Gold Standard PBL vs. Just Doing a Fun Project
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
Release Date: 07/30/2026
Neuroscience Research: 5 Ways to Superior Teaching
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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...
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What is Mastery Learning and How Do You Implement It Effectively?
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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...
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Engage Every Learner: 8 Timeless Classroom Principles #9 Episode (updated for 2026)
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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...
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Are You an Upset Teacher? How to Understand What Is Wrong (#10 of all time)
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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 . 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...
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AI in Schools: Stop AI Detection, Start Learning Detection
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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...
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Academic Integrity: What 22 Confessions Taught a Teacher
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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: Experience AI, a program co-developed by Raspberry Pi...
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How to Build Your Own Data Dashboard: No Coding Required
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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,...
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Teaching Creativity: 4 Ideas Every Subject Can Use
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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: 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.
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Student Personal Branding Without Social Media
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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...
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AI and Academic Honesty: The Second Crisis in Schools
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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 who are not being "caught" but feel like they spent the last years pretending to learn. Dr. Christian Miller, author of , 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. ...
info_outlineGold 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, you’ll learn:
• What the Gold Standard framework actually contains — seven essential project design elements plus seven project based teaching practices — and why a great project still fails without the teaching moves
• What you see and hear in a gold standard PBL classroom: a productive buzz, a project wall with the driving question and milestones, students returning to their need-to-knows, teachers coaching instead of lecturing
• Concrete projects outside business and computer science: designing a community microgrid in high school science, designing a custom diamond in middle school geometry, and a second grade community heroes gallery
• How PBL turns literacy into an all-day practice — reading, writing, speaking, and listening — rather than something that only happens during the literacy block
• Lisa’s answer to the time squeeze: coverage isn’t enough, and going deeper on power standards teaches more than racing through everything
• The principal move worth stealing — have teachers mark what they planned to teach, then revisit after the project to mark what they actually taught deeply. It’s always about twice as much.
• Where to find more than 100 free project ideas, searchable by grade and subject, that scale up or down for your students
Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e958
If this episode gave you something you can use, take a second to leave a rating or review wherever you’re listening. It helps other teachers find the show. And if a colleague is on the fence about project based learning, send this one their way.