10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher

How do students actually learn? AP Psychology teacher Blake Harvard — The Effortful Educator — shares the cognitive science of attention and memory that every K-12 teacher can use tomorrow.
In this episode of the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast, Vicki Davis talks with Blake Harvard about why attention is a necessary component of learning, the simple pre-test that primes the brain, and the mistake of making hard content even harder. Blake breaks down the two strategies with more than a century of research behind them — retrieval practice and spaced practice — and why rereading notes just doesn't work.
In this episode, you'll learn:
Why attention is where we lose students the most — and how to win it back
The power of a quick pre-test to prime the brain for new content
How limited working memory means complex material needs simpler activities
Why retrieval practice (not rereading) builds lasting memory
How spaced practice beats cramming — in less total study time
Listen, then share this with a teacher friend, and leave a review wherever you're listening — it helps more educators find the show.
Full show notes: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e943
Sponsored. This episode is sponsored by EF Educational Tours and their Career Readiness Tours. Lead your students on an international EF Career Readiness tour and show them what a career in fields like agriculture, hospitality, or automotive engineering could look like.

Imagine your students connecting with entrepreneurs at the London School of Economics, getting a behind-the-scenes look at Toyota's manufacturing in Japan, or touring a French culinary school to see future chefs in action. If you've been trying to break through to your students and show them how to turn their career dreams into reality, browse EF's collection of Career Readiness tours at eftours.com/ready.

Experiential learning through travel changes students for good — and Denver science and CTE teacher Angela Cannava proves any teacher can lead it. In this episode of the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast, Angela shares how curriculum-aligned international trips with EF Explore America transformed her students: a forensics lab in Great Britain where they did real DNA fingerprinting, and a Belize Ridge-to-Reef conservation expedition with a midnight bat workshop. She tells the story of a student who barely spoke in three years coming home changed, and a Belize traveler now headed back to work at the conservation NGO he visited on the trip.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- Why curriculum-aligned travel makes lessons "stick" long after the trip ends
- How travel transforms your relationships with students — and the culture of your whole classroom
- The two things to nail before your first trip: a diverse chaperone team and clear student expectations
- How to make international travel doable on a teacher's schedule by partnering with a tour company
- Why the learning ripples out even to the students who stayed home
Read the full show notes and resources at https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e942 
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 show helps you, please rate or review it wherever you're listening, and share it with a teacher friend.

Art teacher Tim Needles brings AI art into the classroom without losing the watercolors, clay, and joy of real art. In this Tech Tool Tuesday, Tim shares how he uses Adobe Express and text-to-image to amplify student imagination, why the kids who use AI well are simply more descriptive, and the daily 10-minute creativity habit that helps teachers fight burnout. Plus: the legacy mural project that reaches a whole community, and the student who broke INTO the art room to keep working — and now works at Industrial Light & Magic.
In this episode, you'll learn:
How to bring AI art into any subject with Adobe Express (works on a Chromebook)
Why specificity makes the difference between weak and strong AI art prompts
How to keep students respecting traditional media in the age of AI
A simple daily creativity habit that protects against teacher burnout
Why "fun is underrated" — and how passion projects change kids' lives
Full show notes and resources: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e941
If this show encouraged you, leave a review wherever you're listening and share it with a teacher friend.

Vibe coding for teachers means describing what you want in plain English and letting AI write the code — no coding background required. 2021 Kentucky Teacher of the Year Donnie Piercey joins Vicki Davis to show how any teacher can build custom classroom tools that save real time.
Donnie shares the small-problem-first method he used to build printable daily student task lists, auto-translate his classroom newsletter into five languages, and create self-checking games — plus the dead-simple troubleshooting trick of screenshotting the error and pasting it back to the AI. Vicki shares how she rebuilt a unit into a game that raised her eighth graders' scores five points with zero retests.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- What vibe coding actually is (and what it isn't)
- How to pick the one small problem worth solving first
- How to fix broken code without knowing how to code
- Why publishing to HTML lets your tool work anywhere
- How AI tools like Gemini, ChatGPT, Canva Code, and Google Apps Script fit in
Full show notes, resources, and transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e940 
If this episode gave you an idea, share it with a teacher friend and leave a review wherever you're listening.
Sponsor: Today's show is sponsored by EF Educational Tours and their Career Readiness Tours. Lead your students on an international EF Career Readiness tour and show them what a career in fields like agriculture, hospitality, or automotive engineering could look like. Imagine your students connecting with entrepreneurs at the London School of Economics, getting a behind-the-scenes look at Toyota's manufacturing in Japan, or touring a French culinary school to see future chefs in action. If you've been trying to break through to your students and show them how to turn their career dreams into reality, browse EF's collection of Career Readiness tours at eftours.com/ready.

MIT's Justin Reich interviewed 120 teachers and students about AI in the classroom — and his honest takeaway is that there are no research-based best practices yet. Here's what to do instead.
In this episode of the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast, Justin Reich (MIT Teaching Systems Lab, host of The Homework Machine) joins Vicki Davis to talk about what AI is really doing in K-12 classrooms, why the research is still in its infancy, and how teachers can run their own small "local science" experiments right now.
In this episode, you'll learn:
Why classroom teachers and students — not thought leaders — give the truest picture of AI in schools
Why there are no AI "best practices" yet (and the 25-year research timeline that explains it)
How to run a small, honest "local science" experiment in your own classroom this week
Why your domain knowledge — not the tool — is what makes AI actually useful
Four ways teachers are handling AI cheating (and how to tell when yours isn't working)
The power of "subtraction": what schools should stop doing to do their best work
Full show notes, resources, and the books mentioned: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e939
If this conversation helped you, please leave a review wherever you're listening and share it with a teacher friend — it genuinely helps more educators find the show.
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. All opinions are those of the teachers and the host.