Most of us are walking around in a low-grade state of fight-or-flight all the time, and we don't even realize it. It looks like the tight jaw in the morning, the exhaustion that doesn't lead to sleep, or the feeling of being on edge even on a good day. These are signs of a nervous system that never got the signal that it's safe to come down.

In this episode, I'm sharing a lesson from my new free video course called Everything is Terrible: An Anxiety Toolkit for the Age of Doomscrolling. It's a five-lesson toolkit for people who care deeply about the world and are quietly exhausted by the weight of it. Each lesson is a standalone tool you can use when you need it.

This episode shares an excerpt from one of these lessons, covering:

-What's actually happening in your body when you're stuck in fight-or-flight -How to manually activate your parasympathetic nervous system even when the external world is still chaotic -Two specific breathing techniques you can use anywhere to send your body the "all clear" signal -Grounding phrases for when your body has settled but your brain is still spinning.

Check out the full Everything is Terrible toolkit FREE on my Substack.

You can also:

• Read the blog post for this episode
• Learn about upcoming teacher retreats
• Join The Reset, a free at-home nervous system reset retreat June 26-28

When the world feels this heavy, this broken, it can feel almost frivolous to make space for art. And in the classroom with so much content to cover, can we really slow down enough to create and take an artful approach to learning with students? Who has time to write poems or pause over a beautiful image when we're al barely keeping our heads above water?

But think about what we're left with if we don't. If we strip away beauty and creativity and connection, all we have left is the grind. The compliance. The systems that are exhausting us in the first place.

I recently talked to Rebecca Bellingham and Veronica Scott about this. They're educators, writers, artists, and the co-founders of Artful Belonging Studio. They're also the authors of the new book, "The Artful Approach to Exploring Identity and Fostering Belonging." Listen as we discuss: What does an artful lesson look like when you have content standards to cover and no time? How do you do cultural heritage months in ways that invite all students in instead of making them feel obligated? And where should teachers start if they want to try this work?

Rebecca and Veronica brought so much warmth and wisdom to this conversation. Listen in. Or read the transcription here.

I picked up my phone to check the weather the other day, and twenty minutes later I was still standing in my kitchen, having bounced from app to app through a chain of perfectly legitimate tasks that I never actually chose to do in that moment. I wasn't scrolling mindlessly. I was checking my steps, signing up for a yoga class, responding to my husband's text, following up on a bank alert. And I still lost the thread of my own day.

That's what makes our relationship with phones so hard to examine. It's not all mindless scrolling. Our phones are genuinely useful tools, and that's exactly why we never put them down.

We've adapted so completely to being constantly tethered to our devices that we've forgotten what it feels like to have a mind that isn't always being filled with input. We reach for our phones in every spare moment, not because we need to, but because we have two minutes to kill and our brains have been trained to say "phone" before we've made a conscious decision.

Something interesting has shifted in recent years, too. A lot of us have pulled back from posting on social media, but we haven't pulled back from our phones. We've just become passive consumers instead of active participants, and the tethering hasn't loosened at all. I've explored this on my YouTube channel, So What Are We Doing Here, in two video essays I'll link in the show notes.

In this episode, I walk through three simple habits that have helped me reclaim my time and attention, habits I still have to practice every day. I'll share the most recent data on phone usage from the 2026 Reviews.org report, explain how our apps are engineered to keep us engaged through intermittent rewards, personalization, and instant gratification, and talk about why mindfulness, which just means paying attention to how you feel, is the foundation for lasting change.

I also share why I believe doing this work alongside our students is far more powerful than just enforcing phone policies at them. When students see that their teacher is honest about struggling with the same thing they do, it stops being about compliance and becomes about awareness and choice. I reference high school teacher Ashly Hilst's approach from Episode 306, where her message "Phones don't make good moments, people do" stuck with students in a way that traditional policies never had.

Whether you want to start with your own habits or bring this conversation into your classroom, this episode will give you a framework for helping yourself and your students take back control of how you spend your time and attention.

If you want to put these three habits into practice for yourself, I have a free 21-day Intentional Connectivity Challenge. It's one email per week for three weeks, each one focused on building one of these habits, with a follow-up check-in to help you stay on track.

If you want something more personalized, Motivation Lab is my coaching app that helps you understand how your brain works and build strategies that fit your natural tendencies. There's a module called Take Control of Your Phone Habits that walks you through exactly what I'm describing here, and it also covers motivation, focus, and procrastination, because our phone habits are tangled up with all of those things.

And if you want to bring this work into your classroom, my Finding Flow Solutions curriculum has a full unit on healthy phone habits with student journals, slideshows, and discussion activities that are no-prep for you. There are versions for elementary, middle, and high school.

Get the shareable article/transcript for this episode here.

We've been taught to think of the brain as the control center, the part of us that really matters for learning. But the body isn't just along for the ride, carrying our brains from place to place.

Caroline Williams, science journalist and three-time author (including of the book Inner Sense) has spent years digging into the research on how our brains and bodies actually work together. Turns out they're in constant conversation, sending signals back and forth in ways that shape how we think, feel, learn, and remember.

And that means the brain isn't calling all the shots from up there in your head: your body has a lot more to say than we've been giving it credit for.

Caroline and I talk about why we've been trained to override our body's signals, what happens when kids learn to tune in instead of push through, and how this changes what it means to teach the whole child.

This conversation might shift how you see everything from behavior issues to why certain kids struggle to focus. You'll learn:

• Why emotions don't actually start in your brain
• How body awareness connects to emotional intelligence and self-regulation
• What's really happening when we say "trust your gut"
• Why teaching kids to tune into their bodies might be one of the most important things we can do
• How understanding this changes the way we think about learning

If our bodies are constantly feeding information to our brains, then a lot of what we do in classrooms starts to make less sense...and there are easy, small shifts that can help.

Article/Transcript for this episode: https://truthforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/the-brain-isnt-separate-from-the-body-heres-what-that-means-for-learning/

After 20+ years of creating exclusively for educators, I'm expanding into some new creative spaces.

In this podcast episode, I share the "why" behind my new YouTube channel ("So What Are We Doing Here?"), my Substack publication, my free guided meditations on Insight Timer, and some other fun new places to find me.

I also talk about how my own work has shifted more toward adults, and why so much of what I've always talked about on this podcast (productivity, mindset, burnout, boundaries) goes way beyond the classroom.

Then I get into something I've been wanting to demystify for a while: the restorative practices that are at the heart of my retreats. I break down what forest bathing, sound baths, and restorative yoga actually are, what the research says about why they work, and what it felt like to lead these sessions at my Books in the Wild retreat last month.

I also make a case for planning your year around restorative practices instead of around work, and using the concept of "due season" to build intentional periods of rest into your calendar before the busyness fills it up.

Truth for Teachers isn't going anywhere. But you're not JUST a teacher, and I want to create for ALL of you, not just the part of you standing in front of a classroom. Article/Transcript for this epsiode: https://truthforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/so-what-are-we-doing-here-expanding-into-retreats-video-essays-mindfulness-and-more/

Retreats: https://dueseasonpress.com/ Insight Timer: https://insighttimer.com/AngelaWatson YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sowhatarewedoinghere Substack: https://angelaswatson.substack.com/ Motivation Lab: https://studio.com/apps/angela/motivationlab

Is AI using a bottle of water every time you make a query? Are you a bad person if you use it in your classroom? Should schools ban it entirely—or go all-in?

If you've felt confused or conflicted about AI ethics, this conversation is for you.

I sit down with Dr. Karen Boyd, an AI ethics consultant who works with schools and nonprofits, to get real answers about the environmental impact of AI—and to talk through the much bigger ethical questions educators are wrestling with.

In this episode, we cover:

• The truth about AI's water and energy use (spoiler: Netflix is way worse)
• Why "just don't use it" isn't realistic anymore in 2026
• The spectrum from AI enthusiasts to conscientious objectors—and why most of us are somewhere in the middle
• 6 strategic stances beyond refusing: wait and see, constrain, compensate, rethink the work, and shape the ecosystem
• How to identify which specific values feel threatened to you (intellectual property? authenticity? effort and craft?)
• Practical ways schools can build ethical AI policies through knowledge sharing instead of top-down rules
• Different ways to use AI beyond shortcuts: as a thought partner, adversary, assistant, or accessibility tool
• Why understanding how AI works matters even if you choose not to use it

Karen offers a nuanced, inclusive approach that validates different perspectives while helping educators move from "this feels icky" to "here's exactly what bothers me and what I can do about it."

This isn't about convincing you AI is good or bad. It's about having the informed, thoughtful conversation we all need to be having.

Resources mentioned:'

Get the shareable article/transcript for this episode here.

Dr. Karen Boyd's Mission First AI Starter Kit (free vendor rubric for schools): https://drkarenboyd.com/blog/introducing-the-free-mission-first-ai-starter-kit

Get the sustainability chapter of Karen's book for free at ddrkarenboyd.com/freechapter No sign up is required, but you can get updates on AI in mission-driven work in your email about once per week if you select "sign up for news and updates" there.

My "Stay Human: Protect Your Brain Power in an AI World" curriculum (mentioned in this conversation) https://shop.truthforteachers.com/products/ai-literacy-lessons-teaching-students-why-writing-and-thinking-matter

Each time we decide which history gets a full unit and which gets a mini-lesson…

Each time we choose whose stories to showcase in classroom libraries while others gather dust on shelves …

Each time we select which family structures and cultures to represent in class and which we quietly pretend don't exist …

We're teaching whose voices matter, what counts as normal, and how power works. That's the hidden curriculum. And it's been operating in classrooms since the first schools were founded.

This episode is about uncovering the hidden curriculum in your own teaching, so you can make conscious choices about the values you're reinforcing.

And, it's about empowering public schools to be unapologetic in their stance about a core piece of the hidden curriculum that should be underlying our work:

Every child who walks into our classrooms deserves to see themselves reflected there, to have their existence treated as welcome, and to leave knowing their life has inherent value.

This episode is a call to remain steadfast in your commitment to care for (and be actively inclusive of) all families in your school community.

We need to proudly own our commitment to teaching kids empathy, curiosity, and the ability to understand–and collaborate with–people who are different from them.

This episode is a rebuke of a coordinated attempt to paint these values as controversial, "political" or "a radical left wing agenda." They are not.

They are educational best practices, backed by long-standing research, that teachers have implemented for decades in schools across the country. It's time to stop playing defense and speak plainly about how we do what's best for kids.

Get the shareable article/transcript for this episode here.

When he got his ADHD diagnosis at age 30, the first thought Andrew Gardner (https://www.agardner.com/about) had was, "Okay, now what? I'm still an idiot."

That negative voice had been with him his entire teaching career, driving him to work 80-90 hour weeks trying to prove he wasn't failing at the basics everyone else seemed to handle easily.

In this conversation, Andrew walks us through what it's actually like to teach with ADHD. He shares the invisible struggles no one could see from the outside, the white-knuckling through administrative tasks, the depression that came from years of that critical inner voice telling him he couldn't do basic things that weren't actually that hard … and eventually, the reframing that changed everything.

Andrew now has over 25 years experience innovating in teaching, learning, facilitation, technology and management. He's taught students from preschool through post-graduate at Yale, Columbia, NYU, and Harvard, advising on and evangelizing the use of technology to help students and teachers become future-ready. He spent over a decade building and leading a professional learning department, certification program, and teacher community at BrainPOP (where he and I were coworkers!)

Since then, Andrew has combined his passion for organizational alignment with his foundation in constructivist teaching and learning into coaching leaders, professionals, and parents. As an ADHD coach, Andrew is especially attentive to supporting the needs and strengths of neurodiverse clientele. Andrew shares how ADHD shows up differently in the classroom (spoiler: "attending to everything all at once" has some serious superpowers), the link between undiagnosed ADHD and depression in adults, and what it takes to start seeing neurodivergence as a strength rather than something to overcome. Andrew also shares practical insights on what schools could do differently, how to help students with ADHD build metacognitive awareness, and why getting on the balcony to observe your own thoughts might be the most important skill for managing ADHD as an adult.

Get the shareable article/transcript for this episode here.

"If AI can write my essay in 30 seconds, why should I spend 30 minutes doing it myself?" I believe students asking this question deserve a thoughtful response ... or even better, an invitation to think critically about their own values and personal philosophy around artificial intelligence.

In this episode, I'm offering some tools to help you facilitate these conversations with students, breaking down the neuroscience of why writing matters in ways AI can't replicate. We'll explore three core principles:

1) Writing is brain-building: When students write, they create neural pathways through neuroplasticity. Every time they struggle to find the right word or rewrite a sentence, they're strengthening cognitive infrastructure they'll use for life. When AI does the writing, those pathways never form.

2) Writing is thinking: Writing isn't just a way to show your thinking—it IS the thinking itself. The act of translating thoughts into words forces a level of clarity that thinking alone doesn't require.

3) Writing is uniquely human: Students are still discovering who they are as thinkers and writers. They haven't written enough to find their unique voice yet. When they default to AI, they skip the process of discovering their authentic perspective.

I also address the question teachers hear constantly: "Why can adults use AI but students can't?" The answer lies in understanding the critical window of adolescent brain development and why students need to build these skills before they can effectively use AI as a tool.

If you're looking for language to help students understand what they're losing when they default to AI—and a framework for teaching them why their thinking and voice matter—this episode is for you.

Resources mentioned: "Stay Human: Protect Your Brain Power in an AI World" 3 lesson mini unit https://shop.truthforteachers.com/products/ai-literacy-lessons-teaching-students-why-writing-and-thinking-matter

Get the shareable article/transcript for this episode here.

Growing up, every report card comment and parent conference involved my teachers expressing some version of the following:

• "Angela is smart, but not working to her potential."
• "Angela needs to focus and apply herself."
• "Angela is a capable student but does not put forth effort."
• "Angela could do the work if she wanted to but she appears lazy and unmotivated."

I shared a little of this story a few years back, and how I was labeled as gifted at first, and then diagnosed with a learning disability in math: EP163: I was a disengaged student who nearly failed high school For years, I believed something was fundamentally wrong with the wiring in my brain. Despite everything I'd accomplished, I felt inconsistent, unfocused, and unable to just ... do the thing like everyone else seemed to. Normal adulting tasks felt like they required herculean effort.

It took decades to understand: I'm not lazy. I'm neurodivergent. And that changes everything.

In this episode, I'm sharing my journey of understanding my brain, from my bipolar diagnosis in my early 20s to discovering CBT and mindset work, to finally creating the resource I wish I'd had all along.

I'll tell you about Motivation Lab, a new coaching app I've built that translates the neuroscience principles from my Finding Flow curriculum into a format for teens, young adults, and anyone who's ever felt like traditional productivity systems just don't work for their brain.

This is the story of why I created Motivation Lab, who it's really for (hint: maybe not you, but possibly someone you care about), and why I'm asking for your help in getting it to the people who need it most.

If you've ever wondered why consistency is so hard, why motivation feels unpredictable, or why no single productivity system works for everyone, I think you'll relate to what I'm sharing.

Check out Motivation Lab here: studio.com/motivationlab/

Read or share the blog post.

The first official podcast ep of 2026 will be out on January 11th. Thank you for listening to this interlude / announcement!