From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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“Who Smarted?” OK, the name would make middle schoolers laugh. Yes, the topics might be gross to some of us adults. (Like who wants to talk about digestion even though probiotics seem to be the rage right now?) And yet, they cover topics that kids are learning, and if you’re a classroom teacher, you can sign up to listen ad-free. (And if you’re going to use this in the classroom, you need to take the ads off.)

In this show, we talk about the growth of the show, why human-created content is more important than ever, and how teachers are using podcasts to promote listening skills and screen-free learning and fun. Of course, as a podcaster, I think podcasts are great for transition time (so many people listen to this show in the car!). But transition time in the classroom is great for students. Also, search back episodes of the podcasts you love. When you have shows with a lot of content, there are great nuggets in the back catalog. I hope you enjoy Jerry Kolber talking about Who Smarted? Let’s learn!

Listen to the Show

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Key Takeaways for Teachers from Jerry Kolber

Elementary students and middle schoolers. Get the ad-free classroom version.

• Building listening skills is important and screen-free is a great way to do this. Jerry says that teachers tell him they like to play episodes after they return from lunch or recess, or as the class shifts to the next subject.
• Question breaks. In the podcast, they run mini quizzes every three or four minutes. You can pause there and have students answer out loud. This builds listening, comprehension and brings teachable moments to the forefront as students ask questions. I love to encourage students to ask “good questions” (and every question is a good question except the one that was just answered – because if you repeat the one that was answered, you guessed it, you weren’t listening!)
• Co-listening is a great activity. Common Sense Media recommends this podcast as a great one for co-listening.
• Giving feedback. When a human makes a podcast, then you can offer feedback. If a bot creates a podcast, who fixes it? Right. But if a human makes one and you disagree or have another point, you can reach out and contact them. Even this point encourages students to understand the difference between bot-created and human-created content. There is a place and need for both, but humans have values and you can learn what to expect from them.

Pick one 15-minute episode (I’ve given you five great choices below to select from) and play it Monday as students come back from lunch. Don’t introduce it, don’t assign anything — just press play. When the show asks its multiple-choice question (it will, every three or four minutes), pause and have students hold up one, two, or three fingers for A, B, or C before you play the answer. Search back episodes to find one that is about current topics in your classroom.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Who Smarted?+ free subscription for educators — The one to do first. Classroom educators get the ad-free version of the show free. Go to whosmarted.com, click Educators, and enter your school email (.edu, .k12, .org, .gov, or .schools). If your address doesn’t qualify, email WhoSmarted@WhoSmarted.com and they’ll help you sort it out.
• Who Smarted? — The main show. Short episodes on history, the human body, space, and whatever else kids are asking about, hosted by the Trusty Narrator.
• The Who Smarted? episode archive — Browse the back catalog by topic and find something that matches what you’re teaching this week.
• Who Smarted? on Apple Podcasts — Or search “Who Smarted?” in any podcast app. No subscription and no special app required.
• Atomic Entertainment — Jerry’s company, and home of Mysteries About True Histories (M.A.T.H.), the scripted series where two kids solve mysteries in their hometown using math, logic, and history. Worth a look if you teach math or social studies.
• The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt (Penguin Press, 2024) — The book Jerry references on screen time, anxiety, and depression in kids.

Clinicians at the Charlotte Speech and Hearing Center, a nonprofit that runs more than 2,000 screenings a year, now identify communication delays in about 38% of the preschoolers they screen — nearly double the pre-pandemic rate of 20–22%. Staff point to missed face-to-face interaction during the pandemic years, more screen time, and fewer chances for back-and-forth conversation. This is one organization’s regional screening data, not a national study — but it matches what a lot of teachers are describing. WCNC Charlotte, August 2026

About Jerry Kolber

Jerry is the creator of educational TV shows including Brain Games (Nat Geo) and Brainchild (Netflix). He and his company focus on making learning fun and accessible for everyone. His podcasts Who Smarted? and Mysteries About True Histories are used by families, teachers, and homeschoolers around the world to get kids engaged and excited about math, history, science, and more.

Connect with Jerry: AtomicEntertainment.com | LinkedIn | Facebook

Before you put any content in front of students, ask who you would email if it were wrong. If there’s a name on the other end, you have a correction path. If there isn’t, you’re the only quality check in the room — and you should read or listen all the way through before you press play. That test works on podcasts, on AI-generated worksheets, and on whatever comes next.

Kids Podcast and Listening Resources for Teachers and Administrators

As always, follow your district’s policy on what you play in class.

STEP 1: Get the Ad-Free Classroom Version First

Do this before you play anything for students. The public feed is free but ad-supported, and the ads are not aimed at children (more on that in the safety notes below). The educator version removes them.

• Go to whosmarted.com/educator
• Enter your school email — .edu, .k12, .org, .gov, or .schools addresses qualify
• You get a promo code back within seconds for Who Smarted?+, which is the ad-free tier plus bonus episodes, at no charge
• If your school email doesn’t end in one of those, email WhoSmarted@WhoSmarted.com and ask — they say they’ll try to sort it out for working educators

STEP 2: Pick Your First Five Episodes

There is no published “most popular” list, so I built this from what Jerry actually named on the show — food and human-body episodes are the runaway favorites — plus one the show itself labels its most requested. Every link opens the full episode with a transcript on the page, which is useful if you have readers who need to follow along.

• Where was the first School? — Start here in August. Compulsory education, one-room schoolhouses, a boat school in Bangladesh, a kindergarten in Germany shaped like a giant cat. Perfect for the first week when you’re building routines anyway.
• How are Pickles made? — The food category Jerry says always wins. Fermentation, food preservation before refrigeration, and a real pickling recipe kids can do at home with an adult.
• What causes a Geyser? — Earth science with pressure, steam, and tectonic plates, wrapped around a true story about 1877 tourists washing their laundry in Old Faithful.
• What events were in the very first Olympics? — Ancient Greece, the city-state truce, and where the Olympic rings actually come from. Good social studies tie-in.
• Why is Roblox our most requested episode? — The show’s own title tells you how often kids asked for this one. Hand it to the student who says podcasts are boring.

Browse the rest at the full episode archive. That back-catalog point is the one I’d underline from this episode — with a library this size, there is almost certainly something that lines up with your current unit.

STEP 3: Build the Listening Routine

An episode playing is not the same thing as students listening. Here are some tips to encourage listening skills:

• Use it at a transition, not as a lesson. Coming back from lunch or recess, or the shift from one subject to the next. You are replacing noise, not adding a block.
• Stop at the question breaks. The show asks a multiple-choice or true/false question every three or four minutes. Pause it. Make students answer out loud or show fingers for A, B, or C before you press play. That is the whole intervention.
• Let them hear it more than once. Replaying an episode later in the week costs you nothing and might be something to do for your more popular episodes or if a lot of students didn’t catch something.

Tool Safety Notes

Here’s what you’ll want to know about this podcast from resources you trust.

• Common Sense Media rates Who Smarted? age 6 and up and gave it a Common Sense Selection award. Their reviewer flags exactly one content item: mild potty humor. Violence, language, sexual content, and consumerism are all marked not present. They also call it “co-listening at its best,” which is the same thing Jerry says he designed for. Read the full review.
• ⚠️ The free public feed carries advertising, and it is not kid-targeted. In several current episodes, the ad breaks included a children’s debit card and money app, a language-learning subscription, a website builder, a tutoring subscription, and a personal-finance podcast about couples arguing over money. None of that is inappropriate, exactly — but it is adult marketing, some of it financial, playing to a room of eight-year-olds who cannot opt out. This is the practical reason to get the educator version before you play anything in class.
• Episodes run about 16 minutes according to Common Sense Media’s listing, so plan for a little more than the fifteen minutes. I’m not going to criticize on that one (ahem, someone paying attention will get why I say that.) Their short “Trusty Trivia” episodes run closer to six or seven if you need a smaller block.
• No account is required for students. Kids never sign in and never enter anything. You play it; they listen. That keeps this well clear of most student-data questions.

Other free kids’ podcasts worth a listen

If Who Smarted? lands with your students, Common Sense Media rates these in the same neighborhood: Brains On! (science, age 8+), But Why: A Podcast for Curious Kids (age 6+), Tumble Science Podcast for Kids (age 7+), Forever Ago (history, age 5+), and NASA’s Curious Universe (age 7+). Rotate them so listening time doesn’t become one more thing that feels the same every day.

Go deeper on screens and young learners

• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt (Penguin Press, 2024) — the book Jerry names on the show.
• Why more kids are struggling to communicate — Clinicians at the Charlotte Speech and Hearing Center, a nonprofit running more than 2,000 screenings a year, now identify communication delays in about 38% of the preschoolers they screen, up from a pre-pandemic 20–22%. One organization’s regional screening data rather than a national study — but it matches what a lot of us are seeing walk through the door.

Other Shows for Elementary and Middle School Teachers

• Smart Ideas for Teacher Prep, Reading, Writing, and Screen-Free Fun — Cool Cat Teacher Talk Season 3, Episode 9. Jerry’s original conversation aired here alongside Dr. Jacob Kirksey, Malia Hollowell, and Nancy McCabe.
• Brain Friendly Reading Strategies That Actually Work — Malia Hollowell on science-based reading strategies for young learners.
• Cool Cat Teacher Talk — My radio and TV show, on YouTube and stations across the country.

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If this episode gave you something you can use Monday, share it with a teacher friend who needs a better transition routine.

Episode Transcript

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post Who Smarted? Why Human-Made Kids’ Media Still Beats the Bots appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

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From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Personalizing teaching and learning is tough. As teachers, it requires so much work and effort to level texts, adapt how we teach to each child, and do everything we can to manage the classroom at the same time. As a teacher, I’ve wanted to customize learning for each student easily and have wished that AI could do that for me more easily. It is great to see companies like the one represented in today’s Thought Leader Thursday, Renaissance Intelligence, who are working to do that. I sat down with Todd Brekhus, who leads Nearpod and is the Chief Product Officer at Renaissance, to talk about their thoughts behind how they designed Renaissance Intelligence.

Sponsored: This episode is sponsored by Renaissance. Renaissance Intelligence connects the loop across assessment, curriculum, instruction, practice and proficiency, so educators can act on student needs in real time. Learn more at renaissance.com/intelligence.

I like the idea of teacher-facing AI tools that make managing the complexity of personalized teaching and learning simpler. I saw it demoed on the floor at ISTE and recommend checking it out for yourself. Now, I will admit, we did have a fun trip through the 1990’s and 2000’s to discuss what we learned in that time in history and how the lessons we learned about teaching and learning apply to today. (Oh, and Todd worked with Vint Cerf; that is just cool.) Let’s learn!

Listen to the Show

Watch this video on YouTube.Subscribe to the Cool Cat Teacher Channel on YouTube

Watch on YouTube and subscribe for new episodes every week.

Key Takeaways from this Show

• Wrapper — a tool built on top of someone else’s large language model rather than its own. Todd’s words in this episode: some AI apps are “built on the wrappers of ChatGPT.” It’s a fair question to ask any vendor — is this your model, or a wrapper around someone else’s?
• Teacher-facing AI — AI that is for the teacher to use. It reads the student data, suggests the groupings, drafts the materials. The teacher may use it to create personalized content for students, but the generative AI use is with the teacher.
• Student-facing AI — AI that works directly with the student. When students are using AI, guardrails become especially important to keep students safe, as does monitoring. Additionally, often when used for tutoring, AI can give students the answer without respecting the productive struggle required to learn.
  
  None of these three are in my AI vocabulary list yet. I will add them as soon as I hit publish on this post. You can grab the whole list in my AI Vocabulary List, and let students review the terms with Spy the AI (a free AI vocabulary game I vibe-coded from that same list.)

• Personalized Teaching AND Learning. Todd made the point that we should say “personalized teaching and learning” instead of “personalized learning.” I think this is important as well. He mentioned that “personalized learning” might imply a kid alone with a device. That is precisely what we know DID NOT WORK during the pandemic, right? So, instead, he suggests we think about ourselves as teachers managing our classroom, personalizing teaching (and thus learning) with better information from the tools we’re already using.
• Moving from isolation to connection. The isolating impact of sending a kid back to the room with headphones. Now, I haven’t done this in my classroom, but I don’t teach math or reading, where we often turn to tools and send a student alone to “catch up” on where they are struggling. This not only has a stigma, but if that child is struggling, I would argue the child needs more attention, not less. I really think our tools need to be different than – hey, go “play a game” that isn’t really fun and may or may not be teaching – but really should be embedded in what we do every day.
• Data in the moment. We talk about data driven instruction but so often the data is delayed and then it is too late to do anything about it. I know in online adult education we’ve often talked about Just in Time learning – learning in the moment when we need it. But in keeping what we discussed, I would argue we need “Just in Time teaching” to happen. That moment is when we know there is an issue not months later when the student may or may not need it.
• Not shipping. I thought it was great that they decided not to ship something. The biggest issue with student-facing AI today is that it interrupts productive struggle by giving answers too fast. I do, however, think that teacher-facing AI is a great way for companies to go and I hope more are doing this instead of rushing to invent the next tutor. We need to support teachers and support learning, not make it harder to learn and easier to cheat yourself out of an education by interrupting productive struggle. Fast answers to problems are not the answer for actually teaching children.

After listening to the episode, discuss how long it takes from data to reteaching for one lesson. Look at the lesson, the assessment data you’re gathering, and how long it takes to reteach and help students with that content from when you collect the data to when you reteach.

To go deeper: watch the “Discover Renaissance Intelligence” webinar — Todd Brekhus walks through the thinking with Chris Bauleke and Dr. Gene Kerns. Then request a demo and ask them to show you the prerequisite-skills view Todd describes at 13:20 in this episode. That was impressive to me at ISTE.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Renaissance Intelligence — the connected system Todd describes, unifying assessment, instruction, practice, and curriculum. Generally available July 1, 2026.
• Request a Renaissance Intelligence demo — see the prerequisite-skills and grouping views Todd walks through in this episode.
• Webinar: Discover Renaissance Intelligence — free. Todd Brekhus, Chris Bauleke, and Dr. Gene Kerns on the vision and research behind the system.
• Where AI Meets Learning Science — free whitepaper (PDF) on connecting AI with learning science while keeping teachers at the center.
• Solving Education’s Coherence Problem — the coherence argument Todd makes in this episode, written out for school and district leaders.
• What Kids Are Reading — free annual report on what students are actually reading, by grade.
• Focus Skills — free tool identifying the highest-leverage skills at each grade level. Also in Spanish.
• AR BookFinder — free, no login. Look up book levels and quiz availability.
• Renaissance webinar library — free, on-demand.
• Renaissance’s published AI approach — how they say they use de-identified data and exclude protected characteristics. Worth reading before you evaluate any vendor’s AI claims.
• Nearpod — the formative-assessment platform Vicki uses for a check every six to eight minutes in AP Computer Science Principles.
• Council of Chief State School Officers — the coherence push Todd credits for shaping how Renaissance connected core to supplemental.
• Todd Brekhus on LinkedIn

About Todd Brekhus

Todd Brekhus is chief product officer at Renaissance. A former educator, he is the creator of multiple education technology solutions, including the myON digital literacy platform. He is the recipient of the SIIA CODiE Award for Lifetime Achievement and many other accolades in recognition of his contributions to the field of education technology.

Thought Leader Thursday questions for your next team meeting:

1. Todd distinguishes “personalized learning” from “personalized teaching and learning.” Which one does our current practice actually look like — and who decides what a student works on next?
2. When we pull a student for intervention, what does the rest of the room learn about that student? Do we believe that the student is improving or not? What do we think is happening in our room and our school with what we’re doing right now in this? Does something need to change?
3. Renaissance chose not to build student-facing AI because productive struggle matters. Where in our own AI use are we removing struggle we should be protecting? Do we talk to students about productive struggle?
4. Todd says teachers are always agile. What in our current system forces a teacher to be rigid when their judgment says otherwise?
5. If a tool told you exactly which twelve students needed a prerequisite skill tomorrow, would your schedule actually let you act on it?

Other Shows for K-12 Teachers and Instructional Coaches

• Todd was featured in part three of our ISTE AI and Edtech Supershow titled “AI with Intention” with Tony Frontier and Jeremy Owoh that is airing on more than 26 stations around the world. You can listen to the extended interview and the opinions of all the guests on that show in AI with Intention Season 7, Episode 2 of Cool Cat Teacher Talk.
• Everything from ISTE 2026 — the full hub of episodes, interviews, and takeaways from the conference.
• AI With Intention: Expert Opinions from ISTE 2026

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If this episode gave you something you can use tomorrow, share it with a teacher who is tired of the screen-time argument.

Episode Transcript

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a sponsored episode and blog post. Renaissance has compensated me to share information about Renaissance Intelligence. However, all opinions expressed are my own. I have personally reviewed these resources and only recommend tools I believe offer genuine value to classroom teachers. My endorsement is limited to the educational products and services discussed in this episode. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” The sponsor has no impact on the editorial content of this show.

The post Keeping the Teacher at the Center of Classroom AI appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

If you're seeing this on another site, they are "scraping" my feed and taking my content to present it to you so be aware of this.

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Quantum mechanics for littles. Yes, you heard that right. Littles. Yes. Littles. Just two weeks ago we talked about space with Mark Wagner and what we can be teaching about it. Now, we’re talking quantum physics. Nneka McGee specializes in how to teach concepts relating to quantum mechanics to littles. No, she’s not teaching algebra and advanced mathematics, but an understanding that is needed to move forward, yes.

This doesn’t mean we stop teaching reading or writing or math. And you don’t even need screens to teach this. Quite the opposite. You can use these concepts to promote conversation about future trends without a screen at all.

In today’s show, Nneka will share examples of why quantum physics is important to all of us, the future of passwords, and security and some practical ideas we can use now. I’ll be sharing lots of resources in these show notes so that you can bring some mini lessons to your classroom. Let’s learn about quantum physics and how we can bring it into schools.

Listen to the Show

Watch this video on YouTube.Subscribe to the Cool Cat Teacher Channel on YouTube

Ideas for Applying These Concepts in Your Classroom

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Muon Global — Dr. McGee’s advisory firm, focused on emerging technology and access in education.
• AI for Young Learners: Balancing Tech Use with Authentic, Off-Screen Experiences — Dr. McGee’s Jump Start Guide from ISTE (January 2026). This is the “AI for littles” work she describes in the show.
• AI + Learning Differences: Designing a Future with No Boundaries — the Stanford Accelerator for Learning white paper, released July 21, 2025. Dr. McGee was project lead and a principal co-author, alongside Elizabeth Kozleski, Christopher J. Lemons, and Isabelle C. Hau. Free PDF.
• Love to Learn: The Transformative Power of Care and Connection in Early Education by Isabelle C. Hau (PublicAffairs, 2025) — the book Nneka recommends for the early-childhood foundation. Isabelle is executive director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning and a co-author on Nneka’s white paper above, so that one link is doing three jobs.
• Quantum Computing for Babies by Chris Ferrie and whurley (William Hurley) — part of the Baby University board-book series. Ages 0–4, and yes, it is real.
• National Q-12 Education Partnership — this is the federal quantum education site Nneka mentions. It was launched in August 2020 by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Science Foundation, so it is further along than she recalls on tape. Everything on it is free.
• QuanTime — free K-12 quantum activities from Q-12, each designed to fit in a single 45–60 minute class period. Hands-on, online, and printable options. No background in quantum required.
• QISE K-12 Framework — the federal Key Concepts for Future Quantum Information Science Learners. Superposition, entanglement, and coherence — the three terms Nneka teaches — map almost exactly onto it.
• QCaMP (Quantum Computing, Mathematics and Physics) — the program Nneka calls out, co-founded in 2022 at Sandia National Laboratories by Megan Ivory and Jake Douglass. Teachers are paid a $1,000 stipend for the week. Students get $250.
• Dr. Nneka McGee on LinkedIn

Fact Check Notes

A note on two numbers from the conversation. Nneka cites brain development as “about 80% before kindergarten” and hedges it herself on tape — the figure researchers actually report is roughly 90% of adult brain volume by age five, which measures physical growth rather than learning capacity. Her underlying point stands either way. She also credits New York with “over $100 million” in quantum investment; the real commitment is $300 million to a quantum hub at Stony Brook, announced September 17, 2025, plus $60 million more for additional sites. She understated it.

And a word for my ninth grader. What she described on that presentation — attackers capturing encrypted traffic today so they can decrypt it years from now once quantum computers arrive — is a real, named threat. It’s called harvest-now-decrypt-later, and NSA, CISA, and NIST all treat it as active. NIST finalized the first post-quantum cryptography standards on August 13, 2024, specifically because of it. She was right.

About Dr. Nneka McGee

Dr. Nneka J. McGee is an educator, researcher, and advocate dedicated to providing access and opportunities for learners exploring emerging technologies. As part of her doctoral studies, she researched the experiences of K-12 teachers implementing or planning to implement artificial intelligence in classroom learning environments. Since 2024, she has presented “AI for Littles,” focused on early childhood and elementary learners, to thousands of educators, providing practical strategies to introduce AI in age-appropriate, engaging ways. Dr. McGee recently served as project lead and principal co-author of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning white paper, “AI + Learning Differences: Designing a Future with No Boundaries.” She has served on multiple AI advisory boards and committees, including National AI Literacy Day, EngageAI Institute, and Foundations, Inc. She was named a 2024 K-12 IT Influencer to Follow by EdTech Magazine and was recognized as a 2024 and 2025 ASU+GSV Woman Leading in AI. Before founding her advisory firm, Muon Global, Dr. McGee taught middle school mathematics and served as chief academic officer at a public school district in south Texas.

Connect: muonglobal.com · LinkedIn

Quantum and AI Resources for Teachers and Administrators

You do not need a physics degree to do any of this. You need a penny, a paper plate, and about fifteen minutes. Everything linked below is free. Use school-approved tools for anything that touches a device.

UNPLUGGED ACTIVITY 1: The Penny (Superposition)

Lesson plans for grades K-12 teachers

One class period. Materials: one penny per student.

Spin the penny. Cover it before it lands. While it is spinning and hidden, it is not heads and it is not tails — it is both at once. That is superposition. Uncover it and it collapses into one answer.

For littles, stop there.

For middle and high school, push on the part that matters: a classical bit is only ever a 0 or a 1. A qubit holds both possibilities until you measure it — and the measurement is what forces the choice. Ask them what information disappeared the moment they looked.

Nneka is careful about this and so am I: the penny is a representation, not a qubit. It is an access point for someone who thinks this topic is closed to them. Say that out loud to your students.

UNPLUGGED ACTIVITY 2: The Plate With No Nose (Human in the Loop)

Grades K–5, adaptable up.

One class period. Materials: paper plates, markers, one image generator on the teacher’s screen only.

Ask an image generator for a smiley face on a plate. Show the class what comes back. When it gets something wrong — a missing nose, three eyes, a mouth in the wrong place — that is your lesson, not your failure.

Then hand out the plates. Every student draws the correct one. The takeaway lands by itself: the tool is useful, the tool is wrong sometimes, and a person has to check it.

What she did: Nneka built this out of an actual mistake she made while preparing a session. She kept the mistake and built the lesson around it. That is worth modeling for your students too.

TERMS TO KNOW

The terms in the show also line up with the QISE K-12 Framework.

• Superposition — a qubit holds more than one state at the same time until it is measured. The spinning penny.
• Entanglement — two qubits become linked, so measuring one tells you about the other no matter how far apart they are. Two coins that always agree.
• Coherence — how long a qubit can hold its quantum state before the environment knocks it out. The reason quantum computers are hard to build, in one word.
• Qubit — the quantum version of a bit. A bit is a 0 or a 1. A qubit is both until you look.
• Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) — new encryption designed to survive quantum computers. NIST finalized the first standards in August 2024.
• Harvest-now-decrypt-later — capturing encrypted data today to crack it years from now. The thing my ninth grader figured out.

For AI vocabulary, here is my full AI Vocab list, and my Spy the AI game for practicing vocabulary.

MORE Free Resources on Quantum for K-12

Ready to teach tomorrow

• QuanTime activities — free, 45–60 minutes each, built for one class period. Hands-on, online, and printable versions. No teacher expertise required.
• Q-12 Teaching and Learning Resources — the full free library.

Go deeper

• QISE K-12 Framework — what students should actually understand, by grade band.
• AI + Learning Differences (Stanford, 2025) — twelve recommendations, co-designed with people who have learning differences.

For your summer, and paid

• QCaMP — three-day teacher camp, $1,000 stipend, travel funds available if you are more than 50 miles out. Nneka is right that this matters: it means you do not have to choose between a summer job and learning this.

Other Shows for K-12 Teachers Teaching STEM and AI

• Cool Cat Teacher Talk, Season 6 Episode 3 — Dr. McGee’s full conversation aired as part of this hour-long show.
• Episode 966: Vibe Coding with Gemini for Teachers with Alice Keeler — building your own classroom AI tools and keeping student data in your own Drive.
• Episode 954: How to Teach About Space in the Classroom with Mark Wagner — the space episode I mention at the top of this post.

Listen and Subscribe

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• All 10 Minute Teacher Episodes

If a teacher in your building has ever said quantum is over their head, send them this one — it takes a penny to prove otherwise.

Episode Transcript

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki
Click to read the full transcript

Vicki Davis: How to Teach Quantum Physics to Littles and Older Students, too, with Dr. Nneka McGee. You can grab a single penny and teach superposition.

Announcer: This is the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis: Today, we’re talking with Dr. Nneka McGee, founder of Muon Global and one of the most fascinating voices in both AI education and quantum computing for kids. She led a Stanford white paper on AI and learning differences, wrote an ISTE guide for AI for littles, and her FETC session on Quantum 101 for educators blew my mind. So I had to get her on the show. Whether you’re teaching kindergarten or high school, you’re going to want to hear what Nneka has to say about preparing students for an AI and a quantum world.

So, Nneka, thanks for agreeing after our session to come on the show today.

Nneka McGee: Thank you for having me, Vicki. I’m excited to be here and excited to talk emerging technologies such as quantum and AI today.

Vicki Davis: So let me just ask you this. Some people would say… AI, quantum computing, like, okay, help me understand. Are they related? Are they not related? Why are you going from one to the other? Talk about it.

Nneka McGee: We’ve all heard at this point of artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence related systems. And I want to focus squarely on education. That’s my world. The technical part is another show. It’s focused on how we can help kids learn and grow about the technologies that will impact them in society. For me, the primary connection for artificial intelligence and now quantum computing are that these are technologies that will impact our students who are going through pre-K through 12 systems and even college.

And it is important to prepare our students because, for example, I’m an educator. Chances of me going into another career at this stage in my life is minimal. But for a student, a young student who is interested in the world, their pathways are limitless. And so we have to give them the tools that are necessary. And I believe that gaining an understanding in the foundational principles of first artificial intelligence and now quantum computing will help.

Vicki Davis: I don’t think anybody would debate you on the importance of AI, at least not now, maybe three or four years ago. But quantum computing, give us an overview of what will quantum computing mean to our world. Getting into the details might be a bit, but why is quantum computing important?

Nneka McGee: When we think about quantum computing and then we think about classical computing, I want to make a distinction here. Quantum computing will not replace classical computing. Right. Quantum computing, at its heart, is designed to solve problems that are different and novel. And I’m going to give you a very specific example of quantum computing and what can happen. There is an encryption technology that we use that governs the Internet, governs all of these things that help us run banking technologies.

Because they use prime numbers and semi-primes and it’s really technical, it takes classical computing millions of years. A quantum computer would be able to crack this encryption in a very short amount of time. Can you imagine what that would mean for every sector of our society to have this type of computing power? It’s not there yet, but I can tell you that many companies, they’re trying to get ahead. Of this eventuality that’s going to happen once quantum computers have this capacity.

So that’s just a stark example of something that can shake every aspect of our security in digital spaces and that they’re working on it now. They’re not waiting until it comes online. They’re doing it now. That’s a stark example of why it’s important.

Vicki Davis: We’re looking at basically none of our passwords really being truly secure.

Nneka McGee: Not only passwords, the mechanisms behind what makes passwords work in every aspect. Once you can crack those large prime numbers in the semi-primes that brought those prime numbers together, it’s kind of like with the pennies in the activity we described. It’s not exact, but it’ll tell you basically at its heart. What happens is that it really takes computers a long time to factor. These are huge, huge, huge numbers. And so that’s why it’s difficult for a classical computer to factor these numbers.

Vicki Davis: So I’m going to check out something one of my ninth graders said. It just presented on quantum computing in my class. And all the things you taught me just helped me really help her, you know, get further along because it is a complex topic. The S in HTTPS, that secure piece, will be able to be cracked. And so all these people who are using something called packet sniffers today, so they’re grabbing all these packets of data off the Internet.

And just putting it somewhere. People who are joining all this free Wi-Fi, like say you go to Starbucks and you join the free Wi-Fi, and yeah, you’ve got your encryption and you’re using all the latest stuff and you’ve got your current operating system, but somebody’s just grabbing that encrypted stuff out of the air. She said that basically when quantum computing comes along, it could be even possible to decrypt things that they captured back here in our current time.

Nneka McGee: She’s correct in the sense that, yes, we will get to a point, particularly with quantum computing. And I don’t know a better way to put it other than the security of the Internet and our digital world will be crackable at every level. It just will be. And there will be a point once quantum computers get to, you know, a state in which they can crack those codes where it’ll be useless.

Vicki Davis: So we were talking before the show and you said working with teaching AI to kids and teachers for eight or nine years. And there are some similarities with eight or nine years ago in AI and where quantum is today in terms of interest. How do you kind of compare the two and where people are in terms of what they’re ready to learn about?

Nneka McGee: Right. Well, even before, so, you know, before ChatGPT came online, and it’s so interesting because in June of 22, I was part of an ISTE panel, about artificial intelligence and its future implications. And we were in a large room and there were a lot of people there, but there were still some empty seats and we always talk about, we said the nerds before the herds. We’re thinking we’re part of this amazing kind of emerging technology and we didn’t know anything.

You think you know something and you don’t know anything. For example, when I tell people. That the federal government has a whole website dedicated to educators for K-12 education dealing with quantum. People are like, really? So you’re seeing that things are happening, but the awareness level needs to grow. So we need to get more people on board with understanding that this is emerging technology that people are working on and we need our kids to be prepared.

People can say what they want to say, but when you hear the word quantum physics, yeah, people are like, that’s not a place I want to go again. You see the government investing funds. You see states, New York, invested over $100 million in quantum technologies. Places like Colorado states are starting to invest heavily in quantum technologies and preparing at the college level for people to enter the workforce or build careers in quantum and quantum-related technologies.

And you can do a lot at the college level, but if you haven’t prepared kids, how are they going to succeed? Yeah. I mean, because if they don’t have strong grounding in mathematics and physics, some understanding of those topics, where are we? How are we sending them to our colleges to prepare for these hundreds of millions of dollars that are being invested? And there will be a breakthrough technology similar to mark this, tag it, do whatever you need to do.

There will be a breakthrough technology like ChatGPT or generative. AI in quantum at some point. And where will we be as educators if we didn’t do what was necessary to help prepare our kids for that eventuality?

Vicki Davis: So you’re talking quantum, Nneka, but you also talk AI for littles. Now, some people would say, hey, okay, quantum, no, and AI for littles, like, why? So what do you do with littles? Because typically littles is like kindergarten, right?

Nneka McGee: Yeah, even not. So when we think about, you know, early education, you’re thinking as early as three years old. A great book I would recommend that kind of gets into the heart of it is this book by Isabelle Hau.

Vicki Davis: I’ve had her on the show. She’s amazing.

Nneka McGee: She is amazing. and one of the things that she talks about is how when we look at brain development in our kids, I want to say it’s like 80% occurs before kindergarten, yet we talk about kindergarten readiness, right? And so it doesn’t mean that we’re teaching linear algebra to young kids, but the key is what that tells us about brain science and what Isabelle is talking about in Love to Learn in terms of even with artificial intelligence and relational intelligence is this is a great time through concrete activities, hands-on activities, to give kids understanding and foundational skills with topics where technology and interacting with the technology may not be appropriate or necessary.

I’ve stressed with AI for littles and what I did was gather together different types of hands-on activities that teachers could use with the youngest learners. And one of them, the one that I use the most. It was a mistake. It was early DALL-E, which is the visual. Basically, they married ChatGPT and DALL-E together, but it used to be separate. Right. So I just wanted to show a plate, like how easy it was to enter a prompt, make smiley face on a plate.

So I enter in these instructions and the image that comes back is a plate without a nose. And I said, this is the most I have built a whole lessons. So I do this lesson and basically I say, hey, you can do all of these things. Any kid with a marker, doesn’t matter how long, how big the marker is, they can draw on a paper plate. And then you show this image to say, hey, even though artificial intelligence is great, you still need a human in a loop.

Not only does it make mistakes, but you need somebody to make sure your instructions don’t cause someone not to have a nose, right? I built those series of hands-on lessons. I did the same thing and then started to do the same thing with quantum computing and understanding of quantum principles. And I start with the basic superposition, entanglement, and also with coherence. When it came to hands-on activities, those were three terms that people would connect with and that I could use very simple materials.

Vicki Davis: And you use a penny. I had a student, the one who did the presentation, was struggling with what’s a qubit? How does it even work? And I pulled out Penny and did what you taught me, Nneka. And she was like, oh, I understand. And she even used that in front of the class to explain a little bit about how it works. No computer. Here’s a penny. Let’s explain these terms. These are things that kids can understand. And I know it shocks people.

How young have you taught lessons on quantum?

Nneka McGee: Thank you for sharing the story of your student, because a lot of times people say, well, do people take things back from conferences? It’s so exciting to know that you took something back to a conference and it led your student to gain an extra understanding to a point where, what does she do? Have a conversation through a presentation about the impact of what quantum computing will mean for the future. We’ve worked with kids, when I say four or five, five-year-olds, the same lessons that we go over, we have done with kids.

These are not just pull them out of the air and then present them. There are things that I’ve actually done with kids, and that’s so important. And there are certain things that I stress, and I think that I stress to you. First of all, even with the penny, It is rudimentary. It is a representation that can allow an access point to an individual who may think that quantum mechanics and quantum computing is inaccessible. And that’s the bridge that’s going to be very hard.

My life as an educator to ensuring that students have access and opportunity to math and science is like the core of what I do. That is why it’s important to present accessible activities. There’s a quantum physicist who. And I shout her name, Dr. Megan Ivory. I don’t know if she had co-developers, but she is one of the main point persons for QCaMP. These QCaMPs, not only do they help students, but they help educators. And they pay educators to spend time to learn about these novel topics so that they can go into their classrooms and support kids.

Recently in New Mexico, they had an event where they created activities even for younger kids to be able to explore. So you have this ecosystem, infrastructure and education that is being developed in whatever I do to get more people to embrace that this is coming in ways that are accessible, entry points that are digestible. That is my task.

Vicki Davis: What is the most surprising thing that kindergarten and first, second grade teachers find as they go to your workshops or sessions for either quantum computing or AI?

Nneka McGee: Well, the first thing that surprises them is that they can introduce these topics in a way that is accessible.

Vicki Davis: That is so exciting. We shouldn’t be playing king of the hill. We should make a bigger hill, especially when it concerns the future of children. Dr. Nneka McGee will put everything in the show notes, much that we could talk about, but her resources just for teaching lessons, you know, these are the kind of conversations we need to be having. You can teach quantum computing and teach AI. And yes, you can even teach them to little.

So thank you for the work that you’re doing and the conversations you’re having and for agreeing to come on the show. So this is really exciting. Thanks for tuning in to the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast. Watch the video version of this podcast and catch my new radio and TV show, Cool Cat Teacher Talk, on YouTube and a radio or TV station near you. Join my Cool Cat Teacher Classroom Matters newsletter at coolcatteacher.com forward slash newsletter.

Leave a review if you found this helpful. See you later, educator.

Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post How to Teach Quantum Physics to Littles (and Older Students Too) appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

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Alice Keeler created the Educator AI Assistant, a Google Sheets add-on that does not collect any data in just two days. In today’s show, Alice Keeler talks about how she vibe codes with Gemini to create extensions and tools for teachers and the classroom. Vibe coding is “all the rage,” and everyone is talking about it. But how do you do it? If you’re interested in vibe coding, you’ll want to listen to the thoughts Alice shares relating to the big-picture issues.

I recently had Donnie Piercey on the show talking about how he vibe codes for his fifth-grade classroom. However, this show is different. It specifically relates to Gemini, surfaces privacy issues we should be concerned about, and casts a vision for what school IT departments are becoming (or might need to become).

I do have to share that this was recorded in the middle of last year; however, I’ve included the timeless elements in our conversation. The principles of AI that relate to what we do to protect privacy and to help our schools succeed are constant. Some of the tools have changed, and they will continue to change. We mentioned how some of the tools from the “Web 2 days” that we used daily and discussed constantly don’t exist anymore. That will happen again. But teaching is just as important as ever, and with vibe coding we have a superpower if we dig in.

If you’re vibe coding in your classroom, I hope you’ll share with me what you’re doing by contacting me. I’d like to hear your story!

Table of Contents for These Show Notes

Listen to the Show

Watch this video on YouTube.Subscribe to the Cool Cat Teacher Channel on YouTube

Key Takeaways from This Show

Here are some of the things we talked about on today’s show:

• How expertise matters, but not quite as much as you might think, when it comes to vibe coding.
• Alice’s concerns about the rapid emergence of new tools built by AI and if they are actually protecting student data.
• The benefits of vibe coding extensions for your own Google Drive and how it can protect data. Notes about how you need to work with your IT department and some features that may not be available to classroom teachers.
• What “citizen programming” is and how vibe coding fits into that approach that has been discussed for years. Also, how it impacts the IT Department of your school.
• The benefits of moving from off-the-shelf solutions to those your district creates for itself and an example of a district who built their own system.
• What we learned from Web 2.0 days that applies to AI days today.
• The importance of using tools that are maintained by the developer and examples of development tasks that are done when you create an extension or add-on.

Resources Mentioned on the Show

• Educator AI Assistant — the Google Sheets add-on she built in two days. Collects no data. Still in beta.

• TemplateTab — the add-on she references, 26M+ installs

• All of Alice’s add-onsAlice’s add-ons in the Google Workspace Marketplace

• Teacher Tech with Alice Keeler — her blog
• Alice Keeler on LinkedIn
• Alice’s books on Amazon
• Free Teacher Tech newsletter
• Vibe Coding for Teachers: No Coding Skills Needed — Donnie Piercey, e940

Beginners: Start By Making a GEM

Classroom teachers, IT Coaches, and curriculum directors

A GEM is a special custom AI prompt that is pre-programmed for a specific purpose. Read Alice’s information on Gems in “What are Google Gemini Gems

Before you start making one, try a Gem like one of those found at on Alice’s shared GEM site or Edugems, made by Eric Curts.

Make a Gem to Align to Your Standards.

1. Sign in to your school account and go to your Gem Manager.

2. Find an online PDF of the standards you’re using for your class this year and attach it to the gem you’re making. Attach only your grade or course section. It will work better if it is a narrow file and not a huge file with hundreds of pages (which may not even upload to Gemini).

3. Use the following prompt and make sure you attach the PDF standards to the gem. Edit the prompt so that it is asking what you want it to help you do. (In Alice’s article on GEMS, Alice gives the acronym PARTS (Persona * Act (Task) * Recipient * Theme * Structure)

TIP: Pick a better model like Thinking or Pro and not fast as you start with it. You can also feed in sample lesson plan templates that you like and other lessons you’ve created that are examples of best practices.

TIP: use a file name like best-practices-template.pdf and standardsname-grade.pdf.

Then set up the GEM with this as a starting point. Edit the instructions to fit your situation and needs.

Description Field

Attach or paste your lesson plan. Name the standards you are teaching in this lesson, by code.

Instructions Field:

You are a standards integration analyst. You examine a teacher's lesson plan
against the standards document attached to this Gem and report where those
standards are actually taught, where they are only mentioned, and what would
strengthen the match.

Use only the attached standards document as your source of standards. Do not
generate standard codes. Do not quote standard language that is not in the
attached document. Do not substitute a standard from memory or from another
state's framework. When the teacher names a code, find it in the attached
document and quote it verbatim before analyzing it. If a named code is not in the
attached document, say so and stop rather than guessing.

For the lesson plan provided, do the following in order.

1. Confirm the standards. List each standard the teacher named, with its code and
its verbatim text from the attached document, so the teacher can check the match.

2. Build a coverage table with one row per named standard. Columns: the standard
code, the specific activity or step where it appears, and a rating of Taught,
Mentioned, or Absent. Taught means students do something that requires the
standard. Mentioned means the standard is named but no student work depends on it.

3. Check the verbs. For each standard, name the cognitive verb the standard
requires and the verb the lesson actually asks students to perform. Flag every
mismatch and state the direction — the task sits below the standard, or above it.

4. Name the evidence gap. For each standard, state what a teacher would look at to
know a student met it. If the lesson produces no such evidence, say so plainly.

5. Search the attached standards document for standards the teacher did not name
that this lesson already does substantial work toward. List up to three, each with
its code and verbatim text, and name the activity that supports it. Mark this
section clearly as suggestions to verify, not claims of alignment.

6. Give three integration moves, ordered by effort:
   - One change that can be made tonight in under ten minutes using what is
     already in the plan.
   - One change for the next time this lesson is taught.
   - One larger redesign worth considering when the unit is rebuilt.
   For each, name which standard it strengthens.

7. Suggest one way to raise the rigor without adding class time, tied to a
standard already in the plan.

8. List anything in the lesson that is not serving a named standard. Do not
recommend cutting it — some of it is classroom culture. Report it so the teacher
can decide.

Report in plain language a teacher can skim. Do not rewrite the lesson plan.

Then, remember, to test your gem. Part of customizing tools using AI is that we ideate, prototype (what you made above), and test. When you test and find mistakes, then you can revise the instructions and try again. Send the link to someone to test.

Learn More About Gemini and Vibe Coding

A GEM is just a start, you can go so much further with vibe coding than this. Recently, I described when I vibe-coded my AI terminology game for ISTE. (Here’s how I did that one and here’s the game.) If you want to do something like this, look at Alice’s tips for vibe coding with Antigravity for Google.

• Google Gemini for Teachers Quick Start Guide – August 1, 2026 Alice posted this which also includes 10 prompts to get you started.
• Getting Started with Vibe Coding Using Antigravity – Alice is now taking us further. First, she talks about enabling canvas to let you create an app for your classroom that does something like this Gem that she made. Then, if you want to go to a higher level, Antigravity is what Alice is using now. Antigravity is not where you start and it does require you install it on your computer and it will not work on a chromebook. She goes through every step.

Make AI-friendly handouts. I taught my students to vibe code games to reinforce what we were learning in class. This means that for almost all content, I produce a PDF and put it into Google Classroom so they can access the material to make their games. Good data helps the AI you’re programming to focus and produce better results. Students are making their own review games in all kinds of AI tools, but most will not take the time to get good information on what they should be studying. I think of these PDFs as handouts for the AI tools my students are using!

Transcript of this Show

Episode Transcript

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

The post Vibe Coding with Gemini: Build Your Own Classroom Tools appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

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Giving students a voice. Respecting the heart of teachers. What if this could really be done? A.B. Combs in Raleigh, NC did just that as they integrated Dr. Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People into their school culture. Then, when Dr. Covey wrote about them in The 8th Habit, it became one of the most visited schools according to then Principal, Muriel Summers.

Muriel coauthored The Leader in Me and now has a new book Teacher Believed in Me. Muriel tells the story of how a struggling principal and single mom in a struggling school believed in what their school could be and it made all of their lives better and the school became a success story that the world stood up and noticed.

Today is the perfect story for a Motivational Monday as so many of us head back to school. Thank you for making the 10 Minute Teacher a show that you listen to on the way to school. I hope this story encourages you like it does me. I was even shocked how they involve students in the hiring process! (Five year olds learn how to interview – ok, before you get upset, take a moment to hear what she’s saying. They aren’t literally hiring but the story is amazing!)

Listen to the Show

Watch this video on YouTube.Subscribe to the Cool Cat Teacher Channel on YouTube

Watch on YouTube and subscribe for new episodes every week.

Key Takeaways for Teachers from Muriel Summers

• She fixed the culture and let the academics follow. Muriel says when everyone is leading and everyone has genius, “you don’t have to worry about the academics. They just happen.” She tells a remarkable story about how A.B. Combs went from one of the lowest performing schools to one of the highest. The story is awesome!
• She asked five groups what they wanted before she changed anything. Parents, students, teachers, college professors, and local business leaders all answered the same question: what would your ideal school look like, sound like, and feel like? The business leaders’ answer was really thought provoking. They said, “we can teach someone of average intelligence to succeed here, but we can’t teach them to be trustworthy.” Character matters. (I would argue, now more than ever. Character has always mattered but I think perhaps now, it shines even brighter.)
• Every child had a job, not just the responsible ones. Discipline went down almost immediately, and Muriel’s explanation is simple: children wanted to come, and they wanted to be part of it.
• Children as young as five sat on the hiring panel. Shockingly, the one time she overruled them, she was wrong.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• The Leader in Me: How Schools and Parents Around the World Are Inspiring Greatness, One Student at a Time — the updated edition, co-authored by Stephen R. Covey, Sean Covey, Muriel Summers, and David K. Hatch.
• Teacher Believed in Me: The Science and Heart of Making a Difference in Students’ Positive Well-Being — Muriel’s new book with Dr. David K. Hatch.
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr. Stephen R. Covey — the book Muriel’s staff read when there was no framework to follow.
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey — the one Muriel calls, lovingly, the “Cliff Notes of his father’s book,” and the one her teachers actually decided to teach from.
• Leader in Me — the FranklinCovey program that grew out of what A.B. Combs built.
• Find a Leader in Me school near you — the mapping tool, if you want to go see one the way people came to see hers.

About Muriel Summers

From the minute she stepped into the classroom, Muriel Summers has always viewed teaching as a calling. As a principal, she twice guided her school, A.B. Combs Elementary in Raleigh, North Carolina, to being named the top magnet school of America. The school also became the original leadership school featured in FranklinCovey’s Leader in Me. The vision and strategies she and her remarkable staff developed are now being replicated in over 8,000 schools and more than seventy countries. She bears the honor of having received several awards, including teacher of the year, principal of the year, and an honorary doctorate. She was awarded the William and Ida Friday award for Leadership in Innovation, The Order of the Long Leaf Pine given by the Governor of North Carolina (the state’s highest honor given to a North Carolinian), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Award for Leadership in Education, and the Ralph Kimmel Award, North Carolina’s highest honor for principals. She now serves as the Global Ambassador for the Leader in Me and keynotes at conferences across the US and abroad.

7 Habits and School Culture Resources for Teachers and Administrators

I’ve been doing some research for free resources that you can use in your school now. I would start by reading the books that I linked above (if you haven’t already>)

Free Lesson Plans and Printables You Can Use Tomorrow

Here are some samples and handouts that you can use in your class to see if you like this approach. They are free from Franklin Covey, and they have more resources. My Mom wrote some similar things for our school that we used with my children. This approach is ap owerful one to check out.

• The Leader in Me Level 1 Annotated Teacher’s Edition (PDF) — This is a sampler. Open this one first if you teach the little ones. Habit 1 is a complete read-aloud lesson built around King Bidgood’s in the Bathtub by Audrey Wood and The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper, with before-you-read, while-you-read, and after-reading questions written out for you, plus cross-curricular extensions in language arts, social studies, science, and art.
  
  It also has a parent letter for Habit 1 you can send home this week, a literature list, hand signs for each habit, and the 7 Habits Tree in kid language: You’re in Charge · Have a Plan · Work First, Then Play · Everyone Can Win · Listen Before You Talk · Together Is Better · Balance Feels Best.
  
• The Leader in Me Level 3 Annotated Teacher’s Edition (PDF) — The same idea for older students. Grab it even if you teach elementary, because of the leadership-tools section: thirteen thinking tools with plain instructions for how students use them, including the Circle of Control diagram, the Stop and Think chart, the Plus/Delta, the Synergizer, the Prioritizer, and the Goal Planner.
  
  These work in any classroom whether or not your school has heard of Leader in Me. It also lists the education correlations for each habit, which is what you need when someone asks you to justify the time.
  
• 7 Habits of Happy Kids Classroom Posters (PDF) — A free seven-poster set, one per habit, each written in first-person student language: “I have a ‘Can Do’ attitude. I choose my actions, attitudes and moods.” Made and given away by a third-grade teacher who blogs as Third Grade Bookworm. Print, laminate, done.
  
• The 7 Habits of Happy Kids (and teachers!) printable library — A K–5 teacher in Memphis put her whole set online: a classroom poster set, a 7 Habits clip chart, student certificates, character slips, bookmarks, coloring pages that pair with Sean Covey’s book, a Habit 2 goal-setting sheet, a Think Win-Win graphic organizer, graphic organizers scaled up for grades 3–5, and 7 Habits songs. Every one is a direct download.

Leadership with Intention Exploration Activities: As You Look At Your School Consider Some of these Questions

Who this is for: whole-faculty meetings, grade-level teams, leadership teams, and new-teacher induction. How to run it: After your team listens to the show, these questions come from what Muriel actually described, not from a template. As I shared on the show, we should make our “to be” list before we make our “to do” list. These activities can help you look at your school now at the beginning of the year as you decide how you can make things better.

1. Open with the two-minute test describing your school

Muriel’s assistant principal, Michael Armstrong, used to ask one question about the building: Can you feel it? She says you don’t need long in a school to know what it’s about.

• A parent walks in for the first time. What do they see, hear, and feel in the first two minutes?
• Walk into your school on a regular day and observe. What do you see, hear, and feel in the first two minutes?
• Is this what we choose for people to see, hear and feel? Should any of it change?
• EXTEND THIS and Walk the halls: What do our walls currently teach? Whose work is on them?

2. Interview Stakeholders

Before A.B. Combs redesigned itself, they asked parents, students, teachers, professors, and local business leaders one question: if you could create your ideal school, what would it look like, sound like, and feel like? The answers surprised them. Teachers wanted students who respected them and a place where they had a voice. Students wanted teachers who loved them. Business leaders said they could teach someone of average intelligence to succeed in their organization, but they could not teach trustworthiness or collaboration. Parents wanted a teacher who knew their child’s story and could see gifts beyond academics.

• Ask the five groups the same question this month. Who does the asking, and by when?
• Which answer would be hardest for us to hear right now?
• What are we already doing that no one asked for?

3. Everyone has a job — not just the responsible ones

Muriel says discipline dropped almost immediately once every child had a role and their genius was recognized, because children wanted to come and wanted to be part of it. Note the scope: every child, not the reliable handful.

• List every classroom and schoolwide job that currently exists. How many students does that cover?
• Name three students who have never held one. Why not?
• What job could exist that doesn’t yet — and which student is it obviously for?
• Do adults feel like leaders in their area of responsibility? Are they empowered to act? Do they feel heard?

4. The hard one: would we let students on a hiring panel?

At A.B. Combs, candidates were interviewed by children — some as young as five, taught how to interview rather than left to wing it, with an adult in the room to listen and debrief afterward, not to feed them lines. The students didn’t decide who got hired, but their voice counted. Muriel says teachers consistently called the student interview the hardest one. In twenty years she overruled the children once: a candidate with an MBA and a systems-thinking background the students admired but said “doesn’t get kids.” He lasted until November.

When I was at Georgia Tech, I was on a “hiring feedback panel” for the Director of External Affairs. We gave feedback on the candidates. It was a great hire and a person who really connected with students and faculty. We gave feedback but didn’t make the final call.

• What is our honest first objection to this, and is it about the students or about us?
• If we tried it once this year, for one hire, what would we have to teach the students first?
• Where else do we ask students their opinion and then not weight it?

5. Close: the to-be list

Now, again, as I said at the end of the show I mentioned something my mother always said: you have to create your to-be list before you create your to-do list. There are an overwhelming number of things you could do. If you don’t know what you want to be, you have no way to choose the right one. Muriel says something similar in her own words: don’t get caught up in the whirlwind of the things that matter least.

• Each person writes three words for what this faculty wants to be this year. Not goals. Words.
• Collect them. What repeats? What’s missing that you expected to see?
• What is one thing on the to-do list that the to-be list says we should stop?

Three Words Above the Door

The simplest thing in this episode is something to discuss. Above the doors at A.B. Combs, where children saw them getting off the bus every morning, were the words: you are seen, you are known, and you are loved. Teachers were outside greeting children by name with music playing. What are the words you want students and visitors to see as they enter. What are the words you want them to see?

What words do you want students to see when they come into your room? Go ahead and write them and put them over your door. You can start simple with words on the board if you like, but communicate a message to your students intentionally.

More Free Resources on the 7 Habits and School Culture

From Leader in Me and FranklinCovey

• 7 Ways Great Schools Welcome New Teachers — useful right now if you have new staff starting.
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families — the five core paradigms written for parents. Good bones for a family night or a newsletter piece.
• Executive Summary: The Impact of Leader in Me on School Climate and Student Behaviors — for the person on your team who wants evidence before they’ll try anything.
• The Leader in Me blog — free, and deep on classroom culture, student voice, and leadership roles.

Other Shows for Teachers and School Leaders

• How to Become a Better Principal: Award Winning Principals Speak — the Cool Cat Teacher Talk episode this conversation is drawn from, with Muriel alongside Ronn Nozoe of NASSP.
• Data-Driven Leadership That Changes School Culture with Dr. Deborah Dennie.
• Transform Your School Culture with Steve Bollar.
• Captivate, Care, and Culture — a full Cool Cat Teacher Talk hour on classroom culture.

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
• All 10 Minute Teacher Episodes

If Muriel’s story gave you something to carry into this school year, share it with the teacher down the hall who is rebuilding their culture right now.

Episode Transcript

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post How a School Built Its Culture Around the 7 Habits — and the Academics Followed appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

If you're seeing this on another site, they are "scraping" my feed and taking my content to present it to you so be aware of this.

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Leadership. It is something we can learn. I’ve had some of the greatest principals and some of the worst. But here’s something ironic. Sometimes they have been the same person. If that is the case, leadership is something that can be learned. And we as leaders can be at our best or worst. But one thing is for sure, we’re never staying the same.

In Part 1 we talk about leadership and who we decide to become as a leader. First, we hear from Ronn Nozoe, the CEO of the National Principals Association (used to be NASSP), about an AI survey and the interesting notes on the schools that are doing it well. Then, we talk to the principal of the school who put Stephen Covey’s 7 habits into practice in their school, Muriel Summers. This is part 1 of a two-part series on leadership. Let’s learn.

Also, I’ll be posting part 2 on this show with an award winning middle school and high school principal. They will talk about cell phone policies, how to reach every student and help them improve, and about relationships and leading with love while improving attendance and discipline in their schools.

A note before you listen: this episode talks openly about the weight teachers and principals are carrying right now, and one segment includes an emotional story about a beloved teacher who died young. If you are struggling, please reach out to a counselor, therapist, social worker, faith leader, or your doctor.

Listen to the Show – Part 1

Watch this video on YouTube.Subscribe to the Cool Cat Teacher Channel on YouTube

Subscribe on YouTube

Resources from the Show

Books from this episode

• The Leader in Me: How Schools and Parents Around the World Are Inspiring Greatness, One Student at a Time — Stephen R. Covey, with Muriel Summers. The book that grew out of what Muriel and her staff built at A.B. Combs.
• Teacher Believed in Me: The Science and Heart of Making a Difference in Students’ Positive Well-Being — David K. Hatch and Muriel Summers. Muriel’s newest book.
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — Stephen R. Covey. The framework Muriel heard him present in Washington, D.C., and then taught to five-year-olds.
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens — Sean Covey. Muriel calls this the version her teachers could actually use.
• The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness — Stephen R. Covey. The book in which Covey wrote about what A.B. Combs was beginning to do.
• Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter — Liz Wiseman. The multipliers-and-diminishers idea Vicki brings into the close.

Topic-specific resource links

• NASSP — the National Principals Association. As of July 1, 2026, NASSP expanded to serve school leaders from pre-K through high school under the new name. Ronn Nozoe is the CEO.
• Ronn Nozoe’s leadership page at NASSP.
• Leader in Me (FranklinCovey) — the program that grew out of A.B. Combs, now in more than 8,000 schools and 70+ countries. Editor’s note: on the recording Muriel cites roughly 8,500 schools in more than 60 countries; the current published figures are 8,000+ schools in 70+ countries.
• A.B. Combs Leadership Magnet Elementary School, Raleigh, North Carolina.
• Justin Reich, MIT — the colleague who put Vicki onto Patrick O’Neill’s review.

People and ideas referenced

• Michael Catt — Vicki’s former pastor, quoted in the opening: “Leadership is hard. It requires that you constantly self-evaluate and face up to your own shortcomings.”
• Todd Whitaker — the researcher on what the best principals do differently, including quietly consulting informal teacher leaders before a big decision.
• Liz Wiseman — multipliers versus diminishers.
• Stephen R. Covey and Sean Covey — the 7 Habits framework at the center of Muriel’s segment.
• David K. Hatch — Muriel’s co-author on Teacher Believed in Me.
• Patrick O’Neill, faculty member at Ivy Tech Community College in Bloomington, Indiana — his forensic review of 14 meta-analyses on generative AI in education.
• Grace Adkins — Vicki’s second-grade teacher and mentor, who retired on her 95th birthday after 75 years of teaching and said “every child a winner.”
• Miss Rose and Miss Honey — the two teachers whose stories anchor Muriel’s segment..

Key Takeaways for Teachers

From Ronn Nozoe: leadership is a “we” thing

• Most principals are already moving on AI — and almost none feel expert. In the survey from NASSP and Vicki Davis, roughly seven in ten said they are already immersed in AI and moving forward with it. Only about 18 percent said they feel very confident leading AI implementation next year, with a little over half saying somewhat confident.
• The number one thing school leaders asked for was not money. It was time. Ronn compares it to research and development in business: schools rarely reinvest in dedicated, well-resourced planning and collaboration time, and it shows.
• Success is subtraction, not addition. Vicki names it and Ronn agrees — the next move in education is taking things off the plate, not stacking more on. He describes running an actual “off-the-plate committee” as a principal that could never take anything off, because everything felt important.
• The best ideas came from a teacher round table. Back in Hawaii, Ronn gave teacher leaders time and got out of the way. They solved problem after problem the front office could not.
• Teachers: go talk to your principal. Ronn’s direct advice is not to wait to be invited. Say the thing you can help with. Most principals do not know how their teachers actually feel until someone tells them.

From Muriel Summers: everyone in the building is a leader

• Leadership is a set of habits, and habits can be taught. Muriel heard Stephen Covey speak, went back to a struggling Title I school, and asked whether you could teach those habits to a five-year-old. The answer turned out to be yes.
• Every child has genius. That is a stated core belief at A.B. Combs, not a slogan — and once children saw their own genius recognized, disciplinary action dropped almost immediately.
• Children read three sentences on their way in every morning. Above the door: You are seen. You are known. You are loved. Ask what your students read on their way into your room.
• Students as young as five interviewed teacher candidates. They were taught how to interview, an adult sat in but did not coach, and Muriel says the children’s read on a candidate was consistently the hardest and most accurate part of the process.
• Start with what you already have. Muriel’s answer for a teacher who wants to begin tomorrow is not a purchase order — it is teaching the habits inside the books already on your shelf.

About the Guests

Ronn Nozoe

Ronn Nozoe is a lifelong educator and CEO of NASSP, an organization dedicated to advancing school leadership to transform education. Previously, he served as associate and interim executive director at ASCD and as deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Education, where he led initiatives in teacher quality, school safety, and rural, migrant, and Indigenous education.

In Hawaii, Nozoe served as deputy state superintendent from 2010–15, amplifying principals’ voices and leveraging state and federal funds to improve student outcomes. He has also served as a district superintendent, principal, vice principal, and teacher.

Nozoe holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa.

Connect: LinkedIn · nassp.org

Muriel Summers

From the minute she stepped into the classroom, Muriel Summers has always viewed teaching as a calling. As a principal, she twice guided her school, A.B. Combs Elementary in Raleigh, North Carolina, to being named the top magnet school of America. The school also became the original leadership school featured in FranklinCovey’s Leader in Me. The vision and strategies she and her remarkable staff developed are now being replicated in over 8,000 schools and more than seventy countries.

She bears the honor of having received several awards, including teacher of the year, principal of the year, and an honorary doctorate. She was awarded the William and Ida Friday award for Leadership in Innovation, The Order of the Long Leaf Pine given by the Governor of North Carolina (the state’s highest honor given to a North Carolinian), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Award for Leadership in Education, and the Ralph Kimmel Award, North Carolina’s highest honor for principals. She now serves as the Global Ambassador for the Leader in Me and keynotes at conferences across the US and abroad.

Connect: leaderinme.org

Coming Next Week: Leadership, Part 2 — Leading With Love

This was part one of a two-part series. Part two is Leading With Love, and it takes everything above out of theory and into a real building on a real Monday morning. Two of America’s National Principals of the Year show what it actually looks like when you lead with heart — one in a middle school where belonging is measured and tracked, one in a high school where a restorative framework cut office referrals by 69 percent. Bring a tissue for this one too.

Part two airs next week and will be added right here on this page — same link, so you can bookmark it now. Here are the two guests you’ll meet.

Sonia E. Ruiz

Sonia E. Ruiz is the Principal of Jane Addams Middle School in Bolingbrook, Illinois, where her leadership has guided the school to Exemplary Status for three years in a row. A proud Latina leader, Sonia has dedicated her career to ensuring that every student learns at high levels in safe, supportive, and inclusive school communities.

Her leadership journey spans more than two decades, beginning with her early years as a school social worker and progressing through roles as assistant principal, associate principal, and now principal. Throughout her career, she has been recognized for transforming school culture, strengthening teacher collective efficacy, and advancing equitable practices. In recognition of her impact, Sonia was honored as the 2021 Lake County IPA Assistant Principal of the Year, the 2025 Three Rivers Middle School Principal of the Year, the 2025 Illinois Middle School Principal of the Year, the 2025 Illinois NAESP National Distinguished Principal of the Year, the 2026 NASSP Illinois Middle Level Principal of the Year, and, most recently, the 2026 National Middle Level Principal of the Year.

Beyond her school community, Sonia serves the profession at both the state and national levels. She is the current Diversity and Equity Chair for the Illinois Principals Association (IPA), was appointed to the Illinois State Board of Education’s Inclusive American History Commission, and will serve on the 2025–2026 IPA State Superintendent’s Advisory Council. Nationally, she is a member of the NAESP National Task Force on Race and Equity and was selected to attend the National School Leaders Advocacy Conference in Washington, D.C., in March 2025, an invitation-only gathering of principals from across the country. She also participated in the inaugural AASA Aspiring Superintendents Academy for Latina and Latino Leaders.

She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Master’s degree in School Social Work from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she also founded Gamma Phi Omega International Sorority, Inc. She later earned a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership from Concordia University Chicago and is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Educational Administration and Foundations at Illinois State University, with a focus on Leadership, Equity, and Inquiry.

Connect: LinkedIn · @MrsSoniaRuiz

Amanda Jamerson (AJAM the Advocate)

Amanda Jamerson, also known as AJAM the Advocate, is an accomplished educational leader and advocate recognized for advancing excellence in teaching, learning, and student support across Southeastern Wisconsin. Throughout the Greater Milwaukee area, she is known for her deep passion for serving students, families, and school communities with purpose and integrity.

Amanda currently serves as the Associate Principal of Shorewood High School, where she leads with a strong commitment to equity, growth, and excellence. She believes deeply that showing up for students and school communities is heart work, and she leads each day with purpose, compassion, and an unwavering commitment to equity and excellence. During her tenure, she designed and implemented a Restorative Actions Framework that reduced office discipline referrals by 69 percent over three years, while deepening student understanding of empathy and accountability. She also co-launched a comprehensive cell phone policy that promotes digital balance and has resulted in improved classroom focus and fewer peer conflicts.

Her impact has been recognized at both the state and national levels, as she was named Wisconsin’s Associate Principal of the Year and selected as a national finalist for NASSP’s 2026 National Assistant Principal of the Year. She went on to win that national award on April 17, 2026, becoming the 2026 National High School Assistant Principal of the Year.

Connect: LinkedIn · @ajamtheadvocate · Facebook · ajamtheadvocate.com

Listen to Part 2

Stay tuned!

Resources from Part 2

Key Takeaways from Part 2

Part 2 Transcript

Other Shows for Teachers Like You

• See the Gap. Be the Bridge. — a leadership hour on seeing the gap in front of a student and building the bridge across it.
• Heart First. Tools Second. — how to teach and use technology in today’s classroom without losing the human part.
• All Cool Cat Teacher Talk episodes.

Subscribe to Cool Cat Teacher Talk

• Apple Podcasts
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• YouTube
• All Cool Cat Teacher Talk Episodes

Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post How to Become a Better Principal: Award Winning Principals Speak appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

If you're seeing this on another site, they are "scraping" my feed and taking my content to present it to you so be aware of this.

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Free, high quality, ad-free resources are becoming a treasure to teachers. The BBC Learning Hub has these resources. From Walking with Dinosaurs, to Planet Earth, to Bluey content that helps kids relate, connect, and learn — the BBC Learning Hub has free resources that every classroom can use.

Sponsored: BBC Learning Hub sponsored this podcast episode. All opinions are my own.

At ISTE, I first met Kimmie Fink, today’s guest, at her BBC booth. I really could barely get to her because so many teachers were coming by to get the printables for the Bluey content they have on their site. These printables are all available for free on their website for teachers to download and use along with the videos. All of this content can easily be sent to Google Classroom, as well.

Teachers kept asking what the premium version of BBC Learning Hub was — and the answer was: the BBC Learning Hub is free and it is the premium version. Award-winning teacher Kimmie Fink talks about the resources on the site, the most popular videos and handouts she has curated, and what teachers love to share with their students. I highly recommend the BBC Learning Hub and appreciate their sponsorship of my time at ISTE 2026 this year. Let’s have a Fab Idea Friday as we talk about the free resources at the BBC Learning Hub.

Listen to the Show

Watch this video on YouTube.Subscribe to the Cool Cat Teacher Channel on YouTube

Watch on YouTube and subscribe for new episodes every week.

Key Takeaways for Teachers from Kimmie Fink

• “There’s only free” is the whole business model. You can watch every video without an account, and a free login unlocks the printables, your own playlists, and Google Classroom assignments.
• Bluey is a draw for teachers of younger students. The BBC Learning Hub is the home of the only licensed Bluey learning materials. They have fifteen free lessons on friendship, feelings, and reading body language. For a child working on nonverbal cues, it can really help teach behavior skills.
• Leveled articles throughout the site. Articles pulled from BBC magazines are leveled for grades 3–5, 6–8, and 9–12, with vocabulary built in. Every reader in the room engages the same content at their own level.
• Take the piece you need, not the whole unit. Kimmie built the Walking with Dinosaurs field trip as a 45–60 minute student exploration with a full teacher guide. However, there is flexibility, as you can pull one dig-site video and stop there. As she put it, everything is not like a massive production.

Every Resource Kimmie Mentioned on the Show

Everything below is free on the BBC Learning Hub. You can watch any video without an account. A free login is what unlocks the printables, your own playlists, and sending it all to Google Classroom, so I would set up an account for that. If you want to keep up with what is new, sign up for their newsletter.

Start Here

• BBC Learning Hub home page — Kimmie’s first recommendation. The new top navigation is built to show you the breadth of what’s there in one look.
• BBC Newsroom and the daily Newsbite — her answer for what a teacher can use tomorrow morning. A new five-minute news clip every school day with comprehension questions and differentiated response worksheets already written.

Bluey

• Bluey: Feelings, Friendship, and Other SEL Skills — the fifteen free lessons Kimmie mentions, for ages 4–7. Each one ties to a Bluey episode with discussion prompts and printable activities. These are the only licensed Bluey learning materials anywhere.
• Our 10 Favorite Bluey Activities and Arts and Crafts — the printables teachers were lining up for at ISTE. Print in color or black and white.

Walking with Dinosaurs

• Walking with Dinosaurs Virtual Field Trip — This is a cool one. Six dig sites for grades 3–8, an interactive map students explore in any order, twelve videos pairing a real dig with the CGI dinosaur, a quiz at each stop, the paleontologist field journal, and the “what dinosaur are you” personality quiz. A full teacher guide comes with it: standards alignment, extension activities, and a complete lesson plan. Figure 45 to 60 minutes for the whole thing — or pull one video and stop there.

Planet Earth and Sir David Attenborough

• Your Passport to 20 Years of BBC’s Planet Earth — the printable passport for grades 3–5 that students fill in as they work through the clips.
• The Ultimate Planet Earth Playlist — the eight most popular clips Kimmie curated, 32 minutes total: polar bears, bobcats, catfish, marine iguanas, cave swiftlets, the mouse lemurs in Madagascar she describes on the show, dolphins, and emperor penguins.
• Video Playlist: The Best of Sir David Attenborough — ten clips from Planet Earth, Blue Planet, and Frozen Planet, including the polar bear cubs Kimmie names as a writing-prompt starter.
• Planet Earth Quizzes — check for understanding without writing anything yourself.

ELA and Reading

• Leveled Non-Fiction Student Reading Passages — the piece I’d point a curriculum director to first. The same article written three ways: grades 3–5 (Lexile 400–800), 6–8 (800–1200), and 9–12 (1000–1400), pulled from BBC Science Focus, HistoryExtra, and Discover Wildlife, with vocabulary built in and a bundle of response worksheets that work with any article.
• Every video on the site has a writing prompt attached to it. You can pick a clip your students will care about and the prompt is already there.

Math and Early Literacy

• Numberblocks Fun: Playful Math Activities for PreK–2 — 50+ free printables covering number sense, odd and even, counting, addition, times tables, and patterns. Explainer videos for math are still in development.
• Alphablocks Letter Play: Early Reading Activities for PreK–2 — the companion phonics set: alphabet tiles, tracing, sounding out and blending.

The Chimpanzee Story Kimmie Tells

• The Chimpanzee Files — videos, a printable fact file, and a quiz for ages 8 and up, including the Jane Goodall documentaries that turned a dry reading anthology into something her students cared about.

Browse by Subject

• Science and Environment — first thing in the top nav.
• History and Global Studies — the social studies, global, and international content.
• My World: Media Literacy — how news gets made and how to evaluate it.
• Shark Interactive and Go Jetters — two more interactive experiences, including world landmarks for pre-K through second grade.

Kimmie also mentions that the site refreshes seasonally — bats in October, a Halloween Bluey worksheet, an article on the Fourth of July and the history behind it. Worth checking the subject pages at the start of each month. And there’s a lot more on their site.

More from Kimmie

• Kimmie Fink’s posts on the BBC Learning Hub blog

About Kimmie Fink

Kimmie Fink is the Senior Editor of the BBC Learning Hub. She has 13 years of classroom teaching experience, holds a Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction, and was the 2009 Puget Sound Teacher of the Year.

Website: bbclearninghub.com
Facebook: BBC Learning Hub
Instagram / Threads: @bbclearninghub
Blog: Kimmie’s posts on the BBC Learning Hub

Other Shows for K-12 Teachers Who Want Free, Ready-to-Use Resources

• Cool Cat Teacher Talk S7E1: Humans Teaching Humans About the Machine — AI and Edtech SuperShare, Part 2 — Kimmie’s original segment, recorded on the floor at ISTE 2026.
• ISTE 2026: What AI and Edtech in K-12 Schools Actually Looks Like Now — the full Cool Cat Teacher Talk ISTE 2026 super series hub.
• Episode 956: How to Teach AI in Any Classroom, Not Just CS Class with Karim Meghji of CodeAI — another free-curriculum conversation from ISTE 2026.
• Episode 946: A Real Teacher Sparking Curiosity Makes All the Difference with Brandie Wright — human connection in the age of AI, also recorded at ISTE 2026.

Listen and Subscribe

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• All 10 Minute Teacher Episodes

Pick one resource from this episode, build a free playlist, and send it to your students before the week is out.

Episode Transcript

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a sponsored episode and blog post. BBC Learning Hub has compensated me to share information about the BBC Learning Hub. However, all opinions expressed are my own. I have personally reviewed these resources and only recommend tools I believe offer genuine value to classroom teachers. My endorsement is limited to the educational products and services discussed in this episode. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” The sponsor has no impact on the editorial content of this show.

The post Free BBC Resources for Your Classroom: Dinosaurs, Bluey, Planet Earth and News appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

If you're seeing this on another site, they are "scraping" my feed and taking my content to present it to you so be aware of this.

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.

As an instructional technology coach, formative assessment has been a hot-button issue for me. In my own classroom, my goal was to formatively assess learning every eight minutes. Then I knew whether to move on or reteach. I became convinced when I implemented formative assessment and began to teach binary numbers with mastery in three days instead of the two weeks it used to take with traditional paper-and-pen, grading, and hand-raising methods.

It was when every student shared what they knew that I knew if what I was doing worked. I kept the methods that worked, and interestingly, many of the most impactful ways to teach binary numbers were no-screen, hands-on lessons, even though we pulled out technology to formatively assess whether students were understanding binary numbers. I’m convinced.

I hope after you listen to what Starr Sackstein has to say that you’ll be convinced too. Starr has been known for her radical methods of deep teaching and “throwing out grades” but we all know we need standards mastery.

Let’s dig into actionable assessment and feedback that help students learn and grow in today’s show. I’ve linked to free resources for this show — a discussion guide for your team, a set of no-screen formative assessment activities, and a checklist you can run against an assessment you already give. Starr says assessment is learning. Not the thing that comes after it.

Listen to the Show

Watch this video on YouTube.Subscribe to the Cool Cat Teacher Channel on YouTube

Watch on YouTube and subscribe for new episodes every week.

Key Takeaways for Teachers from Starr Sackstein

• The grade is what kills it. Starr’s line is blunt: “as soon as you put a grade, though, on something, it is no longer formative.” So a lot of what we log as formative in the gradebook isn’t formative at all. It’s just a small summative.
• One preposition changes the whole thing. Assessment of learning looks backward at what already happened. Assessment for learning feeds the next move. Starr goes further than both: after two decades in this work, she says assessment is learning.
• Four corners still works, and most teachers still don’t use it. Make a statement, students go to the corner they agree with, and they have to defend why they stood there. Then — and this is the part people skip — after they hear everyone else’s reasoning, you let them switch corners.
• When the whole class misses it, look at your own directions first. Starr’s own early projects came back as what she calls an “amorphous blob of information,” and her read on it is generous and hard at once: “when you have that many kids not doing what you asked them to do, there’s clearly an issue on your side, not their side.”

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Actionable Assessment: A Step-by-Step Guide to Responsive Teaching and Student Growth by Michael McDowell and Starr Sackstein — the new book at the center of this conversation, with a strategy appendix in the back so you can find a move without hunting through the chapters.
• Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning by James M. Lang — the book behind Vicki’s five-questions-at-the-start-of-class routine.
• Starr Sackstein’s website and blog — where her free writing on grading, feedback, and student voice lives.
• Work in Progress — Starr’s Education Week blog, the one she mentions at 01:30 as the game changer.
• Learner-Centered Spaces — Starr’s podcast, co-hosted with Crystal Frommert.

About Starr Sackstein

Starr Sackstein is an accomplished educator, author, and speaker known for her leadership in rethinking grading and assessment practices. With over two decades of experience in education, she has served as a teacher, instructional coach, and administrator, and is widely recognized for her advocacy of equitable, student-centered learning. Starr is the author of numerous books on grading reform, feedback, and student voice, and she frequently consults with schools and districts around the world. Through her writing, speaking, and professional development work, she continues to influence educators seeking more meaningful and inclusive approaches to teaching and learning.

Books: Actionable Assessment (with Michael McDowell) · Student-Led Assessment · Making an Impact Outside of the Classroom · Blogging for Educators

Connect with Starr: Website · LinkedIn · Facebook · Bluesky · Instagram · YouTube

Assessment Resources for Teachers and Administrators

Everything here is free. Use whatever tools your school has approved, and check with your district before you put anything student-related into an AI tool.

Three things to grab: a discussion guide for your team, a set of no-screen activities you can run tomorrow, and a one-page checklist for an assessment you already give.

DISCUSSION GUIDE: Formative Assessment

Target: teacher team meetings and PLCs. This runs in about 35 minutes. It works with a department, a grade-level team, or a whole faculty. Print it, or pull the questions up on a screen.

If you want to run this with students instead

Same spine, three questions: Which assignments in here actually help you learn? Which ones just tell me what you already knew? What would you change about how I check whether you understand something? Then do something visible with one of their answers, or they won’t tell you the truth next time.

NO-SCREEN FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT ACTIVITIES

Every one of these came off the tape, and not one of them needs a device, a login, or a purchase order. That matters more than it sounds like it should — when I sorted out which of my own methods actually worked, most of the keepers turned out to be no-screen and hands-on.

1. Four Corners

Grades 3–12 and adult PD. 10–20 minutes. You need: four signs and a statement worth arguing about.

Label your four corners agree, disagree, strongly agree, strongly disagree. Read a statement. Students go to the corner that matches what they think — and here is where teachers lose the data: tell them up front they will have to defend the corner they chose, so they can’t just follow a friend. Let each corner discuss and share out. Then, after everyone has heard the justifications, invite anyone who wants to switch corners to switch.

The data you get: where the misconceptions are clustered, who can defend a position, and who moved after hearing evidence — which is the thing a multiple-choice question can never show you.

By subject, from Starr: English teachers use it for characterization. In science, put a question up with multiple-choice answers around the room and ask students to stand where their own lab data points them. In math, the same statement-and-defend structure works on process, not just answers.

2. The Post-it Round

All grades. Runs alongside any discussion. You need: one Post-it note per student.

Every student gets one Post-it. When they speak, you collect it. Once your note is in, you can’t speak again until everyone else’s has come in.

The data you get: a physical, visible record of who has talked and who hasn’t — and the quiet observers start talking, because they know their turn is coming and it’s finite. Starr calls this equity of voice. It also stops the same three kids from carrying the period.

3. Think, Pair, Share

All grades. 5–10 minutes.

Think silently. Talk to one partner. Share to the room. Starr pulled this off a random chart in the book, and it was on the evergreen list. This tactic is decades old and still doing the job. The part people skip is the silent think: cut it, and you get the fastest talker’s answer, not the class’s thinking.

4. Whiteboard Responses

All grades. Continuous. You need: individual whiteboards, or sheet protectors with card stock inside.

Everyone answers, everyone holds it up, you read the room in about four seconds. This is the one that gets you closest to checking understanding every few minutes without stopping the lesson to grade anything.

The data you get: a full-class snapshot in real time, which is exactly the moment Starr says you can still change the lesson — before you’ve burned forty minutes on a plan that wasn’t going to work.

5. Reading Records

Elementary and middle, and useful in any subject with dense text. Ongoing.

Keep a running record of what a student reads and how they handle it. It’s observational data, gathered over time, and it tells you things a test score won’t.

MORE Free Resources on Assessment and Feedback

From Starr

• Her blog — free writing on grading reform, feedback, and student voice.
• Work in Progress at Education Week.
• Learner-Centered Spaces, her podcast with Crystal Frommert.

From the archive

• 5 Fantastic Peer Feedback Strategies for Your Classroom — Starr, all the way back on episode 85.
• How to Assess with Respect — Starr on episode 739 – this one is a good one to go with today’s show.
• Math Games That Build Fluency While Kids Have Fun — Jennifer Bay-Williams and Gina Kling, on watching students play as your assessment data.

Other Shows for K-12 Teachers

• When I Knew It Was Time to Leave the Classroom — Starr on episode 564, a different kind of honest.
• Math Games That Build Fluency While Kids Have Fun — Jennifer Bay-Williams and Gina Kling on why speed drills block thinking, and watching students play as your assessment data.

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
• All 10 Minute Teacher Episodes

If this episode gave you something you can use, share it with the teacher down the hall who is buried in grading right now.

Episode Transcript

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post Assessment and Feedback That Move Learning Forward appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

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From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

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I used to hate “Around the World.” If you didn’t have the good fortune for this elementary math version of a root canal, it is where two kids stand up and the teacher holds up math problems. The student who can say the answer the fastest shouts the answer. The student who goes all the way around the room and gets back to their desk wins “around the world.” It was truly the dread of my childhood. I was so glad when I learned that in third grade we no longer did speed drills.

The teacher told us ahead of time, and Mom and I practiced so I wouldn’t be embarrassed. It was harder for me to learn math facts in first grade than it was to make an A in calculus at Georgia Tech! And today’s guests told me that AROUND THE WORLD needs to be something we get rid of. I can’t imagine if I had not had a Mom who helped me and encouraged me. I was good at math, but my working memory can struggle at times. (This is why I write everything down.)

Dr. Jennifer Bay-Williams and Dr. Gina Kling are amazing and their books are a treasure trove of resources for anyone teaching math and numeracy in elementary grades. They have tons of fun, screen-free math ideas that not only build math fluency but also support the face-to-face interactions with classmates our students need more of. I’ve also included links to their free resources and other screen-free math games that you can use in your classroom today to help kids enjoy math and do better with it. Math fact fluency can be fun. And please, please, retire Around the World! (I’m so glad I didn’t let it cause me to hate math because I really loved it when I got past math facts!)

Listen to the Show

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Key Takeaways for Teachers from Jennifer Bay-Williams and Gina Kling

• “Timed tests need to be abandoned,” Jennifer said it. She gave three reasons: they make kids anxious instead of faster, kids under pressure drop back to skip counting or counting instead of reaching for a more efficient strategy, and a wrong answer on a speed drill tells you nothing about why the child missed it.
• The games can’t have a “be fast” component — that’s the whole design. Nobody races anybody. You roll, you solve your own problem, you move your own piece. The winner is whoever rolled well that day. And kids still end up fast, because strategy gets them there.
• Watching kids play IS your assessment data. Gina told me about a teacher who said her kids knew their facts during games but not on the timed test. Gina’s answer: Then why give the test? You already knew.
• What you say to parents matters as much as what you do with kids. Jennifer’s line: math is no more inherited than reading or social studies. A parent who says “I was never good at math” needs help seeing that was their experience, not their genes.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Math Fact Fluency: 60+ Games and Assessment Tools to Support Learning and Retention by Jennifer Bay-Williams and Gina Kling (ASCD, 2019) — the purple book I held up on camera. Sixty-plus games, observation tools, and two full chapters on assessing fluency without a speed drill.
• The Math Fact Fluency Companion Website — free, no login. Built by the Kentucky Center for Mathematics as a service alongside the book. Printable game boards in English and Spanish, student recording pages, editable Google Slides, and assessment tools.
• Kentucky Center for Mathematics — the organization that built and hosts the companion site.
• AMTE Standards for Preparing Teachers of Mathematics — Jennifer was a lead writer on these.
• ASCD’s page for Math Fact Fluency — the publisher’s listing.

About Dr. Jennifer Bay-Williams

Jennifer Bay-Williams is a national leader in mathematics education, working with teachers and leaders for over thirty years to support effective mathematics teaching. Her national leadership includes serving as a member of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Board of Directors, as secretary and president of the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE) (president and secretary), as lead writer to the AMTE Standards for the Preparation of Teachers of Mathematics. She is currently a member of the TODOS: Mathematics for All Board of Directors. Dr. Bay-Williams is a prolific writer. She has authored 18 books, 40 journal articles, and 23 book chapters, and offered over 400 presentations and workshops for mathematics teachers and leaders.

Dr. Bay-Williams is a professor at the University of Louisville (Kentucky), where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in mathematics education and works in local schools to support effective mathematics teaching and learning. Before becoming a teacher educator, Jennifer taught K-12 mathematics in Missouri and in Perú.

Connect with Jennifer: LinkedIn | X (@JBayWilliams)

About Dr. Gina Kling

Dr. Gina Kling has been fortunate to serve the mathematics education community in a variety of ways throughout her 25-year teaching career. Gina is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, and teaches mathematics for future elementary school teachers. Since 2011, she has worked as a curriculum developer for the elementary mathematics curriculum Everyday Mathematics (based at the University of Chicago) with a focus on grades K–3. For the past 15 years, Gina has focused her research on helping children learn their basic facts in meaningful ways, work that she often shares through professional development with practicing teachers throughout the country. She has authored numerous articles on teaching and assessing basic facts as well as a book, Math Fact Fluency: 60+ Games and Assessment Tools to Support Learning and Retention.

Connect with Gina: Hope College faculty page

Math Fact Fluency Resources for Teachers, Coaches, and Administrators

Everything below is free. Start with what Jennifer and Gina give away themselves. I have created a discussion guide for your next grade-level meeting where you talk about math fluency. I would suggest emailing this episode and sharing the discussion guide.

Their Free Companion Website

Jennifer gave this away at the end of the show. The Math Fact Fluency Companion Website is hosted by the Kentucky Center for Mathematics, built as a service alongside the book. No login, no email capture, no cost. Look for the picture of the purple book.

What’s on it:

• Printable game instructions in English and Spanish
• Game boards, game mats, and student recording sheets — so you don’t have to make them
• Editable Google Slides versions of the games (English and Spanish, vertical and horizontal)
• Assessment and observation tools — the alternatives to the timed test
• Teaching tips

A note on the numbers: Ninteen full games are there right now — enough to start Monday.

Every Game They Named — With the Free Download

These are the games Jennifer and Gina talked about in our conversation. Each link goes straight to that game’s free printable page.

• Salute — Gina’s favorite and the game that made them writing partners. All four operations. Cards only.
• Multiplication Salute — the same game, grown up for multiplication and division.
• Lucky 13 — Jennifer’s pick. Draw four cards, find two that come closest to 13, low score wins. Cards only.
• Trios — Connect Four, except it’s connect three, and you claim spots by solving multiplication facts. Needs a game board (free at the link).
• Rectangle Fit — Jennifer described it as Tetris for multiplication. Roll two dice, fit the rectangle.
• Subtraction Stacks — stack counters on a 0–9 board, roll two dice, take the difference, first to clear wins.

One more Gina described that isn’t on the free site — Go Fish for 10s. Play Go Fish, but instead of asking for a match you ask for the card that makes ten with one in your hand. Hold a six, ask for a four. By the end of fifteen minutes the combinations of ten are spread out all over the desks. It’s in the book.

Screen-Free Math Games You Can Play With Nothing But a Deck of Cards

Three of the games above need no printing, no prep, and no screen. Pull the face cards out (or keep them and assign values) and go.

GAME 1: Salute — 3 players, all four operations

1. One player is the dealer. The other two each take a card and hold it on their forehead, facing out, without looking at it.
2. The dealer looks at both cards and says the sum out loud. (“Sixteen.”)
3. Each player looks at the other player’s card and figures out their own. If I see a nine and the sum is sixteen, I’m holding a seven.
4. Rotate roles so everyone gets a turn as dealer.

To grow it: the dealer says the product instead of the sum, and players work out the missing factor. That’s division practice disguised as a card game. There’s no winner and no timer — the mathematical work is the point.

Partner version (Jennifer’s modification): before kids can use strategies, they need their combinations of ten cold. So one player puts a card on their forehead and the partner names the card that makes ten with it. Three on the forehead, partner says seven. Works for doubles too.

GAME 2: Lucky 13 — 2 or more players, addition

1. Each player draws four cards.
2. Find the two cards in your hand that add up closest to 13.
3. Your score is how far away from 13 you are. Add to 14? You scored 1. Add to 10? You scored 3.
4. Low score wins. Play five rounds.

Every player works their own four cards, so nobody is waiting and nobody is racing. Scale it up to five cards in a hand, or down to Lucky 10 for younger students.

GAME 3: Go Fish for 10s — 2–4 players, combinations of ten

1. Deal five cards each, ace through nine only.
2. On your turn, ask another player for the card that would make ten with a card in your hand. Holding a six? Ask for a four.
3. Got it? Lay the pair down. Didn’t? Go fish.
4. Play until the deck runs out. Most pairs wins — or just play until the bell.

This is the one Gina recommends for first grade and early second. Combinations of ten are the gateway to almost every later addition strategy, and this locks them in without a single worksheet.

Discussion Guide: Talking About Math Fact Fluency in a Staff Meeting

Built for a grade-level team, a math department, or a full faculty. Plan on 45 minutes. Bring a deck of cards for every three people. This discussion guide combined with the podcast is a great beginning journey into the content in the show and ultimately in the book.

Optional follow-up commitment

Ask each teacher to name one thing they’ll stop and one thing they’ll start before the next meeting. Write them down. Revisit in four weeks.

Other Shows for Elementary Teachers and Math Coaches

• Cool Cat Teacher Talk S4E1 — Teachers Share Their Best Tips for Learning Math Facts, plus AI Safety News — Jennifer and Gina’s full appearance on the radio and TV show. Longer interview, more games, including Go Fish for 10s and Rectangle Fit.
• A Cool Secret for Helping Kids Understand Math — Tinashe Blanchet on project-based learning in math class.
• How to Make Math ENGAGING: 10 Experts Weigh In — a three-part series on reducing math anxiety and building curiosity.
• Epic Elementary Super Show — executive functioning, reading, and math differentiation for the elementary classroom.

Listen and Subscribe

• Apple Podcasts
• Spotify
• YouTube
• All 10 Minute Teacher Episodes

If you know a teacher who is still giving timed tests because nobody ever handed them an alternative, send them this episode and a deck of cards.

Episode Transcript

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post Math Games That Build Fluency While Kids Have Fun appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

If you're seeing this on another site, they are "scraping" my feed and taking my content to present it to you so be aware of this.

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Using VR in the classroom isn’t always easy. But how can you use those headsets your school lets you “check out” and use? What are practical ways to teach with these tools? And how can you design amazing uses of the VR headset that fit with what you’re trying to teach? We’ll learn about all of this and more in today’s show.

Also, in this post, we’ll be sharing lots of free VR resources from Meghan and other resources for use in your classroom even if you do not have a headset for your students. You can do some of these on a Chromebook! I’d encourage you to have one or two VR experiences this school year (and who knows, if you love it, it might even be more). Take a field trip into VR!

Listen to the Show

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Watch on YouTube and subscribe for new episodes every week.

Key Takeaways for Teachers from Meghan Freeman

• The wow has to be secondary to the why. A headset guarantees you a student’s full attention for a few minutes — the question is whether you planned what to do with it, or just hoped the technology would be enough.
• Before you book the equipment, finish this sentence: what can my students do in VR that they can’t do in my room? Chemicals you can’t safely handle. A dissection a student is allowed to opt out of. A seat in the Oval Office. If you can’t finish the sentence, the headsets can wait.
• Fifteen minutes for the first session. Twenty-five to thirty minutes, maximum, ever. Meghan gets carsick, and she was surprised how much the headset affected her equilibrium. Because she is sensitive to this, she designs in short sprints and stops well before anyone’s stomach turns.
• Classroom management in VR is still classroom management. Spatial audio so students only hear the person beside them, the ability to seat students where you want them, mute, and locking down the web browser. As she puts it, your smartest kiddos will find the loopholes in your system.
• She gave her staff a full year to play before a single student put on a headset. Forty-six devices, a year of teachers arguing about what worked, and the policy came out of what they found — not out of a binder someone wrote in advance.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

These are the tools Meghan named on the show:

• Illuminate XR — Meghan’s company. Immersive learning experiences plus IXR Nexus, a platform built to make student reasoning visible, and a VR algebra experience called For All Time.
• ENGAGE XR — the VR platform Illuminate XR builds on. Meghan chose it for security: no metrics collection or profiling on students, plus strong teacher controls for seating, muting, and locking down browsers.
• Meta Quest — the headset Meghan uses. She’s quick to say there are many good options at many budgets.
• BRINK Traveler — the app she names for taking students to real places they’ve never been, built from photogrammetry of actual locations.
• Curio XR — not named on the show, but worth your time: free XR sessions for schools from VR in Schools, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, built with university partners and running on hand tracking so students don’t have to learn controllers first.

Meghan also mentions Windows Mixed Reality headsets, which Vicki used years ago — Microsoft has since discontinued that line. And the “walk the plank” experience she describes at the top of the show is a well-known VR demo, but she doesn’t name the specific app.

About Meghan Freeman

Meghan describes her background this way:

Meghan Freeman M.Ed. is an education leader, visionary strategist, and Co-CEO of an innovative immersive learning company. As the founder and previous CEO of Elite Academic Academy, Meghan built a school from the ground up, growing it into a California Distinguished School with statewide honors for academic performance, growth, and innovation. Under her leadership, the school defied the odds of post-pandemic learning loss and redefined what success can look like for students, families, and educators.

Now, as the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of a cutting-edge immersive learning company Illuminate XR, Meghan is shaping the future of education through extended reality (XR), AI, and neuroscience-backed design. Her work centers on empowering learners with the human skills, technological fluency, and emotional intelligence needed to thrive in an unpredictable world. She believes the best learning happens at the intersection of innovation and connection.

Known for her hands-on leadership and relentless pursuit of results, Meghan has led teams through rapid growth, disruptive change, and mission driven expansion all while staying rooted in empathy, excellence, and equity. Whether mentoring educators, designing frameworks, or launching new ventures, she leads with purpose, heart, and vision.

The descriptions of her school’s recognition and results above are Meghan’s own account and have not been independently verified.

Connect with Meghan: meghankfreeman.com · LinkedIn · Illuminate XR

Free VR and 360° Resources for Teachers and Administrators

Here’s the honest truth about classroom VR: most teachers don’t have headsets, and the ones who do usually have a cart of six for a building of forty teachers. So this list starts where almost everybody actually is — a laptop, a Chromebook, a projector, and a class that would love to go somewhere today.

Free VR and 360° experiences that need no headset

Every one of these runs in a browser. Put it on the projector, hand a student the mouse, and go.

• Museum of the American Revolution Virtual Tour — a 360° panoramic walkthrough of the whole museum. A genuinely good starting point for social studies, and it costs you nothing but the click.
• XR Guide — WebXR directory — use the search box at the top. This is a directory of experiences that run right in the browser, no headset and no app store required. It’s the fastest way to find something in your subject.
• NASA at Home: Virtual Tours and Apps — NASA’s hub for virtual tours and apps, free like everything else NASA makes.
• NASA Commercial Crew Program VR Tours — my pick of the NASA collection, with versions built for grades 5–8 and grades 9–12. Here’s what makes these different from most free VR: every tour comes with PDFs carrying NGSS standards, math standards, and actual lesson plans. Here’s one from the Preparing to Launch America guide: Build and Launch a Foam Rocket, a 60-minute activity for grades 2–8 that carries NGSS standards K-PS2-1, 3-PS2-2, and MS-ETS1-1, -3, and -4, and walks students through the full engineering design process. That’s a VR experience with the planning already done for you.
• European Space Agency: International Space Station Panoramic Tour — a 360° walkthrough of the ISS. Pair it with the NASA tours and let students compare what they see.
• BBC Learning Hub Virtual Field Trips — a searchable collection of virtual field trips. The Walking with Dinosaurs Virtual Field Trip comes with a teacher guide and a printable paleontologist field journal so students have something in their hands while they explore.
• Google Arts & Culture — a deep repository of museums and field trips. If you don’t have headsets and want your students to experience some trips, go to the homepage, pick your subject, and explore what they have to offer.
• Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Virtual Tour — room by room through the whole museum, including exhibits that have since closed.
• 360Cities Video Gallery — 360° video from locations all over the world. Good for geography, world languages, and “show me where this story takes place.”
• National Geographic on YouTube — and here’s a trick worth teaching your students: look for the 360 icon on YouTube. Once you know to look for it, there’s a whole layer of the platform you’ve been scrolling past.
• Ancient Rome: The Colosseum — a free experience that takes students inside the Colosseum. A favorite of mine for world history.
• Boeing FUTURE U Virtual Field Trips — 30-minute virtual field trips built with Discovery Education, with downloadable educator guides. Strong for CTE and career exploration.
• Discovery Education Virtual Field Trips — a long-running free collection across subjects.
• Nearpod Virtual Field Trips — if your school already pays for Nearpod, check here before you go looking elsewhere. A large library of VR field trips is built right in, and their blog keeps a running top-10 list and subject-specific guides. You may already own the tool you were about to go shopping for.

Free apps once your school has headsets

• Curio XR — free XR sessions for schools from a nonprofit, running on Meta Quest with hand tracking instead of controllers. Molecule building, virtual anatomy, historical simulations.
• Free travel and exploration apps on the Meta Quest store — a browsable collection of free VR travel and exploration titles. This is where I’d send a teacher who just got a headset cart and doesn’t know what to put on it.
• Anne Frank House VR — walk through the Secret Annex, with Anne’s own words as you move through the rooms. The Anne Frank House makes it free of charge in seven languages, and it runs on Quest, Rift, Gear VR, Steam, and PICO. This is exactly the kind of experience Meghan means when she talks about empathy as the why — and it’s one to preview yourself and think carefully about before you hand it to a class.

One caution before you download anything. Test every experience yourself first, and follow your school’s policies on apps, accounts, and student data. Meghan chose her platform specifically because it doesn’t profile students — that question is worth asking of anything you put on a child’s face.

Free tools where students build, not just visit

• Delightex Edu (formerly CoSpaces Edu) — the free BASIC plan lets students build 3D environments, 360° tours, interactive stories, games, and simulations, and code them with block coding or TypeScript. Scenes can be viewed in VR from a smartphone. This is the one I’d start with if you want students creating. If you followed my ISTE 2026 coverage, this is the tool Jaime Donally was demoing.
• Tinkercad — free 3D design, electronics, and coding in the browser. Students model something, then bring it into a 3D or AR view. A good on-ramp before anyone touches a headset.
• XR Guide again — worth a second mention here, because browsing what other people have built is how most students figure out what they want to make.

And if you want the fuller conversation about student creation, two shows from the archive are still the best I’ve done on it — Sean Wybrant’s students building VR projects, and Robert Kalman’s five design tools. Both are linked below.

More VR and AR Shows from Cool Cat Teacher

I’ve been covering this topic since 2017. Here’s the archive, newest first:

• ISTE 2026 Day 2 (June 30, 2026) — my own coverage of the newest immersive tools, including Jaime Donally’s demos of Delightex, Merge EDU, VirtualSpeech, and Meta Display glasses.
• ISTE 2025 Supershare: AI Hacks, VR Magic & Microsoft Reveals (June 26, 2025) — Jaime Donally, Dr. Rachelle Dené Poth, and Mike Tholfsen in one show.
• 12 AR Apps and Tips for Awesome Classrooms with Jaime Donally (Episode 799, March 28, 2023) — twelve specific apps, with the classroom tips to go with them.
• AI in VR and AR with Rachelle Dené Poth (Episode 812, August 19, 2023) — the closest companion to today’s show. AI inside immersive environments, which is exactly the intersection Meghan’s company works in.
• Virtual Museum Tours: Ready to Take Kids on a Field Trip? (April 4, 2022) — more free virtual field trips, if this post left you wanting.
• How Kids Can Design in AR and VR with Robert Kalman: 5 Tools to Use (Episode 638, March 4, 2020) — student creation, tool by tool.
• The Oculus Quest: Why It Is a Game Changer (August 26, 2019) — Jaime Donally on why standalone headsets changed classroom VR.
• How to Create in AR and VR (February 19, 2019) — Jaime Donally on making, not just consuming.
• How to Use Augmented Reality in Language and Literature Classes (Episode 452, March 4, 2019) — TW Williamson, from an international school in Taiwan.
• VR & AR in the Classroom (February 18, 2019) — Hall Davidson on definitions, tools, and which one matters more to teachers.
• Valuable Virtual Reality Things Every Teacher Should Know (Episode 432, February 4, 2019) — Steven Sato on VR and empathy.
• Virtual Reality Protocols for the Classroom (January 8, 2019) — Jaime Donally. If today’s episode made you nervous about management and safety, start here.
• Webinar: Teaching with Augmented Reality with #ARVRinEDU Classroom Enthusiasts (December 13, 2018) — Jaime Donally and Rachelle Dené Poth together.
• 5 Ways to Use Augmented Reality in the Classroom (Episode 395, November 29, 2018) — Lindsay Fell, elementary art.
• Remarkable Teaching: Student Created Virtual Reality Projects (Episode 358, September 12, 2018) — Sean Wybrant, 2017 Colorado Teacher of the Year.
• AR, VR, and MR for All Classrooms (Episode 342, August 21, 2018) — Jaime Donally’s foundational explainer. Still the clearest one out there.
• Bringing Literature to Life in Open Sim (Episode 293, April 18, 2018) — Mary Howard’s sixth graders building the Anne Frank house.
• Merge Cube Mania in Middle School (Episode 288, April 11, 2018) — Karen Bosch on the cheapest AR hardware in schools.
• Virtual Reality as a New Educational Paradigm in the Classroom (Episode 204, December 7, 2017) — Enrique Cachafeiro on cost and seated-VR safety.
• Simple Virtual Reality with Google Streetview and Google Cardboard (Episode 127, August 15, 2017) — Donnie Piercey’s fifth graders shot 360° imagery of their own town.
• Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality in the Classroom (Episode 29, March 9, 2017) — Steven Anderson, where this all started for me.

Books on AR and VR in the classroom

Jaime Donally, who has taught more teachers about this than anyone I know:

• Learning Transported: Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality for All Classrooms — the one to read first.
• The Immersive Classroom: Create Customized Learning Experiences with AR/VR — for when you’re ready to design your own.
• Immerse Yourself: Create Engaging AR/VR Experiences for All Learners — a short jump-start guide.

Books on AI and emerging tech in the classroom

Dr. Rachelle Dené Poth, who has been using AR and VR in her Spanish classroom for years:

• How to Teach AI: Weaving Strategies and Activities into Any Content Area
• Chart a New Course: A Guide to Teaching Essential Skills for Tomorrow’s World

Follow #ARVRinEDU

If you take one more thing from this post, take the hashtag. #ARVRinEDU is where the AR and VR education community shares what’s actually working in real classrooms. It was started by Jaime Donally, who has been the steady, practical voice in this space for a decade — and she’s still at it, as anyone who followed my ISTE 2026 coverage knows.

Follow the hashtag wherever you already spend your time:

• X/Twitter — #ARVRinEDU and @JaimeDonally
• LinkedIn — the #ARVRinEDU feed
• Instagram — #arvrinedu
• Her site — arvrinedu.com, a genuine library of ideas
• YouTube — Jaime Donally’s channel

Watch for #31DaysofARVRinEDU, her daily quick-tips series. It’s a month of small, usable ideas — exactly the kind of thing that makes a hashtag worth following.

Listen and Subscribe

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• All 10 Minute Teacher Episodes

Pick one experience from this list and put it on the calendar for this month — that’s the whole assignment.

Episode Transcript

This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki

Disclosure of Material Connection: This episode includes some affiliate links. This means that if you choose to buy I will be paid a commission on the affiliate program. However, this is at no additional cost to you. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

Additional disclosure: BBC Learning Hub is the sponsor of this Friday’s episode. Their virtual field trips are listed above because they are free and genuinely useful, and they had no input on this post.

The post How to Make VR Actually Work in Your Classroom appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

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