Every August, the same conversation happens in thousands of Georgia homes: "You're on that phone too much." It rarely works, and here's why. Summer screen habits weren't laziness. For many students the phone was where their friendships lived for ten weeks straight. A hard cutoff on the first week o Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool #SchoolMentalHealth #K12Wellness #PodcastListen on

The new student in your building already knows the academic part is survivable. It's lunch that scares them. Belonging isn't a feeling schools have to wait for. It gets built on purpose: • A named peer buddy, not just a welcome folder • One adult greeting them by name every day for the first 20 sc Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool #SchoolMentalHealth #K12Wellness #PodcastListen on mentalspaceschool.com →

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts. Muriel Summers took A.B. Combs from one of the lowest performing Title I schools to one of the highest by fixing the culture first — giving every child a leadership role and letting five-year-olds help interview teachers. The post How a School Built Its Culture Around the 7 Habits — and the Academics Followed appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by

MSD of Wayne Township Superintendent Dr. Shenia Suggs was our first gues for the 2026/2027 school year on Voices of the Westside. She talks about a number of different topics including the new cell phone law, the Profile of a Wayne Learner initiative and what it's been like during her first half year on the job as the Superintendent of the MSD of Wayne Township.

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts. Leadership is not a personality you're born with — it can be learned, and it can be taught. Ronn Nozoe, CEO of the National Principals Association, on what principals really say about AI and why the number one thing they need is time. Then Muriel Summers on rebuilding a Title I school around one idea: everyone in the building is a leader, including the

Classnotes Podcast (August 5, 2026). Stephanie Garcia, Ph.D., talks with educators Angel Watkins and Taylor Ray about how a STEM ... read moreThe post From STEM Externship to Community Impact – IDRA Classnotes Podcast Episode 259 appeared first on IDRA.

A tired teenager and a teenager with ADHD can look nearly identical from the front of a classroom. Inattention. Irritability. Forgetfulness. Falling behind on work they clearly understand. Every August schools see a wave of it — and a meaningful share is a sleep schedule that drifted two or three h Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool #SchoolMentalHealth #K12Wellness #PodcastListen on mentalspaceschool.com →

The hardest twenty minutes of a family's day happen before 8am. Shoes that can't be found. A stomachache that only appears on school days. A child who was fine at bedtime and is on the floor by breakfast. The parent arrives at work already depleted, and the student arrives at school already dysregu Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool #SchoolMentalHealth #K12Wellness #PodcastListen on mentalspaceschool.com →

Ninth grade is the year most likely to knock a student off track — and often the year districts watch the least. The research here is unusually consistent: how a student performs in 9th grade predicts on-time graduation better than their test scores or their 8th grade grades do. One semester of sli Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool #SchoolMentalHealth #K12Wellness #PodcastListen on mentalspaceschool.com →

A tired teenager and a teenager with ADHD can look nearly identical from the front of a classroom. Inattention. Irritability. Forgetfulness. Falling behind on work they clearly understand. Every August schools see a wave of it — and a meaningful share is a sleep schedule that drifted two or three h Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool #SchoolMentalHealth #K12Wellness #PodcastListen on mentalspaceschool.com →

The hardest twenty minutes of a family's day happen before 8am. Shoes that can't be found. A stomachache that only appears on school days. A child who was fine at bedtime and is on the floor by breakfast. The parent arrives at work already depleted, and the student arrives at school already dysregu Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool #SchoolMentalHealth #K12Wellness #PodcastListen on mentalspaceschool.com →

Ninth grade is the year most likely to knock a student off track — and often the year districts watch the least. The research here is unusually consistent: how a student performs in 9th grade predicts on-time graduation better than their test scores or their 8th grade grades do. One semester of sli Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool #SchoolMentalHealth #K12Wellness #PodcastListen on mentalspaceschool.com →

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts. Free BBC classroom resources you can use tomorrow — ad-free videos, leveled reading articles, Bluey SEL lessons, a Walking with Dinosaurs field trip, and a daily news bite for media literacy. Kimmie Fink of the BBC Learning Hub shows teachers where to start. All of it free. The post Free BBC Resources for Your Classroom: Dinosaurs, Bluey, Planet Earth

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts. The moment you put a grade on something, it stops being formative. Assessment author Starr Sackstein explains what formative assessment really means and gives you classroom-ready strategies for the start, middle, and end of any lesson. The post Assessment and Feedback That Move Learning Forward appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

The worst time to write a crisis plan is during a crisis. Every Georgia district has some version of one. The real question is whether it holds up at 2:15 on a Tuesday, when a counselor is out, the student in front of you has just disclosed something serious, and three people are waiting on a decis Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool #SchoolMentalHealth #K12Wellness #PodcastListen on mentalspaceschool.com →

Sixth grade is one of the biggest jumps a child ever makes. One teacher becomes seven. One classroom becomes a schedule, a locker, and a hallway full of strangers. Friend groups reshuffle from scratch. And all of it lands exactly when early adolescence is rewiring how they read themselves and every Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool #SchoolMentalHealth #K12Wellness #PodcastListen on mentalspaceschool.com →

The first 30 days set the tone for the whole school year. For a lot of students, going back isn't excitement — it's a stomachache on the bus, tears at drop-off, or a teenager who suddenly can't sleep. Some of that is normal adjustment. Some of it is the early signal of something that gets much loud Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool #SchoolMentalHealth #K12Wellness #PodcastListen on mentalspaceschool.com →

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis Subscribe to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk anywhere you listen to podcasts.You gave the directions. You were clear. You wrote them on the board. Half the class still did it wrong. Dr. Jeff Bogaczyk explains the curse of knowledge — the bias that quietly sabotages teacher-to-student communication — and how to build confident communicators on purpose. The post How to Teach Confident Communicators appeared first on Cool Cat

Before the students arrive, a word about the adults. Your teachers are walking into this year already carrying last year. Many of them spent it de-escalating crises they were never trained for, absorbing stories they couldn't unhear, and going home with nowhere to put it. Then we ask them to be th Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool #SchoolMentalHealth #K12Wellness #PodcastListen on mentalspaceschool.com →

Question for Georgia school leaders: if a student in crisis walked into your building tomorrow morning, how many hours would it take to get them in front of a licensed clinician? For a lot of districts the honest answer is days — or a referral list and a hope. That gap is what HB-268 readiness is Generated from MentalSpace School: Georgia K-12 Mental Health and Compliance Guide #MentalSpaceSchool #SchoolMentalHealth #K12Wellness #PodcastListen on mentalspaceschool.com →