Episode 8: Just Beyond the Comfort Zone with Educator Heather Kretschmer

What happens when the very thing that once unsettled you becomes exactly what your students need?

In this episode, we explore the development of a teacher who once stepped away from performance because of anxiety. Heather Kretschmer, English coordinator at the University of Göttingen and editor of JALT’s Mind, Brain, and Education Think Tank Bulletin, found herself shaped by three converging forces.

Through her work with the Brain SIG, she has engaged deeply with research on emotion, the social brain, and psychological safety. Through publishing PIE SIG articles in the Think Tank bulletin, she encountered concrete examples of embodied, performance-based learning. As these ideas accumulated, she began wrestling with her own hesitation and her desire to step beyond her comfort zone.

The result was not a dramatic reinvention but a willingness to take small, voluntary risks for her students and for herself as an educator: a playlist project to build community, an improv warm-up framed to reduce resistance, and adapted panel discussions. 

This episode is not about becoming extroverted. It is about what can happen when research, professional community, and personal growth align, and a teacher chooses to step slightly beyond her comfort zone in service of deeper learning.

If you are thoughtful, reserved, or uncertain about using performance in your classroom, this conversation offers a realistic and research-informed path forward.

Links:

1. University of Göttingen

https://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/1.html

2. The Mind, Brain, Education SIG

https://www.mindbrained.org/

 3. The Most Dazzling Folk Song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSMf3r_PU2g

4. Heather Kretschmer: Intentionally Equitable Facilitation Tips 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWW5CS-qbGw

5. Curaturae: Combining Art and Text in Curious Ways (Heather Kretschmer)

https://www.mindbrained.org/2025/10/curaturae-combining-art-and-text-in-curious-ways 

6. Warmly Welcoming Neurodivergent Learners into the Language Classroom

(Heather Kretschmer & Yasser Tamer Atef)

https://www.mindbrained.org/2024/10/warmly-welcoming-neurodivergent-learners-into-the-language-classroom/

7. PIE SIG Publications

https://jaltpiesig.org/publications/#Classroom-Resources

Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, please like and leave a review. To learn more about the Performance in Education SIG, check out our website. 

https://jaltpiesig.org/

Have questions or want to get involved? Reach out to us at:

pie.sig.podcast@gmail.com.

To access other high-quality JALT podcasts, go to JALT CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) Podcasts on Soundcloud!

https://soundcloud.com/jalt-call

For tips on how to cite these episodes using APA 7th edition, use the link below:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uLVARUdviigboSQXkJXfgNm0zNkMsal6brBvwpmTKWM/edit?usp=sharing

Transcript

Darren 0:00

Do you want to make your lessons more engaging and meaningful? Then join me on the PIE SIG Podcast with Darren as we explore performance in education with passionate teachers who bring it to life in their classrooms. Welcome to the PIE SIG Podcast with Darren. Today I'm speaking with Heather Kretschmer, the English coordinator and instructor at the University of Gottagen in Germany and co-editor of the JALT Mind, Brain, and Education SIG's think tank online publication. I first became aware of Heather through the Brain SIG at a time when many of our SIG's members began contributing articles for the publication. Influenced by our SIG, she decided to try an activity that touched on our educational approaches and even presented on the experience at a recent PIE SIG conference. Heather sits at the intersection between brain science, practical teaching, and more recently performance-based approaches. In this episode, we're going to talk to her about her background, her involvement with the Brain SIG, and how she's been experimenting with playlists and role plays in her own classes. Okay, Heather, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. So let's start off with a bit about your background. Tell us where you grew up and what you studied at university.

Heather 1:17

Okay, I grew up in Ohio and Michigan. And then after finishing high school, I went to Bowling Green State University in Ohio. And I started off studying music, and I did that for about two years. And it was a really nice degree program, and I learned a lot and enjoyed it. But unfortunately, I've struggled with performance anxiety actually since I've been about 10 years old. And I wasn't really able to get over that in that time at university, and so I decided to switch majors. And I switched to German, got my bachelor's degree in both German and music, actually, and then went on to graduate school, studied, and got my master's degree in German. And during that time I did teach German, beginners for beginners, which was fun. And then the question is: well, what do you do with a German degree? It's nice to have, but it's then hard to know what to do with that later on. I ended up in Germany. Before landing here, I did get a Fulbright scholarship where I ended up teaching English at a German gymnasium, which is a college prep school for grades five through 12 in Germany. I mean, I really enjoyed that. I really enjoyed teaching English to the kids there. And I also taught a group of adults as kind of a side job. And I also thought that was really fun, enjoyable, and rewarding. So I went back and got another master's degree in teaching English as a second language. And after finishing that, I came back to Germany and have basically been here ever since.

Darren 2:49

I'm interested in y our music, how you started off in music. So what instruments were you playing at that time?

Heather 2:55

I played French horn.

Darren 2:57

French horn. So I was just thinking about Ashley's interview, and you know, you're both from Ohio and you both studied music and ended up in different countries, but you had a similar beginning there. So that's interesting. So tell me more about this performance anxiety because I think that touches on the PIE SIG pretty well.

Heather 3:11

I guess, you know, I mean I enjoyed practicing and I enjoyed playing with people together with people and also playing souls. So I enjoyed all parts of music, no question. But it was just getting up in front of people, you know, my heart would start to race, my mouth would get dry, very not a good thing when you're trying to play the French horn. I would shake, would have butterflies in my stomach, and in the worst cases, I would feel like fainting. And I simply did not want to spend the rest of my life living like that. So that's you know what prompted me to change to German, which is, I guess, more for introverts. I tried different things, you know, breathing techniques or making sure to go around and get some exercise before performing and everything. And sometimes it was better, but sometimes it wasn't so good. And it's kind of a strange uh coincidence that I ended up being a teacher where you're also in front of people, you know, and I also dealt with performance anxiety there, especially in the first five years after, you know, first five years, six five or six years of teaching. And it is something that I continue to struggle with in certain areas, you know, to this day.

Darren 4:22

But I remember when I did my teaching degree, they said, you know, it doesn't really matter what your personality is, as long as you have a teacher face or teacher mask, and that's the persona that you take on during the between the bells, it doesn't really matter. So I often tell students I'm kind of shy, but they don't really believe me.

Heather 4:40

Yeah.

Darren 4:41

Okay, so while your your last name seems to be German, is is that the case? Yeah. All right. So you have some German heritage in your family?

Heather 4:49

Well, yes, both German and Irish, and my husband is German, so that's uh it's his name.

Darren 4:56

Okay, all right. So did did your... what generation, how many generations have you been in the in the United States? Quite a few, I think.

Heather 5:04

Uh the family, the different family members came over in the middle of the 19th century. So we've been my family's been in the United States for quite some time.

Darren 5:13

So nobody was speaking German at home or anything like that. So did you did you feel was part of it a kind of desire to connect with your heritage? Or that wasn't yeah.

Heather 5:22

Yeah, I started taking German in high school in the 11th grade and enjoyed it, although it was more of an intellectual thing because we did more, okay, we learned the grammar, we learned vocabulary, we did writing and reading exercises, but that was basically it. There was not a whole lot of speaking. And it wasn't until we had a German Exchange student at my house that I actually tried to speak it and realized, oh, I have a lot to learn. I mean, I knew I had a lot to learn, but you know, and then I became really motivated to continue learning it. And that's why I did so at university at first, even though I hadn't, you know, I had no intention of actually getting a degree in it or doing anything with it, but it was rather the desire to communicate with people in Germany.

Darren 6:08

So JALT, it's obviously international, it's known worldwide, but it's mainly an Asian thing, especially a Japanese thing, and most members are working in Asia or Japan. So how did you become involved in it?

Heather 6:23

Well, I first heard of about JALT long ago. I knew that it was a professional organization for foreign language teachers in Japan, but that was about that was the extent of my knowledge. And basically, in the fall of 2020, I got an email in my inbox from Cambridge, and there they uh recommended or they advertised a video that Curtis Kelly had done entitled Keeping What Matters: What Can We Learn from the Neuroscience of Learning? And I was like, okay, I've got a little bit of time. Why not watch this? I don't know much about neuroscience. And so I clicked on it, and he talked about a lot of things that I had never given any thought to or heard about, and I was hooked, basically. And he also talked about the Brain SIGs think tanks in there, and he showed the covers of two. And so as soon as that video was done, I went and clicked on one of those think tanks, started reading it, and then I've been reading them ever since. And a couple months later I became a subscriber, and that's basically how I knew more about think tanks and through the think tanks a little bit, the Brain SIG.

Darren 7:33

And what's your role now?

Heather 7:35

Well, I work as an editor for the think tanks. This is the Brain Sig's Mind Brain Ed Think Tanks. It's the bulletin for the Brain SIG. It's an online free publication and it's released every month.

Darren 7:51

And how long have you been involved with that one?

Heather 7:53

In 2021, I answered a reader survey. We've got a nice reader survey, and Curtis Kelly contacted me. We had a nice little email exchange. And in that reader survey, I had mentioned that I know a lot about uh task-based language teaching, and so he asked me, Hey, why don't you write an article about this topic? And I said, Yes. And actually, I have to say, if he had never asked me to write an article, I probably never would have. So I have him to thank for that.

Darren 8:23

And had you written any articles before that? Like for any publications? No.

Heather 8:27

No. And so I think that's as far as I can tell, that seems to be a strength of JALT. It really encourages teachers to share their experience, to share their knowledge, both in writing and in at the many conferences that are put on by JALT. Um and if I think about PIE, you know, you've got a lovely resource. You actually have more than one resource, but for example, the PIE Classroom Resources are is a really really nice publication.

Darren 8:53

So as the as a co-editor for the think tank publication, what what what do you spend most of your time doing?

Heather 9:00

I spend most of my time doing lots of different things. For one thing, working to get contributors, to get people to contribute to the Think Tanks, then you know, lots of email exchanges, writing back and forth with authors, then interacting with the other editors, then reading the articles uh that come in, giving feedback. Yeah, I would say these are some of the main things I do. Also writing articles. Writing, for example, the introduction, some of the introductions to the issues, sometimes the main articles.

Darren 9:33

If people are not familiar with this online publication, what would you how would you describe the aim of it?

Heather 9:40

I would say the aim is it's written by teachers or mainly by teachers, for teachers, and it's to help teachers understand more about the brain, more about the science of learning. And this knowledge helps then us to plan our lessons, to teach our students, to work well with our students. So I would say it's very teacher focused, very practical, and it's also on an eye-to-eye level. So, you know, I don't see we don't see ourselves, we the editors don't see ourselves as being better, for example, than our writers or knowing more. We might know more about certain things, but certainly not about all about a lot of things, right? So it's an eye-to-eye kind of relationship. Our mindset at the think tank, very much, you know, when I read an article that comes in, I read it from a reader's perspective, really. And like, okay, these are some things that I really like about this article. And here, okay, this this part here is a little bit confusing. You know, you might want to reword it, for example, this way or something like that, you know. But it's really, I see myself as a reader. How will this come across more clearly to the reader?

Darren 10:51

And I'm supposing you're going to have the the editor's hat cap on as well sometimes. So when you're looking at it from an editor's point of view, are there any times where you just think, no, uh, we can't publish this because it's not it's not what we do or what we're taught what we're about?

Heather 11:07

I would say only when an article comes in that's obviously been from from somebody who who wants to be paid for it and who has used generative AI to create it, and who is very obviously not a language teacher.

Darren 11:26

Are there any tells for the generative AI?

Heather 11:28

I guess it's more of a feeling and sometimes the the word choice and sometimes it's just very it's just far, far away from the reality of teaching and learning.

Darren 11:42

So as an editor, what have you learned in terms of neuroscience and how it is how has it impacted your teaching or the way you think about teaching?

Heather 11:55

I would say I've learned a lot about neuroscience and it impacts my teaching actually basically in all different ways, in a lot of different ways. One thing I've learned, for example, has been about learned a lot about the so-called social brain. This is not a separate brain, it's not a brain part, but rather it's thinking about the the relationships in in the classroom, student-to-student relationships, student-to-teacher relationships, and how important these are for the learning process. You know, for example, if you help students to feel like they belong in the classroom, that they belong in that classroom, that they're a part of the learning community, then you know, this helps, this is like a prerequisite for learning. They'll it'll be much easier for them to learn the language than if they feel like, oh, I don't know, can I learn here? Am I, you know, any good at English, right? If they have this kind of imposter syndrome, if they come into class feeling very anxious, then they're not gonna learn as much or as easily.

Darren 12:58

So basically trying to do some kind of activity where the effective filter is lower.

Heather 13:03

Yes, exactly.

Darren 13:06

What what's the best best one you've ever ever used, or like the most effective community building activity?

Heather 13:12

I don't think I really have a best one.

Darren 13:15

Yeah, I don't like those best or favorite questions either. Tell me one that you like, let's change it.

Heather 13:20

One that I like. Okay, one that I like is for example, this is one that I would do and more a couple weeks into the semester. And if I were doing something on on vehicles, for example, electric vehicles or something like that, then a really nice way to get into the class is to say, hey, if you were a vehicle, what kind of vehicle would you be? Give students a couple minutes to think about it, and then get them together with a partner, and then they can talk with each other about what kind of vehicles they would be. That's it's just kind of a little activity like that. It's kind of creative, kind of not what you would expect, and gets them to think, and then they communicate with each other in the target language.

Darren 14:05

I just did, you know, what animal would you be, but I never thought about doing a vehicle. What what what are some of the more interesting answers you've heard?

Heather 14:13

One answer that was really nice was a student from Korea who said she would be a bus and she would get all of her friends, load all of her friends up, and go on a trip together. Another student who liked hunting said that he would be a like a Land Rover.

Darren 14:29

Or Jeep, or something.

Heather 14:31

He'd be a Jeep, thank you. He'd be a Jeep, and then he would, you know, drive off into the forest uh you know, as a Jeep. So yeah, students come up with fun answers.

Darren 14:42

It sounds like we're on the same wavelength in terms of PIE often tries to do this, right? We we like to do activities that lower the effective filter, create some community, and create an environment where learning can take place, and it also creates a context for the language. So how where's the intersection? Where's the nexus here between the Brain SIG and the PIE SIG?

Heather 15:04

One nice connection for me is that we are not brains on sticks. So what does that mean? I mean, for we've had we have the centuries old notion that okay, the the brain, our mind, our thinking is completely separate from the body, right? There are two completely separate things, but actually they are really quite entwined with each other. So there's this idea now of embodied learning where we learn everything through our senses and through our experiences, our brain predicts what's coming next, right? What what you're gonna say next, for example, what's gonna happen next. And so there's really this back and forth. And so uh what's it what does this mean for teachers? Well, for one thing, that we don't just have our students sitting there passively, you know, listening to us, for example, if we're just lecturing at them, but that we're having them becoming actively engaged in the process, which is what a lot of the PIE SIG activities or the PIE activities do, right? You're getting students really actively engaged. And we also do that too, I would say, with the you know, Brain SIG, the neuroscience kinds of things, and also not just sitting there for 45 minutes or an hour or 90 minutes, but rather getting up and moving, right? And you know, if we think of, for example, drama activities, right? The students aren't just sitting there, oftentimes they're up and moving, doing something.

Darren 16:34

So in terms of like your your journey in in the mind-brain space, when at what period did the PIE SIG become kind of in contact with it or start merging with it in some way?

Heather 16:49

Yeah, I would say that's about about a year and a half ago, actually. Perhaps a little bit further back. I know that there was a collaboration with the PIE SIG in December of 2021 or 2022. Wait, I have it written down. 2021, yeah. That was before my time as an editor, but I do remember reading that issue and thinking, wow, these are really neat activities, but I don't feel brave enough to try them yet.

Darren 17:18

Why why did you think they required bravery?

Heather 17:21

Oh, I don't know. I mean, acting and drama and theater, those those, that's way out of my comfort zone. And so I had to, I needed some time just to kind of acquaint myself with the ideas. And I only recently tried out an improv activity in my in one in two of my classes, and that worked out really well. Tell us more, please. Okay, yeah. Well, actually, recently I went to Sweden to a really neat conference called the Playfulness for the Future of Higher Education, and there were a lot of really neat workshops and presentations and discussions. It was the best in conference that I've been to that's in person so far. Yes, it was really nice. And they had some improv workshops. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna be brave here, I'm gonna go and actually try it out myself. And and it was really fun. And you know, everybody was giving it a go to. Nobody was an expert or you know, an actor or you know, you know, was really into the improv things. We just gave it a go and it worked out fine. So then I thought, okay, I'm gonna try it out with my classes. So I did try it out with two classes and as like an entrance activity, in other words, an opening activity to the to that day's class. And I I was honest with the students. I'm like, this is not something that I would naturally gravitate towards, but we're gonna give it a go. And so we did yes, let's. I don't know if you're familiar with that particular activity. It's a simple, a very simple activity where one person says, You have a group, you're standing in a circle. So I had students in groups of six, but they could be bigger groups or smaller groups. And one person just gives it a go. They say, Let's drink tea, and does the gesture. And the others respond all together, yes, let's drink tea, and they they do the same action. And then the next person says, Let's play basketball, you know, and does a dribbling ball action. And the others say, Yes, let's play basketball, right? And it's a very simple activity. My students in that particular class there are upper intermediate. So I mean, you know, drink tea, play basketball, take a break, read a book, right? These are very simple verbs, simple actions, but it just got them warmed up from that day. They were smiling, having fun. And I did tell them, you know, I was like, we're gonna be having a meeting, we're gonna do a, you know, a practice meeting. And so this is the first step to get us ready for that practice meeting. So I also gave them a reason we was like, we're not just doing this just because I think it's fun or to get us into the world of English, it's also to prepare us for the next activity. And that was just a really nice, simple improv activity that worked out well.

Darren 20:01

Is that the first time that you used any kind of PIE activity?

Heather 20:04

The first kind of I would say PIE theater type, PIE drama type activity.

Darren 20:09

Right, because PIE is very, very wide, right? It includes debates and speeches and presentations and things like that. So since you've been the editor of the online magazine, how much or how many submissions have you had from the PIE SIG members?

Heather 20:25

Quite a few. Like I said, my closer interaction with PIE has been for about a year and a half now, where Curtis Kelly said, Hey, we're gonna be doing some collaborations with PIE SIG, drama, discussion, presentation, speech and presentation, music, right? So those are just the first four that we did. And actually, speech and presentation turned into two issues. So we had speech and presentation this year in March, and then public speaking. It's basically the same topic, just a different title, in August. David Kluge's article on panel discussions, and it's all about setting up panel discussions in classes. And I thought that was a really nice activity, and I adapted it for my classes and gave it a try, and that worked out really well. I had done a panel discussion activity many, many years ago, but this one was a really this one worked out really well. And so I want to try it out with a different class with a different topic.

Darren 21:29

So as the editor, you've you've you've got all this exposure to all these different activities and approaches.

Heather 21:35

Yeah, they've influenced the way I've you know I think about my teaching and I approach my teaching. And I would say one big takeaway would be to get out of my comfort zone, right? So this is again sort of dealing with this, you know, anxiety that you know comes crops up every once in a while. For example, you know, trying out these this panel discussion activity. Okay, that's Maybe a small thing, you know, not super out of my comfort zone, but it's not something I would naturally be inclined to do. Or for example, you know, doing this podcast interview with you, that's also not something I would naturally be inclined to do. So I would say that's one takeaway, like get out of my comfort zone, not not in terms of, okay, let's dive out of the plane head first and see where we land, but you know, little baby steps.

Darren 22:25

I want to ask you about that. Do you think it's the teacher's responsibility to get students out of their comfort zone?

Heather 22:35

I would say we can give students opportunities for them to take that step to move out of their comfort zone if they so wish, but I wouldn't necessarily try to push them, try to force them out of their comfort zone.

Darren 22:52

Let's say you have some students who don't want to be coming out of their comfort zone. So you s you you're saying you should just give them opportunities to do it, but don't push them to do it. How often does that actually happen where you don't push them and they'll take that chance?

Heather 23:08

I had one student, for example, I don't know about how often, but I had one student who suffered from social anxiety, and she told me about it before the before the class started, which was really nice. So I worked together with her and say, okay, here's what I'm planning for this week's class. Are you okay with that? Do you want any changes? And usually she was okay with that. But she said, okay, she didn't want to have to choose her own partner, for example. She wanted me to make sure that, you know, I put students in groups, say, okay, you three work together, you three work together, etc., which was fine with me. And it was also, from that aspect, a good reminder for me that it's not always easy for students to find partners in class. And it's nice for us to, you know, choose the partners for students and also to mix them up for me. If I try to mix them up during a class period so they're not always working with the same people. And I thought that she would be unwilling to talk to other people in the class because she really, I mean, it was really debilitating for her, her social anxiety. But for her, knowing what we were doing in the class, knowing in advance what what she was going to have to do, and then also not having to find other people was enough for her to interact with the other students in a normal, not in a normal way, but interact with the other students in English, in the target language, and participate fully. I gave her that opportunity, she moved out of her comfort zone herself because I know that she didn't actually want to talk to people at all, you know, before the semester started.

Darren 24:46

So basically you're trying to identify the barriers and take them down, hoping she'll take the step.

Heather 24:51

And in her case, she did. And I would say in in in a lot of students' cases, they will. You know, you always have those students who who don't mind talking in front of the class. We you know, we're like you ask a question of the class and they'll answer. And then there are a lot of students who are just quiet and and and won't do that, you know. But a lot of times as the semester moves on, more and more students are willing to speak in front of the whole class.

Darren 25:15

Part of that is just because they know each other better, right?

Heather 25:18

Yeah, exactly. It's it's building this learning community and helping them to get to know each other. Like I said, you know, mixing them up into different groups each, you know, each day, or different partners so they get to know other people and then they feel more comfortable about speaking up in the target language in front of the whole class of peers.

Darren 25:37

As we enter the last part of the podcast, are there any other activities that you've done? That not necessarily directly PIE activities, but PIE-inspired activities that you've done. I think you presented recently on playlists at one of our conferences.

Heather 25:53

This one was inspired by the PIE music issue. That was the one inspiration, and the other inspiration was Diversity Day in Germany, which is towards the end of May. Basically, I decided that I wanted students to celebrate their diverse tastes in music, and I asked them, each student, to submit one of their favorite songs to a class playlist, and we used that basically as a way of building community. In one of the class periods, I got them paired up and they listened to the song of their partner's song, and then they talked about it. They talked about what resonated with them, for example. So it was a really nice community-building activity. And then I also had them write some short entries on their favorite music there, and they had the option to publish that to the university's uh website, and then I used that list, that list of music to play one song before class, each class period. That was quite nice. For example, one time when I played the music piece of one of my Chinese students, called The Most Dazzling Folk Song, I had the title up there on the slide, and she came in the classroom, she heard her song, she she had tears in her eyes, she took a picture of the PowerPoint slide, and I saw her texting, you know, and so she was probably sharing with her friends, hey, I'm in my English class here in Germany, and you know, I you know, I hear, you know, one of my favorite songs. So she was probably sharing that with her, I don't know, friends or family. It really helped to, you know, students would come in, they'd hear their favorite music. It would help to improve the mood of the class, get everybody into the right mindset, you know, launch into English.

Darren 27:33

Are there any other PIE activities that you're hoping to try?

Heather 27:36

So many. I would hoping to try, for example, a debate. I haven't got a clear idea of what I want to do with that, but that's one activity that I want to try out. I'd like to do a little bit more, you know, maybe small improv activities. I would also love to try out a reader's theater piece. I just have to figure out how to weave these things into my classes in a in a way that will be fun, of course, but also really be useful for the students and you know help work towards the goal of improving their English. I think it does that automatically, but also helps them get ready for the exams.

Darren 28:14

So usually we end the podcast by asking the guests to make the case that PIE activities are not just for Juliard trained actors like Kevin Bergman, but you know, they can be for any teacher who doesn't really have any experience with it. And you're I think you're a good person to make that case. So, what what would your advice be to someone who wants to try these things, but uh, I don't know, it's out of my comfort zone, like you said.

Heather 28:39

I would say play to your strengths. That's another thing I that I've learned from you know interacting with the different PIE contributors. You know, if I think, for example, of William Kumai, he wrote about playing the bass in his classes, right? You don't need to come and play an instrument, you know, have some kind of special training, you know, for example, you know, be a professionally trained actor or something, but you can still, they're inspiring in terms of they play to their strengths. So all of us can do that. We can all play to our strengths, we can bring in what you know, what we're good at. And I think the PIE activities are often very creative, and so we can bring out creativity and bring that into the classroom. You know, for example, next week I'll be bringing in a word list, you know, talking about wordless with some random words that have no connection to one another from you know the first three weeks of class. Next week is week four for us, and be like, okay, do you remember what these words are? How can you connect these words? And then I'm going to have them, I'm going to tell them, okay, one way of memorizing words or of learning new vocabulary is to integrate it into a story. And I've got a comic strip that I've started for them. And to say, here, here's a story. You know, the story starts, you know, beginning. Here are these words. How many of these words can you integrate into this story? And they'll work together to do the comic strip. It's not really, I guess, a PIE activity, but it's I would say it's a PIE-inspired activity.

Darren 30:11

I mean, narrative is so, so powerful. I did my own version of the Monkey's Paw. And even my own version had two pages of vocabulary on it. Before we did the story, I just you know gave them the words and we talked about them and they saw the translations and so on. And then I did the story and they were just glued to their seats. And the the next week they remembered all the words.

Heather 30:36

Wow. Yeah.

Darren 30:37

I don't think there was any that they missed. And I said you see, like you see you're seeing them all in context, so it's it's easy to remember them and and they come to life, especially when you're afraid. Uh you know, when you're in a reading a scary story, that fear really embeds the vocabulary.

Heather 30:53

Yeah. Yeah. Emotion drives learning. It really does, right? And the stories also help that. Yeah. So anybody who's listening who's like, uh, not sure about PIE activities, and say, play to your strengths and take baby steps to move out of your comfort zone. Right. See what read these article s or listen to these PIE podcasts, SIG PIE episodes. What can you use to what can you adapt to your own teaching context? Right. And I think I think that's the first step. And I'd also like to add one more thing that it's really been a joy to connect with the uh PIE SIG members to get to know them through the articles, through email communications, and I've learned so much. So I just want to say thank you to all of the PIE SIG contributors to the think tanks.

Darren 31:43

So if people want to connect with you or read more about uh what you've written, how can they get access to your work?

Heather 31:49

I would say go to the MindbrainEd Think Tanks, and that's www.mindbrained.org. And there you can find many wonderful issues. And you can find articles that I've written, and yes, that's a good way to contact me through the email address that's there.

Darren 32:12

Okay, so I'll put that in the uh the show notes so people can just click on it. Well, it's been a great talk. It's wonderful that we've been able to put together performance in education with Brain Science, and you're a great example of someone who's really not of the PIE background, but was willing to come outside your comfort zone and to use it and find out that it's actually a powerful tool. So thank you very much for talking with us today.

Heather 32:38

Oh, it's been my pleasure. Thank you for holding space for this conversation.

Darren 32:42

Okay, take care.

Heather 32:43

 You, too.

Darren 32:43

  Thank you for listening. Until next time, stay focused and keep performing.