Editorial Standards and Transparency

Cool Cat Teacher — published by Cool Cat Teacher, LLC

I’ve been blogging at the Cool Cat Teacher Blog since 2005 and producing the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk for educators around the world. Cool Cat Teacher Talk airs on radio, public access TV, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms. Teachers trust me with their time, and that trust is the whole job. This page lays out — plainly — how this work gets made, who pays for it, how we handle mistakes, and the standards we hold ourselves to. If anything here is unclear, please tell us using our Contact Us form.

On this page: Ownership & Funding · Publishing Principles · Ethics · Corrections · Feedback · Diversity Policy · Diversity Staffing

Ownership & Funding

Cool Cat Teacher is owned and operated by Cool Cat Teacher, LLC, a woman-owned business founded and led by Vicki Davis. Vicki has been a teacher and IT director since 2002 in Georgia.

This work is funded by a mix of sources, and we believe you should know what they are:

• Sponsorships and advertising on the blog, podcasts, newsletter, the Cool Cat Teacher Talk radio/TV show, and our social media — all clearly disclosed.
• Affiliate links, where we may earn a small commission when you buy a product through a link we share (this never changes the price you pay).
• Paid speaking engagements.
• Book sales from titles Vicki has authored.
• Sponsored reviews and product work. We sometimes create unboxing videos and write blog posts sharing our honest opinion after testing and using a product, and we are sometimes hired to write sample lesson plans or to test products with students and write about the experience. When this work is paid, we disclose it.

We vet products as carefully as we vet guests. We only share products we would feature in our coverage anyway, and being paid never buys a recommendation.

No single sponsor, advertiser, or partner directs our editorial coverage. We choose what to write about, whom to interview, and what to recommend based on what serves learning — not based on who is paying. Where money and content meet, we label it (see Ethics, below).

Recommendations reflect a moment in time. When we recommend something, we mean it — based on our honest experience at the time. But products and companies change, and a past recommendation isn’t a standing endorsement of whatever a company does later. We encourage you to evaluate any tool for your own classroom and students before adopting it, and when our view of something changes, we’ll tell you.

Publishing Principles

Everything we publish is built to be genuinely useful to the educators and readers we serve. A few principles guide what we make:

• Learning first. If it doesn’t help a real teacher in a real classroom help real students, it doesn’t belong here. Our content stays grounded in current classroom practice through ongoing conversations with active teachers and students, researchers who spend time in the classroom, administrators who work closely with students, and people who have their finger on the pulse of today’s students. Our goal is to be relevant, helpful, encouraging, and practical — and to empower educators who want to be remarkable.
• Research-backed. The major points in our shows, scripts, and posts are grounded in research and best practice. We name the expert or the source and link to it so you can go deeper. When the research itself is changing or unsettled, we work hard to disclose that, and we focus on promoting the conversations that help educators think and make up their own minds.
• We seek out the best thinkers — especially those still in the classroom. We find guests a variety of ways: through emails, books we read, social media comments and engagement, and by noticing educators doing cool things with students. We focus on practicing classroom teachers, administrators, and researchers who have a heart for the classroom and stay as close to it as they can.
• Honest about how it’s made. Our goal is always to have a human in the loop. That said, we are a small operation with a massive reach, so we use AI to support our work. And just as humans make mistakes, sometimes AI does too — which is why we work hard to build fact-checking systems that bring educators trustworthy resources to inform their decisions. We will never claim a piece was made with “zero AI” when that isn’t true.
• Faith-informed and welcoming. I, Vicki Davis am openly a Christian, and that faith is part of who I am and how I sees the world. At the same time, I have welcomed guests of many different faiths and backgrounds, because I celebrate that we all have choices. I believe humans should have choices as to their spiritual beliefs. I’m also open about the remarkable things that have happened in my life because of my relationship with God and His Son, Jesus Christ. That is just woh I am although I have friends of all different faith walks.

Ethics Policy

Our ethics come down to one word: disclosure. We subscribe to the Bloggers’ Code of Ethics and disclose material relationships as the FTC requires.

• Sponsored content is always labeled. When a person, product, or organization has paid for placement, it is clearly and openly marked as sponsored. We do not pass off paid coverage as independent editorial coverage. Ever.
• Paid guest appearances are limited, vetted, and disclosed. On a limited basis, we accept guests who pay to appear on the Cool Cat Teacher Talk radio and TV show. Every paid guest must clear the same editorial bar as any other guest — the same thorough vetting and the same relevance to educators — or we decline. We retain full editorial control, and any opinions expressed remain our own. Often a paid appearance is booked so a guest’s episode can align with the release of their book or product, since we cannot otherwise guarantee timing. These appearances are always disclosed.
• Recording is not a guarantee of release, and timing is editorial. Recording an interview does not guarantee it will air — sometimes an episode doesn’t fit the timing or the message, or another story takes priority. Guests may request a release window, but we cannot promise specific timing unless the appearance is sponsored. Sponsorship can secure a release window; otherwise, we set the editorial calendar.
• Gifts and freebies are disclosed. If we receive a free product, sample, or other gift, we disclose it in accordance with FTC guidelines.
• A free product doesn’t buy coverage. Receiving a product, book, or sample never guarantees a review — or a positive one. If we do cover it, we share our honest experience.
• No undisclosed paid links. We do not accept undisclosed, paid “do-follow” links inserted into our content to manipulate search rankings. Requests to quietly place, swap, or buy links for SEO value are declined.
• We vet our sponsors deeply and thoroughly. We need sponsors to sustain this work, and we are careful about who we partner with. A sponsor must be a fit for educators and aligned with our values. We turn down partnerships that aren’t.
• Affiliate relationships are disclosed. Where we use affiliate links, we say so (see our Sponsorship page). A commission never changes our honest opinion or the price you pay.
• Product claims belong to the maker. Any product claim, warranty, statistic, or representation about a product or service is the responsibility of the manufacturer or party in question, not ours.
• Standing relationships. Vicki is a contributing blogger for Edutopia. We disclose ongoing relationships like this where they’re relevant to what we’re covering.
• Editorial independence. Sponsors and advertisers can influence whether and when a clearly-labeled sponsored segment runs — but never the honesty of our opinions or our independent editorial coverage. Paid placements are separate from editorial recommendations, and we keep that line bright. In the end, we always decide whether something fits who we are and what we can honestly recommend.
• Honest about AI. We are transparent that our work is AI-assisted and human-directed — a human stays in the loop, and our goal is to verify what we publish. We never misrepresent how content is made.
• We protect audience trust above short-term revenue. When a choice pits a paycheck against the trust of the teachers who read and listen, the trust wins.

For our full sponsorship and advertising disclosure, see our Sponsorship page. For data practices, see our Privacy Policy, and for site use, our Terms & Conditions.

Corrections Policy

We work hard to get things right, and when we get something wrong, we want to fix it.

If you spot an error — a fact, a name, a number, a broken or wrong link — please tell us through our Contact Us form. We review every correction request, make a fix when one is warranted, and note significant corrections where appropriate. We don’t put a clock on ourselves, but we take accuracy seriously and respond as promptly as we reasonably can.

Actionable Feedback Policy

We welcome feedback, questions, story ideas, and concerns from our readers and listeners. The best way to reach us is through our Contact Us form. Whether you’ve found a mistake, want to suggest a topic or guest, or have a concern about something we published or a partnership we’ve disclosed, that form comes to us and we read it. Your feedback genuinely shapes what we make.

Diversity Policy

A great education conversation needs many voices. In choosing whom we interview and feature, we actively seek to represent diversity of:

• Perspective and background among the educators and experts we talk with;
• Geography — teachers and leaders from across the United States and around the world;
• Grade level — early childhood through higher education;
• School type — public, private, charter, faith-based, rural, urban, and everything in between;
• Global voices in education, not just one country’s view.

We work to stay nonpartisan and to focus on what unites us as educators rather than what divides us. Our goal is simple: bring teachers the widest, richest range of ideas and practitioners we can, so every educator can find something that helps their students. We respect each person’s right to get the facts, hear the conversations, and make up their own mind. We don’t believe in playing “king or queen of the hill” — we’d rather build a bigger hill that includes more voices.

Diversity Staffing Report

Cool Cat Teacher, LLC is a small, solely owned, woman-owned business. Vicki Davis is the founder, owner, and sole editorial voice. John Davis serves as editor and assistant producer, supporting content production.

Because we are a small operation rather than a large newsroom, our commitment to diversity shows up most meaningfully in whom we choose to platform — the educators, researchers, and leaders we interview and feature (see our Diversity Policy above) — rather than in newsroom staffing numbers. We share this openly in the spirit of transparency.

About These Standards

We’ve written this in good faith to describe how we actually work. It isn’t a contract, and no page can anticipate every situation. Our blog, shows, and newsletter are offered for general educational and informational purposes — you know your students and your setting best, so please use your own professional judgment before acting on anything you read or hear here. For specific questions, please contact us. For the terms that govern use of our sites and content, see our Terms & Conditions, and for how we handle data, see our Privacy Policy.

Last reviewed: June 10, 2026. We update this page as our practices change.