form is below.
0:00 Why I make every student record a “selfie video”
0:16 The exact prompts I give students
1:03 Why relationships matter as much as content
1:30 The personal welcome email trick
2:07 Using my student grid as a cheat sheet during Vivas
2:54 The 2-minute Friday parent video
4:37 How I set it up on Google Drive in 15 minutes
5:27 Fixing my Mastery Viva timing — jumping straight to level 4
6:03 Still waiting on our AI tool’s approval
6:42 I had Claude draft my Viva questions — here’s how it went
7:12 Why our schedule keeps eating into class time
7:34 Analog isn’t about paper vs. screens — it’s about attention
8:58 A new 26,000-student AI study I can’t stop thinking about
11:00 I want YOU on this podcast
