Explore every episode of the podcast 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher

Explicit vocabulary instruction beats five words on Monday and a quiz on Friday. Students need to know vocabulary, and that old routine is not the fastest or most efficient way for kids to learn all that vocab.

Fifth-grade teacher Sean Morrisey makes vocabulary stick by using explicit vocabulary instruction. Sean spent eight years as a school psychologist who tested struggling readers. Frustrated that kids weren't learning, he moved into the classroom and has taught for eighteen years. He also created the Word Mapping Project, a curriculum that ties vocabulary, spelling, and word parts together.

In this episode, Sean shares the routine he uses to teach new words, how he teaches kids to use word parts to figure out words, and an awesome tip to help kids learn more words, faster (and probably easier).

What you'll learn:

• Why a word list and a Friday quiz don't stick
• The three moves Sean makes the first time students meet a new word
• What a flock of sheep has to do with segregation and congregation
• How a fifth grader figured out "voracious" before Sean taught it
• The most common vocabulary mistake Sean sees teachers make
• Why Sean says we set the bar too low on how many words kids can learn
• The one thing to try in your next vocab lesson

Full show notes, transcript, and resources: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1018

Prompt engineering is outdated. Yes, you heard it. That is what Christie Cloud, instructional tech facilitator, and Dave Hinrichs, director of digital platforms and pedagogy, said in their chapter in The Educators' AI Guide 2027.

Their favorite tool is ChatGPT. In this episode, they discuss what matters in the world of AI and offer a simple explanation of AI agents. They'll share their thoughts on why AI needs to be in schools and how we need to be wise about choosing our models.

Now, I do want to mention this is a highlight reel of our long interview (almost 45 minutes) as aired and published on Cool Cat Teacher Talk so if you want to dive even deeper, check out their episode on my long-form show.

What you'll learn:

• Why Christie thinks banning AI in schools is short-sighted
• The cell phone and social media lesson Dave says schools can't repeat with AI
• Why "prompt engineering" scared teachers off, and what to do instead
• The one-question-at-a-time trick Dave calls his unlock
• How a "multiplayer AI" lets two educators work from shared context
• Why Dave stopped using custom GPTs before OpenAI retired them
• The Constitution Day escape room Christie built with ChatGPT Work
• A plain-language way to explain AI agents to teachers who are just starting

Full show notes, transcript, and resources: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1017

Sometimes when we try to speak words of encouragement for struggling students it can backfire. When a teen is hurting but they won't talk, what do you say? Lawrence C. Harris, a 20-year-old youth speaker and teen author, sat in our classrooms not long ago. He tells us what helped him and what made him pull away.

Lawrence shares the well-meaning phrases that shut struggling students down, the words that keep the door open, and one small thing you can do at the start of class this week.

What you'll learn:

• The two phrases teachers mean kindly that make a struggling teen retreat
• What to say when a student is clearly struggling but won't open up
• Why the student who seems happiest in class might be hiding the most
• The "one pebble a day" idea for a student who feels overwhelmed
• The decision that turned Lawrence's life around
• A start-of-class routine that gives students something to look forward to

Full show notes, transcript, and resources: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1016

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

Classroom Engagement is something all teachers can struggle with. Does it ever feel like kids can't pay attention anymore? Do you feel like attention spans are shorter than ever? Whatever you think about attention spans, we still have to engage the students sitting in front of us. Dr. Michael McDowell, an 18-year public school educator who served as a math and science teacher, coach, principal, and superintendent, shares classroom engagement strategies that can help!

Michael is the author of The Attention Gap. He walks us through a math lesson built in short intervals, and two routines you can try in any K-12 class tomorrow.

What you'll learn:

• Why splitting a lesson into I do, we do, you do can wear students out
• What the attention research measured, and what it means for your class period
• The one question that tells you if students are with you
• A silent routine that has students watching your every move
• What one dot on a piece of student work can teach the whole class
• The well-meaning teacher habit that widens the attention gap

Full show notes, transcript, and resources: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1015

If an AI site promises it won't "share your data," should you believe it? Well, first of all, there's a reason I put that in quotes! Our guest today, Dr. Rachelle Dené Poth, is an attorney with a law degree from Duquesne University, a classroom teacher with a doctorate in instructional technology, and the author of 10 books. Her answer is no, and she explains why.

Today we dig into safety, protecting students by protecting their personally identifiable information (PII), and making smart use of AI.

What you'll learn:

• The one thing Rachelle checks before she trusts any "we don't share your data" promise
• The surprising details that count as personally identifiable information
• Whether what you type into AI really stays in your account
• How far back one school data breach turned out to reach
• Who could be liable when a teacher accidentally shares student information
• Why educators are in the best position to teach students what not to type

Disclaimer: This episode is general information, not legal advice. Listening does not create an attorney-client relationship with our guest or with Cool Cat Teacher, LLC. Laws vary by state and situation, so talk with your school or district's legal counsel about your specific circumstances. Our guest's views are her own.

Full show notes, transcript, and resources: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1014

If this episode helped you, take a moment to rate and review the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast wherever you listen.

Schools are funny. The weirdest things happen. But even in the midst of all of that hurry and scurry, we still have jobs to do, and AI for teachers can help get things done. Maurie Beasley, author of Teachers Have Bigger Fish to Fry, has some great perspectives to share with teachers.

Maurie is a former teacher, counselor, and assistant principal who now directs technology for a rural Texas district. She shares how you can still figure out the best uses of AI even when you have bigger fish to fry!

What you'll learn:

• What happened when a snake fell out of the air conditioning vent onto a teacher's desk
• The difference between efficiency AI and opportunity AI, and which one to start with
• Why her book skips the AI's bad answers, and what she printed instead
• The question Maurie says AI is finally making us ask about being human
• Who should be in control when the laptop lid goes up

Show notes and full transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1013

If this episode helped you, please leave a rating and review. It helps other teachers find the show.

I asked Gemini Notebook (formerly known as NotebookLM) a dress-code question, and it gave me the answer and the page number from our handbook.

Vickie Echols says the turning point for her was when she was barreling through the hallway and the teacher she was with stopped and asked her, "Ms. Echols, do you always walk this fast?" That moment was a turning point for Vickie, and when she saw AI, she wondered how she could save time on tedious tasks to make more time for human moments, so she wrote AI for School Leaders: 62 Ways to Lighten Your Workload and Focus on What Matters.

Vickie has lots of ideas, including how to fix tone in emails, how a superintendent used Gemini Notebook (formerly known as NotebookLM) to summarize meetings for board members, and the usefulness of Gemini Notebook when you're answering handbook questions (this tip is for teachers and administrators!).

Show notes, the full transcript, and links: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1012

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The hallway question that changed Vickie Echols's decisions for how she would lead as an administrator
• How to get a fast, straight answer with page numbers from your school handbook or policy manuals
• The board-meeting trick one superintendent uses with NotebookLM
• The one thing to do before you send anyone an AI-generated podcast
• Where AI notetakers might cross a line in schools
• How one teacher fixed her tone that caused her to be confrontational in her emails (without meaning to)

If you're like me, you might have seen these nightmare "restorative practices" videos making the rounds on social media. I put restorative practices in quotes because seeing a kid misbehave, get a lollipop, and go back to class with no consequences seems like insanity to me; nothing is restored, and I would argue that, if that's what is happening, it is making the relationship worse.

So, when I read Amanda Jamerson's story (she won the 2026 National High School Assistant Principal of the Year), I knew her story would give us some insight. Amanda, or "AJAM the Advocate" as she's called online, tells how her team cut office discipline referrals by 69% over three years and how they built a cell phone policy that is actually working on a five-building campus. I also like that she calls her work "heart work" because it is.

Show notes, the full transcript, and links: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1011

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why a high schooler said it was "fair" to have his cell phone taken
• Why kids who get lunch detention with AJAM almost never come back
• What she checks before she'll act on a student referral
• A simple classroom routine for cell phone management that doubles as attendance
• Three questions a suspended student answers before coming back
• Some mistakes AJAM has observed with restorative practices
• How she helps her teachers know what to say when they are in the emotional moment of a student referral

Teachers, IT coaches, and principals can get excited and present at a conference, and then it happens: side jobs for teachers come calling. People start asking them to speak. They get opportunities. But how do you handle this?

Today's guest, Dr. Will Deyamport (we call him "Dr. Will"), the author of The Edupreneur, talks about building an education business the right way. From disclosures to avoiding conflicts of interest (there are some things you can't do) to owning your own IP, Dr. Will's advice is solid and timeless.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The hard moment when Dr. Will realized he needed to have an opportunity on the side
• Why I don't like calling it a "side hustle"
• What you need to do before you cash your first check
• The criticism Dr. Will got for talking about money and how he answered it
• Why T-shirts and stickers shouldn't be payment for your work
• When working with an edtech company becomes a conflict of interest
• The question you need to ask before you create anything on a school-issued device

Guest: Dr. Will Deyamport, III, author of The Edupreneur and host of The Dr. Will Show podcast.

Show notes, the full transcript, and links: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1010

What are the learning myths we need to abandon? What does the neuroscience say? Today's guest, Ross McGill, author of The Teacher Toolkit Guide to the Science of Learning, shares his findings.

If your students highlight every page and call it studying, or your school plans lessons around learning styles, you'll want to hear this. What does the science of learning say actually works?

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The simple question about learning that many teachers can't answer
• What a student is really telling you when they say, "Miss, what did you say?"
• The myth Ross once had to plan his own lessons around
• What helped my son learn to read, and why it isn't a learning style
• The chapter Ross calls the most frightening in his book
• Why a student who "highlighted everything" may have wasted the evening
• The one step Ross added to think-pair-share, and why it matters with 30 students

Guest: Ross Morrison McGill, founder of TeacherToolkit and a former deputy head teacher in London.

Show notes, the full transcript, and links: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1009

His class didn't have the chemistry tools they needed. So, Ky'lin Spears built them. He's a student and has built a free molecule builder, periodic table, and chemistry simulations. His tool is free in any browser and collects no student information.

So today's Wonderful Classroom Wednesday is featuring a student. Every school has them. The quiet students who figure things out. As you listen to Ky'lin, ask yourself - how can we nourish and encourage students to solve problems in classroom subjects that interest them?

Ky'lin taught himself to code from YouTube videos.

If you teach chemistry, Atomency may be a free resource your students can use this week.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why he built it without AI, and what he tells other students about AI now
• The feature that broke more than 50 times before it finally worked
• Why he made it free, with no login and no student data
• A molecule challenge a chemistry teacher can try this week
• What he wants adults to understand about his generation
• Why he says getting it right on the first try isn't always a win

Guest: Ky'lin Spears, a high school student from Suitland, Maryland, and the creator of Atomency.

Show notes, the full transcript, and links: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1008

Reflective teaching matters. As teachers and professionals, we need to ask ourselves: how are we reflecting and improving? The times I've videoed myself teaching have been hard to watch, but I've learned so much. As you listen to the innovations happening in the teacher education program at Valdosta State University, think about how reflection can improve your teaching.

Dr. Karen Terry has spent more than 30 years in education as a teacher, administrator, district leader, and now a professor preparing future teachers. Her goal is for the teachers from her program to still be happy in the classroom ten years later.

A big part of her program is the connection with mentor teachers. In today's show, Karen shares how her student teachers record their lessons and use both AI coaching AND mentor feedback to reflect and grow. I find it fascinating that each one adds value. Some student teachers who are eager to grow record themselves, reflect with AI, and try strategies they might not have found otherwise.

I would argue that what changes these teachers is their commitment to reflection and growth, along with their willingness to listen to their mentors and use the tools they're given.

Most teachers I know are overly critical of themselves, so we need to give ourselves grace when we watch ourselves teach. Yet reflective use of video can be a valuable tool!

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What most student teachers say after they finally watch the lesson they thought was terrible
• How an AI coach walks a new teacher through reflecting on one goal at a time
• Why a skeptical veteran mentor ended up named mentor of the year
• How one student teacher used video to handle a student's tough behavior
• Karen's test for telling a lasting tool from a passing fad
• What happened when her students wrote their own rules for using AI

If this episode helped you, please rate or review the show wherever you listen. It helps other teachers find it.

Show notes, the full transcript, and the research behind this episode: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1007

When a principal and her school achieve amazing results, I find one thing stands out: the focus on helping students belong and grow. Student belonging is the first thing Sonia Ruiz builds. She is the 2026 National Middle Level Principal of the Year in the US. Incredibly but not surprisingly, her school's English learners and students with IEPs are making gains.

Sonia says she didn't feel like school was built for her, but now she leads Jane Addams Middle School in Bolingbrook, Illinois. The school has earned the state's Exemplary status three years in a row. For her, love and high expectations go together.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The two survey questions that get middle schoolers to tell adults what they really need
• What a school dance looks like when not every student likes noise
• The three questions Sonia's staff asks before any decision
• How a chronically absent sixth grader finished eighth grade mentoring younger students
• Why Sonia uses a rubric to evaluate changes so change doesn't feel personal
• The one small thing students say makes them feel they belong
• What Sonia wishes adults outside school understood about middle schoolers

Show notes, the full transcript, and the research behind this episode: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1006

Going screen-free is an emphasis right now, as is building emotional intelligence. Perhaps that is why bridge is really attractive to some kids. You can also teach math, focus, and teamwork, and you don't have to know how to play. Hall of Famer Patty Tucker created JumpStart Bridge, a free curriculum that has reached more than 12,000 students. It comes with scripts, videos, supplies, and a stipend for teachers who have never dealt a hand.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The one rule of bridge that teaches kids not to quit
• The grade levels Patty calls the sweet spot for starting
• What a teacher who doesn't play bridge gets for free, and how one teacher stays two weeks ahead of her class
• Why one school saw fewer tardies on bridge day
• How a Montana middle school outgrew its own bridge tournament and had to expand from one to three days
• What gifted-education teachers noticed about kids' social skills after the COVID years
• The line from an eighth grader's essay that sums up why face-to-face games matter

Show notes, the full transcript, and links to Patty's free resources: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1005

If this episode gave you an idea for your classroom, take a moment to rate and review the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. It helps other teachers find the show.

ISTE+ASCD 2026 Board President Dr. Jeremy Owoh explains how his district runs toward AI instead of away from it. He also shares why AI can never replace a good teacher and his approach to encouraging innovation in the classroom.

So many teachers are tired of playing "AI whack-a-mole," but it is so helpful to hear how Jeremy helps his district make decisions that bring everyone on board. He says that schools should learn together and set clear expectations. He started as an English teacher in Little Rock, served as an assistant commissioner at the Arkansas Department of Education, and now leads the Jacksonville North Pulaski School District while serving as board president of ISTE+ASCD.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What did ISTE+ASCD CEO Richard Culatta say when he read Jeremy's technology policy?
• Why his district asked students to help rewrite the rules
• The AI tutoring pilot he calls "a game changer," and how he decided whether it worked
• What a former English teacher says matters more than grading the five-paragraph essay
• The one thing every superintendent should do before making AI decisions

Dr. Jeremy S. Owoh is superintendent of the Jacksonville North Pulaski School District in Arkansas and president of the ISTE+ASCD Board of Directors. ISTE+ASCD is now the International Society for Transforming Education. He began his career in 2003 as an English teacher at Parkview Magnet High School in Little Rock.

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

Full show notes, research, and transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1004

Sometimes we need to talk about hard things, like grief in the classroom. Because real life is hard, and real life is in our classroom every day. Our students and we as teachers — we all deal with death. I had to this past school year, and it was hard. It still is. And not everyone experiences it the same way. There's no one-size-fits-all.

On this show, first-grade teacher Haleigh Bresnan and school psychologist Rebecca Brigner share how to help grieving kids and yourself. Their precious children's book about grief, If You're Lucky Enough to Know a Unicorn, honors Kennedy, a baby girl who lived just four months.

I knew this show would be about grief, but it took such an honest turn that it became one of the most authentic conversations about grief in the classroom that I've ever heard. I'm glad we had this conversation and I hope it helps people better understand both what teachers have to help kids with and what we deal with ourselves.

A gentle note: this episode talks about the death of a baby and about miscarriage. If little ones are listening, you may want to save it for later.

When a student is grieving, do you bring it up or let them be? Some kids want to talk. Others just want a normal day with their friends. Haleigh and Rebecca are cousins who work in the same Connecticut school district, so their advice comes from the children they see every day.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How does grief show up in a classroom when a child never says a word about it?
• The one word a school psychologist says every teacher needs when a student is grieving
• Why Haleigh wrote a poem a few lines at a time for six years while rocking her baby son to sleep
• What it's like to show up for your students when you're grieving yourself, and why Haleigh says no one talks about it
• How Kennedy's family reacted when they first saw the book, and what happened the day the first copies arrived

Haleigh Bresnan teaches first grade in eastern Connecticut and wrote If You're Lucky Enough to Know a Unicorn. Her cousin, Rebecca Brigner, is a school psychologist in the same district and illustrated the book.

Full show notes, research, and transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1003

Dr. Patricia Dickenson, author of Smart Teaching in the Age of AI, shows how teachers can use AI to plan and differentiate without losing the heart of teaching. Relationship is still one of the top factors driving student success. Part of using AI is knowing when to use it and when to put it away.

Patricia has a third option for every teacher torn between using AI for everything and banning it altogether: let AI carry some of the planning load, so you have more time for what only you can do, which is connecting with your students. She spent more than 18 years in Los Angeles classrooms and now prepares new teachers, so her advice comes with examples you can use this week.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What did a fourth-grade teacher going through chemo teach Patricia about showing up?
• The custom GPT that tells a brand-new teacher what students should already know before the first lesson
• Never taught a student with auditory processing disorder? How AI can help you plan for the student you haven't met yet
• "Guess what? They're already using it." Her answer to teachers who want to ban AI and go old school
• The one thing Patricia's dissertation found best predicted whether students engage

Dr. Patricia Dickenson is an associate professor of teacher education at National University and spent more than 18 years as a teacher and math coach in the Los Angeles Unified School District. She is the author of Smart Teaching in the Age of AI and co-author of Technology-Infused Math Instruction.

If this episode helped you, would you take 30 seconds to rate and review the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast? It helps other teachers find it.

Full show notes, research, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1002

Kathy Nimmer is the 2026 Helen Keller Achievement Award winner. Her story is so heartwarming that, to celebrate episode 1001, we're airing an extended episode focused on the heart of teaching. The story of her first year teaching is incredible and one we should all hear. If you've been there, you know how quickly a first-year teacher's confidence can shatter. For Kathy Nimmer, a blind high school English teacher, a classroom window shattered too, and it changed how she taught.

Kathy tells how a chaotic first year taught her to bring her authentic self to the classroom, how being blind helped her see her students from the heart, and about the teacher mentorship program she helped create with her district to improve teacher retention. Her positive observations are truly inspiring.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why hiding who you are backfires in the classroom
• How the SEEDS new teacher program supports teachers first and offers PD second
• Affirmative observations: an observation that records only what a teacher does well
• Why specific praise sticks and "great job" doesn't
• Two things to carry all year: you find what you seek, and remember the sunrise

Kathy Nimmer taught English at Harrison High School in West Lafayette, Indiana, for 29 years. She was the 2015 Indiana Teacher of the Year, a National Teacher of the Year finalist, and the recipient of the 2026 Helen Keller Achievement Award from the American Foundation for the Blind.

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1001

Thank you so much! It was February 2017 when I took a day off school to "figure out" how to publish this podcast. I started by telling the story of "Sue and Mrs. Scruggs" and I had no idea what I was doing. I only knew that a 5-day-a-week podcast where teachers, administrators, and those who love kids could get a quick idea every day could be a really good service to education. There are so many amazing stories of teachers, and most of them are too busy or just not called to have a podcast. I didn't want another "talking head" show, as I just wanted to interview people!

So, this episode is not only a thank you, but it is also my son asking me questions. I let John, my son and editor, take this show where he wanted. He asked some pretty personal questions but that was ok. It is good to get the personal stories behind all of it, and here you go.

I'm so glad I get to do this work. I appreciate all of you who listen, share the show with your friends, and suggest people to come on. Without you, I wouldn't have a show. So, if you want to hear some stories and motivations behind the show, celebrate with us for episode 1000.

I also need to say thank you to my husband, Kip, son, John, and my daughter, Susan (she did advertising for me for a while). And our oldest son, James, has also rooted for the show. It is a family project and has blessed us so very much. And speaking of sponsors, thank you to all of the companies who have sponsored the show through the years. You have made it possible, and I'm excited about the many companies who I'm talking to now about sponsoring future weeks of the show.

OK, I guess I haven't thanked the academy yet (ha ha), but this isn't about the academy but about teachers and kids. I love teaching and love students and love getting to bring the stories that can help all of us be better. Thanks again. And I will see you later, educator!

Full show notes and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e1000

Productive struggle is the sweet spot between too easy and too hard. Dr. Barbara Blackburn, author of more than 40 books on rigor and motivation, explains when to help a struggling student and when to hold back, so kids can wrestle with hard work without drowning.

On this Thought Leader Thursday, Barbara shares her structured definition of productive struggle, why students read too-easy work as a sign the teacher doesn't respect them, and the simple "count to 20" habit that keeps teachers from rescuing too soon. She walks through an upper elementary science task where students build the strongest bridge they can from classroom items, and she gives a strategy any teacher can use tomorrow: mischievous misconceptions.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What productive struggle is, and why it still includes scaffolding and support
• The two things that drive intrinsic motivation: value and success
• Why to count to 20 before you step in, and the "show me what you tried" check-in
• Why praising effort, not "you're so smart," keeps students working
• How to celebrate mistakes with mischievous misconceptions

Dr. Barbara Blackburn is a Top 30 Global Guru in Education and the author of Productive Struggle in the K–5 Classroom and Productive Struggle in the 6–12 Classroom.

If this episode helped you, leave a rating or review wherever you listen, and share it with a teacher friend.

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e999

New teacher advice from a three-time Teacher of the Year. Retired fifth-grade teacher Eric Hall spent 27 years in the classroom, and he says it starts with relationships before rigor. Build trust first, and the curriculum comes easier.

On this Wonderful Classroom Wednesday, Eric, author of Controlled Chaos: Lessons They Didn't Teach You in Teacher School, shares how he got to know students and families before the first day of school, why his first call home is always a positive one, and how he let students help write the classroom agreements. He also tells how a weekend plane ride brought a chapter of Hatchet to life, and how a French chef with a falling-off mustache finally taught his class adjectives.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why relationships come before rigor, and how trust makes the curriculum easier to teach
• How to connect with students and parents before the first day of school
• The "first call home is positive" habit, and how to find one good thing about every student in week one
• Why fair doesn't always mean the same, with breaks, pedal bikes, and wobble stools as tools
• How to reach a struggling student through their interests, and why taking teaching risks pays off

Eric Hall is a retired fifth-grade teacher from Cheboygan, Michigan, a three-time Teacher of the Year, and the author of Controlled Chaos.

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e998

Frustrated with AI? Make it interview you first. Dr. Jie Tao of Fairfield University explains why "prompt and pray" gives you brilliant answers one day and useless ones the next, and how a few simple habits get you consistent, reliable results.

On this Tech Tool Tuesday, Jie shares the interview pattern he calls the most powerful prompting technique he teaches, how a "scratch pad" keeps AI working only from your information, and what agentic AI means for teachers. He also explains how his research team used a language model to help clinicians spot signs of suicidal ideation on social media.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why "prompt and pray" frustrates teachers, and why consistent answers beat brilliant ones
• The interview pattern: tell AI "do not assume anything" and to ask you questions first
• How to use a scratch pad so AI works only from the information you give it
• Agentic AI vs. fully autonomous agents like OpenClaw, explained simply
• Why AI is an "overconfident intern," and how to test a tool before students ever see it

Dr. Jie Tao is an associate professor of business analytics and director of the AI & Tech Institute at Fairfield University's Dolan School of Business, and hosts the AI4U podcast.

If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (US).

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e997

Teacher expectations shape what students believe they can do. Edward DeShazer was suspended more than 30 times and expelled three times. Today he leads a school that went from one star to four stars in six years.

On this Motivational Monday, Edward explains the "believement gap": the distance between what a student believes about himself and what he can actually do. He shares the teacher who changed his path, and what his school does to help teachers and students feel like they belong.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What the believement gap is and how teacher expectations shape student success
• Why culture comes first and achievement follows: coffee every morning, a staff workout room, and Walking Wednesdays
• How relationships trickle down from school leaders to teachers to students
• "One Has Got to Go," a two-minute turn-and-talk for the end of class
• Why students (and teachers) need to feel both safe and seen

Edward DeShazer is Executive Director of Greater Holy Temple Christian Academy in Milwaukee, a keynote speaker, and the author of Closing the Believe'ment Gap.

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e996

If this show helps you, would you take 30 seconds to rate and review the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast? It helps other teachers find it.

When a student puts their head down, the question you ask next matters. Therapist and former high school teacher Charle Peck shares the one question to ask instead of "What's wrong with you?" and simple ways to support student mental health without becoming a therapist.

Charle spent years teaching high school before becoming a clinical therapist, and she is the co-author of The Language of Behavior and Improving School Mental Health. On this Fab Idea Friday, she explains why your own well-being is part of the job, not one more thing on your to-do list, and why noticing is the first skill every teacher needs.

She demonstrates a rapid reset, a 10- to 30-second activity that resets your energy and the whole room's. She also explains why she runs a reset with the whole class instead of singling out the one student who is struggling. And she shares a point every principal needs to hear: teachers won't refer a student unless they trust the referral system will help.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The one question to ask a struggling student: "What am I missing?"
• What a rapid reset is and how to use one with the whole class
• Why noticing your own patterns comes before helping students
• What to do when a student puts their head down
• Why a referral system teachers trust matters for student mental health

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e995

If this episode gave you an idea, share it with a teacher who could use it this week.

Why kids can't stop moving, and why some students can't sit still in class: an occupational and physical therapist explains the need behind the movement.

🏆 NUMBER 1 IN OUR COUNTDOWN OF THE TOP 10 EPISODES OF THE FIRST 1,000 — 46,509 downloads. Originally aired February 1, 2018 (episode 244).

📌 Full show notes, resources, and transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e994

Suzanne Cresswell, an occupational and physical therapist, explains why the student who is always moving isn't necessarily misbehaving. Often, she says, that movement is a strategy the child has developed to keep their brain engaged. She explains the vestibular sense (feeling gravity) and the proprioceptive sense (feeling your muscles and joints), and why classroom planks, movement breaks, therapy balls, inflatable seat cushions, and flexible seating can help a busy child stay ready to learn.

🎯 WHAT YOU'LL LEARN • What a unique learner is, and why every classroom has one • Why "acting out" may be a strategy to stay engaged • The vestibular and proprioceptive senses, explained for teachers • Why planks and movement breaks can calm a busy child • Seating that lets students move without disrupting others • Why there's nothing wrong with the child who can't stop moving

👤 ABOUT SUZANNE CRESSWELL Suzanne Cresswell is an occupational and physical therapist who works with unique learners and the parents and teachers who support them. She is the author of Unique Learner Solutions: Discover the Ability in Learning Disability. 

NUMBER 2 IN OUR COUNTDOWN OF THE TOP 10 EPISODES OF THE FIRST 1,000. This one goes all the way back to April 2017, when the show was brand new, and it has been downloaded 27,314 times — the second most-listened-to episode in the history of the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast.

Rob Donatelli, a high school business educator in York, Pennsylvania, brings five brain breaks you can run tomorrow with no prep and almost no supplies. A brain break, as Rob describes it, is a chance for students to step away from high-level processing, have some fun, and refocus so they can get back to learning at their highest potential.

The five: a backward race through the room, 60-second pitches, Name Three Things, cell phone ping pong, and the penny arm flip. Each takes a few minutes. Several of them build the soft skills students rarely get to practice — talking, pitching, and thinking on their feet.

Rob also answers the question every teacher has: what happens when someone walks in to observe and thinks you're just playing? When his school moved from 42-minute to 68-minute class periods, his administration encouraged brain breaks to help teachers chunk instruction. And the students noticed. "If I don't do this, Vicki, they're begging me," he says.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- What a brain break is and why students need one
- The backward race: a whole-class reset that gets everyone moving
- 60-second pitches: a brain break that builds public speaking
- Name Three Things: a fast head-to-head for quick processing
- Cell phone ping pong and the penny arm flip — two games students will ask for
- What to say to an observer who thinks you're playing
- Why novelty and breaking routine make a classroom remarkable

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e993 

If this episode is useful to you, leave a rating wherever you're listening — it's how other teachers find the show.

NUMBER 3 IN OUR COUNTDOWN OF THE TOP 10 EPISODES OF THE FIRST 1,000. This one originally aired January 31, 2022 and has been heard 27,058 times — the third most-listened-to episode in the history of the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast.

Lisa Hollihan Allen is a K-12 reading specialist and literacy interventionist, and she came on to talk about the thing nobody puts on a lesson plan: reading stamina. Not decoding. Not comprehension. The plain ability to keep reading.

Her framing is the one that sticks. Most students have word recognition well before middle school, she says — and a lot of them still cannot sustain attention on a page. So they fake read. They look at the book, the eyes move, and nothing happens, and because it all goes on inside their heads it is almost impossible to catch during independent reading time.

She gives five moves, drawn from her own classroom and from the work of Penny Kittle, Laura Robb, and NCTE: give them protected time, give them choice, get them conferencing and talking about books, advertise great reads so they can see themselves and see past themselves, and then challenge them to stretch — longer books, harder books, new genres.

And she is blunt about frustration. "I think sometimes as teachers, especially with older kids, especially older, struggling readers, we want to avoid frustration at all costs. And I don't know that that's doing them any favors." Her alternative is not to remove the hard thing. It is to teach a student to notice they are frustrated and to keep going anyway — because reading stamina, as she puts it, is brain stamina. It is the same muscle they need in science and social studies.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- What reading stamina actually is — NCTE defines it as sustaining mental effort without scaffolds or adult support
- Fake reading: why it is so hard to catch, and what it costs
- The five moves — time, choice, conferencing, vision, challenge
- Why self-selected reading drives engagement and vocabulary at the same time
- How to let a student stretch past their "level" when motivation is doing the work
- The exact language to use with a frustrated reader, and why removing frustration backfires
- Why a reading specialist calls herself the reading coach, not the reading teacher

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e992 

NUMBER 4 IN OUR COUNTDOWN OF THE TOP 10 EPISODES OF THE FIRST 1,000. This one originally aired in December 2021 and has been downloaded 26,813 times — the fourth most-listened-to episode in the history of the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast.

Dr. Douglas Fisher came on to talk about Rebound, the book he wrote with Nancy Frey, Dominique Smith, and John Hattie. The pandemic framing is dated. The research underneath it is not — and it answers a question every teacher still has: when a student is behind, do you go back, or do you go forward?

Doug's answer is forward. The acceleration research says so, and it comes from a place most of us never look: gifted education. That literature has one finding that should stop you cold. On average, forty percent of instructional minutes are spent on things students already know. We call it review. Students identified as gifted have been telling us for decades what it actually is — boredom, dressed up as instruction.

So you find out where students actually are. You keep the pace brisk. You make the relevance obvious. You rebuild confidence in learners who have stopped believing their own effort matters. And you build knowledge in advance: a ninety-second video on the LMS, two concepts and two vocabulary words, so the time you have together live can move.

He is also blunt about the language we use. "This learning loss narrative is really dangerous," he says. "That's what's killing my morale right now… I'm not convinced that the ninth graders all of a sudden started reading like fourth graders." There is unfinished learning. That's a different thing, and knowing exactly where a student is and teaching them what they need next is, in his words, our superpower.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- Why acceleration beats remediation — and where that research actually comes from
- The 40% finding: how much class time goes to content students already know
- The four moves of acceleration: know where they are, keep the pace, build relevance, rebuild confidence
- Preview and review — a better way to think about asynchronous work than "homework"
- Why tutoring should teach students HOW to learn, not just what they missed
- "Water, water everywhere": the student data we store and never use
- Why "learning loss" is the wrong phrase, and "unfinished learning" is the right one

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e990 

If this episode is useful to you, leave a rating wherever you're listening — it's how other teachers find the show.

You do not have to be an AI expert to teach AI literacy. Laura Gray says nobody is one — and points to free, ready-to-teach lessons that work in any subject.

SPONSORED: Experience AI, a co-developed program by the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Google DeepMind, sponsored this episode. All opinions are my own and that of the guest.

Experience AI is a free AI literacy program with ready-to-teach lessons for ages 8 to 16, in any subject. Laura asked some third graders how a smart speaker works. They told her the question gets recorded and sent to a human being who looks up the answer and speaks it back. Her own four-year-old told her a very short lady lives inside her phone. Children are building theories about these systems whether or not a screen ever comes into your classroom, which is the whole case for teaching this even if you never plug anything in. Laura's advice on the expertise problem is the part I keep repeating: nobody is an expert in AI, so stop trying to be one and start small.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why you are likely already teaching AI literacy in your subject without naming it

• How to weave AI into what you already teach without going off track

• What this looks like at age eight versus age fifteen, including the unplugged advertisement-detective lesson for younger students

• Why anthropomorphizing AI is riskier for children than adults assume

• "Discernment instead of skepticism," and why she chose that word on purpose

• The crutch test — am I reaching for this because I don't know how? — and what students lose when the answer is yes

• Where to start in the free curriculum, and how the lessons are edited and localized by the teachers using them

Laura Gray is a Senior Learning Manager at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, where she manages Experience AI across North America. Experience AI is free, available in 20+ languages, has been downloaded more than a million times across over 195 countries, and won the 2025 UNESCO King Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa Prize for the Use of ICT in Education.

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e990 

NUMBER 5 IN OUR COUNTDOWN OF THE TOP 10 EPISODES OF THE FIRST 1,000. This one originally aired in 2021 and has been downloaded more than 25,000 times — the fifth most-listened-to episode in the history of the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast.

Thomas Arnett and the Christensen Institute surveyed nationally representative samples of teachers and administrators about what teaching actually looked like during the pandemic. The headline finding was brutal and clear: seventy-nine percent of hybrid teachers were running concurrent instruction — the room and the Zoom at once — and in the free-response comments they said flatly that it could not be done well. Hardest year of my career, said teachers who had been teaching for thirty years.

But a small minority said the opposite. They said it worked. What they did differently is the whole reason this episode still matters five years later: instead of stretching one live lesson across two audiences, they built their lessons as online resources students moved through at their own pace, and spent class time checking in with individual kids. Those are the teachers who reported knowing their students better than they usually do. And when the Institute compared tool use before and after, the biggest jumps in adoption were in exactly those tools — lesson creation and screen recording.

There's a second finding in here that has nothing to do with the pandemic and everything to do with your building. Asked how well things were going, administrators clustered between sixty and a hundred. Teachers split into two clusters — one around seventy or eighty, and another around thirty to forty. Same schools. Two different realities.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- Why concurrent instruction — teaching the room and the screen at once — failed for almost everyone who tried it
- What the small minority of teachers who said "this worked" actually did instead
- The tools whose adoption jumped the most, and why that tells you which teachers changed their methodology
- The optimism gap between what administrators reported and what teachers reported
- Three recommendations for school leaders, including what NOT to cancel when the emergency ends
- Vicki's question that outlives the pandemic entirely: teachers are going back to what worked for them — but did it ever work?

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e989 

If this episode is useful to you, leave a rating wherever you're listening — it's how other teachers find the show.

Dr. Sarah Levine taught secondary English in a Chicago public school for ten years, where she founded a youth radio program to make writing feel real to her students. She is now a Lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and Executive Director of the Stanford Teacher Education Program. In this episode she gives you the smallest possible version of an authentic audience — an audience of one — and it turns out that's enough.

Her students record a memory about someone they love and give it to that person as a gift. Levine's research found that kids revise just as hard for that one listener as they would for public radio. Strong verbs, no cliches, concrete images — every rule of good writing gets more important when there's nothing to look at.

This episode originally aired in 2021 and comes in at number six in our countdown of the top 10 episodes of the first 1,000.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- Why "who's going to read this besides you?" is the real writing problem
- How an audience of one produces the same revision effort as an audience of thousands
- The three-to-four week unit: listen, build criteria, draft, cut cliches, record
- Why writing for audio quietly enforces every rule of good writing
- Where to find free student-made audio stories to use as models

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e988 

If you've got a student who writes nothing for you and everything for their friends, send them this idea — and send this episode to the English teacher down the hall.

Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath has lectured at Harvard, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Melbourne, and has worked with more than 150 schools around the world. In this episode he gives five findings from brain science that change what you do Monday — starting with the one most of us have backwards. Memory isn't built by how you put information in. It's built by how often your students pull it back out.

This episode originally aired in 2019 and comes in at number seven in our countdown of the top 10 episodes of the first 1,000.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- Why rereading notes doesn't build memory, and what to do instead
- Why students can't read your slides and listen to you at the same time
- The attention threshold, and how to reset it every 10 to 15 minutes
- How to find the story behind a fact so the fact sticks
- Why facts have to come before skills, demonstrated with a cricket match you won't understand a word of

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e987 

If this one made you rethink something you've been doing for years, share it with a teacher who needs it.

Mastery learning is the driver's-test rule applied to school: if a student fails the test, they take it again until they pass. Jon Bergmann teaches that way, full time, in chemistry and physics.

This is #8 in the Top 10 of the First 1,000, a two-week countdown of the most-downloaded episodes of the 10 Minute Teacher leading up to episode 1,000 on September 28, 2026. Jon Bergmann is one of the two teachers who started the flipped classroom movement — and he has spent the years since making the case that flipping was never the destination. Mastery was. He came back to the classroom in 2019 specifically to teach this way, and he wrote the how-to manual he wished he'd had.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- Why mastery learning is a simple idea most schools already accept everywhere except the gradebook
- How an exchange student who arrived in January, with no chemistry background, accidentally proved flipped mastery could work
- What a mastery unit looks like in physics — five or six lessons, then a test where students get one shot at hitting the target
- The number one reason teachers abandon mastery learning in the first year, and the strategy Jon and Aaron Sams built to fix it
- How tiered tests work: a deep-understanding test, a clear test, and a basic test — and how you decide what every student must know versus what is nice to know
- Why the research says mastery learning helps lower-achieving students most, and which courses are the easiest place to begin
- Where to go next if you want to keep learning: Teach Better's Grid Method, the Mastery Transcript Consortium, and the wider competency-based learning world

Show notes, resources, and the full transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e986 

We are eight episodes away from number 1,000. If you've been listening along, subscribe and stay with me for the next thousand — and if a colleague came to mind while you listened, send this one to them.

Eight ways to engage every learner — recorded in 2021, and every principle still works. This was #9 in our all-time top 10 countdown, and it isn't a ten-minute episode: it's a full session of classroom principles and tools for re-engaging students.

I've edited this one lightly to remove a few apps that no longer exist and to fix my numbering. But I left the AI ethics segment in on purpose. Back in 2021 — well before ChatGPT — educators were already teaching students to think about whether we should, not just whether we could. Those students got a head start, and that history is worth hearing.

In this episode, you'll learn:
- Why slow, steady progress ("innovate like a turtle") beats a total overhaul
- How to relate before you educate — and the research behind why it works
- Four ways to give students a safe channel to tell you how they're doing
- How to bring students into evaluating your own teaching practices
- What teaching AI ethics looked like before ChatGPT existed

The story of Sue and Mrs. Scruggs is the center of this episode — a five-minute conversation with one teacher that changed the entire direction of a life.

Full show notes, every link from the original slides, and updated 2026 tools:
https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e985

If this one helped you, please leave a review wherever you're listening — it's how other teachers find the show.

This is #10 in the Top 10 of the First 1,000 — a countdown of the ten most-downloaded episodes in the history of the 10 Minute Teacher, running weekdays through September 18. Ranked on total downloads including re-airs, this conversation with Michelle Blanchet has been heard 23,379 times.

It originally aired on September 27, 2021 as episode 764. I am re-airing it unchanged because the problem it solves did not go away.

Michelle Blanchet, co-author of The Startup Teacher Playbook, teaches a method for figuring out the specific thing that is wrong — not the vague heavy feeling, but the actual named problem — so that you can make an improvement and feel forward progress. Social emotional learning is not just for students. This one is about you.

Show notes: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/are-you-an-upset-teacher-how-to-understand-what-is-wrong/ 

AI with intention. AI with integrity. Is it possible? Tony Frontier, author of AI with Intention, is talking about how we value learning in the age of AI. He shares the language we can use to evaluate what we're doing, how we're talking about AI, and how we're measuring learning, and ultimately, why education needs to change more than ever.

Experience AI, a program co-developed by Raspberry Pi Foundation and Google DeepMind, sponsored this podcast episode. All opinions are my own and those of the guest. Experience AI is a free AI literacy program with ready-to-teach lessons for ages 8 to 16, in any subject. http://experience-ai.org

I also open this show with some highlights from the Report of MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training and what it means for learning, and they use a term I think we should all be discussing: cognitive surrender. We cannot let our kids cognitively surrender and let AI do the work for them. They also talk about helping students understand that their learning, integrity, and judgment are the product of college, not the grades. So many challenges we have now, but this week has been about sharing the conversations and thought leaders to help you improve the AI conversation in your school. I hope this Thursday helps you be a thought leader in your school!

Tim Plaehn is a teacher who writes about honor codes. In his writing class last April, he believed he had two students he knew used AI. So, he gave the whole class an opportunity to "come clean," and he said his email began dinging while 22 of the 40 students admitted they had used AI on their papers. Tim has authored the book, The Honor Code: Students, Integrity, and our Path Forward where he talks about integrity and how we need to be discussing integrity with our students. This is not an easy topic but an important one!

Show notes: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e982

Experience AI, a program co-developed by Raspberry Pi Foundation and Google DeepMind, sponsored this podcast episode. All opinions are my own and those of the guest. Experience AI is a free AI literacy program with ready-to-teach lessons for ages 8 to 16, in any subject. http://experience-ai.org

A.J. Juliani has been leading cohorts of educators and administrators to learn how to build data dashboards that improve student learning. I love how he focuses on the human aspect of learning. In today's show, we'll talk through the "interview mode" of using AI that is so powerful in addition to using data to improve the experience of school for our learners and teachers. We'll talk about personally identifiable information, the importance of removing it, and some tips and tricks for interacting with AI to generate data dashboards and other tools of your choice.

📌 Full show notes, resources, and transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e981 

Experience AI, a program co-developed by Raspberry Pi Foundation and Google DeepMind, sponsored this podcast episode. All opinions are my own and those of the guest. Experience AI is a free AI literacy program with ready-to-teach lessons for ages 8 to 16, in any subject. http://experience-ai.org

Teaching creativity is not an "extra" that is just for art, theater, or woodshop. As teachers, we can learn how the four branches of creativity are applied in math, science, and engineering and how creativity gives us an edge in today's world.

📌 Full show notes, resources, and transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e980

Experience AI, a program co-developed by Raspberry Pi Foundation and Google DeepMind, sponsored this podcast episode. All opinions are my own and those of the guest. Experience AI is a free AI literacy program with ready-to-teach lessons for ages 8 to 16, in any subject. http://experience-ai.org

We all have a reputation, whether we build it intentionally or not. One of my son's favorite assignments from middle school was when a teacher asked him to draw a coat of arms. It included what he liked, what mattered to him, and what characteristics he wanted to portray. He was figuring out who he was. Who would even put the word "brand" with an activity like that? However, there are times we may want to take the approach of "building a personal brand."

Whatever angle you want to take, Elisabeth Bostwick talks about authentic learning. Now, for those of us who automatically associate personal branding with social media, this doesn't mean that students have to post on social media at all. Students can start with their strengths and interests and select brand colors as well. Elisabeth has done this with high school entrepreneurship students as well as fourth graders. For today's Fab Idea Friday, think about activities that help students think through how they want to be viewed.

Show notes: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e979 

Honesty. We need to be honest about where we are in education. Whether authentic, true, genuine learning is happening should be the question for all of us in education. None of us wants to pretend or participate in a farce. AI guilt is now "a thing" college graduates are talking about. College graduates who are not being "caught" but feel like they spent the last years pretending to learn.

Dr. Christian Miller, author of The Honesty Crisis, has spent more than a decade running some of the largest funded research projects on honesty and moral character. He says that the internet was the first honesty crisis in education. AI is the second one.

We talk about both sides of the desk on this one. Both the student writing their paper with AI and learning nothing, and the teacher giving AI-generated feedback without disclosing it to students. This is why an honest expert is staying up at night about the papers his philosophy students are writing (or if they are not).

Show notes: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e978 

Wow, this is a sensitive topic. And remember that every person with autism has a different experience. But Claire O'Neill is a teacher and she's telling her story of school.

Claire can see the roof of her old primary school from her classroom window. She remembers walking up to the school door with that gnawing, upset feeling in her stomach and the itchy, scratchy uniform that made her so uncomfortable. She says the room was either too hot or too cold. It was almost always too loud, and she says it was smelly. Claire got in trouble a lot. Now, that she's studied autism, she understands better why.

Claire has spent more than twenty years teaching autistic students and is a PhD researcher at University College Cork (Ireland) studying what school is actually like for autistic teachers.

Claire shares her story from an educational perspective. A full-circle moment of a PhD expert teacher reflecting upon the girl she used to be and advocating to help us all understand how to help children like her.

My Mom was one of the most compassionate, intuitive teachers I've ever known. She always said when I had a student who learned differently and I would accommodate for the whole class, everyone in the classroom learned better. Claire says the same thing. She also talks about the importance of Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

She also encourages us to listen to our learners. Believe them when they tell you how they experience your room. And to act upon what they tell us.

Claire is an expert, but I'm not. While I've taught some precious students with autism and most of them thrived in my classroom (one early in my career, I wish I could go back and use strategies I know now.) I share this story with sensitivity and the knowledge that I don't know what I don't know but I know it is important to listen. And isn't that what Claire tells us in the show?

I hope this show makes us all more empathetic on this Wonderful Classroom Wednesday because not every child actually thinks our classroom is wonderful and we need to listen and learn to make it better.

Show notes: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e977 

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!

Link to show notes: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e976 

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.

Show notes: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e975 

Chronic absenteeism doesn't get fixed by counting absences. It gets fixed by asking why.

Dr. Leah Marsh is Assistant Principal at Niles Middle School in Ohio and one of three finalists in the country for the National Association of Secondary School Principals Middle Level Assistant Principal of the Year. Under her leadership, Niles Middle School reduced suspensions by 32% while attendance and engagement went up. She did not relax a single standard to get there.

SPONSORED: Ellis, a program of Children's Health Council, sponsored this episode. All opinions are my own and that of the guest.

In this episode she walks through what her team actually did: pulling the absence data apart until it named real causes — a bus-driver shortage was one — building a Check & Connect mentoring program that pairs struggling students with one adult in the building who is glad to see them, and opening a room called the Dragon Den where a student can re-regulate and go back to class instead of collecting a detention.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why the number on your absenteeism report is the beginning of the question, not the answer
• How her team decides which students get a mentor, out of 450 to 500 kids
• What the Dragon Den is, and why it isn't just another detention room
• Why a rise in tardies can be a win when whole-day absences fall
• Her answer when someone asks whether a teacher's wake-up call is really the parent's job

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e974 

If this episode gave you something to try, leave a review wherever you're listening — it helps other educators find the show.

Only 18% of principals say they feel very confident about leading AI this school year — but 7 in 10 schools are already immersed in figuring it out. SPONSORED: Ellis, a program of Children's Health Council, sponsored this week's shows on the 10 Minute Teacher. All opinions are my own and that of the guest.

Ronn Nozoe, CEO of the National Principals Association, joins me to unpack a survey we ran together across his members and my Classroom Matters subscribers. What we found is more encouraging than the headline number suggests: the schools making progress with AI aren't the ones with all the answers. They're the ones where principals and teachers are figuring it out side by side.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- Why only 18% of principals feel "very confident" leading AI — and why overconfidence would be the real warning sign
- What 7 in 10 schools are already doing, and what the other 3 in 10 say they're waiting on
- The number one thing principals asked for in the survey — it isn't funding and it isn't tools
- What happened when Ronn convened a teacher round table as a state deputy superintendent
- The exact words to use when you want to help your principal — and why you shouldn't say them in a faculty meeting
- Why "we were supposed to be good soldiers" is the wrong model for a profession trying to grow leaders

Ronn Nozoe has been a teacher, a principal, deputy state superintendent in Hawaii, and a leader at the U.S. Department of Education. He now leads the National Principals Association, which serves about 17,000 school leaders across the country.

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e973 

If this episode helped you, please rate and review the show wherever you're listening — it genuinely helps other teachers find us. And share it with a teacher friend who needs to hear that nobody has this all figured out yet.

Your student has an IEP all the way through high school. Then they graduate — and it doesn't go with them. Dr. Toby Tomlinson Baker was diagnosed with a learning disability in 1987, attended six different schools between kindergarten and twelfth grade, and was told by her guidance counselors not to bother applying to college. She has a PhD. In this episode she explains what actually changes the day a student walks off a high school campus, why the accommodations you fought for don't automatically transfer, and how to teach a student to ask for what they need before anyone makes them.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- What legally changes when a student moves from high school to college — and why a university can say no
- Why self-advocacy is a skill you teach, not a personality trait a student either has or doesn't
- What Dr. Baker found when she interviewed college professors about disability law for her dissertation
- Why the accommodation that helps one student usually helps the whole class
- The one thing that predicts whether a struggling student turns a corner

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e972 

If this episode helped you think differently about a student, share it with a teacher who needs it.

SPONSORED: Ellis, a program of Children's Health Council, sponsored this episode. All opinions are my own and that of the guest.

Show Sponsor: 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 on 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: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/ellis

Most teachers reaching for AI to help with a struggling student are reaching for the wrong kind of AI. General-purpose chat tools pull from the open internet, they were never trained on whether the information is accurate, and they should be nowhere near a student's personally identifiable information. Natalie Tamburello, a learning disability and education equity advocate at Children's Health Council, walks through what a teacher-facing AI built on vetted research actually looks like — and why she thinks that is where the real classroom wins are right now.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- Why "just ask ChatGPT" falls short when a student is struggling with behavior, learning, or the emotional side of school
- What RAG (retrieval augmented generation) is, and how pulling from a curated library of vetted nonprofit resources changes the answer you get
- Why the first question a good tool asks you is "what are this student's strengths?"
- How to describe a student situation without putting personally identifiable information into any AI
- The clear line between a classroom strategy and clinical advice — and what a teacher-facing tool should refuse to do

Ellis is a free tool for K-12 educators from Children's Health Council. It pulls from a knowledge base of content from trusted partners like CAST, CASEL, Understood and others, it gives you information rather than clinical advice, and it does not collect personally identifiable student information. Today's show was sponsored by Ellis. All opinions are my own and that of the guest. https://www.askellis.org/ 

Full show notes, links, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e971 

Share this one with the teacher down the hall who is still thinking about that one student.

Boundaries are not a heavy conversation you need a degree to have. They are small, repeated moments — and the right words handed to a child before they need them. Ashley Bendiksen, author of A Kids Book About Boundaries, shows teachers what to say.

Ashley Bendiksen is a national speaker and abuse prevention advocate who spent years talking to teens about dating violence. Then she moved earlier. Her book for children ages five to nine teaches the skill underneath all of it: knowing you have a choice, and having the words to say so. In this conversation she shows what that looks like in an elementary classroom — the two-option choice, the "I don't like that" script, the pause to ask "did we ask first?" — none of which requires adding anything to your lesson plan.

We also talk about your boundaries, because teaching is high-burnout work and we are modeling something for kids either way.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- Why boundaries are emotional and social, not just physical
- The micro-moments that teach boundaries without a new lesson
- A role-play activity you can run this week
- What to say to the student who always decides what everyone plays
- Why "let's all just get along" can send the wrong message
- One small boundary to set for yourself this week

Show notes and full transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e970 

Show Sponsor: 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 on 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: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/ellis 

★ If this show helps you, leave a rating or review wherever you're listening. It is the single thing that helps another teacher find us.

Jerry Kolber built Nat Geo's Brain Games and Netflix's Brainchild — then moved his team off screens entirely. In this episode he explains why, and what teachers are doing with kids' podcasts that he never planned for.

The practical piece: transition time. Coming back from lunch or recess, a short episode gets students seated, listening, and settled without a single reminder — and they don't notice they're learning. Jerry also shares how mini quizzes every three or four minutes train attention, and why "co-listening" — making a show adults genuinely enjoy — is a deliberate design choice.

Then the conversation turns. Vicki and Jerry talk through what happens when AI-generated audio floods the feed, and land on the question that actually matters: if a show gets something wrong, is there a human on the other end who can fix it?

In this episode, you'll learn:
- Why transition time is the highest-value slot for a short podcast in your day
- How question breaks every few minutes build listening stamina
- Why co-listening makes a classroom resource work at home too
- How to search a back catalog for episodes that match your current unit
- Why human accountability is the real dividing line with AI content

One thing worth knowing: Who Smarted?+ is free and ad-free for educators. Go to whosmarted.com, click Educators, and enter your school email.

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e969 

If this episode gave you something you can use Monday, please leave a rating or review wherever you're listening — it's the single best way to help other teachers find the show.