Financial literacy isn't enough: kids need the missing math of money, risk, and odds. In 2025, American adults answered just 49% of everyday money questions correctly, and risk was the lowest-scoring area. Vicki Davis talks with three guests about the math that actually decides our lives, from sports betting and credit cards to reading a medical test.

In this episode, you'll learn:
- Why you have to win more than 52% of sports bets just to break even, and what that means for students
- The probability and statistics ideas Ted Dintersmith, author of Aftermath, says schools skip
- How Diana Isern, author of Money Talks, helps students overcome money shame and talk about investing without giving advice
- What Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash, the world's fastest human calculator and founder of Bhanzu, says about math anxiety and mental math
- Three ideas to try in your classroom tomorrow, plus one question for parents to ask during the game

Show notes, the full transcript, and every resource mentioned: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/missingmath

If gambling is a problem for you or someone you love, help is available 24/7 from the National Problem Gambling Helpline: call or text 1-800-MY-RESET (1-800-697-3738).

If this episode helped you, share it with a math teacher, a counselor, or a parent who needs to hear it.

Should schools ban AI or teach it? In September 2026, New York City banned student AI tools from pre-K through eighth grade, while the UAE, China, India, and Alabama moved to teach AI instead. Vicki Davis talks with two educators who use AI every day and think what we've all been teaching teachers about AI is already out of date.

Christie Cloud is an instructional technology facilitator in Harnett County, North Carolina, and a founding member of EduGuardians. Dave Hinrichs is Director of Digital Platforms and Pedagogy for Johnston County Public Schools. Together they wrote a chapter in The Educators' AI Guide 2027. They explain why you should stop worrying about prompt engineering and just talk to AI, why you don't always need the most powerful model, how agentic AI works, what tokens are, how to fact-check AI, why they avoid AI detectors, and how to talk with students about integrity when AI can make higher grades than they can.

Vicki closes with three takeaways, a heads-up for teachers who built custom GPTs, and a challenge you can try the next time you open any AI tool.

Show notes, the full transcript, and every resource mentioned: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/nextai

If this episode helped you, please leave a review wherever you're listening. It helps other educators find the show.

Teaching is hard, and it keeps changing. Vicki Davis opens with the 200-question test she gave the second week of her first year — a disaster that made her ask what she actually wanted students to be able to do, and set off the chain of changes that led to the internationally recognized Flat Classroom Project. Then, a 2012 study of 242 teachers in the UK and the Netherlands: 93% and 96% of them believed the learning-styles myth, and the teachers who knew more general facts about the brain believed more of the myths, not fewer. So what do we do? We keep learning, and we check the evidence. Today is about encouraging us to learn and grow.

Three educators show what that looks like. Ross McGill of Teacher Toolkit spent 18 months reading MRI research for his new book on the science of learning, and he used to confiscate fidget spinners — "maybe if I had been more evidence-based, I might have been a bit more compassionate." He explains cognitive load in plain English, why learning styles don't hold up while dual coding does, why highlighting and rereading are the least impactful study habits, and his own twist on a classic: Think, Pair, Share, Show Me.

Starr Sackstein, co-author of Actionable Assessment with Michael McDowell, defines formative and summative in a way any teacher can repeat, explains why a grade stops feedback from doing its job, walks through Four Corners and the Post-It trick for equity of voice, and tells on herself about the project whose directions were so unclear that most students missed the point.

Sean Morrisey spent eight years as a school psychologist testing struggling readers before deciding to teach them himself. Eighteen years into fifth grade, he shares the 60-second routine for teaching a word, why morphology unlocks whole word families, why words can't be one-offs, and what he tells teachers carrying guilt about the science of reading: you gotta let it go and get a little better every year.

Then, Vicki (that's me!) closes with ideas you can try tomorrow, a few for parents, and why changing how you teach puts you out on a limb — and why you should go out there anyway.

Show notes, the full transcript, and every resource mentioned: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/bettereveryday - we can all grow, and improve. And sometimes our biggest mistakes lead to the things that set our career up for success.

If this one helped, share it with a teacher who needs the encouragement this week.