A struggling Title I school built its culture around the 7 Habits — and the academics followed. Principal Muriel Summers tells how.

In 1999, Muriel Summers became principal of A.B. Combs Elementary in Raleigh, North Carolina — the fifth person interviewed for a job four others had walked away from. She had just heard Dr. Stephen Covey speak, and she went back to her staff with one question: do you think we can teach these habits to children? There was no framework. There was no money. What they built turned A.B. Combs into the original Leader in Me school and one of the most visited schools in the world.

Muriel is now Global Ambassador for the Leader in Me, co-author of the updated The Leader in Me, and co-author with David K. Hatch of the new book Teacher Believed in Me. This is a Motivational Monday conversation for every educator heading back to school.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- Why Muriel fixed the school's culture first and let the academics follow — "you don't have to worry about the academics, they just happen" - The one question she asked parents, students, teachers, and local business leaders before changing anything, and what each group actually said - The three words posted above the front door that every child read getting off the bus: you are seen, you are known, you are loved - How children as young as five were taught to interview teacher candidates — and the one time in twenty years Muriel overruled them (she was wrong) - What "every child has genius" looks like in practice, from 900 pieces of art on the walls to a morning meeting that matters as much as instruction

Full show notes, resources, and Muriel's books: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e965

If this episode gave you something to use tomorrow, please rate and review the show wherever you're listening — it's the single best way to help another teacher find it. And share it with a colleague who's rebuilding their classroom culture this year.

Free, ad-free BBC videos with ready-to-teach lesson plans — Bluey, leveled reading articles, dinosaur field trips, and a daily newsroom, all free for K-12.

Kimmie Fink spent 13 years in the classroom and was named Puget Sound Teacher of the Year before becoming Senior Editor of the BBC Learning Hub. At her ISTE 2026 booth, teachers kept asking what the premium version costs. The answer: there isn't one. Everything is free. In this Fab Idea Friday episode, Kimmie walks through what a teacher can download and use tomorrow — and how a former teacher decides what belongs in a resource library she once wished she had.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why the BBC Learning Hub holds the only licensed Bluey learning materials — 15 free lessons on friendship, feelings, and reading body language
• Where to find leveled reading articles pulled from BBC magazines, written at grades 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12 so every reader in the room can access the same content
• How the Walking with Dinosaurs virtual field trip works — six dig sites, an interactive map, a paleontologist field journal, and a full teacher guide, in a 45- to 60-minute student exploration you can also break into pieces
• How a daily five-minute Newsbite with built-in questions gives you a media literacy warm-up that's ready every school day
• How to sign up free, build your own playlist, and assign it straight to Google Classroom

Full show notes, every resource link, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e964

This episode is sponsored by the BBC Learning Hub.

The moment you put a grade on something, it stops being formative. Starr Sackstein returns for her fourth 10 Minute Teacher appearance to make assessment practical — what formative really means, what to do with the data you're already collecting, and the strategies that work at the start, middle, and end of a lesson.

Starr has spent more than two decades helping teachers move from traditional grading toward feedback that actually drives learning. Her newest book, Actionable Assessment, is co-authored with Michael McDowell.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- The one-word difference between assessment OF learning and assessment FOR learning — and why it changes everything - Why putting a grade on a formative task cancels the formative part - How the four corners strategy works, plus the Post-it note round that gives quiet students the floor - The most common assessment mistake teachers make: assessments that don't match what we're actually trying to assess - Why observational data is just as valid as testing data — and why you don't have to quiz every day

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e963

If this show helps you, a rating and review wherever you're listening genuinely helps other teachers find it. And if you know a teacher who is drowning in grading right now, send them this one.

Timed tests don't make kids faster! These experts say timed tests make kids anxious and don't tell you what a child actually knows. Dr. Jennifer Bay-Williams and Dr. Gina Kling, co-authors of Math Fact Fluency: 60+ Games and Assessment Tools to Support Learning and Retention, explain what to do instead: low-stress card and dice games where nobody races anybody, and where watching kids play gives you better assessment data than any speed drill. Vicki shares why math facts in first grade were harder for her than calculus at Georgia Tech. (She also shares why her mom, who sat at the kitchen table with her, changed everything. Not everyone has that, so we need to do better!)

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why playing a game to learn basic facts isn't a reward day, it's best practice
• The three reasons Bay-Williams says timed tests need to be abandoned
• What students do when they're under time pressure (they drop back to counting)
• How to play Salute — the card game that started this writing partnership
• Better ways to assess fact fluency: game observation, quick interviews, strategy writing
• How to coach parents who tell their kids "I was never good at math"

Show notes, the full transcript, and every resource mentioned: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e962

If this episode helped you, leave a review wherever you're listening — it's how other teachers find the show.

The wow has to be secondary to the why. Meghan Freeman spent a year letting her staff play in VR before a single student put on a headset — and what they found changed how she designs immersive learning.

Meghan Freeman, M.Ed., is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of IlluminateXR. Before that she founded and led Elite Academic Academy, where she bought 46 headsets for her staff and gave them an entire school year to explore, argue, and write the policy themselves. In this conversation she gets specific about what actually works: how to manage a room full of students who can't see the room, how long a first session should run, and the one question a teacher has to answer before booking the equipment.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What XR means and how VR, AR, and AI fit together in a classroom
• Why the "wow" of an immersive moment has to be secondary to the "why"
• The classroom-management controls that make group VR workable — spatial audio, seating, mute, and locking down browsers
• Why the first trip in should be a scavenger hunt, not instruction
• How long students should actually be in a headset, and why motion sickness matters
• How she used VR sprints to reach students working toward a diploma on their second or third try
• What happened when her school put human intelligence first and standards second

Show notes, resources, lots of links to VR activities, and the full transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e961

If this episode helped you, please take a moment to rate and review the show wherever you're listening. Reviews are how other teachers find us — and share it with a colleague who's about to get headsets and no plan.

Most principals say "data-driven" and mean test scores. Dr. Deborah Dennie means attendance, discipline, and climate too — and it changed her school.

Dr. Deborah Dennie has led Leonardtown Middle School in St. Mary's County, Maryland for ten years. She's Maryland's Middle School Principal of the Year and one of three middle-school finalists for the 2026 NASSP National Principal of the Year. In this episode she walks Vicki through the data routine she runs every two weeks, why she spent her entire first year looking and listening instead of changing things, and how a classic car show and a 94% attendance goal did more for her building than another round of test-score analysis.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why her first year as principal was spent looking and listening, not changing anything • The every-two-weeks data review she runs with her assistant principals and resource teacher • How she identifies teachers above the building failure average — and the questions she sends them • Why attendance and discipline data drive instructional data, not the other way around • How her school hit the state's 94% attendance number using community, not consequences • What she tells teachers who are hurting and tired

Full show notes, free data drive resources, AI prompts, and the transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e960

⭐ If this episode helped you, please rate and review the show wherever you're listening — it's the single best way to help another teacher find it. And share it with a school leader who needs to hear it.

Travel with students changes what a school leader sees. Karen Spencer, principal of Parkview Baptist School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, treats travel as part of her school's mission rather than an add-on — a sixth grade overnight, a seventh grade STEM and history trip to Boston, Washington D.C. in eighth grade, and international travel in high school. In this conversation she walks through how the Boston trip started, what it costs a principal in effort, and what she gets back that nothing inside the building can give her.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• How a single teacher's push to "bring more STEM to the school" became an annual seventh grade trip to Boston
• Why the trip grew from STEM-only into STEM, history and fun — MIT, Harvard, robotics, the Freedom Trail, Lexington and Concord
• What a grade-by-grade travel ladder looks like when each grade builds on the last
• What hands-on learning looks like abroad — cooking classes, flamenco lessons, hiking and biking
• Karen's honest answer to administrators who ask why she'd take on the headache, and the mindset she says you have to bring

Full show notes, resources and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e959

Sponsor. Today's show is sponsored by EF Explore America and their STEM Tours. Lead your students on a STEM tour to places on the cutting edge of innovation to show them how STEM thinking often shows up where you least expect it. Imagine your students coding robots with MassRobotics at MIT, exploring marine ecosystems in Florida's coral reefs, or even sitting down to talk with a former spy in Washington DC. If you want to inspire your students and give them a fresh perspective on the power of STEM, visit efexploreamerica.com/STEM.

If this episode gave you something useful, share it with a teacher or administrator who's been thinking about taking students somewhere.

Gold standard PBL isn't a fun project with a poster at the end. Lisa Mireles of PBLWorks explains what a real project based learning classroom looks and sounds like — and how to teach it without falling behind on standards.

Lisa Mireles, Ed.D., is Managing Director of Digital Curriculum at PBLWorks (formerly the Buck Institute for Education). She's taught bilingual students in California, led schools in Indonesia and India, served as an IB coordinator, principal, and assistant superintendent, and was named HIDOE Kaua'i Complex Educational Officer of the Year in 2018.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What the Gold Standard framework actually contains — seven essential project design elements plus seven project based teaching practices — and why a great project still fails without the teaching moves • What you see and hear in a gold standard PBL classroom: a productive buzz, a project wall with the driving question and milestones, students returning to their need-to-knows, teachers coaching instead of lecturing • Concrete projects outside business and computer science: designing a community microgrid in high school science, designing a custom diamond in middle school geometry, and a second grade community heroes gallery • How PBL turns literacy into an all-day practice — reading, writing, speaking, and listening — rather than something that only happens during the literacy block • Lisa's answer to the time squeeze: coverage isn't enough, and going deeper on power standards teaches more than racing through everything • The principal move worth stealing — have teachers mark what they planned to teach, then revisit after the project to mark what they actually taught deeply. It's always about twice as much. • Where to find more than 100 free project ideas, searchable by grade and subject, that scale up or down for your students

Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e958

If this episode gave you something you can use, take a second to leave a rating or review wherever you're listening. It helps other teachers find the show. And if a colleague is on the fence about project based learning, send this one their way.

AI in the classroom isn't a tool problem — it's an assignment problem. Dr. Nancy Frey on designing work students can't fake.

Dr. Nancy Frey — professor of educational leadership at San Diego State and teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College — joins Vicki Davis for a practical conversation about what actually changes in a classroom when every student has AI. Not which app to use. What to assign, what to collect, and what to teach kids to verify. Nancy's newest book, Teaching Students to Use AI Ethically & Responsibly, is co-authored with Salman Khan, Douglas Fisher, James Marshall, and Meghan Hargrave.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- How to build verbal assessment into a classroom that has 180 students — including a Google Docs workaround when face-to-face isn't practical - Why you should collect the student's dialogue with the chatbot, not just the finished product - How lateral reading — Sam Wineburg's method — transfers directly to interrogating AI-generated content - What appropriate AI use looks like by grade band: "truth detectives" in K–2, "information investigators" in grades 3–5 - How to redesign a task so it's AI-resistant, plus Carol Jago's reflective questions a chatbot can't answer for a student

Show notes, the full transcript, and every resource: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e957

★ REVIEW ASK: If this show helps you teach, please rate and review it wherever you're listening. It's the single best way to help another teacher find us — and I read every one.

Most teachers know AI belongs in their classroom — almost nobody tells them where to start if they don't teach computer science. Karim Meghji, President and CEO of CodeAI (the nonprofit formerly known as Code.org), gives the answer at ISTE 2026.

Vicki took one of Karim's classes on the ISTE show floor before this conversation — including a lesson that asks AI to generate a "healthy meal" and then hands students the cultural bias in the result to talk about. That design choice is the whole episode: students don't learn what AI gets wrong by being told, they learn it by watching it happen and then discussing it.

In this episode, you'll learn:

- Why CodeAI rebranded from Code.org — and what "glass box instead of black box" means for how you teach - Why Karim's teams deliberately build lessons where the AI answers incorrectly - The question he wants every student asking: who is in control — you or the AI? - What sits behind free student AI tools — pre-filters, post-filters, and hundreds of jailbreak tests - The exact first step for a teacher who has never taught a line of code

Karim's answer to "where do I start" is shorter than you'd expect, and it puts the teacher and the students in the same boat on purpose.

Full show notes, every resource, and the transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e956

If this show helps you teach better, leave a review wherever you're listening — it's how other teachers find us.