50 episodes listed below
Classroom craft with thoughtful momentum.
Vrain Waves treats teaching as practical craft, not abstraction. Recent conversations move from AI judgment calls and scaffolding to reading knowledge, sports psychology, and lessons borrowed from advertising.
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Vrain Waves is an education show with its feet planted in classroom practice. It sounds local, conversational, and teacher-to-teacher. The recent run is especially interested in judgment: the small decisions educators make about tools, scaffolds, expectations, reading, and mindset. AI is treated with both curiosity and restraint. The show repeatedly returns to the question of whether a technology helps learning or merely helps get something finished. That distinction gives the AI conversations a grounded shape, because Chromebooks, Pear Deck, Google Forms, Mentimeter, mini whiteboards, lyrics, music, and student-created work all appear as choices inside instruction rather than shiny endpoints. Scaffolding is another anchor. Across the excerpts, it is tied to empathy, high expectations, background knowledge, student voice, and the belief that complex thinking can be brought forward with the right supports. The reading episode with Natalie Wexler points toward knowledge and vocabulary as central to comprehension. Other episodes widen the frame without leaving education behind. Dr. Lindsay Portnoy brings advertising into a conversation about teaching and attention, while Dr. Jim Aframow brings sports psychology into a discussion of mindset and challenge. The show’s texture matters. Openings include jokes, seasonal notes, Longmont, Colorado references, and co-host banter, then settle into professional learning that is meant to be usable. It is not austere. It is also not careless. The best moments come when enthusiasm for new ideas is balanced with the slower work of asking what supports students best. Vrain Waves suits a listener who wants classroom craft, education research, and collegial reflection in the same place. It is especially useful for someone who values practical discernment over trend-chasing.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants education ideas filtered through actual instructional judgment. Best fit for teachers and school leaders who care about AI, scaffolding, reading, mindset, and classroom-ready decisions.
What sets it apart: Vrain Waves separates itself by treating big education ideas as daily classroom choices. Its conversations pair a warm local rhythm with careful attention to when a strategy, tool, or metaphor actually improves learning.
Vrain Waves seeks to provide teachers powerful professional learning anywhere, and anytime. We feature interviews with educational giants, successful professionals, and sought-after consultants to help teachers feel more informed, inspired, and connected. Join us each week as we highlight educational theory, strategies, and tools that all teachers can put to use in the classroom.
A mini whiteboard can beat another app when you're choosing what actually helps students learn.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A grounded conversation about when AI should serve teaching and when teaching should stay human-centered.
AI gets its clearest test here in the space between what a tool can do and what a teacher decides is worth doing. The St. Vrain AI team keeps the focus on instructional practice, returning to the useful question, "I can, but should I?" That framing gives the episode a steady…
A practical episode on choosing classroom tools for learning, not novelty.
Susie Evans and Shane Saeed keep the episode rooted in a teacher's day-to-day judgment: what will help students learn right now? The discussion moves through choices like using a Pear Deck slide deck when visible student work matters, or skipping a Google Form or Mentimeter when…
A warm conversation on how empathy, expectations, and classroom scaffolds can support complex student thinking.
Scaffolding comes through as a close-reading practice for teachers: Wendy Shuler describes how empathy, instinct, background knowledge, high expectations, and experience help students bring complex ideas into language arts work.
A focused case for scaffolding as a way to preserve challenge, with AI positioned as a planning partner for teachers.
Scaffolding is framed here as a way to keep the ceiling high, not as a quiet lowering of expectations. The episode's central idea is clear: start with demanding work, then design the support that helps every student reach it.
A grounded classroom conversation where AI helps start the work, while student agency and teacher judgment give it shape.
AI takes a useful step down in this Brainwaves conversation, becoming less the lesson itself than a prompt for richer teaching. Three St. Louis teachers describe students using it to build projects they can bring home to families, while a music teacher uses it to shape an…
Ideas, ready for the classroom.
Quebec teachers, projects, and professional care.
Classroom stories from the substitute's side of the desk.
Music-room lessons from the people behind Musicplay, sung aloud.
Shane Saeed and Suzy Evans introduce the ETHOS AI team, recent winners of Project of the Year, to discuss AI in education.
A podcast episode exploring the ethical considerations of using AI in education, featuring an interview with educator Matt Miller.
Wendy Shuler says the best scaffolds come from watching students stumble in the moment and responding with sentence frames, oral rehearsal, or a different prompt.
Hosts Susie Evans and Shane Saeed introduce a book on adaptive teaching techniques called The Scaffolding Effect, discussing its relevance to educators.
Shane Saeed and Susie Evans introduce a follow-up episode featuring three teachers discussing how they use AI to enhance their content and teaching.
Catelyn Tucker says AI can help teachers design differentiated lessons when educators direct the planning rather than accept generic outputs.
Joylyn Boardman says her 30th year of teaching still calls for new approaches, including slang dictionaries and classroom movement.
Dan Willingham, a University of Virginia professor, says experience alone did not improve his parallel parking over nearly 50 years.
Natalie Wexler discusses why reading scores are declining despite increased instruction time, arguing that focusing on background knowledge and vocabulary is more effective than teaching discrete reading skills.
Dr.
Hosts discuss the value of sports psychology and analogies for educators before interviewing Dr.
Ben Kalb and Becky Peters introduce an interview with Dr.
This episode explores how teachers can sustain positive energy and avoid burnout as the school year progresses, featuring insights from educator Chase Mielke.