5 Ways To Bring SEL Into Edtech Classroom Use
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
Release Date: 06/27/2019
How a School Built Its Culture Around the 7 Habits — and the Academics Followed — Episode 965
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
A struggling Title I school built its culture around the 7 Habits — and the academics followed. Principal Muriel Summers tells how. In 1999, Muriel Summers became principal of A.B. Combs Elementary in Raleigh, North Carolina — the fifth person interviewed for a job four others had walked away from. She had just heard Dr. Stephen Covey speak, and she went back to her staff with one question: do you think we can teach these habits to children? There was no framework. There was no money. What they built turned A.B. Combs into the original Leader in Me school and one of the most visited...
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Free BBC Resources for Your Classroom: Dinosaurs, Bluey, Planet Earth and News — Episode 964
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
Free, ad-free BBC videos with ready-to-teach lesson plans — Bluey, leveled reading articles, dinosaur field trips, and a daily newsroom, all free for K-12. Kimmie Fink spent 13 years in the classroom and was named Puget Sound Teacher of the Year before becoming Senior Editor of the BBC Learning Hub. At her ISTE 2026 booth, teachers kept asking what the premium version costs. The answer: there isn't one. Everything is free. In this Fab Idea Friday episode, Kimmie walks through what a teacher can download and use tomorrow — and how a former teacher decides what belongs in a resource library...
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Assessment and Feedback That Move Learning Forward — Episode 963
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
The moment you put a grade on something, it stops being formative. Starr Sackstein returns for her fourth 10 Minute Teacher appearance to make assessment practical — what formative really means, what to do with the data you're already collecting, and the strategies that work at the start, middle, and end of a lesson. Starr has spent more than two decades helping teachers move from traditional grading toward feedback that actually drives learning. Her newest book, Actionable Assessment, is co-authored with Michael McDowell. In this episode, you'll learn: - The one-word difference between...
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Math Games That Build Fluency While Kids Have Fun — Episode 962
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
Timed tests don't make kids faster! These experts say timed tests make kids anxious and don't tell you what a child actually knows. Dr. Jennifer Bay-Williams and Dr. Gina Kling, co-authors of Math Fact Fluency: 60+ Games and Assessment Tools to Support Learning and Retention, explain what to do instead: low-stress card and dice games where nobody races anybody, and where watching kids play gives you better assessment data than any speed drill. Vicki shares why math facts in first grade were harder for her than calculus at Georgia Tech. (She also shares why her mom, who sat at the kitchen table...
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How to Make VR Actually Work in Your Classroom — Episode 961
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
The wow has to be secondary to the why. Meghan Freeman spent a year letting her staff play in VR before a single student put on a headset — and what they found changed how she designs immersive learning. Meghan Freeman, M.Ed., is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of IlluminateXR. Before that she founded and led Elite Academic Academy, where she bought 46 headsets for her staff and gave them an entire school year to explore, argue, and write the policy themselves. In this conversation she gets specific about what actually works: how to manage a room full of students who can't see the room, how long a...
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Data-Driven Leadership That Changes School Culture — Episode 960
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
Most principals say “data-driven” and mean test scores. Dr. Deborah Dennie means attendance, discipline, and climate too — and it changed her school. Dr. Deborah Dennie has led Leonardtown Middle School in St. Mary’s County, Maryland for ten years. She’s Maryland’s Middle School Principal of the Year and one of three middle-school finalists for the 2026 NASSP National Principal of the Year. In this episode she walks Vicki through the data routine she runs every two weeks, why she spent her entire first year looking and listening instead of changing things, and how a classic car...
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Travel With Students: A Principal's Grade-by-Grade Plan — Episode 959
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
Travel with students changes what a school leader sees. Karen Spencer, principal of Parkview Baptist School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, treats travel as part of her school’s mission rather than an add-on — a sixth grade overnight, a seventh grade STEM and history trip to Boston, Washington D.C. in eighth grade, and international travel in high school. In this conversation she walks through how the Boston trip started, what it costs a principal in effort, and what she gets back that nothing inside the building can give her. In this episode, you’ll learn: How a single teacher’s push to...
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Gold Standard PBL vs. Just Doing a Fun Project
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
Gold standard PBL isn’t a fun project with a poster at the end. Lisa Mireles of PBLWorks explains what a real project based learning classroom looks and sounds like — and how to teach it without falling behind on standards. Lisa Mireles, Ed.D., is Managing Director of Digital Curriculum at PBLWorks (formerly the Buck Institute for Education). She’s taught bilingual students in California, led schools in Indonesia and India, served as an IB coordinator, principal, and assistant superintendent, and was named HIDOE Kaua’i Complex Educational Officer of the Year in 2018. In this episode,...
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AI in the Classroom: Assignments Students Can't Fake
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
AI in the classroom isn't a tool problem — it's an assignment problem. Dr. Nancy Frey on designing work students can't fake. Dr. Nancy Frey — professor of educational leadership at San Diego State and teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College — joins Vicki Davis for a practical conversation about what actually changes in a classroom when every student has AI. Not which app to use. What to assign, what to collect, and what to teach kids to verify. Nancy's newest book, Teaching Students to Use AI Ethically & Responsibly, is co-authored with Salman Khan, Douglas Fisher,...
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How to Teach AI in Any Classroom, Not Just CS Class — Episode 956
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
Most teachers know AI belongs in their classroom — almost nobody tells them where to start if they don't teach computer science. Karim Meghji, President and CEO of CodeAI (the nonprofit formerly known as Code.org), gives the answer at ISTE 2026. Vicki took one of Karim's classes on the ISTE show floor before this conversation — including a lesson that asks AI to generate a "healthy meal" and then hands students the cultural bias in the result to talk about. That design choice is the whole episode: students don't learn what AI gets wrong by being told, they learn it by watching it happen...
info_outlineMark Sparvell cites current research about what students really want in their classroom and how social-emotional learning relates to education technology.
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Mark Sparvell - Bio As Submitted
Mark Sparvell is an experienced educator with over 25 years experience leading learning for schools, systems, higher-ed and professional associations.
In his current role, he works directly with education leaders and organizations globally to identify innovative leading and teaching practice, building community and capacity by leveraging digital solutions.
As Associate Director, Professional Learning with Principals Australia Institute, Mark designed and delivered professional learning for education systems across Australia and Asia Pacific. Mark has taught both pre-service and post-graduate studies.
As Education Leader with Microsoft, Mark developed and implemented the Global Leader audience strategy and developed the global Showcase School program.
In his current role Mark has led the Class of 2030 and Emotion and Cognition in the Age of AI global research initiatives.
Mark is the host of the monthly What’s New in Edu Youtube channel, the Teaching Happiness web-series and regular presenter at Executive Briefings, conferences and workshops.
Education Leader
Microsoft Education Microsoft Corporation, USA | marksp@microsoft.com