Podcast
Angela Watson's Truth for Teachers
Hosted by Angela Watson · EN
Truth for Teachers is designed to speak life, encouragement, and truth into the minds and hearts of educators and get you energized for the week ahead.
17episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Join me for The Reset: a free at-home retreat for teachers (June 26-28)
1w ago00:06:15Tap to summarizeYou've been holding it together with caffeine and adrenaline, but your nervous system has been white-knuckling it for ten months and hit a breaking point. It's time for The Reset. This is something brand new I'm offering for the first time: an at-home restorative retreat for teachers happening June 26-28th. It's intended to be like a real retreat experience, just held somewhere you don't have to pack a bag for and deal with travel expenses. Because The Reset is FREE. Over the weekend of June 26th-28th, I'll guide you through the practices that actually move the needle for teacher burnout. I've created videos for morning stretching and restorative yoga, audio for forest bathing (which is a mindful nature practice you can do anywhere outside), breathwork, and more. There are also nervous system mini-seminars where I explain what's actually happening in your body during a stressful school day, why you feel the way you feel, and how to send the all-clear signal so you can calm down again. And no worries about being tied to a screen: these are designed to be listened to while you're walking, going for a bike ride, gardening, or whatever you like to do! If you're thinking, "I don't know if I can actually take a real break if I'm at home with all these distractions," I've planned for that. Everything is on-demand and completely optional. There's no Zoom call you have to show up to, no message forums to keep up with, no schedule to follow. I'll release videos of guided experiences each day on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in the retreat portal. Pick and choose whatever you'd like to do, in any order you want. You basically get to design your weekend retreat, with my resources there to guide you through activities and spark inspiration. Here's how it works: Sign up for FREE to join The Reset At-Home retreat from June 26-28. All the content releases over that weekend, and is removed on Sunday night at midnight PT. I want you to actually prioritize your own wellbeing: mark your calendar, and carve out time for YOU. If you want to keep all the resources permanently, opt in for the $29 Anytime Access pass. You can take your own retreat whenever it's convenient, and do mini resets during the school year. Additional bonus practices and resources will drop on Monday for those who get the Forever Access Pass. One more thing. If you have a teacher friend who's running on fumes right now, send this this ep, or the link to sign up: https://courses.truthforteachers.com/courses/reset Better yet, plan to do The Reset together! Hang out at your friend's house in your comfiest loungewear, pick some of the activities to experience, have a healthy lunch, maybe even take a nap on the couch before diving back in for a final restorative session before dinner. You can make this at-home retreat anything you want it to be! Join us for The Reset HERE If you'd also like an in-person retreat, I've got two of them happening this summer (June 12-14 in eastern PA, and 24-26 July in the Asheville/Charlotte NC area). And, there's a Labor Day weekend retreat and fall restorative retreat I'm holding for everyone (not specifically teachers, so you can bring a non-teacher friend or partner). Get all the details about in-person retreats HERE.
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EP348 Stuck in survival mode? Here's how to calm your nervous system.
2w ago00:18:33Tap to summarizeMost of us are walking around in a low-grade state of fight-or-flight all the time, and we don't even realize it. It looks like the tight jaw in the morning, the exhaustion that doesn't lead to sleep, or the feeling of being on edge even on a good day. These are signs of a nervous system that never got the signal that it's safe to come down. In this episode, I'm sharing a lesson from my new free video course called Everything is Terrible: An Anxiety Toolkit for the Age of Doomscrolling. It's a five-lesson toolkit for people who care deeply about the world and are quietly exhausted by the weight of it. Each lesson is a standalone tool you can use when you need it. This episode shares an excerpt from one of these lessons, covering: -What's actually happening in your body when you're stuck in fight-or-flight -How to manually activate your parasympathetic nervous system even when the external world is still chaotic -Two specific breathing techniques you can use anywhere to send your body the "all clear" signal -Grounding phrases for when your body has settled but your brain is still spinning. Check out the full Everything is Terrible toolkit FREE on my Substack. You can also: Read the blog post for this episode Learn about upcoming teacher retreats Join The Reset, a free at-home nervous system reset retreat June 26-28
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EP347 An artful approach to exploring identity and fostering belonging (w/ Rebecca Bellingham & Veronica Scott)
4w ago00:49:07Tap to summarizeWhen the world feels this heavy, this broken, it can feel almost frivolous to make space for art. And in the classroom with so much content to cover, can we really slow down enough to create and take an artful approach to learning with students? Who has time to write poems or pause over a beautiful image when we're al barely keeping our heads above water? But think about what we're left with if we don't. If we strip away beauty and creativity and connection, all we have left is the grind. The compliance. The systems that are exhausting us in the first place. I recently talked to Rebecca Bellingham and Veronica Scott about this. They're educators, writers, artists, and the co-founders of Artful Belonging Studio. They're also the authors of the new book, "The Artful Approach to Exploring Identity and Fostering Belonging." Listen as we discuss: What does an artful lesson look like when you have content standards to cover and no time? How do you do cultural heritage months in ways that invite all students in instead of making them feel obligated? And where should teachers start if they want to try this work? Rebecca and Veronica brought so much warmth and wisdom to this conversation. Listen in. Or read the transcription here.
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EP346 Feeling tied to your phone? These 3 habits can help you take control.
Apr 1900:36:00Tap to summarizeI picked up my phone to check the weather the other day, and twenty minutes later I was still standing in my kitchen, having bounced from app to app through a chain of perfectly legitimate tasks that I never actually chose to do in that moment. I wasn't scrolling mindlessly. I was checking my steps, signing up for a yoga class, responding to my husband's text, following up on a bank alert. And I still lost the thread of my own day. That's what makes our relationship with phones so hard to examine. It's not all mindless scrolling. Our phones are genuinely useful tools, and that's exactly why we never put them down. We've adapted so completely to being constantly tethered to our devices that we've forgotten what it feels like to have a mind that isn't always being filled with input. We reach for our phones in every spare moment, not because we need to, but because we have two minutes to kill and our brains have been trained to say "phone" before we've made a conscious decision. Something interesting has shifted in recent years, too. A lot of us have pulled back from posting on social media, but we haven't pulled back from our phones. We've just become passive consumers instead of active participants, and the tethering hasn't loosened at all. I've explored this on my YouTube channel, So What Are We Doing Here, in two video essays I'll link in the show notes. In this episode, I walk through three simple habits that have helped me reclaim my time and attention, habits I still have to practice every day. I'll share the most recent data on phone usage from the 2026 Reviews.org report, explain how our apps are engineered to keep us engaged through intermittent rewards, personalization, and instant gratification, and talk about why mindfulness, which just means paying attention to how you feel, is the foundation for lasting change. I also share why I believe doing this work alongside our students is far more powerful than just enforcing phone policies at them. When students see that their teacher is honest about struggling with the same thing they do, it stops being about compliance and becomes about awareness and choice. I reference high school teacher Ashly Hilst's approach from Episode 306, where her message "Phones don't make good moments, people do" stuck with students in a way that traditional policies never had. Whether you want to start with your own habits or bring this conversation into your classroom, this episode will give you a framework for helping yourself and your students take back control of how you spend your time and attention. If you want to put these three habits into practice for yourself, I have a free 21-day Intentional Connectivity Challenge. It's one email per week for three weeks, each one focused on building one of these habits, with a follow-up check-in to help you stay on track. If you want something more personalized, Motivation Lab is my coaching app that helps you understand how your brain works and build strategies that fit your natural tendencies. There's a module called Take Control of Your Phone Habits that walks you through exactly what I'm describing here, and it also covers motivation, focus, and procrastination, because our phone habits are tangled up with all of those things. And if you want to bring this work into your classroom, my Finding Flow Solutions curriculum has a full unit on healthy phone habits with student journals, slideshows, and discussion activities that are no-prep for you. There are versions for elementary, middle, and high school. Get the shareable article/transcript for this episode here.
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EP345 The brain isn't separate from the body–here's what that means for learning (with Caroline Williams)
Apr 500:36:53Tap to summarizeWe've been taught to think of the brain as the control center, the part of us that really matters for learning. But the body isn't just along for the ride, carrying our brains from place to place. Caroline Williams, science journalist and three-time author (including of the book Inner Sense) has spent years digging into the research on how our brains and bodies actually work together. Turns out they're in constant conversation, sending signals back and forth in ways that shape how we think, feel, learn, and remember. And that means the brain isn't calling all the shots from up there in your head: your body has a lot more to say than we've been giving it credit for. Caroline and I talk about why we've been trained to override our body's signals, what happens when kids learn to tune in instead of push through, and how this changes what it means to teach the whole child. This conversation might shift how you see everything from behavior issues to why certain kids struggle to focus. You'll learn: Why emotions don't actually start in your brain How body awareness connects to emotional intelligence and self-regulation What's really happening when we say "trust your gut" Why teaching kids to tune into their bodies might be one of the most important things we can do How understanding this changes the way we think about learning If our bodies are constantly feeding information to our brains, then a lot of what we do in classrooms starts to make less sense...and there are easy, small shifts that can help. Article/Transcript for this episode: https://truthforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/the-brain-isnt-separate-from-the-body-heres-what-that-means-for-learning/
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EP344 So what are we doing here? Expanding into retreats, video essays, mindfulness, and more
Mar 1500:54:33Tap to summarizeAfter 20+ years of creating exclusively for educators, I'm expanding into some new creative spaces. In this podcast episode, I share the "why" behind my new YouTube channel ("So What Are We Doing Here?"), my Substack publication, my free guided meditations on Insight Timer, and some other fun new places to find me. I also talk about how my own work has shifted more toward adults, and why so much of what I've always talked about on this podcast (productivity, mindset, burnout, boundaries) goes way beyond the classroom. Then I get into something I've been wanting to demystify for a while: the restorative practices that are at the heart of my retreats. I break down what forest bathing, sound baths, and restorative yoga actually are, what the research says about why they work, and what it felt like to lead these sessions at my Books in the Wild retreat last month. I also make a case for planning your year around restorative practices instead of around work, and using the concept of "due season" to build intentional periods of rest into your calendar before the busyness fills it up. Truth for Teachers isn't going anywhere. But you're not JUST a teacher, and I want to create for ALL of you, not just the part of you standing in front of a classroom. Article/Transcript for this epsiode: https://truthforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/so-what-are-we-doing-here-expanding-into-retreats-video-essays-mindfulness-and-more/ Retreats: https://dueseasonpress.com/ Insight Timer: https://insighttimer.com/AngelaWatson YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@sowhatarewedoinghere Substack: https://angelaswatson.substack.com/ Motivation Lab: https://studio.com/apps/angela/motivationlab
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EP343 The truth about AI's environmental impact: Finding your ethical stance as an educator
Mar 100:55:51Tap to summarizeIs AI using a bottle of water every time you make a query? Are you a bad person if you use it in your classroom? Should schools ban it entirely—or go all-in? If you've felt confused or conflicted about AI ethics, this conversation is for you. I sit down with Dr. Karen Boyd, an AI ethics consultant who works with schools and nonprofits, to get real answers about the environmental impact of AI—and to talk through the much bigger ethical questions educators are wrestling with. In this episode, we cover: The truth about AI's water and energy use (spoiler: Netflix is way worse) Why "just don't use it" isn't realistic anymore in 2026 The spectrum from AI enthusiasts to conscientious objectors—and why most of us are somewhere in the middle 6 strategic stances beyond refusing: wait and see, constrain, compensate, rethink the work, and shape the ecosystem How to identify which specific values feel threatened to you (intellectual property? authenticity? effort and craft?) Practical ways schools can build ethical AI policies through knowledge sharing instead of top-down rules Different ways to use AI beyond shortcuts: as a thought partner, adversary, assistant, or accessibility tool Why understanding how AI works matters even if you choose not to use it Karen offers a nuanced, inclusive approach that validates different perspectives while helping educators move from "this feels icky" to "here's exactly what bothers me and what I can do about it." This isn't about convincing you AI is good or bad. It's about having the informed, thoughtful conversation we all need to be having. Resources mentioned:' Get the shareable article/transcript for this episode here. Dr. Karen Boyd's Mission First AI Starter Kit (free vendor rubric for schools): https://drkarenboyd.com/blog/introducing-the-free-mission-first-ai-starter-kit Get the sustainability chapter of Karen's book for free at ddrkarenboyd.com/freechapter No sign up is required, but you can get updates on AI in mission-driven work in your email about once per week if you select "sign up for news and updates" there. My "Stay Human: Protect Your Brain Power in an AI World" curriculum (mentioned in this conversation) https://shop.truthforteachers.com/products/ai-literacy-lessons-teaching-students-why-writing-and-thinking-matter
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EP342 The hidden curriculum: getting real about the values we teach
Feb 1500:23:50Tap to summarizeEach time we decide which history gets a full unit and which gets a mini-lesson… Each time we choose whose stories to showcase in classroom libraries while others gather dust on shelves … Each time we select which family structures and cultures to represent in class and which we quietly pretend don't exist … We're teaching whose voices matter, what counts as normal, and how power works. That's the hidden curriculum. And it's been operating in classrooms since the first schools were founded. This episode is about uncovering the hidden curriculum in your own teaching, so you can make conscious choices about the values you're reinforcing. And, it's about empowering public schools to be unapologetic in their stance about a core piece of the hidden curriculum that should be underlying our work: Every child who walks into our classrooms deserves to see themselves reflected there, to have their existence treated as welcome, and to leave knowing their life has inherent value. This episode is a call to remain steadfast in your commitment to care for (and be actively inclusive of) all families in your school community. We need to proudly own our commitment to teaching kids empathy, curiosity, and the ability to understand–and collaborate with–people who are different from them. This episode is a rebuke of a coordinated attempt to paint these values as controversial, "political" or "a radical left wing agenda." They are not. They are educational best practices, backed by long-standing research, that teachers have implemented for decades in schools across the country. It's time to stop playing defense and speak plainly about how we do what's best for kids. Get the shareable article/transcript for this episode here.
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EP341 Everything all at once: what it's like to be a teacher with ADHD (with Andrew Gardner)
Feb 100:47:58Tap to summarizeWhen he got his ADHD diagnosis at age 30, the first thought Andrew Gardner (https://www.agardner.com/about) had was, "Okay, now what? I'm still an idiot." That negative voice had been with him his entire teaching career, driving him to work 80-90 hour weeks trying to prove he wasn't failing at the basics everyone else seemed to handle easily. In this conversation, Andrew walks us through what it's actually like to teach with ADHD. He shares the invisible struggles no one could see from the outside, the white-knuckling through administrative tasks, the depression that came from years of that critical inner voice telling him he couldn't do basic things that weren't actually that hard … and eventually, the reframing that changed everything. Andrew now has over 25 years experience innovating in teaching, learning, facilitation, technology and management. He's taught students from preschool through post-graduate at Yale, Columbia, NYU, and Harvard, advising on and evangelizing the use of technology to help students and teachers become future-ready. He spent over a decade building and leading a professional learning department, certification program, and teacher community at BrainPOP (where he and I were coworkers!) Since then, Andrew has combined his passion for organizational alignment with his foundation in constructivist teaching and learning into coaching leaders, professionals, and parents. As an ADHD coach, Andrew is especially attentive to supporting the needs and strengths of neurodiverse clientele. Andrew shares how ADHD shows up differently in the classroom (spoiler: "attending to everything all at once" has some serious superpowers), the link between undiagnosed ADHD and depression in adults, and what it takes to start seeing neurodivergence as a strength rather than something to overcome. Andrew also shares practical insights on what schools could do differently, how to help students with ADHD build metacognitive awareness, and why getting on the balcony to observe your own thoughts might be the most important skill for managing ADHD as an adult. Get the shareable article/transcript for this episode here.
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EP340 Stay human: Teaching students to protect their brain power in an AI world
Jan 1800:26:45Tap to summarize"If AI can write my essay in 30 seconds, why should I spend 30 minutes doing it myself?" I believe students asking this question deserve a thoughtful response ... or even better, an invitation to think critically about their own values and personal philosophy around artificial intelligence. In this episode, I'm offering some tools to help you facilitate these conversations with students, breaking down the neuroscience of why writing matters in ways AI can't replicate. We'll explore three core principles: 1) Writing is brain-building: When students write, they create neural pathways through neuroplasticity. Every time they struggle to find the right word or rewrite a sentence, they're strengthening cognitive infrastructure they'll use for life. When AI does the writing, those pathways never form. 2) Writing is thinking: Writing isn't just a way to show your thinking—it IS the thinking itself. The act of translating thoughts into words forces a level of clarity that thinking alone doesn't require. 3) Writing is uniquely human: Students are still discovering who they are as thinkers and writers. They haven't written enough to find their unique voice yet. When they default to AI, they skip the process of discovering their authentic perspective. I also address the question teachers hear constantly: "Why can adults use AI but students can't?" The answer lies in understanding the critical window of adolescent brain development and why students need to build these skills before they can effectively use AI as a tool. If you're looking for language to help students understand what they're losing when they default to AI—and a framework for teaching them why their thinking and voice matter—this episode is for you. Resources mentioned: "Stay Human: Protect Your Brain Power in an AI World" 3 lesson mini unit https://shop.truthforteachers.com/products/ai-literacy-lessons-teaching-students-why-writing-and-thinking-matter Get the shareable article/transcript for this episode here.
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