Inside NeuroWell: Safer, Happier Classrooms That Work with Lisa Riegel

The biggest problem in schools isn’t disengagement—it’s relevance. We sit down with education leader and author Lisa Riegel to unpack NeuroWell, a practical framework that aligns brain science with daily classroom life so students feel safe, seen, and ready to learn. From belonging cues to behavior de-escalation, Lisa shows why culture design is the hidden lever for academic gains and healthier staff.

We explore how to build a true learning community: clear norms, student roles, shared rituals, and goal setting that give every learner purpose. Lisa explains emotional and intellectual safety—why routines, predictable feedback, and strengths-based language regulate nervous systems and unlock attention. We also talk inclusion that works for neurodivergent students by matching roles to strengths and creating frequent, low-stakes social practice through short “learning sprints” and positivity prompts.

Then we tackle technology and AI with nuance. Phones off can help, but the deeper fix is designing work that matters. If a chatbot can do the task, the task needs to change. Lisa shares ways to assess thinking, collaboration, and iteration by observing process, not just products, and how leaders can define graduate skills—critical thinking, empathy, communication—and backward map adult practices that reliably grow them. With teacher burnout high, we highlight how leadership culture, clear outputs, and consistent measures make change stick.

If you care about safer classrooms, stronger relationships, and lessons students remember because they matter, this conversation offers field-tested moves you can use tomorrow. Check out Lisa’s book NeuroWell on Amazon and connect with her via LinkedIN  for workshops, book studies, or coaching. In addition, Lisa is also has her new book Aspirations to Operations: A leader's guide to making transformative change stick available on Amazon.

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

https://www.amazon.com/Aspirations-Operations-leaders-making-transformative/

https://www.amazon.com/NeuroWell-Applying-science-supportive-proactive

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Transcript

Welcome And Stakes For Education

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Hello everyone and welcome to today's episode of On the Spectrum with Sonia. Now, more than any other time, is it been where education systems have been challenged, especially now with people wanting the eradication of the Department of Education and school systems being affected, and more and more cases of the need for trauma-informed trainings and learning to work with people of all different abilities that need that help and support. Here to discuss in what a framework she worked on is Lisa Regal. She wrote a book called NeuroWell. She herself has a doctorate in education leadership. And she is here to discuss with us that framework, why it's important in school systems, how educators can benefit from it, and how it helps shape a learning environment so that we have better equipped students ready to take on the world when they graduate high school. So without further ado, Lisa, thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

You're welcome. I'm happy to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Wow, we're happy to have you here. So, Lisa, walk us through a little bit now. You came up with a framework called NeuroWell, and you're all about helping education systems and helping just overall school systems be have a more healthier environment, be happier, be able to better cater to people's needs. And especially now with the, you know, that always people wanting to get rid now of the Department of Education and just things in the political climate that are affecting education systems. Tell us a little bit about how this framework is also touching upon those things.

The Science Behind Behavior And Engagement

Building Belonging As A Foundation

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Sure. So I have worked in schools for many, many years. And basically I'm kind of an implementation and engagement expert. So, you know, schools, schools are trying so many things to address student needs and the student population is really changing. We've got reduced executive function coming in. We have kids' behavior is escalating. We have a lot of disengagement, absenteeism, we have a lot of problems in schools. And, you know, just as we recently, we just went through the science of reading kind of initiative that said, hey, if we align the science of learning reading to how we teach reading, we're going to have better impact. And so my book is really about if we align the science of behavior, the neuroscience of engagement, of perceptions, of stress management, if we align those two things, then we can make a better environment for teachers and students that can be safe, supportive, and proactive.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

So with that being said, and you know, providing a better system all together, walk us through like how this would be implemented. Like if we were to just be following a blueprint of what that could look like, what what would like educators be expected to see? What would students see differently?

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Sure. So I think part of it is starting with developing a culture that has a sense of belonging. So there's some social scientists that have studied what they call collective identity. And basically they the the research actually grew out of the they looked at all the initiatives we've done around diversity and multiculturalism. And they said, why isn't it working? We still have people hunkering down in like groups. We're not like the um the stock photos where there's one of everybody who's great friends. So they were like, What happened? And what they started to look at is where are there places where people have a strong sense of belonging and close ties? And they looked at the army and they said, Okay, you've got people from the north, south, east, west, black, white, purple, green, blue, different religions, different everything. And yet they form these really strong ties. And the army and the military service in general is really intentional about doing that. So when we have schools, we have a lot of kids who come into school and they don't belong. They don't feel a sense of belonging. Um, and and so when you don't feel a sense of belonging, your body will respond as if you're in danger. So, like if, you know, if you go to a meeting and you walk in and you you look around right away and you go, these are not my people, then you kind of shut down. Where if you walk into a meeting and you're like, oh, it's my people, you know, you're wide open and ready to go and and ready to engage. So, really, the foundation of a neurowell culture is starting with that sense of building the sense of belonging. And, you know, in schools, a great example is Ohio State. People wear Ohio State gear who never even went to Ohio State. And it's like, you know, they want to be part of that Buckeye nation. If you see someone who has Ohio State gear on, it's like, hey, and you know, you start talking and you start engaging right away. And there's a lot of contextual factors that make kids have school anxiety and they don't want to be there. So that's the first step. Then the second step is how do we make our classrooms and our schools safe? And safety we think of through the lens of like locking doors and keeping people out, that physical safety. But in neuro well, I talk about the emotional and intellectual safety as well. So, how are we setting up routines to help de-escalate students to keep our bodies regulated? How are we setting up instruction so that it's intellectually safe? And then it moves into kind of how to create supportive environments, develop relationships, and then how to be proactive. We do a lot of reactive stuff in education. We wait till the problem's there instead of thinking ahead, knowing it's coming.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

So, how would an example play out? Let's say now you want people to bond, right? So let's say you got a classroom, there's a lot of diversity in that classroom. What could be like a tool to get people to open up and feel like, okay, we are together as one?

From Hierarchy To Learning Community

SPEAKER_00 6:33

So it starts with defining it as a learning community. So, like when I was teaching, I would start out and say, hey, our mission in class is to learn. We're a learning community. You know, you have the right to decide not to learn, but you don't have the right to take that away from anybody else in the classroom. We're a community. And right now, a lot of classes are set up like I'm the queen of the classroom, you're gonna do what you're told, and you're my subordinate. So I shift that to be more community building. And then um, and then we define what is a good learner? What are the characteristics of somebody who does really well learning? What are the characteristics of a good community member? And we create concrete explanations of what that is. And then I have students set goals. So everybody's not good at everything. Maybe I'm not good at, you know, coming to class prepared, or maybe I'm not good at letting people finish talking before I interrupt, or maybe I'm not good at getting started on my work. So we have students set goals and then we put them in groups so they can peer support each other. The second thing we do is we uh create a class name, a mascot, a mantra, a chant. You know, you think about we're never too old for that. And I know high school teachers sometimes roll their eyes and I'm like, well, the NFL does it, sororities and fraternities do it. You know, Ted Lasso, everybody hits the believe sign on their way out. You know, there's there's things that bring you together that make you feel like a family. You can give each other nicknames. You know, nicknames, if I I'm, you know, your name is Sonia. If I called you Sonny, that means that you and I are probably good friends, right? It it creates a familiarity. And and so creating some nicknames, just some of those kinds of things. And then I talk about is having students have jobs in the classroom. So if things are getting too noisy, the sound manager turns the lights off. Or I've had teachers use like um doorbells, you know, they can click a doorbell that says, Hey, too loud. Have a tech manager that passes out the computers, have a previewer that looks at the learning targets for the day and starts class. So it's a student starting the class. So they're seeing different jobs that you can have students do and and it gives them a purpose in the classroom. So now they have kind of a sense of I belong here, they have a sense of purpose, and then setting up the expectations for behavior in the lens of um a learning community makes it so that people feel like it's not about just I'm a loner in the classroom alone. I have responsibility to these group of people.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

So it seems like it's all about everybody plays a role in it, everybody is doing something. So it doesn't feel like it's all student teacher only. How would this account, though, for let's say somebody who there may be people who are neurodiverse and maybe not good with social skills or maybe have people get turned away from those kinds of kids because they don't understand? How do we like learn to incorporate that as well? Because I love this idea that everybody feels part of a community, and it very much goes into that Edlyan theory that, you know what, everybody wants to feel like they belong to something, right?

Roles, Rituals, And Classroom Jobs

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Yep. Yeah, we're social creatures. And I think it it comes down to just like in any community, you want to play to your strengths, right? So if you have neurodivergent students who maybe don't feel comfortable, you know, like one of the jobs might be to stand in front of the class and do the preview. So today we're working on this, here's what we're doing. You know, you can have a reviewer at the end. So this is what we did today, this is what we are doing later. If you've got a kid who's not comfortable with that, then you might put them in the job as the supply manager. So they pass out the supplies and, you know, or a cleaner that comes around and kind of wipes the tables before the end of the class period. So it's just kind of a matter of figuring out who's comfortable with what. I've even had some teachers that put the jobs out there and have students apply for the ones they want and they know what they're comfortable doing. But what's critical is that right now a lot of kids come in and it's just they're alone. They come in and it's just, I feel alone, I feel by myself, I sit in a desk, nobody notices me, and then I put my head down and I then I leave and they're not engaged. So this kind of creates a community responsibility. I did an exercise once in a school where we put all the students' names on a page and we had the teachers put a red dot next to any of the students that they had had a meaningful conversation with in the past week, not just like do your homework or something, but something that was a relationship-building conversation. And what was really amazing was how many invisible students there are. Students that not one teacher had had a conversation with over the last week about anything. So we've got a whole lot of sort of ghost students. They come in, they sit down, they may be quiet, so we don't realize that there's a problem, or they may be acting out because there is a problem, but they get no feedback from adults and and they're just alone.

SPEAKER_01 11:21

And that's unfortunately a problem that people are finding themselves in at school. I see this, I hear this from even clients too, about how they used to feel like they'd walk through the halls and no one would notice them, or they would just be virtually all by themselves. And sometimes they'll be paired to do group work with people, and sometimes the peers that they were paired to do things with not the most amicable to them.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Yeah. Well, and I think the other piece too is that the solution to this is positivity. And so if you develop an inclusive culture that's positive and strengths-based, and so, like, even one of the things I talk about with teachers is doing learning sprints. So instead of doing like, I'm gonna talk at you for 45 minutes, because people don't have the attention span for that, being proactive and saying, okay, I'm gonna chunk this lesson, I'm gonna do 10 minutes of learning, and then I'm gonna do maybe two or three minutes or five minutes of unstructured conversation. Or I might have positivity prompts like, hey, turn to your neighbor and tell them one thing you really like about them, or what's one good thing that happened today, or what's one thing that you that people don't know about you, but you think, you know, makes you special. Things to give people an opportunity to kind of toot their own horn and share who they are. Um, and it's really powerful. And the kids love it because it gives them a quick mental break, then you get right back to to working. And I hear teachers a lot of times and and parents complain, you know, these kids today don't know how to socialize. Well, they're never gonna learn that if we don't give them chances to practice in an environment that's safe.

Including Neurodivergent Students Through Strengths

SPEAKER_01 12:52

Exactly. And how do you feel like technology, though, in the schools is impacting that? Because I had a guest who came on here before and he said that in the schools in New York City, they banned students from having their cell phones in class. Yep. A lot of states have made that legislation. Ohio is that way too. Okay. So Ohio, there's no cell phones in the class, but still it's very technology based now with learning, because this is what I hear from clients, you know, that come into my office is that, you know, everything is on the computer. They've even shown me their uh school, their notebook that they all get, you know, in the beginning of the year. And I know for some students they tell me that people are bringing in headphones to class. I understand some people need it because of sensory issues. I get that. You know, I'm in full support. If you have a sensory issue, you need to have your headphones to help you regulate with some of the noise. You know, having one button or something, fine.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

But, you know, I feel like I feel like one of the foundational problems that I've seen is when we started connecting student test data to teacher quality, we moved we moved away from teaching kids to teaching content. Yes. And we, you know, neuro well is about, I mean, health is about relationships and connectedness. And so we're losing that because we're so focused on just the academic pieces. And so now you see kids who spend an a crazy amount of time on computers. And so it's really it, it's just we've gone too far in that direction. You know, some computer-aided learning is great, but you need to balance that with social learning and the ability for kids to think about what they're learning and apply it. And that doesn't happen necessarily on a computer as effectively. So I'm not anti-computers, but I just think it's a matter of balance. And I, you know, you can go into a classroom and in five minutes you can see whether a teacher's teaching content or teaching kids.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

And so you see that that's the difference, right? Versus like actually teaching content versus teaching the kids.

Invisible Students And Relationship Gaps

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Yeah, it's kind of taking the human factor out. You'll hear teachers say things like, I have to move on, I gotta get through this content, I gotta get through this curriculum. And it's all about just getting through the stuff versus being able to say, Hey, what's Sonia need? Like, let's let's take a minute to just talk about how, why is this information relevant? You know, I read an article recently that was talking about everybody's talking about disengagement and absenteeism. And they were saying this isn't a disengagement problem, it's a relevance problem. You know, we're we're so focused on just teaching this kind of content. And, you know, I've been talking to schools about the initial purpose of school was to teach us to read so we could vote. Then we went to we're gonna be renaissance men, right? We're gonna know a little bit about everything. Well, then the internet democratized information. So now we're in this, we're gonna do career readiness, which is great, except now AI is coming in and the pathways to career are getting real fuzzy. And we're actually finding that what we actually need for our future workforce are all these skills that we're not focusing on in schools. We're not focusing on creativity and communication and social engagement and passions, and we're not focusing on those things. We're just focusing on get your math done, get your reading done. It's very disconnected from life. And kids are saying, this isn't even relevant for me. I can go to Chat GPT and get this done in five minutes. Why do I have to learn how to do it? And we're not providing a relevant answer for them.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Yeah. And like, yeah, I noticed that that's been a big problem too, because I've had clients who were teachers at schools, and they were even saying that one of the challenges they were facing is kids are not even researching anymore, and they're just real heavily relying on Chat GPT to do their papers. And so they actually had, I know, a seminar a couple of years ago that one of my clients attended where it teaches it was to provide teachers information on how to check for plagiarism out of Chat GPT and have, you know, come up with a system so that they, you know, are able to catch it, you know, and not allow it to continue.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

And see, that's where I think that's framing the problem in the wrong way. The problem isn't kids are cheating on Chat GPT. The problem is that we're giving them assignments that chat GPT can do. And so if we want to build their brains to be prepared for the future that they're gonna face, we need to be thinking about how do we use chat. I use Chat GPT all the time. I love it. But the point is, if if I'm being asked to do, if somebody asks me to do a task that I can plug into Chat GPT and be done, my coworkers would say, oh wow, that's so cool. That's so smart. But when we ask kids to do stuff that Chat GPT can do, then we say you're cheating. So my challenge is we need to start thinking about what we're teaching and how we're cre how we're having kids generate knowledge and showcase their knowledge and make applications. We have to find a gap where chat GPT is a tool and not the answer. Correct. But until we shift our thinking away from we're teaching this content to we're teaching humans, then that's not going to happen.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

Right. And I feel like, you know, when you're dealing with schools too, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, it's very bureaucratic, a lot of red tape, right? And you also deal with that idea of state testing and funding and people having to pass with the certain score levels in order for schools to continue to get funding. How do you feel like this also interplays with that as well, right? Like what what's your take on some of that?

Learning Sprints And Positivity Prompts

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Well, I mean, I I think at the end of the day, what you measure matters, and if you measure it, it then matters. And so, you know, if we want kids to be happy and healthy and successful, we need to not just measure their math score. And so we've we've come to where we let the tail wag the dog. So I actually have a book coming out at the end of the month that is called Aspirational to Operational, and it's for leaders. And it talks a lot about this. It's like, you know, a lot of times you say, okay, here's the resources we're going to use, here's the action we're going to do, and then we're going to improve math scores. But you're missing within any logic model of change, you're missing your outputs. What are the adults going to do to make that needle move? And so I think having some clarity around what, how can we measure, how can we observe good culture in a school? Or how can we observe? I just had a conversation this morning with a school principal, and I said, his big movement is we got to get kids to think critically. And I said, okay, well, the first step then is we need your staff to define critical thinking. What is it? What does it look like? What does it sound like when they're doing it? And then they need to create measures that measure whether or not kids are using critical thinking, because otherwise it just becomes a fluffy word. And then at the end of the day, we're only measuring the product they produced. And if they produced it in Chat GPT or whatever, we don't know because we haven't created the assessment in a way that we can measure and view and see their thinking along the way.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

What I'm hearing a lot of is reframing how we do things, reframing so that we get a better result while also having it be in a beneficial way.

Tech, Cell Phones, And Balance

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Right, right. I think it's reframing away from because right now, if you look at what we measure, we measure math, reading scores, and we have some end-of-course exams. So we're measuring content, right? We're measuring content and basic function skills like being able to read or being able to pull an idea out of a passage or something. What we're not measuring are the skills that kids are going to need in the future. We're not, and if you're measuring, do you know the year, you know, this particular war started, or do you know, you know, what the definition, what were the high characteristics of the 1920s or something like that? I can look that up. But that's what we're measuring in schools, and kids are bored. They don't want to do it, they're not interested, and it doesn't have relevance. And they look into the future and they say, This isn't the stuff I'm gonna need to know when I'm out in the world.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

Yeah. I mean, so it seems to me like there's a lot of things that could be done differently, a lot of things that will promote self-esteem and confidence boosting, the positivity framework. There's a lot of need to address the gap in how things are being taught to what do you want that outcome to be, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Well, and when you're teaching, when your focus is I'm teaching kids, they learn the content. They learn it a lot faster because you're making connections. And you know, our brain learns through repetition, experience, and emotion. So I always use the example of like, I've had two kids. I don't need to have 42 kids to know what it feels like to be pregnant or have a baby or be a mother because it's such a highly experiential and emotional experience. You look at like the way we teach currently, think about math, it's repetition, repetition, repetition. There's no emotion, there's no experience, and then they forget it all. Which is why if you go to the store now, they have a sale and they have to put a sign up to tell you how to figure out what 50% off is gonna cost because people can't do basic math. But if we can combine sort of that emotion and experience and make our classrooms dynamic and communities, and we give kids chances to, you know, explore things that are relevant to them and make those connections, they'll remember it.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

What do you see as the biggest gap as of right now that, you know, you say they we're we're trying to prepare kids for the future in terms of them being able to have the tools to navigate what's out there, not having to heavily rely on Chat GPT to be the mastermind for them?

Relevance Over Rote Content

Rethinking AI And Assessment

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Well, I think I think the biggest gap is a systems level gap. One of it is one huge barrier that we have right now is teachers are exhausted. They're exhausted and they're they every time they turn around, they're being told to do something else, and they just can't figure out how to manage all of those tasks. And they're being told to do all these things as far as like you need to make sure you're differentiating for everyone. Student, you need to be accommodating all of their needs, you need to be doing all of that. But at the end of the day, the only thing that matters for their teacher quality is that outcome data. It's did you get the kids to the end? And so from a neurodivergent perspective, that's really scary for those kids because if the you aren't following the pack, just consuming the information that you're being given and then regurgitating that information and behaving the right way, then you're a problem because you're impacting my ability to reach the data goals that my principal or my school district keeps harpering on. So teachers feel this sense of urgency that they can't wait for kids to catch up. They can't, you know, that differentiation piece is just stressful because they don't have time. And so I think it's a real systems change to say, okay, you know, I'm working with a school right now and we came up with a priority framework around like, what do we want kids to know how to do? They need to learn how to learn. So like metacognitive structures and things that they can reflect on their learning. They need to learn how to talk and communicate. They need to learn how to show empathy, to learn how to resolve conflict. So we kind of made this list of what are the things they need. And then we backwards mapped into, okay, what are you already doing that's helping kids to develop these skills? And then the more important question, how do you know? Because it really becomes an equity gap. Teachers will say, Well, I put them in group work so they learn how to work together. Well, the kids who already knew how to work together do great, but the kids who don't, there's no actual teaching to help them learn. I think it's a the the biggest thing that needs to happen is a mind shift that says, hey, the purpose of education to just give kids information and give them basic functions like in math or basic skills, that's not what the future is gonna need. So we really need a reimagining of, okay, now we're entering a whole new era. What's gonna what's what's what's gonna make us useful in that new era is our people skills. And our, you know, like I'm big on like you need to become self-aware, you need to be self-regulating, you need to be self-c in self-control. And those are the kinds of things that we don't pay the same focus on in schools. And but it doesn't have to be a complete throw out the everything we've ever done. It's really about, you know, putting on a set of glasses and saying, let me look at this through the brain science lens and the, you know, what we know about human engagement and what we know about kids. And all of a sudden, you'll see, oh, these things work really well because they're aligned with the science of how we learn. These things are not working. Well, of course they're not because it's not aligned with how we learn.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

And takes a lot to have that come into fruition. You know, teachers have complained about this before, where they feel like parents put the pressure on the teacher to be the parent for their kid.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

It's a huge problem.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

Which is, and the thing is, the whole point of being a why people go to teaching school is because they are there to teach, not to parent a kid, right? And so that's another, I think, hurdle that goes into this complicated mix.

SPEAKER_00 25:56

Right. But I do think that if you are a good teacher, you are a model and a mentor and a cheerleader. And so you by de facto are a lot of characteristics of what we would want parents to be. So it's not a matter of being their parent, but you know, if you're a parent, you love your kids, you want the best for them, you encourage them, you help them when they fall down, you do so all of those things I believe are the role of a good teacher. But I think that we have kids that are coming with such monumental and profound problems that are oftentimes due to their situation in their home, that it has become beyond that kind of what a teacher should be doing as a mentor and guide for students. And it is, it's a lot. It's a lot. But again, if we understand the brain science and the science behind behaviors, behavior is the intersection of our biology and our context. So if we understand, if I'm looking at a kid and seeing that kid misbehaving, if I understand it has nothing to do with now, it has everything to do with the whole culmination of their life and the way that their brain has situated their experiences. If I understand that science, then I don't have to get escalated by it. I can look at that kid and say, that kid's in pain, and I need to help figure out how I create a context where that kid feels emotionally and intellectually safe so that this context can be wildly different from the context they have at home or after school. So when they walk into my context, their brain makes positive associations. And so you can become a mitigating factor. You don't have to solve the problems those kids have at home, but you can become that safe oasis where they can experience something wildly different. And when they do, then all of a sudden they might say, Man, I like that better than what I have going on out there. So I'm gonna model my life after being positive and inclusive and community-based and and you know, in places where I feel good about who I am.

Measurement, Outputs, And Critical Thinking

SPEAKER_01 27:55

This kind of reminds me of that movie that came out in 2007, I believe, Freedom Writers. Hillary Swank is a teacher, and she goes in and um, I think it was the Twin Intercity School, and she really goes and changes these kids' lives around and provides them with, you know, positivity and encouragement and shows them things in ways that they were not exposed to before. And it just goes to show how much of a positive impact one person can have when given the right attitude, the right tool.

SPEAKER_00 28:31

Yeah. And one of the problems with the Hollywood movies is that the teachers go so far above and beyond that regular teachers are like, I have a family, I can't, I can't ever get there. But the reality is you don't have to go that far. That's Hollywood. No. But if you create in your classroom during school hours, if you create a place where kids feel safe and honored and seen, and if you can work with them with positivity to understand, you know, what's going on in their lives and help them move forward, you can make all the difference in 45 minutes a day if you're a high school teacher.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

I will say, I wish we had more people like you when I was going to school, being in elementary school, and you had very angry teachers that would come to school, would be teaching second grade. You think about how old a child is in second grade, what you're talking with, you're dealing with seven, eight-year-olds. There was one teacher, I remember every day she was always in a bad mood, screaming at kids, threatening kids even. And I remember she came, she got mad at me for something. And I remember one day when I walked in, I was going to my homeroom. I heard people gasping when they were going into the room, so I kind of had a gut feeling something happened. A desk had been dumped. And as soon as I got to my desk, it was my desk that she had dumped. And she had gone. And here's the thing: my homeroom teacher looks like a scared puppy. She was standing by the blackboard. She gave a very slight, you know, like a very kind of coy smile, very acting to a puppy that just got reprimanded for peeing on a carpet.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

This is then the teacher came in the doorway and just started screaming.

Future Skills And Brain-Aligned Teaching

SPEAKER_00 30:19

Or you, you know, you need that moment of like, oh, somebody yelled at me. But there is never a place for raising your voice. And, you know, coming back to the brain science piece, if I come from a home where I'm screamed at all the time and I'm in school and you're screaming at me, you're going to make an association between negative things in my life and I'm going to have a negative stress reaction because of that. Where if I, you know, no matter what situation I come from or what trauma I come from or anything else, if I walk into a school and I walk into my classroom and it is a safe bubble of positivity and hope and joy, and we have fun, we work hard, sometimes we struggle. But, you know, if you have that community feeling, then it is like, and now for something completely different. And I used to teach all the at-risk kids, and it was funny because people would be like, I don't know how you manage those kids. And I'm like, I never had any problems. In nine years of teaching, I had to remove two kids because they were in dangerous stuff. You don't, you know, you didn't, I didn't have that problem because my space was safe. Right. And the grabbing so it's more about completion and credentialing. And we've just got our focus so far away from the human factor in the equation. And you know, I've worked with a lot of schools too because it does start with the teacher. If you have a completely dysregulated teacher, you don't have a regulated group. Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_01 31:40

Absolutely. Going back to that teacher I was telling you about who did the desk dumping. I wonder if she had like an alcohol problem because every day she was moody when she came to school. Maybe there was some substance abuse involved. Yep. I did not know how to go home and tell my parents, hey, this is what happened to me today. Right. Can you go call the principal? But if I had more verbal language back then, right, and I said something, and my parents would have said something. If I was the principal of that school, I would have put that teacher on administrative leave. I would have said, you know what, you need to go get psychiatrically evaluated. You need to get some therapy and get cleared. And in the meantime, we'll find a substitute to take over.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

Well, and the thing too, teaching is hugely stressful. I mean, it's a huge, it's a huge cognitive load to try to classroom and teach and all the things. We also have these other pressures where, like you mentioned in the beginning, they want to get rid of the Department of Education. You know, teachers are in the public square. They used to be a really respected profession and it was a noble profession. And now you hear so much negativity around teaching. So there's a lot of, you know, from that context, you know, there's a lot of like stress that teachers walk into the school district with feeling like they're unappreciated or they're doing a bad job or they have to look over their shoulder, and it's not a good work environment. So for principals, it really starts with, and that's like the new book I have coming out that AC, it starts with culture. So, how do you develop a culture for your teachers that is safe, supportive, and proactive? And then that will start to drip down into the classrooms.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

You have your neurowell book, which discusses what we had talked about in terms of creating that safety, positive environment, getting people into a uh environmental community learning zone. And now you have the next book coming.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

When does that do? So it'll be out at the end of this month, end of January. And it's called aspirational to operational.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

Operational to operational.

Teacher Burnout And System Barriers

SPEAKER_00 33:41

Yeah, because the other problem that we have too is leadership training. Like I used to teach at Ohio State in their principal licensure program. It's all like org theory. But it's how do you do this? And my doctoral work was really focused on people. Like, how do you engage? What's motivation in people and what they value and how values drive our behaviors and and and then the neuroscience is a whole nother level on it. So the book kind of talks to leaders about like, how do you make change stick? Because real change starts in the brain. So, how do we understand the brain and how do we put the conditions in place where people will be able to successfully change? And right now is more important than ever in every industry with AI. People have been some research out there. People are nervous. They don't know what it means for their job or if they'll be obsolete. Or so helping to give leaders a framework that pulls together. Right now, you can get a leadership book on how to build culture or a leadership book on how to establish collaboration or how to resolve conflict or how to coach. This brings it kind of all together and says, here's eight C's. And if you only do one of them, you're gonna fail. You need to be strategic about each of these C's. And when you do that, you develop the conditions for successful implementation. And I developed the framework from the work that I've done. I I'm kind of known as sort of an implementation expert. And so anybody can kind of write a strategy, but how do you actually move that strategy and embed it so it becomes part of what you do? And so these are all things that I've done over the years with leaders to help them set up positive transformative change.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

Oh, that's amazing. And I'm so proud of all the work you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 35:21

Where can people find you and get a hold of your books? So they can go to Lisa Regal.com and just make sure spell my name with the E on either side of the G. So it's R-I-E-G-E-L. So just Lisa Regal.com. My books are on Amazon. Right now you can find NeuroWell on Amazon. There's also a book I wrote called Stop Doing What Doesn't Work. And it's really about how to engage families and create partnerships with families. And then the new book will be out at the end of the month. And, you know, I work with schools. I do book studies with teachers. Sometimes they need CEUs. I can do virtual book studies. I can do keynote addresses. And then I take usually about five or six schools a year that I go very deep with. And I'm I'm there a lot. And I really help, you know, do the leadership coaching, do the direct teacher coaching to help move the initiative forward. And are you on any social medias that where people can follow you and your work as well? Sure. LinkedIn is the main one that I use. So they can just look up Lisa Regal on LinkedIn and they'll find me.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

Okay. Well, Lisa, thank you so much for your time today. Everybody, I encourage you to check out Neurowell on Amazon. Look up Lisa Regal's work. Also, if you are educators, any of you are educators and would like to reach out to Lisa, I'd highly encourage it because I feel like any conversation that you'll have with her will leave you feeling refreshed, renewed, and leaving with a different perspective. So that wraps up today's session one, or episode rather. What am I talking about? Session. I'm sounding like a therapist right now. Episode. You know, if you liked what you heard today, remember rate, review, subscribe, and share with your family and friends. And we will be back soon for another episode on here. Thank you for all for tuning in and have a wonderful day.