Ep 36 - Rewiring Learning: Brain Science, Motivation & the Anti-Boring Approach with Gretchen Wegner

In this fun, insightful, and deeply practical episode of Rewired, Tiffany sits down with educator, academic coach, and founder of the Anti-Boring Learning Lab
, Gretchen Wegner, to explore what the brain actually needs in order to learn, engage, and change.

Together, they unpack the neuroscience of attention, motivation, executive function, and why traditional learning approaches often fail both students and adults. Gretchen shares her “Anti-Boring” philosophy for making learning more engaging, memorable, and effective—especially for people navigating ADHD, anxiety, overwhelm, perfectionism, and burnout.

This conversation goes far beyond the classroom. Whether you’re a leader, coach, educator, parent, or simply someone trying to create lasting change in your own life, this episode offers practical tools and powerful insights into how we learn best.

In this episode, you’ll explore:

• Why the brain craves novelty, meaning, and emotional connection
• The difference between consuming information and true transformation
• What executive function really is—and why it matters
• How emotional state impacts learning and retention
• Why motivation struggles are often misunderstood
• Practical ways to make learning more engaging and effective
• Brain-friendly strategies for helping people move from overwhelmed to empowered

Gretchen’s work combines brain science, playful rigor, and practical action in a way that leaves people feeling hopeful, energized, and ready to experiment with change.

To learn more about Gretchen’s work and sign up for her upcoming free webinar and newsletter resources, visit:
Anti-Boring Learning Lab Resources

And if this episode resonates with you, be sure to subscribe, share, and leave a review so more people can discover the neuroscience of real-life change.

Let’s get rewired.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Welcome to Rewired. I'm your host, Tiffany Grimes, with Empower Coaching and Training. Rewired listeners, I think you are really going to love this episode. I can't wait for you to meet Gretchen Regner. She's the founder of the Anti-Boring Learning Lab. And this is where, beyond just having the coolest name ever of an anti-boring learning lab, what is happening in there is extraordinarily cool. This is where educators obsess over discovering the best science-backed study skills and executive functioning strategies to really help learners thrive. Gretchen is a lively soul. She is a master teacher. She is a creative strategist, really about how to rethink learning and teaching the anti-boring way. And the anti-boring way is really science-backed, neuroscience-informed, incredible tools and understandings and mindsets and strategies we can put in place with folks who might be struggling with things like ADHD or different diagnosed learning disabilities. Maybe you are working with folks who are first generation or low-income college students, for example, students that are suffering from anxiety, overwhelm, and perfectionism. Maybe it's working with people who are unmotivated as well as high-achieving adults and those in the middle who have fallen through the cracks of kind of these overworked and overwhelmed school systems. So I'm really excited for you to meet what I would say is a hero in the world of education and really sparking internally motivated joy around learning. Those are my words. I took that away from her. I hope that she's okay with me using that framework. I think you're really gonna enjoy the conversation with her. She also shares about a lot of tools and freebies that are available on her website, including an upcoming workshop that she is doing. So she tells you about how to get in there and how to sign up for that. It's later this month. Enjoy, listeners, and do reach out to do some work with Gretchen. Really an amazing human being in our world. So let's get to the discussion. Gretchen, welcome to the Rewired Podcast. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so glad to have you. I love that we had a student in common who connected us and said that we should connect. We have some high energy and some naturally curly hair and love coaching and brains, and it was indeed a great connection. So, Jeff, if you're listening, thank you. Hi, Jeff. We appreciate you. So, all right, so we get to learn all about the anti-boring learning lab, which I am just excited about. But we always start with the same question to all of our guests, and so I want to start with you as well, which is how do you define empowerment, Gretchen, and what's empowering you in your life right now? And that can be personally or professionally.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

You know what I love is that I forgot to think ahead about this particular question. So, what occurred to me when you just said it just now is that empowerment is that I can and I deserve to. Oh, yeah. And so what's empowering me right now is I just came back from this conference that I've talked to you about. And I noticed that I still feel like, even, you know, in a context of my colleagues who are cognitive scientists and teaching experts, I still don't feel like an equal or a peer. But I on the airplane on the way back, I wrote just it came out of me the chapter to my first to my book, the first chapter to my book. And so I'm right now, even though I still feel shy and like, can I really do it? I do feel empowered because I do feel like I can and I deserve to.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Oh, I love that. I love that. Your book, that's fun to know about. Yeah, we'll see.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

I didn't know that I now was the time to write a book three days ago, but apparently, according to my bullet journal that has the 10 pages of handwritten chapter one. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Oh, I love that. That's inspiring. That's inspiring. Well, okay, let's talk about the anti-boring learning lab. The name alone is just incredible. Again, when Jeff told me about it, I was like, oh my gosh, I gotta know more about this. So, what is the anti-boring learning lab and what inspired you to create it?

SPEAKER_02 5:25

Yeah. So, you know, I'm gonna start by saying a cons a misconception about it. Because there was one of my the coaches, the academic coaches I work with students, well, I train educators who work with students, said that she's like, you know what? I don't tell students that I'm an anti-boring certified coach because I'm afraid that I'm too boring and they'll just say you're too boring. They'll reject my certification.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

They won't re-certify me.

SPEAKER_02 5:52

And I do think it's true that I personally am a sort of a lively, not boring kind of a person. But when I talk about anti-boring learning, it has nothing to do with the educator. It has everything to do with how do we help students access the anti-boring inside them. And how do we help them realize that no matter how lively or interesting or boring your teacher or boss or whomever is, that you have the capacity and the responsibility to not bore your own brain when you're learning. So let's give you the tools that we wish all the teachers had, but they may not all have those tools, but you can have them and you can wield your own attention and wield your own learning processes in a way that is invigorating to your own brain.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

That's fascinating. I did not understand that piece of it. So that's really so it's kind of is it mindfulness-based, placing your attention somewhere on purpose? Is it does it have roots in that work?

SPEAKER_02 6:59

Well, this is what's funny is that I mean, I I always have an answer. So I have an answer to you, but I also don't have an answer yet because I haven't written the book yet. So I haven't researched boredom yet. But I finally, I've had this name for years, and I haven't yet done all the research about boredom specifically. I know it's there. I know I'm gonna love it when I find out and I'm gonna find out that my intuition for how I oriented all of our tools is right alongside the research. But the reason the word boring came up is I worked with teenagers and I would try to tell them I can make school fun for you. And they would side-eye me because school fun, and how can you, some random white lady, help me, you know?

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

Yes. And so finally, one day the word anti-boring came out of my mouth. I was like, okay, okay, I can't make school fun, but what do you think about this? I could make it anti-boring for you. I could teach you how not to bore yourself in a boring class. Does that seem more doable and appealing to you? And then the answer was, oh yeah, okay, I still don't believe you. I'm still gonna sid eye you, but now I'm interested. So it was really, and people have complained to me, and maybe even to say this since this space that you're in is a coaching space, they're like, Gretchen, why are you focusing on what it's not? In good coaching, we focus on what it is, what we're moving towards. And it's like, yeah, but I'm working with teenagers. And teenagers are so, they just resist and they're they're identified by what they're resisting more than they're identified by what they're leaning into. And of course, as coaches of teenagers, we're gonna help them with that transition. But if we're really gonna try and motivate them, then we attune to their resistance rather than attune to where we want them to go and we hope they might go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Yeah. Wow. And so people are coming to you. Are are you still working with youth? My understanding is you have educators and folks who are working with young people coming to you for training. What does that look like? What can people expect? What are the options?

SPEAKER_02 9:14

I am not currently working with students, though. I'm feeling the itch to get back to it because I feel like I'm losing my craft a little bit. You know, it's been four or five years since I've coached directly because I decided that I was gonna step into being the big boss lady for this business. And that takes time, as you know. It does.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

You don't get to do what you love, you get to run a business. So that it can yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Yes, exactly. But the the folks who are best served by the anti-boring learning lab are people who work with learners in specific capacity. There's something learners don't know that they need to know, and we need to try and figure out how to coach or teach them there, but we do that with a coach approach rather than a teaching approach. Or rather, we combine teaching and coaching. So I have a toolkit that I train educators in so that they know what's happening in the brain when we're learning and how do we teach that to students in a way that's A, not boring, but then B, elicits the students' agency to not bore their own brain. So there are tools, but there's also some coaching moves. And later at the end, I'll have a free webinar coming up where we're actually talking about the five most important coaching moves that I know of in my own work and as I watch others that really help teenagers be able to access the agents inside of them.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Yeah, beautiful. And my last question to you before we move on to a slew of other questions. So my last question on this original question is you I notice you use the word students in how you're talking and on your your website versus teens. Are these define student for me as you say it?

SPEAKER_02 11:02

Yeah, what a good question. Nobody's ever asked me that question before. No one boring around here. Yeah, I think I say students specifically because of what I said earlier. Students, you're you're a student. If there's something you don't know that you need to know or want to know, that you don't yet know. So there's a gulf between where you are now and what where you want to get to go. And that gulf is not just, oh, I don't have the right mindset, or oh, I'm not empowered in my life. That gulf is there is specific information and skills that I need that I don't have. And anyone of any age can can be a student then. I've been shocked that the the sort of my most, I'll say famous, I'll just claim famous, my most famous concept right now that everybody's asking me to speak about is this idea of cognitive overload. Yeah and how does overload happen in our brains? And then how can we learn to manage our own overload? And I've been shocked that the teachers who reach out to me after my presentation who have taken the mini lecture that I taught them in the presentation and taught it immediately to their students the next week, second and third graders.

unknown 12:21

Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:23

But I have a new group of educators coming into the learning lab next school year who work at an adult education school.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

And the same concept, cognitive overload, is so relevant whether you're an eight-year-old or whether you're a 50-year-old finally getting your GED.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. That's great. Yeah, I love that. I love that. I think about for me, I teach mostly, you know, in conferences or in professional development. And I have recently over the last year started teaching. I get to work with job site supervisors from the International Carpenters Union. And I have realized I have really had to shift how I teach because these are hands-on learners. They are driven by holding it, working with it, manipulating it. And I it was, it's just been fascinating. And I think it's part of what I've loved about kind of following your work a little bit is this, you know, yes to them. They there's work that they can do to not be bored in the class. But for me, it was motivating as the educator in that setting of how do I take this concept and challenge myself and really transform how I'm teaching in that classroom.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

And well, and let me say that both are true, right? So I I mentioned them as conception earlier. But it is true that we also, as conveners of spaces, otherwise known as teachers, or as hosts, you could say it's good if we are not boring ourselves, but not boring doesn't mean I'm engaging, I do a dog and pony show and I'm funny and I'm this and that. It's not that. But what it does mean is we model really well the actions that we hope our students will do themselves. And then we ensure that we're weaving in metacognitive moments the entire time so that the students don't think that we are the ones who just cause their great learning. Right. What did I just do to help you? Do you think you could do that for yourself? How could you do that for yourself? When could you do that for yourself? How did it feel when I did that for you? Yeah, you can do that for you. Isn't that amazing? So it's this constant interweaving of uh reflect of noticing and then doing. And in the doing, it helps if we are more engaging, hands-on, active educators, however you want to think about it. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

Yeah, that's great. Well, okay, so let's talk a little bit about, you know, you talk about metacognition and these moments and what's actually happening in the brain when learning becomes boring versus engaging? Like we can see it on the outside usually. Yeah. What's happening internally for learning?

SPEAKER_02 15:43

And what I what I want is maybe we'll talk again in a year after I've written my book and you'll ask me the same question, and I'll have more answers because I mean I I have an answer, but it's like I'll have more. Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

That's all in chapter three of my book.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Exactly. Exactly. Well, maybe I'll just answer it through the lens of cognitive overload, because that's what I've been thinking about a lot lately. And so I don't know how much your listeners know about the concept of working memory. Do you yourself know about working memory?

SPEAKER_00 16:17

I have a pretty good idea, yeah. I have a pretty good idea, but maybe give us a couple words because I also don't know what our listeners know about it.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

Yeah, so we have long-term memory. Everybody knows about long-term memory, and that's the big goal is to get any information, any skills, any memories into our long-term memory. Because when it's there and it's deeply embedded in our long-term memory, then we can access it when we need it. And that's what learning is. And then though, there's this, and oh, and long-term memory is unlimited capacity. That's what's so cool about it. Technically unlimited.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:55

But one of the just really it's like a bad joke of the universe, of evolution, of God, however you want to hold it, is that to get information into the vast long-term memory, it has to come through something called the working memory. And the working memory is like a little whiteboard just right next to our brain where we have to hold information and think about it. So it's like in the five to ten seconds where we've heard it, that's what working memory is working with. And then if we do something with it, then it can make it into our long-term memory for a little while. Yeah. So that's just the basic difference between working memory and long-term memory.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

But five to ten seconds? Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_02 17:43

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know the official official numbers, but it's very short. It's very, very short. And so, you know, if I were to give you a math problem and I would say one plus two plus three, you're holding those numbers, you're holding the plus sign in your working memory, you're adding it together, you're doing something with it, you're even remembering the answer long enough to say it to me. Yeah. And that can be the case when you're being given a shopping list or when your partner is telling you about their day, everything's going into your working memory. And if it starts coming too fast, our working so here's the thing: our working memory only has about four chunks of information that we can hold at any given time.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

So long-term memory unlimited, working memory incredibly limited. If what we're hearing, if what's coming into our brain is related to something we know already, that we have really good feelings about, yeah, or just our prior knowledge, we can hold more in our working memory because it's connected to chunks that are already in our long-term memory. But if it's brand new information, we really only have about four chunks there. So attention is what is like if I were to draw an image, so we've got like the working memory is like a thought bubble right next to your head. And then coming into the working memory are all these arrows. And emotions can affect how well we can process information. Logistics affect how many parking spaces are taken up in our long-term, I mean in our working memory, like if we have so much that we have to remember to do and we're feeling super anxious about something, we're not going to be able to think well about it. And then if information itself that we're trying to learn, if a lecture is coming at us too fast and we're not taking notes or we don't have tools to help manage the flow, that can be difficult as well. So we're constantly needing to balance like, what are the feelings that I have in the moment? Are there and are the feelings getting in the way of my learning? Are they making me feel more overloaded so I don't have as much room in my working memory? Or are the feelings really supporting my working memory because they're in the just right zone of feeling just a little hard or really exciting or really engaging? So that way we can hold. We I'm not saying this correctly exactly right now, but we can hold, you know, the feelings are are supporting how we are thinking through information in our working memory.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

Gotcha. So really this idea of like boring versus engaging is how am I managing this working memory? How am I in relationship with this capacity that I have?

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Is that awareness I'm building around it? It's so much, there's so much more. I'm oversimplifying it right now, but I find that when people understand how this difficulty of the working memory being so limited, then yes, when we're bored, maybe we're so shut down. Yeah. That and shut down is a kind of feeling, it's a you know, hypo arousal of the nervous system. And that can actually take up spots in our working memory that can make it, we're just so shut down, we can't even direct our attention well enough to be able to accept information in. Or we need some amount of variety, right? We need some amount of dopamine, we need some amount of personal relevance that also affects how well we're able to hold information long enough to think about it and do something with it. And so, yeah, so I sometimes think about boredom as just how we direct our own attention towards something. And if the personal relevance is not coming from elsewhere, if the emotional salience is not coming from elsewhere, or one more thing I just forgot, but that's okay. Then we need to figure out, we need to notice, oh, I've shut down, I'm I'm bored, I'm not attending as well as I could. What do I need right now to bring my brain back into focus so I can be here?

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Yeah. It makes me think about I love listening to podcasts. I they've it's almost replaced all most of my music listening these days when I'm working out and I'm driving. I just love it so much. And then of course I listen, I my guess is it would be fun to exchange our listening favorites because you know they're mine are neuroscience based and coaching based and and I'm learning from them. And sometimes I'm driving and I I'm like, I I love what they just said. I have to pause it and digest it and think 'cause I don't want it to slip through. I want to purposefully move this down to long brain memory so that I can grasp it. I didn't have those words for it, but as you were describing it, it was Yeah. I want to pause and work with this on the whiteboard. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

It's like your working memory, you're you're and that's actually a strategy, right? You can tell, oh gosh, I just got overloaded.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

And I got, but I got overloaded in a good way. Like it's so much good stuff. But oh, if I don't literally do something with it, it's it's gonna be completely gone. And I sometimes imagine from that thought bubble of the working memory, there's a slide, and at the bottom of the slide, there's just a bunch of rubble. And that's the stuff that came in too fast, or we didn't use our strategies. And that's where learning comes in. We can we we actually can never improve the number of parking spots in our working memory. What we're born with is what we have. But we can improve our ability to use strategies. And so you either stopping the car or at least stopping the podcast so that you can think about it a little bit. I don't know if you ever talk out loud about it. Sometimes that's exactly what I do. I pause it and I talk to myself. Yeah, yeah. I just heard da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. I think that's connected to this, that, and the other thing. Yeah. And because you're listening to podcasts that on topics that you're somewhat of an expert in already, you have so much prior knowledge, you can listen and hold it there and you're constantly attaching. Oh, that thing I just heard, that's connected to something in my long-term memory. So you're attaching it and it makes it, it makes it there.

unknown 24:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

But at some point you got over the edge where there was a lot of new information that you didn't quite have enough structures in your prior knowledge to hold on to it. And so you had to pause and practice your strategies.

SPEAKER_00 24:31

Yeah, exactly. That's excellent. That's so fun. That's I I love what you're doing. I love just, I mean, the word empowerment comes back to my mind. It's like empowering learners to really how do I go in and really create this? If I'm already going to be here, you're right. By choice or by mandate. Yeah. If I'm already going to be here, investing my time in it, let me purposefully get a lot out of this. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

Can I tell you a quick story about a learning moment that I love stories? This was back when I was a teacher and before I knew any of this stuff. So all I had at this time was my very my own body wisdom about how I function in the world. But I didn't have all the science behind it yet. But we had to sit through as teachers, we had to sit through a day of Red Cross training. And it was video, like a video chunk. And then it was some firefighters who were there giving walking us through it. Then they would lead us through some discussion prompts, another video discussion. And it was just this all the way. It was too much repetition. And, you know, I would think one video and one discussion prompt or two videos and two discussion prompts might have been okay, but it was just so much repetition.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

And I just knew I wasn't going to be able to tolerate it. I wasn't going to be able to pass a test if we had to take a test. And I just was, I was, I was going crazy inside. I I probably also had slash have some undiagnosed ADHD there. But I started with my colleague who was sitting next to me. I started, I initiated, I noticed that there were all of these phrases in the videos that were that sounded, I'll just, I'll just say it directly, that sounded a little sexual without trying to be sexual. And it was funny to me. So I was like, I want to listen to these videos if I can make a list of all of these phrases that seemed that would have different meanings under different contexts than they do right now in this training. And I started the list, my colleague added to the list, we had it between us, and we stayed so engaged the entire training, every word. Every word. Yes. And because we had to both know kind of the definition that they intended, but then the funny little definition that we were thinking of, we were actually actively engaging with the content in a way that they didn't intend, but was anti-boring for us. It got us through and we learned what we needed to learn. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Yeah. That's great. What a great example. I'm really, I mean, you know, I was gonna ask about how our traditional learning environments are not set up to do this. But you're also, you know, I think you gave a really excellent example of that. But anything you'd want to add to this, why do so many traditional learning environments fail to activate the systems of attention and novelty and short-term memory, long-term memory? What's happening there?

SPEAKER_02 27:47

It's because I'm fresh off this research ed conference. I think the cognitive scientists there might answer your question a little differently than I would from my own experience coaching students. I and I think we're both correct. But I think they would say that classroom environments aren't following what we know to be evidence-based practices in how to manage attention, and then also how to include, for example, something called retrieval practice, which is what science has shown is like the best possible way we can get anything into our learn long-term memory, which is to test ourselves to see what we know and what we don't know.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:32

And you were doing that when you stopped your podcast. You're like, Oh, I gotta practice retrieval. Okay. It just I heard it, it went into the top part of my long-term memory, and I need to stop and I need to test myself to see if I got it. Okay. And then when you did that, it would go a little deeper into your working memory. And then if you got home and told a friend or a partner or a colleague or something, like, oh, this is what I learned, then you're practicing retrieval again. And the more we do that, the better. And I do actually think the sort of hot tip for those out there who who are coaching, it's really not a bad idea to ask your clients to restate something that felt important from the session so that you can. That's a retrieval practice. And it's just once isn't gonna make sure they remember it. But then if next week that thing that we talked about, or that thing that I taught you, that little three-step framework, do you remember the three steps? And just make them practice retrieval around it again. It goes against some of the ways we we teach how to coach.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:40

Because it's a bit more didactic, but we want people to be able to know, like to truly remember the information and it comes through retrieval practice and other actions too. But that's one. So cognitive scientists would say that classrooms just aren't yet structured. We know so much about how learning happens in the brain, but it is not actually put into practice in the teaching methods as well as the way even classrooms are structured. Um, and my answer would just simply it's well, I shouldn't say simply. My answer is we have a model of education that we've inherited that is anti-agency that came from preparing human beings to go into factory work and to get them to respond to a bell, to respond to do what the teacher tells them to do, to do mechanistic repetitive actions and to tolerate it long enough that they you actually just do it over and over and over again. And people tend to teach in the same way they learned. And it's it's just everywhere. It's even I've noticed, I've been through some a big medical journey. The way doctors work with me around the stuff that I need to remember is so not set up for me to actually remember the information they need me to remember and do what I need to do because everybody has learned from this the combination of this idea that lecturing is teaching.

unknown 32:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

And then that sitting in a classroom and following directions without any agency whatsoever is how to motivate people.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know you hear this all the day, all the days that you are alive, I'm sure. And in relationship with teachers, but I I look at it through I have a I have two middle schoolers that I have the privilege of raising right now. And, you know, I think about the I meet some of the teachers who are just dynamos, just amazing teachers, and they're stuck in these systems. So even if teachers are motivated and creative and think outside the box, it's still a system that is stuck in you gotta pass the test, you gotta give the state testing, they've gotta get so many to move up. It's this yeah, gargantuan system to to try to break out of or change in. Yeah. How are when you're working with educators? I'm imagining many of them are in these systems we're describing. How are they breaking the system a little bit or improving or finding ways to build in this creativity in such a I want to say stagnant, but like prescribed, I think is the right word, like these prescribed systems.

SPEAKER_02 33:30

Well, first I just want to acknowledge that the majority of educators who are coming into the anti-boring learning lab have just left the system altogether and are now in private practice for themselves as academic coaches, executive function coaches, tutors, etc. Some are still in the system as maybe ed therapists or speech and language pathologists or special ed teachers. But most of the people coming in are working in one-to-one settings with students and so are way more able to support the kiddo with what they need right now because they're not balancing other needs. So that's just one thing to say. But it is true that there are more and more educators who are in classroom settings coming in. And the beauty of at least the way I've figured out how to work with students around these tools, is it doesn't have to take a lot of time to help a student grow into the skills they need to become agents in their own learning. And it is what I've I've noticed is that students need not just the strategies, not just do this, but they need to know why doing this makes a difference. And the science behind the strategy doesn't have to take a long time to share. I mean, I've developed these mini lectures, I call them, that take about 10 minutes to share one discrete piece of brain science to students. So that's something you can weave in pretty easily in the curriculum that you're still required to do. And then it's also pretty easy if you get your own habits to then help students reflect on that. Or like once you've taught them the study cycle, which is the three steps that the brain needs to remember to learn anything, you can then ask them when you did your homework last night, were you doing it at step one encoding, step two retrieving, or step three encoding in a new way? Or and you just like one teaching isn't gonna make a difference, but the metacognitive reflecting about it over time can make a difference. I I like to even say, like right now, like right now, I'm about to teach you something. How are you gonna listen? Are you gonna listen as if you're encoding it for the first time? Are you gonna listen as if you're testing it to see, oh, I knew that. Oh, I don't think I knew that, like as a little bit of a retrieval practice. The scientists would be would disagree with how I just used retrieval in this moment, but nonetheless, I think it's a good way to invite students to manage their own retrieval. Um, how are you gonna take notes? And so just a little bit of science plus some smart follow-up questions with a little bit of time to reflect in class can make some difference.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

Yeah, yeah. That's great. What so you know, we're kind of talking a little bit more about the teachers right now, and I want to move into talking about how this impacts students. Yeah. And I think about, you know, I I worked with young people for a long time, I think two and a half or about two decades in like youth build programs and federally based programs, and so it was, you know, just I I have a love of working with young people, but so often they would come in and the first thing we had an education component to our program, and they would say, I'm a bad student, right? I'm a bad, I don't like math, I'm not good at math, I'm not good at writing, I'm not good at science, you know, whatever it is. And so we, of course, in the coaching world talk a lot about identity and how that impacts our behaviors. And so I'm curious, how does boring or repetitive learning reinforce or transform a student's identity? And I'm I'm curious if you have research on that.

SPEAKER_02 37:31

Yeah, well, I don't have any research. Talk to me next year when I've written my book. Chapter eight of the book. Specifically to address identity. You probably have more of the research behind that right now, but I we do certainly know that our beliefs about ourselves and the world are built through our experiences.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:53

And so if we had, let's just say you're a kiddo with ADHD. Most of the clients I worked with had some kind of neurodivergence. Most of the coaches who now learn from me are supporting neurodivergent students. Okay. So if you have ADHD, I I don't even remember the specific number, but it's something like you get 12 times the number of negative messages than you do positive messages from the world outside. It might even be a higher number than that, versus a neurotypical student gets a bit more of a balance about positive and negative messages. So you're already getting all of these messages about what you're doing wrong. And then, not to mention, then you have to contain yourself in the chairs and rows and follow instructions. And then you're told you're not following instructions well. And then you internalize that. Yeah, I'm a bad student or I'm bad at math. So many students come to me back when I was seeing students, and the first thing they would say in our in our exploratory session to see if they were gonna do some coaching is I procrastinate. As if it was like the worst thing, and like I'm lazy because I procrastinate. So the lazy is the belief.

unknown 39:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:07

So it's these structures when we are different than the structures around us, we usually decide that it's our fault. And then we create these really strong beliefs in our mind, and then we become resistant to tools. It's almost like we depend on those beliefs, right? I mean, I know you know that from the coaching world. Yeah. And so part of our, and then we don't want to do the strategies that are going to ruin. I'm just lazy. I'm just lazy. Yeah.

unknown 39:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

Don't I always phrase it as we're recommitting over and over and over, recommitting to this identity that doesn't serve us. But with the more I say it, the more I commit, the more I say I can't do use the tools because yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:50

Yeah. And it's why I I am getting more increasingly passionate about sharing about working memory and overload, because in all the science that I have shared with students, that is the one piece. I specialize in what I call the least you need to know to get into effective action. And I do believe the science of working memory is the least students need to know to get into effective action, including to counter their beliefs. Oh my God, I'm not lazy. Maybe time and tasks are coming into my working memory in a way that I can't process them. And so I just choose to do nothing because I don't know how to handle the overload in my brain. That makes sense to students. Or oh, I'm not bad at math. It's just that numbers are harder for my brain because of my dysgraphia or for whatever or for whatever reason. It like creates overload, just even reading a number or reading a letter for those who are just have dyslexia creates so much overload in my brain that I can't do the thinking that my brain is actually skilled in doing, but I don't even understand it yet. I'm not broken.

SPEAKER_00 41:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:13

Yeah. So I'm really curious. There's more research that I'm wanting to do, not just book research, but research with the coaches who are using these methods that I'm teaching to find out. It's it's seeming like when students learn about cognitive overload, they leave going, nothing's wrong with me. I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00 41:32

Wow. That's transformative. Yeah. Nothing's wrong with me. I mean, that is yeah, that's gargantuan belief system shifts, right? That's gonna, yeah. So then that's amazing. That's powerful. Yeah. You talked about as we were talking about this idea of cognitive overload and short-term memory to long-term memory. You talked about one of the things that could be impacting that is emotion, emotional state. So I want to talk about that a little bit. So, yeah, how do emotions impact learning and retention? And how can we intentionally shift emotional states to improve how people absorb and apply new information? And are you teaching the is this part of what coaches do is teach this emotional kind of self-regulation? Talk to us about that a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 42:28

This, so in my anti-boring toolkit, it's only been recently that I've started really pulling in and honing more emotional regulation resources. I've always known they are needed, but I just didn't have the time and I needed to do more learning myself. And more recently, because of the combination of the pandemic and then what's happened to learners since the pandemic, and then neurodivergence, just you know, the pandemic exacerbates any writing differences that people have. And students are struggling so much right now with the regulation piece that I actually had I many people, many business owners, coaching business owners, choose to have their new coaches come through my training program as a way to get them up and running. And one of the women said, I need my coaches to go through an emotional regulation unit first before they even do any of the learning. Because if kids can't regulate, kids can't learn. And I mean, in some ways that's too simple because you can learn some things, but you just can't learn as efficiently as if you're a college student as you might need to to pass the class. So yeah, so I'm trying to think what's the least people need to know about emotions and learning. But when our limbic system, which is where emotions are processing, are processed, is so activated or is incredibly activated, it shuts down our access to our prefrontal cortex. And I know we're not being recorded, but I just did the flipping the lid thing that I know you know, and many people may know from Dan Siegel. And so, but we need our prefrontal cortex and our executive functions in order to be able to do our learning, in order to be able to focus our attention, in order to be able to take action. And the bigger the feelings, the harder a time we have being able to do all of that. And to know that it is a skill, not just a student skill, but a life skill, to be able to attract, to track where where is my feeling state right now, if I can track that. And to understand the idea of the window of tolerance. And I don't love the word tolerance there, but anyway, what is the window in which, yeah, I'm having some feelings, but I'm still able to attend? Maybe my feelings are taking up one of my parking spots in my working memory, but not too many of them, versus when I've spiked into hyper arousal or hypo arousal, and I actually can't even think because my my brain is. So activated. And ideally, we would have the tools to keep ourselves in our window of tolerance. But then also, what are the tools I need, which can include self-advocacy and getting support from other people when I have spiked in one direction or the other and can't bring myself back into my window. And of course, I don't know about you, but this is a long-term, it's a lifelong process to know that. But I think just for students to know that feelings exist and that there's a little bit of a science to how feelings work inside of us and that we actually can do things that manage our feelings and affect our learning, even that is empowering to them. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

Yeah, it just puts it in this different context about I'm either smart or not smart. Right. Right. Into maybe learning is much more complex than that. And how can I influence that? What do I have control over? Right. So I'm thinking for some of our listeners who might not be educators. I'm one, you know, I think about leaders and parents and, you know, people working with all sorts of other people, lots of coaches. What are two to three simple ways we can make learning more anti-boring starting immediately? You know, how could I go into my next team meeting and do something different and better in that?

SPEAKER_02 47:03

Yeah. So I knew you were gonna ask me this question. And what was funny is when I sketched out the three things, I realized that they actually went according to a tool that I call the consent burger. So I thought maybe I just quick teach the consent burger to you because I think that's a good one. And of course it's called the burger. Like a burger. And I just need to say it could be a vegan burger or meat burger, any kind of burger you want it to be is what it is. Okay, love that. So a a good burger has a top bun and a bottom bun, and then something yummy in the middle. And it's kind of hard to hold that yummy thing in the middle if we don't have the buns. So for me, the top bun is checking in about willingness. And especially for leaders, I'm just even thinking, I mean, even in meetings, there are gonna be some times that you need to tell people things that are concrete, that are discreet. Like this is a moment when you're gonna be like listening and learning, right? Whether it's the five-year plan or the anyway, whatever. And to have a moment beforehand to let people know I'm about to share something with you for the next however many minutes, 10, 15 minutes. That's the burger. The burger is what you're gonna teach, it's what you're gonna lecture, it's what they just need to consume. I'm gonna do that right now. And if you're one-to-one, you can ask the question, are you willing to hear this? If you're in a team meeting, you can't quite ask, are you willing? But just to allow people to check in with how willing am I in this moment? How or even how much capacity do I have in this moment? In in classrooms, I recommend that teachers just have a five-point scale with fingers and students can just show either publicly by holding their hands up or secretly by holding their hands on their chest if everybody's facing forward. Like I'm at a one today. I'm at a five today. And just for the leader to know where everybody's capacity is to be able to receive this stuff can be very helpful. So part of the top bun is the is the are you willing, or just noticing where where are you with your willingness in this moment? And then a moment of empathy, like helping them connect. Like this is how I truly think hearing this would be of benefit to you, but like real empathy, not because the company needs blah, blah, blah, or because the team needs blah, blah, blah. With students, it would be, yeah, I really heard you. You're so frustrated with that score on that test last week. I got some brain science I could teach you that might help you understand why. Are you willing to hear it just for 10 minutes? And then we'll see if it was of use to you. So some version of that in a coach one-to-one coaching or in a group setting is the top button. So just having consent be there or even acknowledging, I recognize that this is a moment where you don't have consent. I just have to share this with you. But where are you with that right now? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:17

Yeah. Like naming it and inviting in at whatever level you can. We're two humans. This is the role I'm gonna play. Are you willing to play this role?

SPEAKER_02 50:25

I've naming the role rather than wielding the position. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so likewise, then there's the bottom bun. So after you teach or share or show the PowerPoint or whatever the thing is, most people just end there. But it's hard to hold a burger if you have a top button and no bottom button. So that's the reflective piece. When I'm with students, I would say, I would step back and I would say, okay, that's what I wanted to share with you. I thought it might be helpful for you, but I I don't know. I'm not in your brain. What landed for you just now? Was it helpful? Why, if so? If not, total permission for it not. What feelings came up? What it's it's the reflection piece. Is there anything you want to do with what I just shared? And this is the agency piece coming in. And most people, myself included, because I'm in a rush in meetings or sessions, forget the bottom bun of the burger, or we just assume that people will do that for themselves. And people might do that for themselves. But there's something really powerful about when the person who has power, which is what a teacher or a leader is, acknowledges I thought it might be useful, but you are an expert here too. What landed for you? So those were my three. If I look over at my list, it was like build, like build agency or acknowledge agency, get willingness, and then and then teach, but acknowledge your teaching and and do it in in a time container so that people aren't like, oh my God, when are they gonna be done? And respect the time container and then allow it to be okay. The third part is allow it to be okay if somebody might have struggled with what you just shared, but let them articulate where they landed with whatever they heard and to develop that as a as a practice so you almost don't think about it anymore, that you naturally have the top and the bottom button and a discrete teaching moment that doesn't take too long.

SPEAKER_00 52:48

I was muted there. I was loving that silently from back here. But what and tell us again what you call that.

SPEAKER_02 52:55

I call it the consent burger.

SPEAKER_00 52:57

Consent burger. I love that. Yeah, yeah, that's excellent. Okay, so I love that, and I'm gonna ask one more like tip from you, but from the student's standpoint, yeah. How could a student advocate for themselves, or what could you know, if I'm in a situation and it is uh from looking at this from a student standpoint, or maybe the person is not delivering a consent burger, they're just giving me the meat. Yeah. What would you encourage, what would you say to me as the student, what's one or two things I could do in that moment?

SPEAKER_02 53:37

Well, and if we're thinking about not just being in learning situations, but broadening to adults in any kind of a space, if the power dynamic allows it, I just interrupt people at the beginning. If I re if I realize I haven't fully consented in, I interrupt, not in a blaming way, not in a you didn't, you're just giving me advice. Yeah. But but to ask a question, it's it's almost like you have an inner consent burger and you're like, okay, why might what they're sharing be helpful? And let me understand their intention. So I'll interrupt and say, okay, so what you what you're about to do is you're you're about to tell me how blah, blah, blah, blah, blah works, and you're thinking it might be helpful for me. Why? I'm not quite understanding that yet, and I really want to hear you, and knowing the why would help me.

SPEAKER_00 54:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:30

So if you can do that, great, then interrupt and advocate for yourself. If you can't, you can still walk through. It's like, okay, I don't know the why yet, or I I don't feel like this person has empathized with me. But I know why I'm gonna choose and listen right now. And it's not because I'm a victim to this person lecturing at me. I'm gonna try and find a different reason why it's important to me to listen right now since I feel like I can't interrupt. And or I'm gonna pay attention to if I can't even understand why it would be helpful, what else do I need to tolerate being here? And so, like, do I need to be, you know, my my fingers under the desk wiggling so that I have some body sensation that's helpful for me to remain present and attending? Do I sort of notice my breath in my nostrils as I'm listening? Right. What do I need to be present here? You can at least take care of yourself that way. But if you can interrupt and advocate, I'd strong, I wish, I wish we all did that more.

SPEAKER_00 55:44

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And that others would allow space for that, you know. Let me, I love it when people pause me and say, you know, I really I can't, I don't take in information this way. Could we do it? Could you show your screen? Could you I I'm so grateful for that. And and I've been on the other end of it where I feel like, oh, wait, I wasn't, you're hitting me with a whole bunch of information. I was not prepared to listen. So this kind of creating the buns on our own for this consent sandwich. Um, yeah, yeah, or burger, consent burger. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 56:22

Sandwich, you know, whatever. Is this is a hot dog a sandwich? You know, we could go into that.

SPEAKER_00 56:29

A burrito. I love the burrito. Yeah, that's great. Okay, well, as we close, tell P. You had mentioned you have a free kind of exploration or a workshop coming up. Tell us about it. Where can people find you? I know you have a blog. You know, give us where we can follow you. I know lots of folks will be interested.

SPEAKER_02 56:52

Well, the website is antiboringlearning lab.com. No hyphen for anti-boring, just anti-I B-O-R-I-N-G. There is a live training coming up that's a free webinar about the five coaching moves that I uh that I have noticed really support those who work with students. Consent is one of them. So you've already learned one of them, but come and learn more about it. And that's on May 16th, if you're hearing this before May 16th. And I don't think it'll be advertised publicly on the website. So the way to know more about it is to go to the website and sign up in the free stuff section. There's, I have a free library in the Anti-Voring Learning Lab. And if you sign up for that, you'll be on the email list. And so you'll get emails about the upcoming May 16th webinar. It's in the morning Pacific time on that Saturday. But then if you want to actually see me delivering the cognitive overload mini lecture that I just suggested here, but I have a whole drawing that goes along with it because that that would be the other tip is always try and make things as visual as well as verbal.

unknown 58:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:05

Yeah. So you can see that visual drawing and watch me teaching a student about it inside the free library. And again, you sign up for that just at antiboringlearning lab.com. And there's a couple other, you'll see me teaching the study cycle too if you want to learn about those three steps for how to learn anything. So there's people say I give too much away. I probably do, but there it is for you. So go get it.

SPEAKER_00 58:30

An educator at heart, right? Yes. I love that. Well, Gretchen, thank you for not just your time today, which I am grateful for, but also just what you're doing. You know, I it's it's so powerful, this identity shift or this worthiness, or, you know, that I think more and more, I don't know what it is, but it's just getting glazed over and into pushing information. And so I'm just grateful for you to be able to create a space where people can, you know, I just think of it as love. This is a love language of really meeting people where they are and igniting this ability to say, I I can learn. I'm, you know, I can learn and I can teach both sides of that, right? I can learn and I can teach, and how powerful that is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:23

Yeah. And thank you for being in the science club of really loving how the brain works and how that translates to the actions we take, both as coaches, facilitators, as well as learners. Yeah, absolutely. Good club.

SPEAKER_00 59:37

Absolutely. And again, thank you to Jeff, wherever you are in the world, traveling somewhere in Spain or Portugal. Lovely place. Thank you for making this connection. All right, Gretchen, take care. We'll talk soon. Okay, bye, everyone. Rewired listeners, if this episode resonated with you, I'd be so honored to stay connected. Follow the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and iHeartRadio. Share an episode with someone in your life, and leave a five-star review. It helps people access these tools and this work and grow our community. At Empower Coaching and Training, we believe that when you understand your brain, you gain the power to change your patterns, your relationships, and your life. If you're ready to go deeper, you can always learn more about coaching and resources at yesempower.com. And as always, listeners, notice what you're practicing, what you're returning to, and what you are rewiring. Until next time.