How Can Neuroscience Help Students Thrive? With Dr Lisa Riegel. A Cognitive Psychology Podcast Episode.

Today on The Psychology World Podcast, I’m joined by Doctor Lisa Riegel talking about using neuroscience in education settings to help students thrive. It’s a brilliant, wide-ranging discussion that helps us to create a calm, intellectually safe environment where children feel safe, secure and motivated to learn. Whether you work in education or you’re an aspiring or qualified psychologist, you’ll learn tons in this fascinating, engaging and insightful episode.

Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Cognitive Psychology: A Guide To Neuroscience, Neuropsychology and Cognitive Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

Who is Dr Lisa Riegel?

Dr Lisa A. Riegel holds a Ph.D. in Education Policy and Leadership from The Ohio State University. She created the NeuroWell Framework, a brain-based approach to engagement and change. Lisa helps leaders, schools and organisations use neuroscience to create cultures of engagement, fulfilment and sustainable growth. With over two decades of experience in education, leadership and organisational strategy, Lisa bridges brain science and human systems to help people think better, connect better and perform better- so change actually lasts.

How Can Neuroscience Help Students Thrive?

Connor: So, hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of "The Psychology World Podcast." And in the content part of today's episode, I have a brilliant and very impressive guest, who manages to blend neuroscience and education, and as you all know, as an aspiring educational psychologist, education is something that I'm really passionate about.

Hi, Lisa. So, can you please introduce yourself, what you do, and how you got into the line of work?

Lisa: Sure. Thanks for having me.

My name is Lisa Riegel, and I am kind of a transformation change specialist in schools. And I focus on bringing neuroscience to schools to help them understand how to set up culture, and also how to work with behavior in students, and also with their staff, so that teachers are not burned out. And I started my journey...I was a teacher for nine years, and then I was an administrator. And then I had the opportunity to do my doctoral work at Ohio State, and I studied leadership, but what I was really interested in was the human system as opposed to policy. So I studied social sciences and psychology around motivation and engagement and behavior.

And then about five or six years ago, I really dug into the brain science with the idea that real change starts in the brain, and unfortunately, educators are not trained very well, or at all really, on how the brain works. And so it's become kind of my mission to help people understand...when we understand that any behavior, academic, social, or, you know, work behaviors for the adults in the system, is the intersection of our biology and our context. And so if we understand the biology, then we reframe the problems that we see, and then ultimately, we can control the context. And so how do we set up a safe, supportive, proactive context to help reduce the biological reactions that we're having to our environment?

Connor: Definitely. And I thank you for that. Because I used to work in special education, and one of the biggest bugbears is that we aren't trained, we aren't taught. And it was only because of my psychology background that I was able to apply different bits of understanding and different theories and concepts, but so many people are just thrown in it, or you don't know.

And teacher burnout and staff burnout is so high. Like, I think the school that I used to work for, they had like a 50% staff turnover rate because it was so hard to cope. So I thank you for the brilliant work that you're trying to do, and I just wanted to, like, say that just so we can affirm the podcast episode in terms of why this is so badly needed.

Why is Brain Science Needed In Education?

Lisa: Well, I think that people are unhappy. We have a global mental health crisis, and you can't learn when your brain's dysregulated, and so we have sort of two main problems that our schools are facing. One is mental health problems that they are not equipped to deal with, and the second is that we have reduced executive function in the kids that are coming to us, and so when you think about biology and context, there's a lot of contextual factors that have impacted our executive function development. So, for example, you know, I used to memorize phone numbers. I used to memorize addresses. You know, just the way I lived my life as a child, you had to use your working memory a lot. And in today's world, we don't have to do that because our phone does that for us. And scientists call that cognitive offloading. And so we are offloading the executive function to a device.

And as AI comes into our lives in so many different ways, it's exacerbating that problem. And I love technology, but the problem that I see is that educators haven't recognized that the way that we live our life is changing our executive functioning, and we're not really putting anything in place to strategically help build that in students, and it's causing academic problems, which then cause emotional and behavioral problems.

The other piece with context is, like, our media that we consume really portrays the world as a dangerous and chaotic place, positions people as mean. You know, when I was a kid, I watched, like, "Little House on the Prairie" and "Saved by the Bell," and shows that were very family-oriented. They were about, like, owning your mistakes, and that people were generally kind, and that you could pull together. And in today's media landscape, it's about, like, you know, "Hey, Connor, you and I are gonna manipulate that person and vote him off the island." You know, it's about power and deceit, and so that helps shape a worldview for people. And it impacts the way we perceive our reality and the way that we respond.

And then we have social media. You know, social media is the devil. We all know that. But the other thing I think with social media that we don't think about is the decline of altruism. Because if I'm online, I can put, you know, a flag or a ribbon or something in my profile, and I can get 4,000 likes. So very low-risk, very high reward. Where if I'm in a real brick-and-mortar space and I help somebody, and they say, "Thank you," I get one dopamine hit. So it's a much higher risk and a much smaller reward. So one of the things I try to talk to schools about is, can we create this protective bubble when kids come into school that this is a place where you can get dopamine hits, where we can have low-risk, high-reward interactions between students and between students and teachers so that we are incentivizing altruistic behavior?

Connor: Wow, that was brilliant. And there's certainly a lot to unpack there, because when you were talking there I was thinking that for technology. To some extent, I think the schools, they are trying because we all see, like, these policies. But I don't think that... I think that there's a policy gap between what the policy says and what's actually happening. Because at the school that I used to work for, and in lots of other educational settings that I've worked in, we happily let the students go on, like, their Chromebooks or their technology, but there's always an AI summary, right? There's always AI trying to interfere with their independent research skills. That policy says that we've got to allow it. So, how do we actually make this into actionable steps to protect the children?

Lisa: Right. And, you know, it's not about just getting phones out of schools or just using technology, it's really about... You know, even when I grew up, I had family dinners with my parents, and they were boring. You know, you had to listen to your parents, and you weren't interested in a lot of things, but what you learned in those family dinners... Because in my day, you weren't allowed to get up until dinner was over, and so I learned the rhythm of conversation. I learned how to read non-verbal signals. I learned how to be curious and ask questions, so I could find things interesting.

And from thousands of experiences, that became natural. And in today's world, kids are not getting those experiences because people are either on their devices or, you know, not together at all, and doing family conversations, playing family games. And so when they come to school, they don't they don't have those social engagement skills. So then their anxiety ramps up because it's uncomfortable, and then you end up with...you know, the biology takes over. And now, we're in anxiety, and now we can't think. And so we just have a lot of contextual factors in the world.

The other one that really upsets me is the over-identification of mental health disorders, and, you know, I think that... And I have two kids. I have a 20 and a 23-year-old, and both of them have come to me and been, like, "Oh, I have such social anxiety." And I'm like, "Everyone is uncomfortable in a novel social setting, everyone." But the key is your body has kind of four states of awake. So you can either be calm, you can be alert. And alert's actually good. Alert's when you're focused, and you get just a little hit of stress chemicals to help, really, you know, get you ready to perform. Kids today don't understand how that phase feels, and so they move right into the third stage, which is alarm. An alarm is when the limbic brain has taken over, and the part that makes you is no longer operating, and so that's why, like, if you get super upset and then you calm down, you're like, "Why did I say that? That's not even who I am. Like, what was I even thinking?" And the reality was you weren't.

In fact, 80% of the traffic in our brain is below our nose. So there's a whole lot of thinking going on in the unconscious part of our brain, and my big push is that if we can be self-aware by understanding our biology and understanding what are the things that dysregulate our body, then we can have self-regulation techniques, and then we can have self-control. But I think there's a lot of people walking around feeling very out of control because they don't understand how to live in that alert phase, and so a little bit of sadness is depression, a little bit of nervousness is anxiety. And the medical field is in the business to sell pills, and so they diagnose us. And we had a report from our National Institute of Health that said social anxiety is misdiagnosed 98% of the time. That is a lot. Yes. And, like, bipolar is up in the 60s. Depression. I mean, really high numbers of misdiagnoses, and I think, you know, when we diagnose kids with a mental health disease, then that creates a confirmation bias in them that they're sick.

And so when you think of how our brain forms perceptions... And this is one of the things that I try to teach everybody that will listen to me is that the way our brain creates a perception is we have the limbic part of our brain, which does not know time and can't tell a story, and we have kind of a data manager there. It's our thalamus. And our data manager's job, who I call Harold... So Harold's job is to take in all the information from the environment and to collect information from our vagus nerve about whether our body's operating well, and then write up a report. Before he writes that report, he goes into our sensory memory bank, which is also in that limbic system, doesn't know time, can't tell a story. So he looks for associations between what's going on now and what's happened to us in the past. If every single situation was a brand-new situation, our brain would explode. So we have to put kind of patterns together.

But the problem is those patterns are formed through our context, and so if our context is that the world is safe and supportive and people are kind, then our thalamus, our data manager, is going to look for examples that confirm that. And so we have all of these negative sort of filters in our brain, and I use the example of, like, a colander or a spaghetti strainer. You know, if you have a banana and you shove it through a colander, on the other end, it doesn't look like a banana anymore. It's still a banana, but it doesn't look that way. So our perception is the smushed-up banana. The reality is the banana, and how that messed-up banana comes to be is through our personal experiences and how our brain has coupled emotional responses to certain stimuli. And so when we understand that, we can understand that this is not that. Like, what I'm experiencing right now, my brain may be making a faulty association.

So I'll give you an example. I hate to be late. When I was a child, my parents got divorced, and so when my dad would have, like, his night with me, he was always late. So I spent a lot of time sitting on my front stoop waiting for my dad. My little 8-year-old brain associated negative feelings of being worthless or unloved or things like that with time, and it's a faulty association, but throughout much of my early life, before I really gained self-awareness about all of this, I would become really uncomfortable when I was running late. And sometimes it would cause anxiety or anger, where it was like I couldn't even have fun. I was so mad. Like, if my husband was running late, it just dysregulated my body, and then I had a hard time calming myself down.

Well, once I recognized that that's a faulty association, then I, the smart part of my brain, was able to tell Harold, my data manager, "Hey, don't make that association because it's not true." And I was able to change the way that my brain reacts when I'm late, and I still don't like it, but it doesn't ruin my day. It doesn't dysregulate me to the point where I'm just angry. It's just I don't like being late. And I'm able to be proactive and leave earlier so that I don't run into a situation where I'm going to have to face being late. And I think we have a lot of kids and teachers and people, in general, who are living with Harold, right? Harold is deciding how they live their life because he is making these associations, and we're not aware of them. So I think that self-awareness starts by understanding how we are perceiving our reality, and then having some self-awareness and self-control to say, "Hey, I'm the boss of the brain, and I get to tell you how to respond, not the other way around."

Connor: Yeah, definitely. And one of my biggest bugbears or problems with the education system is that we don't teach kids these vital life skills about their mental health, about their psychology. And, like, I've been through lots of that stuff long time ago, and my mental health and my trauma recovery only got better when I started to learn these skills. So I think that if it took me so long and if I went through lots of pain, before I learned that what other kids are going through. So I think that's one change we've got to do.

Lisa: Yeah. And it's interesting because I've been doing professional development for teachers and working in schools for 25 years, and so you get a lot when you're doing trainings, you get a lot of teachers that kind of look above their glasses at you, or they're like on their computers half listening. But when I go in and actually teach them about the brain and how it works, they close their computers, and they lean in. Like, they are interested in this stuff, and I just think it's a real tragedy that we're not teaching a deep neuroscience pathway, not one class in a teacher prep program or a principal prep program. But really infusing this because at the end of the day, it's a people-based system. And we know very little about the people. We just know a whole bunch of tactics about how to structure things or how to do a routine or...

You know, I always hate the term classroom management. It's not about managing a classroom. It's about building a community and teaching kids how to be a member in that community. And so even the words we use are about control and compliance, and kids feel that. And so it's not a happy place. And so trying to build, I call it, a NeuroWell culture. It's a culture that's about, you know, neurowellness. It's about knowing your brain. It's about knowing how to take control of your brain so that we're not running around bottoms up, we're running around with the thinking part of our brain deciding how we want to respond to situations.

How has the ownership of schools by private business impacted education?

Connor: Yeah. So we will move on to the neuroculture in a moment. But so in the UK, something that I would really appreciate your thoughts on is that a lot of our schools that used to be very much public-owned, they were very much schools, but over time they've shifted more towards private businesses. How much do you think that's possibly impacted the change of a focus from management, sort of just, like, focusing on, like, grades, getting money, sponsorship, those sort of stuff? I'm not sure if I've made my question clear.

Lisa: Yeah. Well, I think the big problem that I see in the United States is that we measure what matters, and what we end up measuring is what matters. And when we moved into this high-stakes testing... And I have no problem with accountability. I have no problem with doing tests for kids every so often. But when we connected it to teacher quality, that was the real key problem. Because now, when a student isn't progressing the way that I want them to, now I'm mad at them because they're impacting my data and my teacher-quality data.

As opposed to before, that was such high stakes, we were able to look at that child and say, "Okay, this is a puzzle to solve. I'm going to help this child figure things out." And it was about more than just their math score. So I think that this overreliance on test scores has shifted the system away from I teach kids to I teach content. And the kids are no longer the center, even though we say they are sometimes. The way that we behave doesn't reinforce that.

And then even at the leadership level, when principals just are railing on data all day long, and then they are annoyed that teachers aren't forming relationships with their kids. It's like, well, you're not celebrating that. You're not reinforcing or supporting that kind of development. And so some of what I do with schools, too, you know, I work with... Like, I think we have a purpose problem. Because originally, education was about learning a little bit about a lot of things, because information wasn't available. So once the internet and AI came, like, information's available to anybody, in any form, all the time, so that purpose doesn't really matter as much anymore. I mean, you need to know some things, but that shouldn't be the end goal.

Then we move to career development. So, we said, "Okay, well, information's democratized now, so we don't need to focus on that even though our assessments still do. And then we move to career readiness, and we started building all these career pathways and credentialing routes. And the problem now is that with AI the workflow is so disrupted and nobody knows what it's going to look like. So, now, we've got this whole structure in place that we can be creating pathways to nowhere for kids. So, now, we're sitting around going, "What's the purpose?" And people keep talking about, like, the purpose we need them to be critical thinkers and problem solvers and leaders of the future. And I'm like, "What we do...but we're not doing anything strategically. We're not measuring that along the way."

So, I was at a school a few weeks ago, and the task for the teachers was define critical thinking and start to put together some actual observable criteria of what you see when a student is using critical thinking. And in two hours, they couldn't even come up with a definition that they agreed on. And so we've got, like, this word salad of what we want to see kids become, but we haven't operationalized it, and actually, said, "Okay, so what's the strategy for developing a scope and sequence to teaching critical thinking, and how do we align that with their developmental capacity at different ages?"

Because I think sometimes we expect kids who are 6 to be way beyond what they are, and even high school students, we think they should be adults when we know their brains are not developed yet. So how do we become part of that? So I think we need to shift to a purpose that's really about how do we prepare kids for a post-AI world, and what I would argue is we have to be really intentional about building those executive functions and those, you know, people skills, thinking skills, problem-solving skills, the ability to discriminate information as useful or not useful. Because if we lose this, we lose what makes us unique as humans. I mean, this is the part that makes us human, the rest of us is just, you know, an animal brain to keep us alive.

Connor: Yeah, wow. And I'm truly... Like, the reason I was smiling so much when you were talking about that was because I was like, "That's mind-blowing." Because it's so true, and it's just like, yeah, like, I'm definitely after this episode gonna have to reflect on it. Because what you've said is just so true. Like, our school assistants, though, are just based on, like, words of salads, and, like, we have no idea how to actually make a staff. And I'm sure we get into a whole political conversation about it, but we're not going to. This is not a political show, but it really is something that all of us can think about. So, what is a NeuroWell culture?

What is a NeuroWell Culture?

Lisa: So, a NeuroWell culture is a culture where the people in the culture, students and teachers and principals, understand the brain, understand how it works, and then create a context that is safe, supportive, and proactive. So, the safety piece, though, is not just physical safety. And I think schools spend a lot of time on the physical-safety piece, but it's also intellectual safety and emotional safety. So, you know, what are routines and practices that we have in place to help students understand their emotional brain and regulate when they're out of sorts? Like, do we have routines in place? Do we build a sense of agency and power for the kids so that they feel like they can control their brains and their emotions?

The intellectual-safety piece is really around, you know, are we meeting kids where they are? And again, going back to testing, it's like, right now, even though we talk about differentiation, we've talked about it for 20 years, I don't see a whole lot of it going on in the classroom. And I'll hear teachers saying things like, "Well, I just got to get through this curriculum," and I'm like, "You're talking, not teaching," right? Because if nobody's learning, you're not teaching. You're just talking. So it has become very teacher-centered, around, "I just have to deliver this to you, and then I've done my job." That's not intellectually safe for kids who aren't ready for the information you're delivering. So, that's kind of the safety piece.

The supportive piece is really about power sharing and building agency. And what I see in schools is that the policies and the practices are so much about control, compliance, completion, credentialing. And what it needs to be about is building agency and independence and adaptability and giving kids voice in their education, and that's not really happening in a lot of the settings that I'm in. And it causes a lot of behavior problems. You know, especially kids who have dysregulated systems or kids who come from trauma, they need some power and some sense of self.

And then the third is proactive, and I've said to teachers so many times... So, like, to teachers of little ones, "So can you predict they're going to roll around on the carpet and poke each other?" And they laugh, and they say, "Yeah." And I said, "Then why are you angry when they do it, right?" Put things in place proactively that give them spaces to move or that teach them how to appropriately socially engage with other people when they want attention, and then now, you don't have to be angry when they're rolling around the carpet, poking each other. And so it's that safe, supportive, and proactive with the goal of doing what you need to do to help students and teachers become self-aware, self-regulated, and in self-control.

Connor: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, because I know that...so the school that I used to work in was a special educational needs school. So we were very much small and low classrooms. We had different things in place, and we were sort of encouraged to do that. When I reflect on my mainstream school work, none of that was in place. This was never a conversation. It was very much a case of were just meant to sit quietly, listen to the teacher talk, and you could have those conversations when I was in sixth form. Yes, that's the 16 to 18 education here in, like, the UK. But when you were in, like, younger years, you couldn't do that at all, and that was not very stimulating. It definitely wasn't safe. But I remember being quite anxious and nervous about wanting to raise a point because I didn't want to draw attention. I didn't know if that teacher would like what I've got to say.

Lisa: Right. Right. Yeah.

And I think, you know, just recognizing, and I hear teachers say this all the time, that, you know, kids are so much harder today. They're so much more difficult to work with. And, you know, really I think what they're saying is that they're less willing to sit. They're less willing to sit and get... You know, and there's biology to that. I mean, our attention span as a species has declined, and yet we're still doing big long lectures. I've watched, you know, in first grade classrooms, teachers that are doing direct instruction for 25 or 30 minutes. And I'm like, "Kids cannot focus that long. They can't." And so one of the things when I...like, in NeuroWell culture, I talk about doing learning sprints.

So a learning sprint is basically take your learning and chunk it. So you might say, "Okay, we're going to do a 10-minute learning sprint," and you put a timer up on the board so that the students can see 10 minutes. And you say, "During this, I'm going to give you some instructions, and so I expect everybody to be quiet and listen to me when I'm giving you the instructions. And then you're going to be working independently for the rest of that 10 minutes. And so during that time, I need you to be quiet." And so you do that 10 minutes, and you put the timer on, and it teaches kids how long is 10 minutes, when I focus, what can I accomplish in 10 minutes.

And then at the end of that 10 minutes, when the timer goes off, no matter where you are, you know, if I've taken too long and I'm still talking at that 10 minutes, I stop. And we take a two-minute break, and that break is maybe turn to your neighbor and tell them one good thing that happened today, or what's one thing you love about yourself that other people don't know, or, you know, would you rather this or that? Just little conversation pieces so that you teach the kids how to focus, and then how to shift focus, and then how to come back and focus again on the academics.

And it's been such a successful program for people. So teachers that are using it... I had a kindergarten teacher who was like, "I cannot believe how much more work they're getting done," and I'm like, "Yeah, because it's the same thing as rolling around, poking each other." We know they don't have the attention span we're asking of them. When we alter the way that we chunk our day to honor that, then we get more out of them. Because instead of fighting all of them for 20 minutes, you've got them focused for 10, you give them a little bit of, you know, free-time brain time, and then focus for another 10 or 15. You know, you can alter the time, but learning sprints is one of the most powerful strategies that I've seen that has helped increase the productivity and engagement in students.

Connor: And I really agree with you about that. Because when I was at the university, and I did some student ambassador work, so I would create content, and I would present it to classes, and a lecture was the worst thing ever. And you never give the kids a lecture. So you would do a shorter quiz. You would do something interactive. You would do something, like movement-based, and you make it engaging for them. And that's why we always had such positive feedback. Compared to be on a boring, normal lessons because the teachers just want to go through the content, make sure the students get their work done, get that class out, so they can get another classroom in. And when you really think about it, the education system is so strange, and it's not built for kids. You really do need to update it.

Lisa: Right.

And, you know, I like lectures because I am in auditory learning, and I can enjoy a lecture, but I am in the minority. And I also think that even if you...you know, there's a place to just talk to kids, but it's got to be short doses. And you think about the media we're competing with. I mean, media is designed to be short and highly, highly interactive, highly like, you know, images and graphics and all kinds of things that keep our attention. And when you go from this is my lived experience of all of the stuff I do outside of school, and then I come sit in school, it's like going from digital to analog, right?

And so you're sitting in the classroom then, and you're just like, "Oh my gosh." And then if you don't have, like, a timer or... I always liken it to if you go on a treadmill, and you say, "I'm gonna run for 30 minutes," and then you're running and you're like, "Oh, I've got to be close." And you look down, and it's only been like seven minutes. And you're like, "I'm never gonna make it." If you chunk it and do sort of intervals, and you say, "Okay, I'm gonna do 5 minutes this way, and then I'm gonna maybe slow down for 2 minutes, and then I'm gonna run for 3 minutes," you can chunk it, and you can actually achieve your goal to be on there for 30 minutes. And it goes a lot faster.

So when kids come to school, it's eight hours of just never-ending time, and that's just way too long. And so figuring out ways that we can not only address the emotional pieces that we need to address with kids, but also this kind of structure and routines that can help kids feel more success.

Connor: Yeah, thank you. So, if there are any teachers or teaching assistants, and anyone who actually works in education, listening to the episode, what actionable steps can they take to create a NeuroWell culture in their school?

What Actionable Steps Can People Take To Create A Neurowell Culture In Their School?

Lisa: So one thing is start the learning sprints. It's super easy, and literally, all you need is a timer, and you will find that it only takes like... And I've done this with incarcerated youth and teenagers. And so you think those kids are definitely disruptive. It works with them, and they appreciate it because they have that quiet space. So it's super easy to implement. The other thing that I tell teachers that's super easy to implement is something called fizzy or flat. And so I take a can of soda, and I shake it up, and I take the kids outside, and I open the can, and then the pop explodes everywhere, right? So, I tell them, "We are like a can of soda. We're carbonated, and just like if you drink, you know, a Coke that's too carbonated, it's gross, or if it's flat, it's gross, you want it just right, you need to be just right as well in order to learn. So if you are feeling fizzy or feeling flat, I can't see that. So, you need to let me know."

Because what I also see in classrooms is we don't mean to but we elevate stress, and we actually exacerbate problems because we don't know that a kid is having a stress reaction. We just think that they're just not engaged, or they're tuned out, or they put their head down, or they're acting out. So, I give kids the opportunity when they come in the classroom, if they're feeling fizzy or feeling flat, they just say, "Fizzy or flat." And then I know that I need to give them a little grace and space, and I teach them how to calm their body down when they're feeling that way, or we have some type of intervention for them so that they can come back to feeling, you know, just right. And it's been amazing because it gives kids a voice. It honors the fact that, hey, everybody's not okay all day. That's all right. Like, it happens. We have ups and downs all the way through our day, and you have a right to ask me to show you some grace and space while you calm down.

And then you can keep data on that. If there's a kid who, you know, is fizzy all the time, then you say, "Okay, well, maybe we need to have a meeting with a counselor or with the parents to talk about what's going on." But I had a young woman who I worked with. She was in elementary school, and she had a very tough life. She was in a foster family, and there were like nine kids. And she would come in, I mean, and her behavior was, like, crazy. I mean, she was, like, under desks and just completely out of control. And, you know, there were four or five adults that were literally just trying to harangue her all day long. So, what we did was we said, "Okay, can we recognize that this is out of our control. That she is coming to school already dysregulated. So how do we help her regulate before she, you know, make that transition, before she goes to class?"

So, we started having her eat her breakfast in the sensory room, and she would sit in a swing and just kind of swing back and forth. And there was an aid in there, and became kind of her person. And just, "Hey, how you doing today? What's new? What do you like to do?" You know, just chit-chatted with her. And it had a two-and-a-half-hour impact on her behavior, and then she would start to dysregulate. And then we had to put another intervention in place. But the reality is, you know, these kids are dealing with stuff that's pretty heavy, and so we can't expect them when they walk in the school doors, "Well, you're not at home anymore, so why are you acting like this?" You know, it's again, that way our brain perceives has everything to do with our past and how we're associating present to past, and so just simple things like that can make a huge difference, but it requires that we understand the brain.

Connor: So, I completely agree on what you said that people and teachers really do think that that issue was your home life. You're at school now, it doesn't impact you.

Does Large Classroom Size Impact Student Behaviour?

Do you think that one problem could be class size and the lack of teachers, because in the UK in a mainstream school you would tend to have like 30 kids, 1 teacher? That teacher cannot be a counselor, a support worker, everything. They've just got to try and do their job, and if a kid's having a bad day, they are going to try, but they can't do that much because they've got 30 kids to try and help support and teach.

Lisa: Yeah. And, you know, class size comes up a lot, and it is hard when you have a lot of kids in the classroom. However, that's where that NeuroWell culture... That is a culture routine. This is how we do business in the school. So, if we start to set up those routines where we have...you know, if we do the learning sprint with the brain break, we can use that brain break strategically to teach them a relaxation technique, or to teach them... You know, so what happens is the number of students who need additional interventions is reduced, and so it's just a healthy classroom in general.

And it also gives you a chance to develop some relationships with students because you can say... You know, one of the other things I tell teachers is play memory games. Build that working memory. So, you know, what's your favorite ice cream? What's your dog's name? What's your whatever...? You know, it gives you a chance to make some connections with the student and their interest so that you can then refer to them while you're teaching. So, there's a lot you can do even if you have a large class size, if you're setting the culture up to build those things in. As opposed to thinking, "Okay, I'm just going to teach as usual, and then now, I'm going to have to intervene with all these various kids you saw."

And then the other thing, too, is if you're teaching them about their brain and you're putting those routines in place, then you're giving the kid the power to control themselves. If they don't have any self-awareness and they don't have any regulation skills, then it falls to you to intervene when they're having a problem. But if you build those skills in them, they can do it themselves, and then it reduces the amount of interruption for a teacher, whether you have 15 kids or 30 kids. Because I've seen classrooms, too, with 15 kids that are way harder than some of the classrooms with 30 kids. So, I think that we think that class size plays a big role, but it's interesting because the studies they've done over here on class size have really not shown that the class size is a huge variable for student success, which it seems counterintuitive, but that's what the research is saying.

Connor: Okay. Thank you. And that's one of the reasons why I asked it. Because it's such a common thing that you were able to say that. So, I just thought or I wanted to know the truth on it. Because sometimes I think, "Oh, well, the solution is simply smaller class size." For starters, that is so impractical, but also is the solution really as easy as that? So, thank you for that.

Are There Any Other Sort Of Tips And Tricks That You Can Help Us With?

Lisa: I think one of the other things I would say is that teachers need to take care of themselves. I've never been in a classroom that's functioning well when the teacher is not regulated. So, a couple things that I talk to teachers about is, like, when you are feeling stress and, you know, that you're starting to have your limbic brain take over, and you're reacting instead of being strategic about what you're doing, just tell the class, "Hey, I need a brain break. I'm feeling a lot of stress." Turn the light out. Sit down. Do some breathing. Model for them that people get stressed. It's okay, and that we can take control of that, and we can calm ourselves down. And it's interesting because it builds empathy with the kids as well. Because the kids look at the teacher, and go, "Oh, wow, she's human, and she's feeling stressed right now." And then they'll be supportive to the teacher. So, super easy to do. Just turn the lights out, sit down, and just say, "Okay, I'm going to take a couple deep breaths because I'm feeling a little bit anxious right now."

The other thing is having the teachers... So I call it the purple folder, but I pair teachers up based on, like, whose classroom is right next to theirs. And I get a purple folder, and if the teacher's starting to escalate... Because remember, behavior is biology and context. So sometimes we just got to get out of the context in order to calm ourselves down. So if I'm starting to feel stressed, I might be like, "Hey, Connor, can you run this purple folder next door?" And the other teacher, when they see the purple folder, immediately switch. And so the two teachers switch classrooms. And, you know, the other teacher can be in a different context and kind of calm down. And the kids, you know, they know, like, "Okay, I'm gonna read or just keep working on what I'm working on."

Or the teacher says, "I'll be right back." And then once I've calmed down, then I send the purple folder back, and we switch back. And that's been a really effective way to help teachers manage through the day. Because you think about in other jobs, like, if you're having a minute, you can be like, "You know what? I am just going to take 10 minutes, and go have a cup of coffee, and, like, think about something happy." But when you're teaching, you can't do that. Like, you're on all day long, and so it gives you kind of a exit ramp or, you know, relief valve that you can use when you're really feeling stressed, and sometimes, even just knowing it's there reduces your stress and helps you stay in control.

Connor: That is brilliant, and that's really insightful.

And I definitely know that if I was a teacher and if I was delivering some of my outreach content, I would be at first very nervous about doing that and modeling it for the kids. Because I would be scared about them, like, mocking me, judging me, and thinking less of me. But that's just a short-term impact. What you might be doing after the long term is like how you were saying, modeling, inspiring them, teaching really critical skills, well, which just isn't covered in education at the moment. So, thank you so much for that.

Lisa: Yeah. Well, and I think also, you know, it's great for the kids because you can even say, "You know what? I'm starting to feel stressed. Is anybody else feeling stressed in here? Let's just take a minute, and let's all breathe together. Let's take a couple breaths." And then you can teach them a breathing technique. And, you know, what I see in schools a lot is that, at least over here, they'll do movement breaks because, you know, they know that kids need to move. So, they'll have, like... You know, the kids are getting out of control, and they'll be like, "Okay, we're gonna do a wiggle break," or something, and then they put on a video. And the kids dance or things like that. But two things. One is they wait until things are out of control. So it's a reactive approach versus a proactive approach. Like, the learning sprints create a proactive approach of little doses of this throughout the day.

And the other piece is that when you have the whole group, like, "I might not want to dance. Like, I might not be somebody who enjoys that." Some kids do. Some kids don't. So, creating ways that there's a little break, but maybe kids have choices in what they want to do. Maybe some kids just want to focus and draw. Maybe some kids do want to get up and move. Maybe other kids just want to chat with their neighbor. Like, it's okay to give kids a little bit of unstructured time. I think that teachers have had this pressure that bell to bell, they have to be on, on, on. And that's just not how our brain learns. We need a couple minutes of downtime to sort what we've just heard, and just kind of, you know, shift our focus somewhere else, and so, you know, that can have a big impact on helping the kids to be able to be calm throughout the day instead of being reactive and waiting until they're out of control.

Connor: Brilliant. So, I could definitely talk to you all day, but we're almost out of time. So, is there anything else that you also wanted to cover on the podcast? Do you think that we've missed anything?

A Tip For Aspiring Educational Psychologists

Lisa: The only other thing I would say is for folks who are listening, who are going into the ed psych route, if they are doing any kind of counseling with students, I think it's really important that they ask the administration to share some of the strategies that they use with students. Because, you know, you come in and you get counseling, and the whole point of counseling is skill building, right? Like, figuring that self-awareness, self-regulation, self-control. So, you know, kids have great sessions with those counselors, and then they go back into a classroom that they try something that they've been told to do, the teacher doesn't recognize that this is a strategy, and then they say, "No." And now, the kid's doubly mad

And so I worked with a school once where there was real animosity between the people who were providing counseling and the teachers, because the teachers saw their methods as, you know, this kid who's always in trouble, always disruptive. And you're down there playing basketball with them, or you're down there doing this with them. I don't understand, and so we actually have the therapist do a little professional development with the teachers to say, "This is what therapy looks like. These are the things that we say to kids and build that bridge. Because if we give kids the chance to practice those skills in all these different contexts, they will be able to make them automatic. But when we have, like, a great experience in counseling and then send them into a polluted context, it unravels those...and it actually makes them put their feet in the sand, and say, 'I'm not trying this because it doesn't work.'"

Connor: I will definitely be trying that in the future. This is really insightful. So, if everyone wanted to connect with you, where can they find you online?

Lisa: So, I'm on LinkedIn, just Lisa Riegel on LinkedIn. I also have a website lisariegel.com, and then I have my other website is ep, like, education partnerships, epinstitute.net. And that's the website that's more school-focused, because I work in the private sector as well. And then if they go to Amazon and type in my name, they can see the books that I have. I have "NeuroWell." I also have a book about parent engagement called "Stop Doing What Doesn't Work," and then I have a book for leaders that's called "Aspirations to Operations" that helps them move from their theory of change to actually implement and sustain it.

Connor: Brilliant, Lisa. So, I really wish you the best of luck with the future, and a massive thank you for coming on the podcast.

Lisa: Thank you for having me.

Dr Lisa Riegel’s Links

www.lisariegel.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisariegel/

www.epinstitute.net 

https://calendly.com/lisariegel/60min

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