Understanding Brain Science: A conversation with Dr. Lisa Riegel

What if the fastest path to better teaching, stronger leadership, and happier learners starts in the brain? We sit down with Dr. Lisa Riegel—educator, researcher, and author of NeuroWell and Aspirations to Operations—to unpack how biology and context shape behavior, attention, and achievement, and how simple shifts can unlock agency and joy in classrooms and teams.

We dive into NeuroWell culture—safe, supportive, and proactive—and why emotional and intellectual safety are as critical as locked doors. Dr. Riegel shares concrete routines that work tomorrow: 10‑minute learning sprints with choice-based brain breaks, “fizzy or flat” check-ins to normalize regulation, and inquiry learning that lets answers emerge from challenge. You’ll hear a standout story of a student who demonstrated mastery through modern dance, proving how emotion and experience cement memory far better than lectures alone.

Behavior gets a powerful reframe, too. Think of the thalamus as the data manager and the limbic system as security; when alarm takes over, the cortex steps out. Consequences still matter, but coaching self-awareness and regulation changes outcomes by design, not by chance. We also connect movement and the vagus nerve to sharper focus—why a quick walk before testing or PE before math can lift performance—and explain the science so students can use these tools in life, not just class.

For leaders, Dr. Riegel lays out the Eight Cs: culture, clarity, coherence, cadence, collaboration, celebration, coaching, communication. It’s a practical roadmap that turns "buzzwords" into behaviors, aligns initiatives, and sustains change with authentic, specific recognition. If you want less noise and more learning, this conversation maps aspiration to action with brain-based strategies you can utilize today.

If this episode resonated, grab NeuroWell and Aspirations to Operations, subscribe for more conversations like this, and leave a comment to tell us which brain-savvy move you’ll try first.

Resources/contact:

Dr. Lisa A. Riegel, Ph.D. Author, Speaker, CEO Educational Partnerships Institute, LLC
www.lisariegel.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisariegel/
www.epinstitute.net
https://calendly.com/lisariegel/60min
Amazon author page

Thanks for listening! 🙏🏼 If you picked up a new idea or felt inspired by today’s episode. Please take a moment to follow the show and share it with another educator who’s passionate and let’s keep the conversation going!” I’d love to hear from you and if your interested in being a potential guest on the show; email mahperdpodcast@gmail.com 

Transcript

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Introducing Dr. Riegel And Her Mission

Jake 0:15

Hello and welcome to Voices from the Field, a MAHPERD podcast where we talk with educators in the field to hear about their perspectives and experiences. My name is Jake Bersin Advocacy Chair for MAHPERD, and today we're joined by someone who has dedicated her career to one powerful question. How do we help people truly reach their potential? Welcome to the show, Dr. Lisa Riegel

Speaker 1 0:37

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 0:39

Absolutely. Here's a short bio about Dr. Riegel. Dr. Riegel started her career in education driven by one goal, to help people reach their potential. Over time, she realized that fulfillment, whether in a classroom, company, or community, comes from understanding how the brain drives behavior and how systems shape success. That discovery became the foundation for her life's work. As an educator, researcher, and author, she has spent two decades helping schools, leaders, parents, and organizations align brain science with human systems, creating cultures where people feel connected, capable, and in control of their growth.

Jake 1:18

Dr.

Speaker 1:19

Riegel earned her bachelor's degree in English and secondary education from Kent State University. And she also holds a master's and education degree in curriculum and instruction from Otterbeen University and a PhD in education policy and leadership from the Ohio State University. Her work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals and she has authored five books, including her two latest books, NeuroWell and Aspirations to Operations, focused on brain science and how we can leverage it to help people become happier, healthier, and more successful. Dr. Riegel, I'm really looking forward to our conversation today. But before we get started, what's making you smile these days?

Lisa 1:59

Um, I think what's really making me smile is that people are finally waking up to the idea that real change starts in the brain. And the work I've been doing in schools over the past couple of years, teachers are really receptive to the information and to, you know, what do I do about this and how do I help students become happier and healthier and more successful? And I've done training for many, many years. And, you know, sometimes you do training and people just kind of look over their glasses at you, like, oh, here's another thing. But when we start talking about brain science, I think it not only helps teachers, but it helps students as well because teachers get a little bit of self-awareness of how their brain works, and it can help them be more effective teachers and reduce burnout. That's fantastic.

Speaker 2:41

So, Dr. Riegel, where and how did your path in education actually begin?

Speaker 1 2:47

Well, it's actually, I have a very crooked path. So I graduated my first degree was in English literature. So, you know, I went into sales and I was selling automatic greasing systems for semis

Quarter-Life Reset To Teaching

Speaker 1 2:58

and off-road construction equipment. And then I also sold the technology that's now OnStar, but it was before Westinghouse to purchase that. So I did that for a couple of years and I was successful by all the data that you look at. I had, you know, making good money, I had a house, I had a car, I had all these things, but I was really miserable. So when I was about 25, I did a hard reset and quit my job. And I just threw a backpack on and went to Florida for a few weeks and walked around. And I was like, what do I want to do? And from a personal standpoint, I was like, I want people to be happy. I want me to be happy. I want to help other people be happy. So I decided I wanted to work with kids and I went back in and got my second bachelor's degree in education and started teaching.

Speaker 3:43

Wow. So that backpack trip you're talking about really helped reset what you what you wanted to do when you're ambitioned, right?

Lisa 3:50

Yeah. Yeah. I call it my quarter life crisis. And I really recommend everybody has one because it it gave me a minute to align, you know, I was on somebody else's path and I hadn't really thought about what made me happy. I'd really just more thought about what my expectations were for my family or, you know, just get a job kind of thing. And then once I was in education, I taught for nine years, and then I was an administrator for two years. And then after having a series of effective leaders and then ineffective leaders, I decided to study leadership. So I went to the Ohio State University, I have to say the Ohio State University, and studied leadership. But what I was really interested in was the human system in leadership, more so than the policy. That kind of started my my passion toward, you know, let's use the science to help us create spaces that are gonna help people be more productive and fulfilled.

Speaker 4:41

So would you say that your time at in Ohio the Ohio State is what made you become interested in neuroscience?

Lisa 4:47

Yeah, I think it it started my interest. And I was really doing a lot of work with, I was doing a lot of work with like social science, like science on motivation and engagement, pieces like that. And then I started doing some work in special education for the state of Ohio. And that really got me interested in actually the science of what's going on. When you look at neurodivergent people, like what's actually happening in the brain. So I started really digging into that and I was like, this is something we should all know. And so, even with the the listeners you have, especially with like health and physical wellness, I mean, we should be teaching about the brain and helping kids learn, you know, self-awareness, self-regulation, and and self-control in a scope and sequence that spans all the way through.

Speaker 5:31

I I agree. And in your book, NeuroWell, which I bought actually, I think you mentioned in one of the pages talking about how we have to teach the students first as opposed to the con the content first. Sometimes you get caught up as maybe beginning teachers, even veteran teachers, teaching just the content. What are we trying to cover? What are you trying to have the kids learn? But if we really don't make those connections, right, then we're not having as much of an impact as we could be. So, like you said, that brain science and really knowing how it works is so important.

Speaker 1 6:00

Yeah, we need to teach kids first. And I I think the accountability movement, and I'm not anti-testing or anti-accountability at all, but I think what it did was it shifted teachers away from I teach students to I teach content. And the system itself, you know, we measure what matters and what we measure matters. So the system is measuring student data outcomes. And so teachers really shifted to align their practice that way. But it hasn't, it hasn't really worked very well. Our our gaps persist, and and we've got a real disengagement problem in the country with students. We've got, you know, absentees problems. So I feel like we need to, as a whole education industry, we need to kind of shift back to the human piece of what we do.

Speaker 6:45

So along those lines, you mentioned you work as a teacher, administrator, you're an author, coach, and consultant. What thread kind of connects

From Leadership Studies To Brain Science

Speaker 6:53

all these roles for you?

Speaker 1 6:55

I think it's the people, like really being able to look at a system and whether it's an individual who's trying to figure out how to lead something and struggling, or a teacher who's struggling, you know, I feel like I connect really well with people and help them understand themselves better, which gives them that sense of self-control and self-awareness. And it's exciting because then I feel like I watch them blossom into doing things that they didn't even know they could do.

Jake 7:21

Interesting. So in your book, you talk about Neurowell culture. Can you describe a little bit more about that to someone who's not familiar with that concept?

Lisa 7:30

Sure. So Neurowell culture is basically safe, supportive, and proactive. So in schools, we talk a lot about safety, but we're really focused on physical safety when we have those conversations. And what I encourage people to think about is emotional safety and intellectual safety. Because if we don't feel emotionally safe, or if we're coming to school every day and the work isn't differentiated and I have no idea what I'm doing, all of that impacts the biology of our brain to say, hey, we're in stress, and then our stress systems go into a five-alarm fire, and then we can't think, so we can't learn. So it becomes this cycle. So that safety piece is really about more than just physical safety. And then the supportive piece is about a shift from compliance and control and completion and credentialing to a shift that's more human-focused, about building agency and power and a sense of self and goals and you know, future passions and really helping to develop those relationships with students rather than a lot of classrooms that I'm in are very much about like, I have to get through the content. You need to sit there and listen to me and then tell me what you learn. And then the proactive piece, like I always ask teachers of young kids, I'm like, so can you predict that they're gonna roll around on the carpet and poke each other? And they're like, Yeah, I can predict that. And I'm like, then why are you angry when they do it? Like, you know they need to move, you know they want to engage with each other. And if rolling around on the carpet isn't the right thing to be doing, then we need to insert places for them to learn how to appropriately socially engage. So it's really about thinking ahead and planning routines in your classroom, thinking how do I set up a structure that promotes executive function development and emotional regulation as just part of my way of doing business in the in the classroom community that I build.

Jake 9:20

So you obviously visited many classrooms in many institutions. What's one or two practices or one or two things that you've seen that have been good as far as giving students a sense of agency?

Lisa 9:32

Yeah. So so one thing I would say, well, for a sense of agency, um, I would say when I was a teacher, I used to co-design the assessment with the student. And this is kind of scary. So this is like a bigger leap from a teacher that's, you know, wherever they are, if they're like they're gonna think this lady's crazy. But what I did was I said, okay, why are we learning this? So like I had a book I was teaching, I was teaching to kill a mockingbird. And so I said to the students when we finished, I said, okay, so this is why we read the book. And I went back to the standards and I said, you know, this is what character development is, and this is what you should be able to demonstrate. This is what understanding a theme in a book and the, you know, purpose of the book should be. And so I had a a rubric that I created that was a standards-based rubric. And then I said, Okay, I have a traditional test and you can take that, or show me how you know. You can show me any way you want. And I had this girl, she was not a great student. She was like a C minus student and you know, just kind of came to school, but she loved modern dance. So she came up and she's like, Can I do a dance? And I thought, oh boy. So I was like, Well, I said they could do this. So I just said to her, you need to make sure that whatever you do, I'm grading it based on this criteria. So you could dance the nutcracker for me and flunk this assignment because if it doesn't align with this, and she's like, No, I got it, I got it. And I said, Okay. So she came in for the assessment day and she had created a move for each character. First, she told us about modern dance, which was super interesting because I didn't know anything about it. Then she had created a move and a little snippet

Teach Students First, Then Content

Lisa 11:03

of music for each character, and she explained why that move was representative of the growth of that character in the novel and how the music supported that. Then she strung the music together and did this whole dance and explained to us how the dance was representative of the theme within the book and how the different characters interacted. And I was completely blown away. Like I could not have ever assigned that. And and I I tapped into something she had a passion about and I connected that emotion and experience to the content, and I guarantee you she still knows that book. So that's the kind of agency and power. Now that's a that's a big example. A smaller example is thinking about emotional regulation. So we all have bad days. So one of the routines I teach is called fizzy or flat. And so I get a can of soda and I shake it up and I take it outside and pop it and it explodes everywhere. And they tell kids, we are just like that can of carbonated liquid. Like you're carbonated, I'm carbonated, but I can't see inside your can. So if you come to school and you're super fizzy, you know, fizzy soda tastes gross and flat soda tastes gross. So if you come and you're fizzy or flat, as you walk in the door, just say fizzy or flat. And what I'm gonna do is give you some grace and space to go in, sit down, get yourself regulated, and and then you let me know when you're ready to learn. And what we do in classrooms a lot is we don't, we don't acknowledge that they come in feeling already agitated. And then we start with the like, hey Jake, where's your homework? Do you have your homework? Why don't you have your pencil? This and that, you know, and then the kid just escalates and either shuts down or explodes. So even something as simple as a fizzy or flat says, you have a voice, you can tell me when you're feeling okay, and I'm gonna respect the fact that you need a little bit of space. And we as adults expect that. If we're having a bad day or something horrible is going on in our life, we expect our colleagues to be thoughtful, compassionate with us, but we don't always extend that to the students.

Speaker 13:02

That's interesting. And that's something that somebody could implement tomorrow, right? This year, yeah, super easy. Very easy, very easy to do. Super easy. Yeah, very cool. So, Dr. Ego, when you're working with leaders or organizations for the first time, what's one of the first changes you like to help them make or kind of get them to reflect on?

Lisa 13:22

The first thing I really ask for is clarity. So, you know, I I'm amazed at how teachers are exhausted. They are told to do 4,000 things, and then every year it's some new buzzword and word salad, and we're doing this now. And and so I always ask the leaders, you know, and in in regard to like a Neurowell culture, okay, so we've read the book, you understand what it is. I've done some preliminary training. Now, what do you want to see? What do you want to hear? And being really specific about that, because I think sometimes, you know, teachers don't know what they're supposed to do. And they, and I was, I was doing a project once where the school wanted teachers to use more inquiry learning. And this woman, I was doing an evaluation on it. And this woman was the best inquiry learning teacher I've ever seen. And I asked her, you know, hey, can I videotape you as part of this evaluation? Because this is great. And she was like, Oh, I don't know. She goes, You can videotape me, but I don't know if I'm doing it right. And it broke my heart because I was like, not only are you doing it right, you should be a superstar and your principal should be in here all the time giving you props about what you're doing. So I think, you know, helping to prep the leaders that they can't just provide information to teachers and then just expect them to run with it. They have to have some understanding of what they want to see and hear so that they can support it, they can celebrate it, they can provide that little hit of energy as we try. You know, anytime you try to change habits, it's exhausting. So if a teacher's trying to put new routines in place, you want to be able to celebrate and say, hey, I I notice you, I see what you're doing, I appreciate it. It's working, and giving them some

What NeuroWell Culture Looks Like

Speaker 1 14:58

of that positive feedback.

Jake 15:00

So that would be from the administrator's point of view, right? Kind of encouraging or a coach, building coach, should I encourage them to those small wins and having those small successes. Yep. Excellent. So you mentioned this lady about she was really good at inquiry. Can you talk a little bit more about what was impressive to you? What made it good? I just want to hear more about that.

Lisa 15:20

Yeah. So inquiry learning is basically the idea that you don't give the students all the information. And I think this is a misconception for teachers across the board that I've seen over and over is that I have to give them all the information. I have to teach it all to them before they can do anything with it. And inquiry kind of flips that on its head and it says, let them explore and let the answers emerge. And so when you do inquiry learning, you do like a little chunk where you give them some challenges and then you let them figure some things out. So, like, for example, I was working with an eighth-grade science teacher and they were doing a unit on electricity. And the kids were supposed to have had electricity in like fifth grade. So she gave a pretest and she was super irritated. She's like, didn't they teach this in fifth grade? They were supposed to have had this. And I said, Well, let's look at your test. So we looked at the test and I was like, Well, this is a vocabulary test. So, like, can you define meiosis and mitosis for me right now if you weren't a science teacher? Like you, you recognize the words, but it's been a minute since you've done anything with it. So I said, Why don't you do this instead? Take light bulbs and circuits and switches and just throw them on the desk.

Lisa 16:28

And when the kids come in, that you guys have a challenge. You have five minutes, see if you can get the light bulb to light up and write down everything that you try along the way. So they would write down everything they try, and some kids would get the light bulb lit, some wouldn't. And then after the five minutes, then she says, Okay, so you know, what did you do in your group, Jake? And you'd say, Well, we tried this, we tried, and she'd be like, I'm so glad you tried that, because that's a common misconception. So she created like a T chart that said, These are the things that are what doesn't work, and these are the things that work. So she was sharing that teaching, and the kids were giving a chance to problem solve. And what I hear in schools all the time today is kids cannot go through a productive struggle. The minute they don't know what they're doing, they escalate and shut down, or they need the teacher to tell them. So this kind of model of instruction helps kids to start building that persistence and risk and resilience when they try something and it doesn't work.

Speaker 17:25

I love that. And it also, it also kind of helps them be held more accountable too. And they it's a different type of learning, different type of structure. I love that a lot.

Lisa 17:34

Yeah. Well, and the thing is, like when you think about retention, our brain learns through repetition, experience, and emotion. So like I've had two kids. I don't need to have 40 of them to remember the experience of having a kid, right? Because it was highly emotional, highly experiential. But if you asked me to solve a trigonometry problem, I probably couldn't remember how to do it, even though I did repetition, repetition, repetition. And that's what I see in schools a lot is a lot of content transfer. You know, I have the content, I'm telling you the content, but we're missing the experience and the emotion. So when you have kids doing things together where they're trying stuff, they're experimenting, they're getting a chance to think in school, then all of a sudden you're adding that experience and that that emotion to the learning experience, and they'll retain the information better.

Speaker 18:23

So at these workshops or PDs that you give, do educators sometimes say, we don't have time to do this, we don't have the wherewithal. And how how would we go about changing that kind of mindset?

Lisa 18:35

Yeah. So one thing that, and this is kind of a glib answer, but you don't have time not to, because what you're doing right now isn't necessarily working. You've got, you know, your your method, your teaching, and and one of the things I teach is to divide your class into what I call learning sprints. And so we know that we have about 10 minutes of attention, and that's generous in some settings, right? So when like I've sat in classroom observations and teachers will spend 15 minutes just going over the instructions. You've already lost half of your kids. So then when they start to work, they don't know what they're doing. And then now they're asking you, and all those minutes that are spent trying to manage the noise in the classroom or get everybody to listen. So the learning sprint, and this is truly one of the most effective strategies that I teach. Everywhere I go when teachers try this, they're just like, wow. And I'm like, yeah, super easy. So you take your lesson and you say, okay, we're gonna align it with what we know about the brain's ability to focus and maintain attention. So set a timer for 10 minutes, put the timer up on the whiteboard, or

Building Student Agency With Choice

Lisa 19:43

you know, some of the teachers of younger kids have like hourglasses or something. So you put it up there and you say, okay, we're gonna do a learning sprint for 10 minutes, and then I'm gonna give you a brain break. So the learning sprint, we're gonna, you're gonna listen to me for a couple minutes when I give you instructions, and then you're gonna have some time to work independently. So during this learning sprint, there's no reason to talk because it really should be about you working independently. And then we'll take a brain break. And then during the brain break, you can infuse some positivity, you can do some social engagement stuff. It can be a turn in talk. And the first thing I hear from teachers when I tell them to break their class up is, well, I'm never going to be able to get them back if I let them talk for two minutes. And it actually is the opposite. The kids fall right into a rhythm. I had a kindergarten teacher that did this. She said within three days, kids were like trained and they loved it because they were learning. Number one, how long is 10 minutes? Number two, what can I accomplish when I focus in 10 minutes? So I feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. Like, look at all that that I got done when I really buckled down. They learn how to chunk work, you know, because that's something that, you know, if you 40 things on your to-do list, it's stressful. So it kept the stress level down because it was little bites of learning. And then the the learning breaks, where they got, you know, they started doing like in the in the lower grades, they do like, okay, you guys can either go over there and dance for two minutes, or you can turn to your neighbor and just have a conversation. You can draw. And I encourage teachers to give kids choices rather than have whole glass, whole class like brain breaks. And then you go back to the learning sprint. And what what I have heard from literally 100% of the teachers who have done this is wow, we are getting through stuff so much faster.

Lisa 21:29

And it's like, yeah, you are, because the kids are focusing when they need to focus, as opposed to spending 40 minutes trying to get the room quiet. And a lot of kids can't learn in a noisy environment. So it gives a good learning environment and then a little break. Learning, and you can you can make them 15 minutes or five minutes, depending on what you're doing in the class. And then if you're doing like inquiry projects or active engaging projects, then you you could say we're going to spend 20 minutes working in teams. And and because kids are active, they don't lose their attention span as fast. But a lot of school is auditory, listening to the teacher, and our brain just cannot process that. I mean, even think about like when you've gone to a professional development day.

Jake 22:12

I was just gonna say. that I think we should tie the w everything you're talking about into a PD for adults. We need to have these sprints and then we need to have these breaks. Then the sprints and breaks because instead of sitting through a three hour PD so very interesting. So I'm sure you've seen the images of after of the brain after exercise or after movement how it's it it lights up and more color. So what exactly what exactly is happening in the in that instance after a movement break?

Lisa 22:43

Yeah so I think part of it is well there's a couple things that could be happening. One is that our vagus nerve plays a big role in our stress regulation system. So the vagus nerve is really involved in interoception which is is your heart beating is your stomach emptying is your you know are your lungs working all the internal it's like a systems manager. And then it also monitors proprioception which is where is your body in space. When you don't know where your body is in space or when you're not grounded to what's going on then your vagus nerve sends signals to your thalamus which is your sort of data manager sends signals there that says hey we might be in trouble. I don't know heart seems weird or I don't know where my feet are, you know, we could be standing next to a cliff. And when the vagus nerve is calm then we don't react as much in stressful situations. And then when you add a little bit of competition or a little bit of performance, we get just a little jolt of the stress chemicals. And so it makes us more alert and it makes us more awake because we're we're physically active and doing something that the brain interprets as you know a little bit of stress. It's it's it's you stress, EU it's good stress. So I've actually read that the best thing you can do before a job interview is go run on the treadmill for 20 minutes and then take your shower and go to the job interview because those stress chemicals will be in your brain and you'll be more focused and sharp. And I actually read a story

Clarity For Leaders And Fewer Buzzwords

Lisa 24:13

about I can't remember if it was Baltimore might have been Baltimore it was a bee out in the east was the city. But basically all they did to change their math scores is they put PE class ahead of math for the kids who were struggling in math and then their scores went up.

Jake 24:29

Interesting. I love to hear that it's funny you mentioned that because we have this something called the MCAS in Massachusetts and I was talking to the principal a few years back and I showed him this picture that I'm I'm re referencing. And ever since that day I showed it to him every time we have an MCAS he has the students come down to the gym, walk four or five laps and then they go back up and so he saw the value in that. He didn't say much he didn't make a big deal of it but he saw the value in having the students move to help them feel things better.

Lisa 24:56

So well and the other thing I would say is teach kids that that's what's happening. Don't just say we're going to go down to the gym get you ready for the test like teach them why and and I think that's something that we miss. We, you know, I go into schools and see wiggle breaks or movement breaks through the class but the kids don't understand why they're why they're beneficial. So they're not something that they take and apply in their regular life outside of school interesting.

Jake 25:20

Yeah that kind of leads me to my next question is in your experience what are some common misconceptions about motivation or behavior in either in schools or workplaces? What do you see?

Lisa 25:31

Yeah so the number one thing I would say is behavior is always whether it's work behavior, social behavior, academic behavior, yours, mine, anybody the behavior is the intersection of our biology and our context. And so when we understand the biology and we create a positive context, then we can be really proactive and we can prevent problems from starting and when one does arise we can reframe the problem and have a better solution. So I think the biggest misconception is that teachers think that students misbehave because they're choosing to and what I see a lot of times when I go in and observe kids is that the limbic system of their brain is basically dictating their their action and their behavior not the part of their brain that makes them who they are. So when you think of just in a like one minute explainer you've got this data manager which is your your thalamus he takes in all the information from the environment and he's in the part of your brain that doesn't have consciousness doesn't you know doesn't tell a story can't tell time just operates on sensory associations. When I feel this way am I in danger and this part of your brain is always about survival. So it's actually always looking for threats to make sure it's prepared when when one happens so if he sends a report to your security monitor and I name these parts so I call my data manager Harold I call my my security monitor Bob. So Harold takes in all the information he makes sensory associations of like what I'm feeling now is similar to before because if every new experience was brand new our brain would explode. So we have to find patterns. So then he sends a message to Bob and says either hey we're we're in trouble or I don't know what this means. This report has conflicting I'm not sure how we should react. If the first if he sends we're in trouble, then Bob wails on the panic button we go into a stress reaction where we are in alarm and at that point the message is sent up to the CEO of our head that says hey we're going to keep you alive. So go get a cup of coffee or something. We don't need you right now and we'll call you when we're safe again. And that's why sometimes when you're really angry and then you you kind of calm down, you're like, why did I say that? That's not even who I am like I don't know why I did that. And it's because you didn't Harold and Bob did that and you were out having a cup of coffee. What we want to try to do is teach people to go in the alert phase rather than the alarm phase because if if Harold says to Bob, you know, I'm not really sure how to react we should weigh in with the boss then Bob just taps the button and it sends an emergency message to the front of your brain that says hey I need your logic reasoning. I need you to think our way through this and tell us how you want us to respond. And so when people understand that that what they are doing is actually witnessing uh an event where a kid you know Bob and Harold have taken over the brain then it I recognize that this is not about me. This is about how that child's brain is associating something going on in this context with an underlying fear that's making their body dysregulate. And I see people try to process behavior with kids and and this part of the brain can't tell you why they did

Inquiry Learning That Sticks

Lisa 28:43

that. So instead of processing what happened, what what we should be doing is processing why do you think your brain and I am I just say why do you think Harold and Bob, you know, were freaking out and pulled the fire alarm on this and getting the kids to think about really the the fear beneath that whatever the trigger was in the environment that made them misbehave. So that's the biggest misconception is getting people away from that idea of this kid's a jerk and he needs punished to really saying this kid doesn't have self-awareness, self-regulation or self-control and that's a teachable moment. I can help that kid learn to do that. And sometimes kids do act just dumb because they're kids and they make mistakes and that's different. But when you've got some of these kids that are consistently shutting down or acting out in class, you know, I would argue that nine times out of 10 there's something going on in the stress regulation system.

Speaker 29:36

That definitely takes a mind shift to for some teachers because some folks take it personally like he did this to me she did this to me but you know it's not always like you're saying it's not about that it's about something happening in the brain.

Lisa 29:49

So and it doesn't mean I'm not a person who doesn't believe in consequences. I mean you can ask my two kids they're 20 and 23 they knew they got the look they were in trouble. But it it's not about like those consequences don't change behavior because if you haven't changed the science of what's going on the biology in there then a similar context is going to have the same they're going to have the same reaction.

Jake 30:14

Interesting. So you have several books though I'd like to ask you about your most recent book. What's the title of it and what can the readers expect from it?

Lisa 30:24

So the most recent is Aspirations to operations and it's a leader's guide to making transformation stick. And it goes through it it really applies the brain science to the adults in the education well and it's industry agnostic so any leader could use it but it it applies to the adults in the system. So it provides a framework for you know how to build a safe culture how to build kind of a neurowell culture within the organization and then how to frame change. So you asked earlier and I said clarity was really important. So the there's an eight C framework that I go through in the book and and the first C is culture because you can't grow anything in if the ground isn't fertile. Then there's three planning C's. So there's clarity, coherence and cadence. And this is something else that you know even going back to why are we in this situation, it's a lot of times because teachers are overwhelmed by the expectations that they and then lack of clarity of what they're doing. I worked with a school once that said we're doing universal design for learning. That's our instructional model and I said okay and so I said well what's that look like or sound like when you're doing it and nobody could answer me. And then the teachers were like oh yeah is that that pillar thing we did like three years ago and the superintendent was like we spent $40,000 on that pillar thing that they don't even know what it is. And I'm like yeah but you never clarified what it was and then the curriculum director bought direct instruction curriculum. So now you've got you want universal design for learning and you have direct instruction curriculum that's not coherent. And so now I'm going to fail no matter what I do. And then the cadence piece a lot of times you know somebody like me will come in and do a training and it's like well now you were trained go do it. And it's like change doesn't happen like that. So it kind of goes through like what are what's going on in people's brains when they're resisting and how as a leader do you help to overcome that. So that's the first set. The second set of C's is the engagement. So it's collaboration and coaching and using that brain science lens for how do we encourage people and support them as they try hard things. And then the last set of C's is the sustainability ones and that there's communication and celebration. And that's what I really don't see a lot of in schools is really authentic celebration that serves to drive motivation and engagement. You know, people have like a teacher luncheon or something which is nice everybody enjoys the food but that type of celebration isn't going to move the needle to organizational improvement. Does it teach appreciation week well and that's the thing is it an appreciation and it's great and everybody enjoys the soup and it's nice parents bring stuff in but that's not going to improve instruction I from listening to you you talk about this is a framework I really like that there's tangible steps that people can take to make a change. It's not just and the title of the book is Aspirations to operations right so it's not just about theory it's not just about talking about it.

Jake 33:22

But when the rubber hits the road what are you actually doing to make a change to make an impact and each yeah and each chapter has like actual tools that I'd use successfully to help schools move the needle and and really do some transformative things. And I and I just think you know I taught at Ohio State for a while in the leadership program and and taught a lot of aspiring principles and they learn a lot of org theory and policy and structure stuff, but we don't really help them understand the humans in the system. So there's a huge

Learning Sprints And Brain Breaks

Lisa 33:53

learning gap. And then when that happens, you know if you have a dysregulated teacher because they're in a climate with a non-supportive principal, you're not going to have success in the classroom interesting.

Jake 34:05

So as we come to a close Dr. Regal if you're going to leave our audience with one idea about human behavior or brain science, what would it be?

Lisa 34:14

I would say that learning it is critical to being happy healthy and successful because when you understand and it does you don't have to go into a deep dive but just basic understanding of how your brain is processing information, making perceptions and sort of driving behavior and attitude then now we have self-awareness and then we can regulate that we can send 80% of the traffic in our brain is below our nose in that limbic system and it's unconscious to us. Being self-aware and in self-control is learning how to drive more traffic from the part of the brain that makes you you. And when you take the time to really do some of that introspection and understanding your brain it becomes so much easier to be happy. We get to choose if we're happy and if we choose to be happy and fulfill then we need to be intentional about how we shift our brain to make sure that it's saying yeah to help get you there.

Jake 35:11

Interesting. So all this information is in in the books you have two right the neurowells the aspirations and operations that's fantastic. And all that's on Amazon?

Lisa 35:21

Yes it's on Amazon. So if the teachers are listening they find the NeuroWell book really helpful and there's tons of actionable strategies step by step like the learning communities I go right through step by step how to set that up. So it's it again it's it's not an aspirational book. It's here's what you can do and you know adapt it into your classroom. And then if you're a school leader NeuroWell can give you some context in what kind of culture you need to build and what kinds of practices you need to see in a classroom. And then the aspirations to operations gives you the roadmap to help lead that change in your building. Fantastic. So Dr. Regal how could our listeners connect with you? Is there a website they can go to is there a social media? What's the best way? Yeah so they can connect with me on LinkedIn. I also have a website it's just lisarie.com and then if they want to hear me on other podcasts or read more about the education side of the work I do because I work in education and in the private sector they can go to epinstitute educational partnerships institute. So epinstitute.net and I have you know recorded episodes of other other people who've had me on as a guest and and they can get a real flavor of the work that I'm doing and and how I can help.

Jake 36:34

Yeah I think that'll be super helpful for our listeners to hear some other episodes as well. So that's that's great. So Dr. Regal thank you so much for taking the time to share your experience and expertise insight with us. It's been really great having you on

Lisa 36:48

well thank you so much for having me.

Jake 36:50

Absolutely listeners if today's episode resonated with you I encourage you to check out Dr. Riegels latest books NeuroWell and Aspirations to Operations where she dives even deeper into how brain science can transform the way we lead, learn and live and as always if you found value in this episode please be sure to subscribe. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.