You make dozens of invisible decisions every class period.

Should I squeeze in one more activity or leave time for questions? Do I spend more time on this concept or move on? Is this the best use of our remaining five minutes?

You weigh options, estimate time, and reprioritize on the fly, and you do it so automatically that you barely notice anymore.

But here's the problem: your students have no idea any of this is happening. They just see you move seamlessly from one thing to the next. If kids never see how you plan, prioritize, and adjust, how are they supposed to learn to do it themselves?

In this episode, I'm talking about how to make your thinking processes visible to students, and why it matters so much. We'll cover how to talk through your weekly overview so kids learn to anticipate where their time and energy should go, how to involve students in prioritizing decisions (like "We have five minutes left, should we do X or Y?"), how to model breaking down projects into manageable steps, why most people are bad at estimating time and what to do about it, and what to say when things go off track and plans need to change.

These are teachable skills, but kids won't pick them up through osmosis. They need to see it modeled, and even better, they need to be invited into the process.

Listen or read the episode here: https://truthforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/think-out-loud-teaching-the-hidden-skills-of-planning-and-prioritizing/

Do your students seem less and less able to sit with anything uncomfortable, whether that's boredom, confusion, frustration, or the feeling of not immediately knowing the answer?

The research backs up your anecdotal evidence: distress tolerance in young people is measurably declining.

In this episode, I dig into why this is happening and what teachers can actually do about it.
We'll talk about the biology behind why comfort reduces resilience (and why that's not anyone's fault), why our students are more stressed than ever but building less capacity from it, and practical strategies for building distress tolerance in the classroom without being dismissive of real struggles.

I also get into how this applies to us as adults, because we're dealing with their own version of this.

Listen in to hear:

• Why distress tolerance is declining in young people, and why it's a predictable biological outcome rather than a character flaw
• The difference between chronic, overwhelming stress (which breaks people down) and acute, manageable stress (which builds capacity), and why modern life has gotten this equation backwards
• How stress inoculation works in the classroom, including specific strategies for gradually building students' ability to sit with discomfort
• The tension teachers feel between "tough it out" and "honor every feeling," and why both extremes fail
• How to help students distinguish between "I can't" and "I don't want to"
• Why normalizing the feeling of not knowing might be one of the most powerful things you can do
• Where teachers can apply this same thinking to their own lives

Listen in. Or read the transcription here.

Everyone has an opinion about AI in classrooms right now, but very few of those opinions are grounded in what we actually know about how kids learn. In this episode, I sit down with Erin Mote, CEO and founder of InnovateEDU and co-founder of Brooklyn Laboratory Charter School, to cut through the noise and talk about what the evidence actually shows about AI as a learning tool.

This isn't a conversation about ChatGPT, cheating, whether to ban devices, or what kids are doing with AI at home on their own time (which are separate topics worthy of their own discussion).

We're talking specifically about AI-powered tools designed for classroom use that are being pitched to your district and showing up in your school, and whether they hold up when measured against what we know about how kids learn.

In this episode you'll hear Erin share her thoughts on:

• Why "good enough" consumer tech is not good enough for students, and what to look for in tools that are actually built around learning
• The difference between sycophantic AI and Socratic AI, and why it matters for student outcomes
• What the early research is showing about AI as a learning tool, including what's promising and what we still don't know
• What to ask for and advocate for at the school and district level so these decisions aren't made without you

If you've been feeling overwhelmed by the pace of change and unsure what to actually do, this episode will leave you with more clarity, and more confidence in what you already know about how kids learn.

Listen in. Or read the transcription here.