10 Minute Teacher Podcast with Cool Cat Teacher

Boundaries are not a heavy conversation you need a degree to have. They are small, repeated moments — and the right words handed to a child before they need them. Ashley Bendiksen, author of A Kids Book About Boundaries, shows teachers what to say.
Ashley Bendiksen is a national speaker and abuse prevention advocate who spent years talking to teens about dating violence. Then she moved earlier. Her book for children ages five to nine teaches the skill underneath all of it: knowing you have a choice, and having the words to say so. In this conversation she shows what that looks like in an elementary classroom — the two-option choice, the "I don't like that" script, the pause to ask "did we ask first?" — none of which requires adding anything to your lesson plan.
We also talk about your boundaries, because teaching is high-burnout work and we are modeling something for kids either way.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- Why boundaries are emotional and social, not just physical
- The micro-moments that teach boundaries without a new lesson
- A role-play activity you can run this week
- What to say to the student who always decides what everyone plays
- Why "let's all just get along" can send the wrong message
- One small boundary to set for yourself this week
Show notes and full transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e970 
Show Sponsor: Ellis, a program of Children's Health Council, sponsored this podcast episode. All opinions are my own and that of the guest. Ellis pulls from a knowledge base on content from trusted partners like CAST, CASEL, Understood and others, and gives you evidence-aligned ideas for students who are struggling with learning, behavior, or the emotional side of school (but not clinical advice). If you've got a student (or two) who you can't stop thinking about, try it and see what it brings you. No personally identifiable student information is collected, and it is a much better place to start than "brainstorming" with your general-purpose AI chat tool. Try Ellis today: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/ellis 
★ If this show helps you, leave a rating or review wherever you're listening. It is the single thing that helps another teacher find us.

Jerry Kolber built Nat Geo's Brain Games and Netflix's Brainchild — then moved his team off screens entirely. In this episode he explains why, and what teachers are doing with kids' podcasts that he never planned for.
The practical piece: transition time. Coming back from lunch or recess, a short episode gets students seated, listening, and settled without a single reminder — and they don't notice they're learning. Jerry also shares how mini quizzes every three or four minutes train attention, and why "co-listening" — making a show adults genuinely enjoy — is a deliberate design choice.
Then the conversation turns. Vicki and Jerry talk through what happens when AI-generated audio floods the feed, and land on the question that actually matters: if a show gets something wrong, is there a human on the other end who can fix it?
In this episode, you'll learn:
- Why transition time is the highest-value slot for a short podcast in your day
- How question breaks every few minutes build listening stamina
- Why co-listening makes a classroom resource work at home too
- How to search a back catalog for episodes that match your current unit
- Why human accountability is the real dividing line with AI content
One thing worth knowing: Who Smarted?+ is free and ad-free for educators. Go to whosmarted.com, click Educators, and enter your school email.
Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e969 
If this episode gave you something you can use Monday, please leave a rating or review wherever you're listening — it's the single best way to help other teachers find the show.

For twenty-five years we sent the struggling kid to the back of the room with headphones on. Todd Brekhus of Renaissance explains why that model broke personalized learning, and how teacher-facing AI hands the room back to you.
Todd Brekhus is Chief Product Officer at Renaissance, General Manager of Nearpod, a former English teacher and technology director, and the creator of the myON literacy platform. We recorded this conversation at ISTE 2026.
In this episode, you'll learn:
- Why "personalized learning" quietly pushed teachers out of the loop, and what changes when you say "personalized teaching and learning" instead
- How to pull last year's skill-level data and plan two paths before tomorrow's lesson
- Why back-of-the-room intervention stigmatizes kids, and how to differentiate inside the core lesson
- The case for a formative check every six to eight minutes without leaving your slides
- Why Renaissance deliberately chose not to build student-facing AI, and what productive struggle has to do with it
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
Full show notes, resources, and the complete transcript: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e968 
If this episode gave you something you can use tomorrow, leave a rating and review wherever you're listening — it helps other teachers find the show. And share it with a teacher friend who's tired of the screen-time argument.
Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a sponsored episode. 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.

Alice Keeler built the Educator AI Assistant — a Google Sheets add-on that collects no data — in two days. In this episode she 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 actually do it? This conversation goes specifically to Gemini, surfaces the privacy issues we should be concerned about, and casts a vision for what school IT departments are becoming — or might need to become.
Alice makes the case that if a district can describe the tool it needs, someone inside that district can build it — and know it is safe, because they made it themselves. She also talks about what it costs to own the thing you built, and the question worth asking about any tool you rely on: is anyone still maintaining it?
This was recorded in the middle of last year. The tools have changed and they will keep changing. The principles underneath — how we protect student privacy and help our schools succeed — have not.
Full show notes, Alice's free resources, and a Gemini prompt you can use tomorrow: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e966 
If you're vibe coding in your classroom, I'd like to hear your story.

Quantum computing is roughly where AI was nine years ago. Dr. Nneka McGee has already taught it to five-year-olds — with a penny.
Nneka is the founder of Muon Global, project lead and principal co-author of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning white paper "AI + Learning Differences," and the author of an ISTE Jump Start Guide on introducing AI to young learners. Her FETC session on quantum for educators is what convinced me this belonged on the show.
Her argument is simple and hard to dodge: the technologies that will shape our students' careers are being built right now, states are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in them, and we are sending kids to college without the grounding to take those seats. As she puts it — there will be a breakthrough technology like ChatGPT in quantum at some point, and where will we be as educators if we didn't do what was necessary?
Then she gets practical. You'll hear how she teaches superposition, entanglement, and coherence with materials already in your desk drawer. You'll hear about the plate with no nose — an image generator's mistake she turned into a full lesson on why AI still needs a human in the loop. And you'll hear about my own ninth grader, who worked out on her own that attackers could capture encrypted traffic today and decrypt it years from now once quantum arrives. That's a real, named threat, and she nailed it.
In this episode:
- Why quantum won't replace classical computing, and the problem it's actually built for
- The encryption math that makes today's passwords a temporary arrangement
- "The nerds before the herds" — the 2022 ISTE room with empty seats
- Teaching quantum concepts to four- and five-year-olds
- Why the awareness gap is the opportunity, not the obstacle
Full show notes, every resource, and free unplugged activities you can use this week: https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e967 
⭐ If this show helps you teach, please leave a rating or review wherever you're listening. It's the single best way to help another teacher find us — and it takes about thirty seconds.
Share this one with the teacher down the hall who thinks quantum is over their head. It takes a penny to prove otherwise.