π Your Back-to-School Catch-Up (Plus Free Claude and ChatGPT)
Published 13 days agoΒ β’Β 8 min read
Happy almost back-to-school, teacher!
This is a summer catch-up newsletter. Whether you're planning, want some new ideas, or want to get up to speed over the conversations this summer, you'll find quick ideas for you. Find one or two, use them and good luck getting started.
First, the free thing you should grab before school starts.
π Claude and ChatGPT Are Free for US K-12 Teachers
Anthropic made Claude free for verified US K-12 educators for a full year (sign up by June 30, 2027). The teacher version includes state standards for all 50 states, lesson planning and differentiation built on learning science, curriculum from Illustrative Mathematics and OpenSciEd, and connections to tools like Canva, MagicSchool, and Diffit. β Sign up for Claude for Teachersβ
ChatGPT for Teachers is also free for verified US K-12 educators through June 2027, with the flagship models, file uploads, image generation, and admin controls. β Sign up for ChatGPT for Teachersβ
One caution. Free does not mean paste anything you want into it. Protect student data. No IEP notes, no rosters, no diagnostics. I wrote up how to get both tools, what connects to your classroom, and how to keep student data safe. β Free AI for Teachers: How to Get Claude and ChatGPT Freeβ
π§ Seventeen Shows, Sorted by What You Need
We're back to 5 days a week for the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast (we were 5 days a week from February 2017 when we started to February 2020 - we know what happened then.)
π Listen if you're planning the first weeks or your year
βHow Students Actually Learn: Memory & Attention β Blake Harvard. "You're not going to prepare for a game by watching practice." Retrieval practice and spaced practice beat rereading notes, and they take less time. Build this into your plans now, not in October.
βHow to Teach Confident Communicators β Dr. Jeff Bogaczyk. Say it, write it, post it, then have a student say it back in their own words. That's when you find out what they actually heard. He also talks about his profile of a graduate for his school. There's a reason Jeff has over 500K followers on Instagram and TikTok
βValuing Students and Teachers: Become a Hope Agent β Debbie SimΓ΅es. Praise who the child is, not only what the child did. Worth deciding before you meet them. Her story is hard and heartbreaking - hospitalized after being assaulted by a first grader. And yet, she's full of hope and has advice to help if you're in a hard situation. Great advice.
π€ Listen if you're trying to make sense of AI
βHow to Teach AI in Any Classroom, Not Just CS Class β Karim Meghji, CodeAI. Where to start if you don't teach computer science. Human in the loop isn't enough if the human is in the passenger seat. I highly recommend the free CodeAI curriculum for kids if you're just getting started and are concerned about safety and guardrails. (Sponsored by CodeAI.)
βAI in the Classroom: Assignments Students Can't Fake β Dr. Nancy Frey. Collect the chat transcript along with the assignment. The questions students ask tell you more than the finished product does. We're all talking about this right now.
βAI Assisted Grading: A Teacher's 30-Second Checklist β Steven Swanson. He built an AI grading tool, then deleted the button that would grade for him. This is a must listen if you're looking to use ai-assisted grading this year.
Gold standard project based learning. If you can plan 2-3 projects in your school year now, you'll be glad you did. Here are some ideas to help.
βProject-Based Social Studies Ideas Students Never Forget β Megan Philbrook, 2026 New Hampshire Teacher of the Year. Rock-paper-scissors at the door, and seventh graders filming Ancient Rome for the kids coming up behind them.
βBuilding Apps with Students Using MAD-learn β Erin Keith and Edward Courtney. Before a single device comes out, students sketch a three-screen app on paper that solves a real problem at your school.
βHow to Teach About Space in the Classroom β Dr. Mark Wagner. Put a map on the wall, star map, Mars map, or world map, and open with a question you don't answer. Costs nothing and works in any subject.
βHow to Do Gold Standard PBL Without Losing Class Time β Dr. Lisa Mireles. Post your driving question on a bulletin board and let students build the "need to know" list underneath it. No budget, no permission needed.
βA Real Teacher Sparking Curiosity Makes All the Difference β Brandie Wright. Open tomorrow with a question you don't answer, and start a class wonder book for the ones nobody can answer yet. She keynoted the mainstage at ISTE on Sunday and talked about sparking curiosity. We can do this!
π«² If you're already running on empty
βTeacher Burnout: How to Reconnect and Feel Fulfilled β Dr. Michelle Chanda Singh. Do a clarity audit. Two columns, what makes you float and what drains you, then name one thing you'll stop tolerating this week. Great advice from a teacher who learned the hard way.
βHabits of Hope to Help Educators β Dr. Julia Garcia. Hope is a habit, not a feeling, and the hardest habit for teachers is learning to receive help. Her story is raw and personal - she turned to drugs and alcohol in her off hours to try to "handle" the stress she wasn't dealing with during the school day. This is not an easy story but a wake up call that we all need to cope wisely and well.
π Listen if you're studying, reading, or working on a degree
βTravel With Students: A Principal's Grade-by-Grade Plan β Karen Spencer. A progression from sixth grade through high school that builds student independence one trip at a time, so nobody's first big trip is also their first time away from home. (Sponsored by EF Explore America.)
πΊ Wondering What the Top Thought Leaders Are Actually Saying About Tech Right Now?
This three part series is now airing on our 26 radio and television stations in the US and UK. You can listen right here to some of the thought leaders and school leaders who are shaping the conversations in AI today.
This is what the AI & EdTech Super Series on Cool Cat Teacher Talk is for. I sat down with the people setting the direction, and you get the conversations without the badge, the flight, or the sore feet. All three are live.
βHot Conversations: AI Assessment, Burnout, and the Space Economy β Carmalita Seitz, Steven Swanson, and Dr. Mark Wagner. Where AI assessment is heading, why burnout is still the story nobody solved, and the jobs your students may hold in an industry that barely exists yet.
βHumans Teaching Humans About the Machine β Karim Meghji of CodeAI on what AI literacy actually means, Kimmie Fink on free BBC classroom resources you can use Monday, and Brandie Wright on Kamari, the real student everyone assumed AI made up. (Sponsored by CodeAI and BBC Learning.)
βAI With Intention: What Leaders Decide and Teachers Do β Dr. Jeremy Owoh on leading with relationships first, Tony Frontier on getting off the AI-police treadmill and writing integrity policy instead, and Todd Brekhus on AI that keeps the teacher in the middle. Send this one to your principal. (Sponsored by Renaissance.)
This was my 19th ISTE. I blogged raw notes each day so you can steal what's useful and skip what isn't.
Smart glasses, accessibility, and AI grading bias. Jaime Donally and Hall Davidson on what wearables actually do for students with disabilities, a Stanford study on bias in AI grading, and a keynote on loneliness that I'm still thinking about. β Read itβ
Every tool the presenters swore by, and a mistake I made in public. The 9 a.m. super share where teachers name the tools they actually use, ISTE's new Profile of an AI-Ready Graduate, and my honest confession about publishing a bad AI-generated stat. β Read itβ
Curiosity, AI policy, and free classroom resources. Brandie Wright's keynote on curiosity as the thing tech can't replace, Tony Frontier on ditching the AI police, Todd Brekhus on keeping teachers central, and the BBC Learning Hub. β Read itβ
π I'm Not Returning to the Full-Time Classroom
After 24 years, I'm not going back to full-time classroom teaching this fall. My family asked, I prayed, and the answer kept coming back the same. It is time.
Cool Cat Teacher is going full time now. The radio and TV show, the 10 Minute Teacher, this blog, this newsletter, and the books I've been promising are the main work.
I'm not walking away from my school and I'm not walking away from students. I'm helping get the year started, and I'll be there Tuesday for Student Success Camp. I have some instructional tech coaching things I'm doing for friends, some new tools I'll be using in classrooms, and I'll help keep the Shark Tank app building project going and still teach vibe coding to my ninth graders.
But my day-to-day focus now is teaching teachers. You are my focus. Making your life easier, and helping all of us make sense of everything going on right now.
Things are changing faster in education than at any point in my career. I believe that my full focus is needed here (plus with the growth of the radio/tv show, I really have had two jobs and my family said I needed to pick.) But in the end, I want to take time to test the tools, try things out with students, read the research, and share personal observations. That's the job now.
I can't do it all. But I can do something. And my family needs me to have more balance.
I'm writing the whole story this week and I'll put it on the blog. I hope you'll read it. I just wanted to tell you first. It was not an easy decision. It was so exciting that my AP CSP students still earned a 100% pass rate on their AP exam. All three years of teaching that class and my students brought their A game (and I did too.)
Cool Cat Teacher is still a teacher. My classroom just got bigger. I want to help. So, stay tuned. I hope you will.
Cool Cat Teacher Talk now reaches roughly one million weekly listeners and viewers across FM radio and public-access TV, including our UK stations, plus YouTube, every major podcast platform, and streaming on Reveel. Find a station or watch anytime at coolcatteacher.com/cool-cat-teacher-talk.
β· FM Radio WDJY FM 99.1 Atlanta (Wed 4PM β’ Sat & Sun Noonβ1PM) β’ WKCR 89.9 FM, New York (Columbia) β’ WNYE 91.5 FM, New York β’ WFYI 90.1 FM, Indianapolis (NPR) β’ WFSU 88.9 FM, Tallahassee (NPR) β’ KERA, Dallas (NPR) β’ Denver 92.9 FM / 89.3 HD3 β’ Texas Public Radio, San Antonio (NPR) β’ WZQR, Florida β’ KPFA 94.1 FM, Berkeley Coming Summer 2026 (UK): BBC Radio Ulster, Northern Ireland β’ LBC, London β’ XPress Radio, Cardiff University, Wales
β· Public Access TV LMC Media, Mamaroneck NY (Roku & Fire TV) β’ San Francisco β’ Norfolk/Fairfax β’ New Mexico (Mon 9PM) β’ New Hampshire β’ Washington, DC β’ New Jersey β’ Newington, CT β’ BronxNet β’ TV18 Detroit β’ Urbana Public TV Added June 2026: Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN), New York
See you later, educator. Until next time! Thank you for subscribing and connecting!
Vicki Davisβ Cool Cat Teacher
PS The 10 minute teacher is also back to 5 days a week so make sure to subscribe for a quick encouragement on the way to school. See the show page for links.β
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