Neuroscience Research: 5 Ways to Superior Teaching
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
Release Date: 09/09/2026
Think, Pair, Share, Show Me: Science of Learning in Action
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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...
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Molecule Builder: How a Teen Coded a Free Chemistry App
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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,...
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Reflective Teaching: How Video and AI Help Teachers Improve
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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...
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Student Belonging: A Principal of the Year's Plan
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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...
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Bridge in the Classroom: A Screen-Free Math Game
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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...
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Screen Value, Not Screen Time: Leading Schools in the AI Age
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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...
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Grief in the Classroom When Teachers Are Grieving Too
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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...
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Using AI? Keep Teachers in the Driver's Seat
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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...
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A Blind Teacher on Truly Seeing Your Students
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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...
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Celebrating 1,000 Episodes: My Son Turns the Tables on Me!
10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher
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 "" 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,...
info_outlineDr. 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.