EP351 What does learning science actually say about AI in the classroom? (with Erin Mote)
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
Release Date: 06/28/2026
EP353 Think out loud: teaching the hidden skills of planning and prioritizing
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
You make dozens of invisible decisions every class period. Should I squeeze in one more activity or leave time for questions? Do I spend more time on this concept or move on? Is this the best use of our remaining five minutes? You weigh options, estimate time, and reprioritize on the fly, and you do it so automatically that you barely notice anymore. But here's the problem: your students have no idea any of this is happening. They just see you move seamlessly from one thing to the next. If kids never see how you plan, prioritize, and adjust, how are they supposed to learn to do it...
info_outline
EP352 Why distress tolerance is the missing piece in classroom management
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
Do your students seem less and less able to sit with anything uncomfortable, whether that's boredom, confusion, frustration, or the feeling of not immediately knowing the answer? The research backs up your anecdotal evidence: distress tolerance in young people is measurably declining. In this episode, I dig into why this is happening and what teachers can actually do about it. We’ll talk about the biology behind why comfort reduces resilience (and why that's not anyone's fault), why our students are more stressed than ever but building less capacity from it, and practical strategies...
info_outline
EP351 What does learning science actually say about AI in the classroom? (with Erin Mote)
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
Everyone has an opinion about AI in classrooms right now, but very few of those opinions are grounded in what we actually know about how kids learn. In this episode, I sit down with Erin Mote, CEO and founder of InnovateEDU and co-founder of Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School, to cut through the noise and talk about what the evidence actually shows about AI as a learning tool. This isn't a conversation about ChatGPT, cheating, whether to ban devices, or what kids are doing with AI at home on their own time (which are separate topics worthy of their own discussion). We're talking specifically...
info_outline
EP350 The power of regret: using hindsight as a tool for growth
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
Teaching gives you a lot of opportunities to look back and wish you'd done it differently, and most of us carry those regrets way longer than we need to. In this episode, I'm sharing what I learned from Daniel Pink's book The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, and how his research applies to the unique kind of regret that teachers carry. I'll walk you through the four categories of regret most people have, the difference between "if only" and "at least" thinking, and a three-step process for actually processing a regret instead of just ruminating on it at 2 a.m. I'll...
info_outline
EP349 Re-awakening kids' curiosity & connection to real food through sensory learning (with Bee Wilson)
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
Food writer Bee Wilson has been in classrooms across the UK, and what she's discovered is startling: many children have completely lost their sensory connection to real food. They know the peach emoji but not the fuzzy feel of actual peach skin. They recognize mint from shampoo but have never smelled a fresh mint leaf. When asked where food comes from, kids used to say "the supermarket." Now they say "mommy's iPad." This slow shift is revealing a new gap in child development that affects how kids observe, describe, and engage with the world around them. In this episode, Bee explains...
info_outline
EP348 Stuck in survival mode? Here's how to calm your nervous system.
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
Most of us are walking around in a low-grade state of fight-or-flight all the time, and we don't even realize it. It looks like the tight jaw in the morning, the exhaustion that doesn't lead to sleep, or the feeling of being on edge even on a good day. These are signs of a nervous system that never got the signal that it's safe to come down. In this episode, I'm sharing a lesson from my new free video course called Everything is Terrible: An Anxiety Toolkit for the Age of Doomscrolling. It's a five-lesson toolkit for people who care deeply about the world and are quietly exhausted by the...
info_outline
EP347 An artful approach to exploring identity and fostering belonging (w/ Rebecca Bellingham & Veronica Scott)
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
When the world feels this heavy, this broken, it can feel almost frivolous to make space for art. And in the classroom with so much content to cover, can we really slow down enough to create and take an artful approach to learning with students? Who has time to write poems or pause over a beautiful image when we're al barely keeping our heads above water? But think about what we're left with if we don't. If we strip away beauty and creativity and connection, all we have left is the grind. The compliance. The systems that are exhausting us in the first place. I recently talked to Rebecca...
info_outline
EP346 Feeling tied to your phone? These 3 habits can help you take control.
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
I picked up my phone to check the weather the other day, and twenty minutes later I was still standing in my kitchen, having bounced from app to app through a chain of perfectly legitimate tasks that I never actually chose to do in that moment. I wasn't scrolling mindlessly. I was checking my steps, signing up for a yoga class, responding to my husband's text, following up on a bank alert. And I still lost the thread of my own day. That's what makes our relationship with phones so hard to examine. It's not all mindless scrolling. Our phones are genuinely useful tools, and that's exactly why we...
info_outline
EP345 The brain isn't separate from the body–here's what that means for learning (with Caroline Williams)
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
We've been taught to think of the brain as the control center, the part of us that really matters for learning. But the body isn’t just along for the ride, carrying our brains from place to place. Caroline Williams, science journalist and three-time author (including of the book Inner Sense) has spent years digging into the research on how our brains and bodies actually work together. Turns out they're in constant conversation, sending signals back and forth in ways that shape how we think, feel, learn, and remember. And that means the brain isn't calling all the shots from up there in your...
info_outline
EP344 So what are we doing here? Expanding into retreats, video essays, mindfulness, and more
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
After 20+ years of creating exclusively for educators, I'm expanding into some new creative spaces. In this podcast episode, I share the "why" behind my new YouTube channel ("So What Are We Doing Here?"), my Substack publication, my free guided meditations on Insight Timer, and some other fun new places to find me. I also talk about how my own work has shifted more toward adults, and why so much of what I've always talked about on this podcast (productivity, mindset, burnout, boundaries) goes way beyond the classroom. Then I get into something I've been wanting to demystify for a while: the...
info_outlineEveryone has an opinion about AI in classrooms right now, but very few of those opinions are grounded in what we actually know about how kids learn. In this episode, I sit down with Erin Mote, CEO and founder of InnovateEDU and co-founder of Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School, to cut through the noise and talk about what the evidence actually shows about AI as a learning tool.
This isn't a conversation about ChatGPT, cheating, whether to ban devices, or what kids are doing with AI at home on their own time (which are separate topics worthy of their own discussion).
We're talking specifically about AI-powered tools designed for classroom use that are being pitched to your district and showing up in your school, and whether they hold up when measured against what we know about how kids learn.
In this episode you'll hear Erin share her thoughts on:
- Why "good enough" consumer tech is not good enough for students, and what to look for in tools that are actually built around learning
- The difference between sycophantic AI and Socratic AI, and why it matters for student outcomes
- What the early research is showing about AI as a learning tool, including what's promising and what we still don't know
- What to ask for and advocate for at the school and district level so these decisions aren't made without you
If you've been feeling overwhelmed by the pace of change and unsure what to actually do, this episode will leave you with more clarity, and more confidence in what you already know about how kids learn.
Listen in. Or read the transcription here.