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Welcome to the podcast, Full PreFrontal: Exposing the Mysteries of Executive Function hosted by Sucheta Kamath.
Executive Function is a core set of cognitive skills that allow humans to focus attention, block out distractions, plan ahead, stay engaged, temper emotions, and think flexibly while creatively solving problems to fulfill personal and social goals. The prefrontal cortex region of the brain, which governs Executive Function, is often compared to an air traffic control system at a busy airport. Much like an air traffic controller guides planes on different flight paths in the direction that each needs to go, the prefrontal cortex intercepts thoughts and impulses in order to direct them towards situationally appropriate and productive outcomes that serve the need of the future self.
Significant research in the field suggests that developing strong Executive Function is critical for school-aged children and remains one of the most reliable predictors of overall success, shown to have profound life-long implications beyond the formal years of learning. On this podcast, host Sucheta Kamath will converse with neuroscientists, social psychologists, learning experts, and thought leaders who will illustrate how Executive Function is inextricably linked with mental health, physical health, school readiness, job success, marital relationships, and much more.
On the path of self-development, we all experience a constant struggle between trying to optimize our talent and effort while still facing difficulty in mobilizing the inner tools and strategies that can lead us in the right direction. Tune in to Full PreFrontal to figure out how best to manage your thoughts, habits, and attitudes to enhance your self-awareness and future thinking and to achieve your best self.
Sucheta Kamath is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed a personalized digital learning curriculum/tool (ExQ®) that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence. Outside of her business, Sucheta previously served as President of the Georgia Speech-Language-Hearing Association, where she started a free Social-Communication and Executive Function Training program for inner-city men afflicted with addiction and homelessness—a program she continues to oversee as a coach and a trainer today. She is also a long-time meditator and is currently working on her Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification. A firm believer in the “Pause, Reflect, and then Respond” philosophy, Sucheta hopes to spread the word on how every person can reach higher levels of self-awareness and achieve lasting growth of their Executive Function.
The podcast Full PreFrontal: Exposing the Mysteries of Executive Function is created by Sucheta Kamath. The podcast and the artwork on this page are embedded on this page using the public podcast feed (RSS).
If an American 10th grader is assigned to read the autobiography "Virat Kohli: Legend of a Great Player," about the world-famous Indian cricketer known as the best limited-overs batsman in history, they might read the pages, but would they truly grasp the meaning of Kohli’s remarkable accomplishments on the global sports platform? Americans who don’t play cricket, let alone know much about its rules, may struggle to comprehend due more to unfamiliarity with the context and meanings of terms such as "wicket," "innings," and "century" than an inability to read the words, sentences, paragraphs, or chapters. In short, knowledge matters when it comes to learning and deriving meaning through reading.
In this episode, Dr. Gene Kerns, Vice President and Chief Academic Officer of Renaissance Learning and co-author of the 2021 book "Literacy Reframed: How a Focus on Decoding, Vocabulary, and Background Knowledge Improves Reading Comprehension," returns to discuss the role of knowledge in building literacy competence and the urgency of making knowledge the cornerstone of learning. Once students have mastered the mechanics of reading, their literacy development depends on educators’ ability to enhance their background knowledge and expand their vocabulary. Executive function plays a crucial role in students’ ability to monitor comprehension and bridge knowledge gaps. Together, these skills enable students to become competent learners who understand how to persist and achieve their goals.
About Dr. Gene Kerns
Gene is a third-generation educator with teaching experience from elementary through the university level and K-12 administrative experience. He currently serves as Vice President and Chief Academic Officer of Renaissance Learning.
With more than 20 years of experience in leading staff development and speaking at national and international conferences including South by Southwest (SxSW) EDU, London’s Westminster Education Forum, the ASU/Global Silicon Valley (SGV) Summit, the 42nd Annual Mexico TESOL Conference, and the Global Education Technology Forum of China. His former clients include administrators’ associations across the country and the Ministry of Education of Singapore.
Gene received his Bachelor's degree and Master's degree from Longwood College in Virginia, and also holds a Doctor of Education (Ed .D.) from the University of Delaware with an emphasis in Education Leadership.
His most recent work has been focused on assessment and literacy. His first book, inFormative Assessment: When It’s Not About a Grade is published by Corwin Press in both English and Arabic. His second book, Unlocking Student Talent, was released by Teachers College Press in December of 2017. This newest book, Literacy Reframed, was released in 2021 through Solution Tree.
Books:
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Indian-American author and wellness expert, Deepak Chopra, says, “Find the place inside yourself where nothing is impossible.” The big challenge for educators and parents alike is how do developing brains become all that they have the possibility of becoming? Is this simply a mindset or is reaching one’s own full potential a story of building skills with practice? What are sure-fire ways for each and every child to tap into their own human potential and stretch themself to the limit to reach the pinnacle of their performance?
In this episode, Vice President and Chief Academic Officer of Renaissance Learning and co-author of the 2017 book, “Unlocking Student Talent: The New Science of Developing Expertise”, Dr. Gene Kerns, discusses guidelines to help teachers spot and encourage "all" students to attain their personal best despite all the odds and how best to promote greater motivation for learning and success in our young scholars. Since Executive Function skills are essential in enabling children to persist to achieve goals; students need skill building to learn to persist and these same set of skills go into unlocking their true potential.
About Dr. Gene Kerns
Gene is a third-generation educator with teaching experience from elementary through the university level and K-12 administrative experience. He currently serves as Vice President and Chief Academic Officer of Renaissance Learning.
With more than 20 years of experience in leading staff development and speaking at national and international conferences including South by Southwest (SxSW) EDU, London’s Westminster Education Forum, the ASU/Global Silicon Valley (SGV) Summit, the 42nd Annual Mexico TESOL Conference, and the Global Education Technology Forum of China. His former clients include administrators’ associations across the country and the Ministry of Education of Singapore.
Gene received his Bachelor's degree and Master's degree from Longwood College in Virginia, and also holds a Doctor of Education (Ed .D.) from the University of Delaware with an emphasis in Education Leadership.
His most recent work has been focused on assessment and literacy. His first book, inFormative Assessment: When It’s Not About a Grade is published by Corwin Press in both English and Arabic. His second book, Unlocking Student Talent, was released by Teachers College Press in December of 2017. This newest book, Literacy Reframed, was released in 2021 through Solution Tree.
Books:
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
It’s human to crave connections. If there’s a silver bullet that comes closest to protecting kids, it’s the art of making meaningful connections with adults in their lives. This provides children with a sense of closeness and belonging ,which in return, contributes positively to their physical, social, psychological, and emotional health. Effective communication is the key ingredient to forming deep connections and parents, teachers and mentors need insights and tools to know ways to communicate that helps create a safe space for children to express themselves.
On this episode, neuropsychologist and coauthor of the books “What Do You Say? Talking with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home” and “the Self-Driven Child”, William Stixrud, Ph.D. returns to discuss the parenting language of a consultant and ways in which kids benefit when their parents serve as a non-anxious presence in their lives. Family dynamics and effective modeling by parents can lead to cultivating strong Executive Function enabling questioning the validity of one’s decisions, rethinking positions or points of view, and changing one’s own mind with ease, persistence, and courage.
About William R. Stixrud, Ph.D.
William R. Stixrud, Ph.D., is a clinical neuropsychologist and founder of The Stixrud Group, as well as a faculty member at Children’s National Medical Center and an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine. He is also the co-author, with Ned Johnson, of the national best-selling book, The Self-Driven Child, which is published in 18 countries and 17 languages and has sold more than a half-million copies in China alone. He and Mr. Johnson have also co-authored a critically-acclaimed second book, What Do You Say? Talking with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home.
Dr. Stixrud’s work has been featured in media outlets such as NPR, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times of London, The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News and World Report, Time Magazine, Scientific American, Business Week, Barron's, New York Magazine, and Vogue. He is a long-time practitioner of Transcendental Meditation, and he plays in the rock band Close Enough.
Books:
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Reading comprehension is unequivocally the foundation of all other learning, not just during the formal years of education, but in creating socially engaged communities and an inclusive world. The ‘Active View of Reading’ framework suggests that complex executive function skills such as goal setting, planning, organizing, and sequencing information critically supports goal completion, mental flexibility, and learning how to learn underneath the reading and writing processes. New findings suggest that despite having age-appropriate word reading, poor reading comprehension might be explained by executive function challenges in children, which is disrupting their learning success.
On this episode, author, director of READLab, and Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Teacher Preparation at Christopher Newport University, Dr. Kelly Cartwright, Ph.D., discusses how executive function infuses and supports human reading processes and how educators must consider remediating Executive Function as a means to promote literacy outcomes in K-12 education. Fortunately for us all, executive function skills can be explicitly taught and doing so will accentuate academic success for all learners.
About Kelly B. Cartwright, Ph.D.
Kelly B. Cartwright, PhD is Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Teacher Preparation at Christopher Newport University, where she directs the Reading, Executive function, And Development Lab (READLab), and is a Research Scholar for the Center for Education Research and Policy. She is the recipient of numerous educational awards, including the 2023 State Council of Higher Education in Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award. Her research, supported by grants from the US Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences, explores neurocognitive and affective factors that underlie reading processes and difficulties across the lifespan. Her groundbreaking book, Executive Skills and Reading Comprehension: A Guide for Educators, now in second edition, is the first comprehensive text at this intersection. Kelly has served on the Board of Directors of the Literacy Research Association and as Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. She regularly works with K-12 teachers throughout the US to understand and improve reading for struggling students, and these experiences inform her research. Kelly can be followed on Twitter at @KellyBCartwrig1
Books:
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Modern living means living with uncertainty. We are surrounded by progress, yet the things we are unsure of keeps growing, needing us to skillfully cope; hence, making hard decisions without all the answers requires skill and courage. On the other hand, the world measures certainty as the mark of expertise and celebrates those who exude the attitude of invincibility through a firm disposition of ”be fast, be right, and be without a doubt.” So, how do we widen our personal cognitive horizons and become more open and curious in spite of internal and external unpredictability?
On this episode, award-winning author, journalist and thought leader with a global reach, Maggie Jackson, returns to the Full PreFrontal Podcast with Sucheta Kamath to discuss her latest book Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure. Together, they explore the definition of uncertainty, the ties between executive function and the wisdom of uncertainty and finally, ways in which people can build a healthy relationship with the state of ‘not-knowing’. In times of flux, it’s strong Executive Function skills that enable everyone to question the validity of their decision, rethink their position or point of view, and change their own mind with ease, persistence, and courage.
About Maggie Jackson
Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author, journalist and thought leader with a global reach. Her new book, Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure, explores why we should seek not-knowing in times of flux. Nominated for a National Book Award, Uncertain has been named a Best Book of 2023 by Library Journal and The Next Big Idea Club. Library Journal calls the book "remarkable and persuasive." Maggie’s acclaimed book Distracted sparked a global conversation on the steep costs of fragmenting our attention. A former columnist for the Boston Globe, Maggie has written for The New York Times and many other publications worldwide. Her writings have been translated into multiple languages and widely covered by the global press. She lives in New York and Rhode Island.
Websites:
Books:
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
The start of the New Year always rings in new possibilities. However, setting and achieving goals for yourself and by yourself is harder than it seems. There are a multitude of obstacles including questions like knowing which tasks and ambitions to prioritize, where exactly to start, and how best to carry on when facing roadblocks and distractions. One truth remains though, we are likely to follow through with goals and pursuits that we are highly motivated about.
On this episode, behavioral scientist, Chicago Booth professor, and leading expert on motivation, Dr. Ayelet Fishbach, Ph.D., discusses ways to think about and apply motivation to our lives and what people need to know about leveraging social support to stay motivated in our goal pursuit. Motivation is defined as a psychological force that enables action and a key to mastering Executive Function is to close the gap between one’s intentions and one’s actions.
About Ayelet Fishbach
Ayelet Fishbach, PhD, is the Jeffrey Breakenridge Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business and the author of GET IT DONE: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation. She is the past president of the Society for the Science of Motivation and the International Social Cognition Network. She is an expert on motivation and decision making. Dr. Fishbach’s groundbreaking research on human motivation has won the Society of Experimental Social Psychology's Best Dissertation Award and Career Trajectory Award, and the Fulbright Educational Foundation Award.
Websites:
Books:
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
How would you feel if during your trip to Agra, India, someone offers to sell you the Taj Mahal (one of the greatest wonders of the world)? In its absurd glory you might question the offer as you read this, but not everyone did. One of the greatest con artists from India, Natwarlal aka Mithilesh Kumar Srivastava, not only sold the Taj Mahal to unsuspecting foreign tourists, but also made out selling a few other historical monuments ~ and not just once, but multiple times. No one likes to be conned, fooled or taken advantage of. However, everyone has fallen prey to someone else’s deceit at least once because we are wired for trust-bias and scammers use our own cognitive beliefs, habits, and assumptions against us.
On this episode, research neuroscientists, co-authors and collaborators Dr. Christopher Chabris and Dr. Daniel Simons discuss their most recent book, “Nobody’s Fool: Why we get taken and what we can do about it” and explain what classic and current research in cognitive psychology and the social sciences says about our vulnerabilities to fall prey to deception and fraud. Focus, critical thinking, discernment and questioning ourselves with criticality are some of the effective ways of managing our truth bias and activating our executive function to protect our future-selves.
About Dr. Christopher Chabris
Christopher Chabris is a Professor at Geisinger, a Pennsylvania healthcare system, where he co-directs the Behavioral Insights Team. He previously taught at Union College and Harvard University, and is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. Chris received his Ph.D. in psychology and A.B. in computer science from Harvard. His research focuses on decision-making, attention, intelligence, and behavior genetics. His work has been published in leading journals including Science, Nature, PNAS, and Perception. Chris is also a chess master and co-author of the bestseller The Invisible Gorilla (published in 21 languages) and the forthcoming book on deception and fraud, Nobody’s Fool.
About Dr. Daniel Simons
Dr. Daniel Simons is a professor of psychology at the University of Illinois where he heads the Visual Cognition Laboratory and has courtesy appointments in the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising and the Gies College of Business. Dan received his B.A. from Carleton College and his Ph.D. from Cornell University. His research explores the limits of awareness and memory, the reasons why we often are unaware of those limits, and the implications of such limits for our personal and professional lives. For more information, visit dansimons.com.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking ski
200 episodes! The Full PreFrontal Podcast has reached a significant milestone, and what does that mean to us? We’re “in it for the long haul!” We find inspiration from Japanese artist, On Kawara, known for his work that illustrates the beauty, structure, and discipline in doing something over a long period of time with persistence and care. A milestone often not only marks the start of a new chapter, but also serves as a reward for past accomplishments, both big and small.
Achievements are precious and timeless, and what better way to commemorate them than with precious guests. On today’s podcast, Sucheta celebrates this 200th episode with her two sons who flip the script by taking a look back at the podcast’s journey through time.
Kunal Kamath is a graduate of Columbia University and an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company who lives and breathes executive function principles. In his spare time, Kunal loves the performing arts, crossword puzzles, and cultivating an indoor jungle of houseplants in his Brooklyn apartment. Rahil Kamath is also a graduate of Columbia University and is working toward his doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University—he is a firm believer of the deep connection between executive function and psychological well-being. Rahil loves reading novels, is an avid soccer fan, and, much like his mom, enjoys nerding out on all things psychology.
Sucheta would like to invite all listeners and followers of the podcast to join in on the celebrations as she continues to explore the mysteries of Executive Function while translating the art and science of self-regulated transformation for personal growth.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
During the 2007 season of America’s Next Top Model, contestant Heather Kuzmich introduced American viewers to her diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder and the challenges that go along with it. Having to live in a house with twelve strangers while navigating the social politics of housemates who were also her competitors proved to be quite a bit of challenge for Kuzmich and yet she won viewers’ hearts and ended up in the top five. While this success story offers inspiration and hope to many; for those with ASD diagnosis, the struggle is real and they need help and support from not just experts, but from communities as well.
On this episode, practicing clinical psychologist and co-author of two books “Is This Autism? A guide for clinicians and everyone else” and “Is This Autism? A companion guide for diagnosing”, Dr. Donna Henderson returns to discuss effective ways to manage the ASD condition as it poses many challenges including black-and-white thinking, rigid rule-following, obsessiveness, and perfectionism that can take a toll on one's quality of life.
About Donna Henderson, Psy.D.
Dr. Donna Henderson has been a clinical psychologist for over 30 years. She is passionate about identifying and supporting autistic individuals, particularly those who camouflage, and she is co-author (with Drs. Sarah Wayland and Jamell White) of two books: Is This Autism? A guide for clinicians and everyone else and Is This Autism? A companion guide for diagnosing. Dr. Henderson’s professional home is The Stixrud Group in Silver Spring, Maryland, where she provides neuropsychological evaluations for children, adolescents, and adults who would like to understand themselves better. She is a sought-after lecturer on the less obvious presentations of autism, autistic girls and women, PDA, and on parenting children with complex profiles. She also enjoys providing neurodiversity-affirmative training and consultation for other healthcare professionals.
Website:
Book:
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
If a boy has an odd affect, you might think he’s autistic. But if a girl has an odd affect, you’ll think she’s a drama queen!…How does autism present itself? And what if it presents in a way you might not expect? The ordeal of connecting, communicating, and belonging to a neurotypical world while being neurodiverse is the same as navigating the right-handed world while being left-handed ~ it can cause angst and challenge.
On this podcast, practicing clinical psychologist and co-author of two books “Is This Autism? A guide for clinicians and everyone else” and “Is This Autism? A companion guide for diagnosing”, Dr. Donna Henderson discusses effective ways of identifying and supporting autistic individuals, particularly those with subtle presentation who experience life-long effects which are much more than subtle.
About Donna Henderson, Psy.D.
Dr. Donna Henderson has been a clinical psychologist for over 30 years. She is passionate about identifying and supporting autistic individuals, particularly those who camouflage, and she is co-author (with Drs. Sarah Wayland and Jamell White) of two books: Is This Autism? A guide for clinicians and everyone else and Is This Autism? A companion guide for diagnosing. Dr. Henderson’s professional home is The Stixrud Group in Silver Spring, Maryland, where she provides neuropsychological evaluations for children, adolescents, and adults who would like to understand themselves better. She is a sought-after lecturer on the less obvious presentations of autism, autistic girls and women, PDA, and on parenting children with complex profiles. She also enjoys providing neurodiversity-affirmative training and consultation for other healthcare professionals.
Website:
Book:
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
The process of educating children and growing as an educator in return requires everyone to acknowledge the bidirectionality that is inherent to teaching and learning. The context and culture that invests in both the academic growth of a child and also in the process that honors the input from its learning community brings itself into a new realm of possibilities. By carefully creating time and space to hear the voices of student stakeholders, educators discover meaningful ways to act upon them with clarity and care.
On this episode, author, K-16 educator & administrator, motivational speaker, leadership expert and development coach, Dr. Mary Hemphill, discusses the framework of the One-Minute Meeting and the importance of an informative needs assessment that maximizes interactions with students to uncover their transformational potential. In an effort to build self-reliant children, we need to build relationships with children so that they approach their own challenges and roadblocks with courage and trust; and as their brains grow, so does their Executive Function skills.
About Dr. Mary Hemphill
Dr. Mary Hemphill is a Leadership Expert & Development Coach, K-16 Educator & Administrator, Author, & Motivational Speaker. With over 17 years of professional experience as a teacher, administrator, state director, & university professor, Mary understands the importance of fusing education, empowerment, & leadership together as she works with learning & working communities & speaks to audiences across the country. She holds a Ph.D. in Leadership Studies, & has led, coached, & impacted close to 40,000 educational and corporate leaders around the world on transformational & innovative strategy, self-empowerment, & leadership development. Mary is the proud CEO & Founder of The Limitless Lady LLC ™, an organization that helps people ignite the leader in themselves so they can better serve their community, company, and personal career through coaching, consulting, workshops, and keynotes aimed at corporate and educational leaders and organizations.
Mary is the author of The One-Minute Meeting: Creating Student Stakeholders in Schools, which teaches readers how to leverage a unique instructional practice called the One-Minute Meeting to authentically glean information from students. Developed to inspire school and district leaders to fully engage with and empower their students, The One-Minute Meeting is an exceptional resource for college & university courses in school leadership and administration. This text is also a valuable resource for in-service educators and administrators at K-12 institutions.
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Book:
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Culture in general plays an important role in human development and particularly childhood is shaped by culture. Not so long ago raising children was considered rather noisy, dirty, tedious and anything but pleasant. However, those living in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) societies that make up about 12% of the world’s population have perpetuated over-protective child-rearing practices and principals while ignoring the cultural wisdom of the rest of the world. With this rise in parental hyper-vigilance in creating independent children, there is a growing trend that parents are turning everything in the child's life into a learning/teaching opportunity, which is a likely source of learned helplessness and a predictable path to a failure to launch.
On this episode, anthropologist, researcher, and author and Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Utah State University, David Lancy, discusses the loss of autonomy and freedom in WEIRD societies and the relationship between how we raise children and the eventual likelihood of a failure to launch and the insecurity, anxiety, and breakdown in executive function.
About David F Lancy
David Lancy has done extensive cross-cultural fieldwork with children as the focus. His most important work, just published in a third edition, is The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings. That scholarly book was paired by a popular version in 2017, entitled Raising Children: Surprising Insights From Other Cultures. In total, Lancy has authored nine books and edited three. A new work on pedagogy in culture is in progress. Publishers have included Academic Press, Cambridge, Longman, Praeger and Oxford. He has also authored over eighty articles and book chapters.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Culture encourages girls and women to exhibit both traditional “feminine” qualities, such as being empathic, good with relationships, nice, obedient, good mothers, and home-organizers, as well as traditional “masculine” qualities, such as being assertive, competitive, academically driven, and career-focused. However, when girls display disruptive, hyperactive, impulsive, or disorganized behavior, they are at risk of harsher social judgment compared to their male counterparts because they violate the feminine societal norms. For starters, ADHD and resulting Executive Dysfunction in girls and women can turn their lives upside down and in an attempt to avoid social sanctions, many of them spend excessive amounts of energy trying to hide their challenges, which in turn go unnoticed and hence untreated.
On this episode, psychotherapist, consultant and author, Sari Solden, discusses why girls and women with ADHD get diagnosed much later than a typical child with ADHD and how best to help alleviate their personal shame and struggles with the unrelenting societal pressure of needing to “prove it to the world” that they are worthy to be given opportunities. An essential component of improving Executive Function skills is building self-knowledge and constructing a personal narrative of a wholesome self that recognizes the common humanity in all of our experiences. Instead of framing self-work or self-change as “fixing something that is broken”, the best therapeutic way to empower girls and women with ADHD is to help them invest in their own future-self.
About Sari Solden, MS
Sari Solden, M.S, is a psychotherapist who has counseled adults with ADHD for over 30 years. She is the author of the books, Women with Attention Deficit Disorder, Journeys Through ADDulthood, and co-author of A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD. Her areas of specialization include women's issues, inattentive ADHD, and the emotional consequences and healing process for adults who grew up with undiagnosed ADHD. She is a prominent keynote speaker on these subjects nationally and internationally. Ms. Solden currently consults with neurodiverse women mental health and helping professionals, as well as trains therapists in how to help women with ADHD. She serves on the professional advisory board of ADDA and was the recipient of their award for outstanding service by a helping professional.
You can contact Sari at [email protected]
Website:
Books:
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Why is it that our resolve to lose weight, give up eating desserts, and start a new exercise regimen is bound to fail? Because we all have bought into to the conventional wisdom that follow-through with a new decision is simply a matter of conscious choice and decision and ultimately this belief ends up leading us astray. Even though it’s a common human experience to want to overcome ill-desired habits and change our ways, simply chanting the mantra of the “Just Do it” or reading self-help books will not make it easy to get rid of our bad habits or make us better people.
On this episode, Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at the University of Southern California and author of the book, Good Habits, Bad Habits, Wendy Wood, discusses how the psychological sciences of habit-making, habit-breaking, and habit-reshaping relies on the interplay of decisions and unconscious factors. She highlights that to make the changes we seek, we must first unlock our habitual mind. Since Executive Function skills pertain to forming goals and persisting through time to achieve them, the success of Executive Function training lies in discovering how to tolerate the drudgery of sticking to things over and over again.
About Wendy Wood
Wendy Wood is Provost Professor of Psychology and Business at the University of Southern California and author of the book, Good Habits, Bad Habits. For the past 30 years, she has studied the nature of habits and why they are so difficult to break. Her award-winning research has appeared in over 100 scientific articles and is regularly featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, and NPR. She has consulted on habit formation and change with P&G's consumer products division, the CDC's diabetes prevention programs, the World Bank's initiative to increase hand-washing in developing nations, and the US Paper & Packaging Board's recycling program.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Research shows that young children with stronger Executive Function skills present themselves far differently than their peers and their behaviors and actions stand out a bit more. These children are more involved in their preschool classrooms, they interact more freely with their learning environment, and it’s less likely that they get put into “time out”. From there on, these students’ journeys puts them on the fast track to develop greater independence and self-sufficiently because they exhibit skills that allow them to maximize the learning opportunities in activities that are the building blocks of formal education.
On this episode, Assistant Researcher at the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Dr. Laura Rhinehart, discusses the nature of Executive Function and early development and ways in which children with ADHD or dyslexia differ in their reading, literacy, and executive functioning skills.
About Laura Rhinehart, Ph.D.
Dr. Laura Rhinehart is an Assistant Researcher at the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She received her M.Ed. and Ph.D. from UCLA’s Department of Education. Her current research focuses on dyslexia, early literacy assessment and reading interventions, and children’s executive functioning skills. Dr. Rhinehart’s articles have been published in peer-reviewed publications, including The Reading League Journal and the Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Raising children, which was always hard, has become harder; not because of the work that goes into changing diapers, preparing meals, taking kids to soccer or piano, or all the laundry that one has to do; but because not everyone is good with children. On top of that, in modern times and in modern living, parents’ abilities to control what children have access to has fundamentally changed, requiring parents to deal with difficult information and ongoing conflict in motives between what the parents think is appropriate versus what children desire. All this amplifies the ongoing tension and erodes relationships between contemporary parents and their teens while the complex world never ceases to be complex.
On this episode, ADHD and parent-teen relationships expert, author, and clinical psychologist, Dr. Arthur Robin, discusses how to build better communication, problem solving, and realistic thinking in interpersonal relationships. A key ingredient to Executive Function development and mastery is effective interpersonal communication and self-initiated problems solving and hence, parents play a vital role in facilitating that for their children.
About Arthur L. Robin, Ph.D.
Since receiving a Clinical Psychology Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in New York in 1975, Dr. Arthur Robin’s 47 year career has included clinical practice, teaching, 37 years as a pediatric psychologist at Children’s of Michigan and Wayne State University School of Medicine, research, and writing. Specializing in parent-teen relationships, ADHD in adolescents and adults, and eating disorders in adolescents, he has authored/ coauthored five book and many chapters and journal articles and spoken often throughout the United States and elsewhere on these topics. Common across all of his books is Dr. Robin’s emphasis on building better communication, problem solving, and realistic thinking in interpersonal relationships. A licensed psychologist in Michigan, at present Dr. Robin maintains a small clinical practice evaluating and treating adolescents and adults with ADHD and related disorders at Dennis, Moye, Branstetter and Associates in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
There is no impulse more natural than the desire to protect ourselves and our loved ones from pain. When we experience social-emotional pain, we activate the same instincts as a mama bear who jumps to protect her cub as an effort to dial down emotions of distress. An unhealthy emotional pain management can lead to actively taking steps to inflict pain on others through the acts of withholding affection, interactions, or reciprocity. The “silent treatment” or social exclusion is one such powerful tool that delivers insurmountable distress to others providing individuals with only temporary relief.
On this podcast, a pioneer and world-leading expert on social and psychological dynamics of ostracism, author, and a distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University, Kipling Williams, discusses how the silent treatment can damage relationships, sometimes irreparably and provides effective and meaningful ways we can manage our own disappointments, let-downs, or hurt by engaging personal growth and emotional agility.
About Kipling Williams
Kipling Williams is Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences at Purdue University. He earned his B.S. from the University of Washington—Seattle (1975) and his PhD at The Ohio State University (1981). Prior to coming to Purdue, Williams was on faculties at Macquarie University and University of New South Wales (both in Sydney, Australia), University of Toledo (Ohio), and Drake University (Iowa). He is a pioneer and world-leading expert on social and psychological dynamics of ostracism. As well as his authored book, Ostracism: The Power of Silence, he has edited ten books, including The Social Outcast, and the soon-to-be published Frontier Handbook on Ostracism, Social Exclusion, and Rejection. He has been an associate editor of Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, & Practice, as well as Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. He was the editor of Social Influence from 2010-2019.
His research interests include ostracism, social influence, and motivation in groups. He has published over 180 articles and chapters, with articles in Science, Scientific American-MIND, Psychological Science, and other top journals in the field of social psychology. In 2012, he was a Lorentz Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies. He was a co-winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Socio-Psychological (AAAS), and Purdue University’s College of Health and Human Sciences Research Achievement Award. He is past president of the Society for Australasian Social Psychologists and the Midwestern Psychological Association.
Website: http://williams.socialpsychology.org
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Students with underdeveloped Executive Function skills often present themselves as highly impulsive or distracted, reactive rather than reflective, forgetful of their goals, lacking persistence or as those who dislike effortful tasks. Such behaviors often are alarming as they sabotage personal success and social cooperation. However, a myriad of traumatic exposures in childhood in Black communities leads to stress-related cognitive, emotional, and physiological compromise that tends to disproportionately affect that community and requires special consideration.
On today’s episode, assistant professor and Adult Emphasis Neuropsychology Director at Spalding University School of Professional Psychology, Dr. Willie F. McBride discusses what considerations we must give and how best to work with and engage in intersectional thinking while serving the needs of Black children and adults. Helping children from diverse backgrounds to build their Executive Function skills requires neuropsychologists, clinicians, and educators to personalize tools for advocacy and a pause to activate our own discernment can go a long way.
About Dr. Willie F. McBride, Ph.D.
Dr. Will McBride is a neuropsychologist, assistant professor and co-director of the Complete Neuropsychology Services at Spalding University. He completed his neuropsychology fellowship at the University of Virginia Health System where he primarily focused on evaluating neurodegenerative processes in older adults. He has a burgeoning interest in cultural neuropsychology and examining health disparities within the African American community and is a co-founder of the Society for Black Neuropsychology. He completed his doctorate at the Virginia Consortium Program in Clinical Psychology. His hobbies include collecting vinyl records, playing video games, spending time with family, and watching movies/anime.
Website: www.soblackneuro.org
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
In a society where its members believe that one color or race is superior to another, its members who belong to the racial minority experience poor treatment based on these beliefs causing them social-emotional trauma. These racialized experiences get further accentuated by false narratives perpetuated by the society unbeknownst to its members which leads to an artificial gap that directly contradicts our mission of wanting to provide equal opportunities to ALL scholars. The trauma-informed approach to education considers these nuances and prioritizes the mission of challenging these false narratives.
On this episode, Spalding University’s Chief Diversity Officer, Associate Professor in Spalding University’s School of Professional Psychology, and Coordinator for the Collective Care Center Racial Trauma Clinic, Dr. Steven Kniffley, discusses what race-based stress and trauma is all about and how that impacts learning and personal agency of our young minority scholars. Helping young learners to take responsibility for their own learning to become self-reliant adults hinges on forming future-forward goals, good habits, and strategic plans based on personal priorities; however, the journey towards homing one’s Executive Function skills isn’t same for all children and we must understand the distinctions and use discernment when designing educational opportunities for these children.
About Steven D Kniffley Jr., PsyD ABPP MPA
Steven D. Kniffley Jr., PsyD MPA ABPP is Spalding University’s Chief Diversity Officer, an Associate Professor in Spalding University’s School of Professional Psychology, and Coordinator for the Collective Care Center Racial Trauma Clinic. Dr. Kniffley's area of expertise is research and clinical work with Black males and the treatment of race based stress and trauma. Dr. Kniffley also serves as an organizational diversity consultant and works with law enforcement departments on addressing conflicts between communities of color and police officers. Dr. Kniffley has written numerous books, book chapters, and articles on Black male mental health, Black males and the criminal justice system, racial trauma treatment and training, and academic achievement. Additionally, Dr. Kniffley was recently selected as one of Louisville’s top 40 under 40 for 2020, a recipient of the 2020 MediStar Healthcare Advocacy Award, a 2021 Louisville Healthcare Hero, and the inaugural recipient of the University of Louisville Diversity Leadership Award.
Website: https://drstevenkniffleyjr.com/
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the m
The excitement of a new year also brings new challenges to overcome, especially as we continue to face educational, health, safety and well-being issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic. As we gear up, how should we adjust our educational approach so that we can achieve our goals with our schools and communities? How can we keep students motivated and engaged to continue learning, but also, how do we develop patience and understanding throughout the community during this new normal that is weighed down by fear, frustration, and the anxiety of the unknown?
In this episode, Dr. Morcease Beasley, Superintendent, Clayton County Public School, Georgia discusses how educators can make strategic shifts by focusing on self-awareness, self-reflection and Executive Function in general to empower their teachers, staff, parents and students during these uncertain times. Hear how since the start of COVID-19 in 2020, Dr. Beasley has made remarkable efforts to strategically manage the disruption caused by the pandemic by implementing prudent health and safety precautions, bridging the digital divide by improving remote/hybrid learning experiences for students and activating meaningful support of students and faculty alike. Learn how teaching our students to regulate emotions and master skillful deliberation, cognitive flexibility and empathy makes a positive difference in not only their academic outcomes but also in their lives.
About Dr. Morcease Beasley
Nationally known as an innovative leader and instructor, Dr. Morcease Beasley has more than 25 years of dedicated service in instructional and organizational practices and the education of young people. Throughout his career, he has held numerous positions at every level of public school education beginning as a high school Mathematics teacher; assistant principal; high school principal; Executive Director for Curriculum, Instruction, Professional Learning and Federal Programs. He also held the position as Deputy Superintendent for Teaching and Learning; Deputy Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction and School Leadership. Dr. Beasley is considered a transformational educator and instructional leader with proven success in the supervision of both large urban and suburban school districts.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
It is said that a human body that has been traumatized or overwhelmed by stress can feel helpless, reactive, angry, impulsive, raging, numb and leaning towards avoidance. AND the same is true for schools! Institutions, public or private, that serve the needs of children, learners and families from distressed communities can also feel helpless and drained with an ongoing crisis or seemingly unmanageable chaos. These places and its people too can become reactive, angry or riddled with avoidance and the necessary skills may be lacking in dealing with overstressed schools and classrooms.
On this episode, trauma expert, licensed social worker, the Co-Director of Outpatient Services at NFI, Vermont, and former fellow at Child Trauma Academy (CTA), Dave Melnick, returns to discuss the distinction between trauma-informed vs. trauma-transformed schools and the best practices involved in the effortful redirection that cultivates this deep and wide knowledge that helps make trauma-transformed schools. In these challenging times, psycho-social and emotional trauma experienced by learners, learning communities, and all communities around the globe is far more common than ever before. Those who are trained and trauma-informed approaches to care, shift the focus from “What’s wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” This is a journey we all take together.
About Dave Melnick
Dave Melnick, LICSW is the Co-Director of Outpatient Services at NFI, Vermont, a statewide mental health agency primarily serving children, adolescents and families. For the past 35 years, Dave has worked in a variety of settings including outpatient, residential treatment, and in public and day treatment schools. Along with his focus on Developmental Trauma, Dave has expertise in family therapy, adolescence, attachment, Reflective Practices, and Trauma-informed Systems. He is trained in EMDR, DDP, and a variety of family systems models. In 2015, the ChildTrauma Academy (CTA) acknowledged that Dave had completed NMT Training Certification through the Phase II level, and between 2017-2021 he was a Fellow at the CTA.
Dave received his master’s in social welfare from UC Berkeley in 1988 and is licensed in both the state of Vermont and New York as a clinical social worker. Dave teaches graduate classes for the Vermont Higher Education Collaboration, and is a presenter and consultant in Vermont, New York and Canada.
Course: Transforming Trauma (Level 1): The School as a Healing Community | VT-HEC
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
The violence in the United States this past month has brought up raw emotions in all of us. The killing of Asian seniors as they were worshipping in their church, African-American elders as they went about their everyday tasks such as shopping for groceries, and the violent deaths of 19 small children with their two teachers who came to their elementary classrooms for a day of learning—all of this leaves us in a state of deep grief and pain. For some, this might elicit feelings of fear, anger, rage, sadness, numbness, or even resentment. For others, this may invoke a renewed determination to try and make the world a better place. But for most, this might be the ultimate point of exhaustion.
On today’s podcast, trauma expert, licensed social worker, the Co-Director of Outpatient Services at NFI, Vermont, and a previous fellow at ChildTrauma Academy (CTA), Dave Melnick, discusses the impact of developmental trauma on childhood learning and the distinction between trauma-informed and trauma-transformed schools. Helping children cope with childhood traumas and setbacks requires effortful redirection and educators as well as leaders must cultivate this deep and wide knowledge to help build better schools.
About Dave Melnick
Dave Melnick, LICSW is the Co-Director of Outpatient Services at NFI, Vermont, a statewide mental health agency primarily serving children, adolescents and families. For the past 35 years, Dave has worked in a variety of settings including outpatient, residential treatment, and in public and day treatment schools. Along with his focus on Developmental Trauma, Dave has expertise in family therapy, adolescence, attachment, Reflective Practices, and Trauma-informed Systems. He is trained in EMDR, DDP, and a variety of family systems models. In 2015, the ChildTrauma Academy (CTA) acknowledged that Dave had completed NMT Training Certification through the Phase II level, and between 2017-2021 he was a Fellow at the CTA.
Dave received his master’s in social welfare from UC Berkeley in 1988 and is licensed in both the state of Vermont and New York as a clinical social worker. Dave teaches graduate classes for the Vermont Higher Education Collaboration, and is a presenter and consultant in Vermont, New York and Canada.
Course: Transforming Trauma (Level 1): The School as a Healing Community | VT-HEC
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Our commitment to multitasking in everyday life is unwavering and ubiquitous; a strong indicator of how our perceptions deceive us. We are not as smart as we think we are, neither are we as attentive as we think we are because the cluttered and distracted mind fragments our attention disrupting thinking, intentions, and follow through.
On this episode, neuroscientist, researcher, John R. Park professor and head of the Cognitive Neuroscience Area in the Department of Psychology at the University of Utah, David Strayer, discusses the role of attention, multitasking in real-world, and the serious cognitive challenges posed by various kinds of multitasking. As we find ourselves continually being drawn to technology, we might want to strengthen our insight and self-awareness so we change our ways and improve our productivity and wellbeing.
About David Strayer
David Strayer is the John R. Park professor and head of the Cognitive Neuroscience Area in the Department of Psychology at the University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois@ Urbana-Champaign in 1989 and worked at GTE laboratories before joining the faculty at the University of Utah. Dr. Strayer’s research examines attention and multitasking in real-world contexts and for the last 20 years has focused on understanding driver distraction stemming from multimodal interactions in the vehicle.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Life without struggles is no life at all and what accompanies these struggles is ambiguity, uncertainty, and disruptions. Coping under these tenuous conditions means deciphering new goals, weighing options, and being future-forward while responding with adaptive mental and emotional flexibility; all made possible by one’s evolving Executive Function. However, individuals who have experienced adverse childhood experiences develop a lifelong style of being mistrustful which poses its unique challenges, raising issues in the domain of personal health and interpersonal cooperation.
On this episode, award-winning psychologist and elected fellow of the US National Academy of Medicine, British Academy, UK Academy of Medical Sciences, and Association of Psychological Science, Professor Terrie E. Moffitt, discusses how activating strong Executive Function to think clearly and systematically under highly stressful conditions is truly hard and it affects all types of decision making including the decisions to vaccinate. By improving Executive Function such as self-control, emotional agility, and perspective taking, individuals can approach complex decision making in interesting and fruitful ways.
About Professor Terrie E Moffitt
Terrie E. Moffitt’s expertise is in the areas of lifelong aging, mental health, and longitudinal research. She is the associate director of the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, which follows a 1972 birth cohort in New Zealand. She also founded the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study (E-Risk), which follows a 1994 birth cohort in Britain. Moffitt is a licensed clinical psychologist.
She is an elected fellow of the US National Academy of Medicine, British Academy, UK Academy of Medical Sciences, and Association of Psychological Science.
Moffitt is recipient of the Stockholm Prize, the Klaus Jacobs Prize, the NARSAD Ruane Prize, and the 2022 Grawemeyer Prize for her work on mental health, and the Maltilda White Riley Award from the NIH for her recent work on aging processes in midlife adults.
Dr. Moffitt received her PhD in psychology at the University of Southern California, and completed her postdoctoral training at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. She enjoys working on her poison-ivy farm in North Carolina.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Researcher Diane Halpern says, “When people think critically, they are evaluating the outcomes of their thought processes – how good a decision is or how well a problem is solved.” Metacognition on the other hand is thinking about one’s own thinking and discovering how best to control our thinking to facilitate learning. Both require strong attentional and emotional recourses channeled as mental effort into new learning. Students who reflect on their own thinking are positioned to learn more than their peers who are not metacognitive.
On this episode, award-winning professor of psychology at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama and chair of the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology, Stephen L. Chew, discusses barriers in cognition and learning that create a disconnect between self-knowledge and the approaches to new learning. Metacognition is a critical component of building students’ executive function and education must include this science in designing learning strategies for all students.
About Stephen Chew
Stephen L. Chew is a professor of psychology at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. He also serves as chair of the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology. Trained as a cognitive psychologist, one of his primary research areas is the cognitive basis of effective teaching and learning. His research interests include the use of examples in teaching, the impact of cognitive load on learning, and the tenacious misconceptions that students bring with them into the classroom. He is the creator of a groundbreaking series of YouTube videos for students on how to study effectively in college (http://www.samford.edu/how-to-study/) which have been viewed over three million times and are in wide use from high schools to professional schools. His most recent work is on the cognitive challenges of effective teaching. He is the recipient of multiple national awards for his teaching and research, including named the 2011 Outstanding Master’s Universities and Colleges U.S. Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
On October 16, 1843, while on a stroll along the Royal Canal in Dublin, mathematician William Rowan Hamilton had an aha moment which led to his famed discovery of the algebraic equations known as quaternions which is now etched on the bridge. Research shows that although creative insight and analytical thinking are distinct modes of thought, they do complement each other. These aha or eureka moments are typically considered the manifestation of creativity in a few creative geniuses; however, having access to one’s own creative process can be different for different people.
On this episode, professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Drexel University, Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the Psychonomic Society, and international best-selling author, John Kounios, Ph.D., discusses the process and science of creative insight and analytical thinking that marks our discovery of a brilliant solution for small or big problems. We all need strong Executive Function mastery to counter the effects of a lack of insight and a lack of immersive experience into “problematic” components which can take away the focus needed for solving one’s own problems.
About John Kounios
John Kounios, PhD, is a professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Drexel University. He has published cognitive neuroscience research on insight, creativity, problem solving, memory, and Alzheimer’s disease and coauthored (with Mark Beeman) the international Amazon Bestseller, The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain (Random House). John's research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation and has been reported by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times (London), National Public Radio and was featured in BBC Television and Discovery Science Channel documentaries. His work was profiled by The New Yorker and The Saturday Evening Post and is part of a permanent exhibit at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. He is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the Psychonomic Society.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
As the United States becomes a land of the diverse, conversations are shifting from "how do we excel in spite of our differences" to "how we come together and thrive because of our differences." The K to 12 educational spaces are also shifting the focus from helping develop skills in academic areas to the best ways to help children develop their sense of agency and sense of identity. In order to propel such cultural transformations, we have to address the relentless and commonplace occurrences of unfavorable, negative, or even traumatic experiences associated with the insidious racial tension and racialized marginalization experienced by minorities.
On this episode, author, professor at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky and, Dr. DeDe Wohlfarth, discusses the idea of cultivating cultural humility against the backdrop of systemic and structural racism and the work that must be put in by the dominant group to create racially harmonized experiences for all. As we think about raising and educating children to master their Executive Function and demonstrate self-sufficiency, we need to prioritize thinking about racial inequalities and perspective shifts so that empathic support is extended to the marginalized individuals whose experiences of injustices may be hidden.
About Dr. DeDe Wohlfarth
Dr. DeDe Wohlfarth earned her bachelor’s degree from Earlham College, master’s degree from Ball State University, and doctorate degree in clinical psychology from Spalding University. DeDe is a full professor at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. She is also a clinical psychologist in Indiana and Kentucky who specializes in treating children and families who are affected by intergenerational poverty, abuse and neglect, and trauma.
Her focus on cultural humility (Tervalon & Murray-Garcia, 1998) intensified over the last decade as she saw the many ways racism, sexism, and heterosexism were traumatizing people. She has since published several articles on diversity, trauma, and cultural humility, and presents regularly on the topic. Despite all this, DeDe knows she makes mistakes every day on her own diversity journey and tries to learn from them.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
We are wired to be social and socializing and connecting depends on theory of mind, perspective taking, and being able to sympathize or empathize with others. Empathy, one of the vital ingredients for social and interpersonal success, facilitates prosocial behaviors, promotes social understanding and helps us to regulate ourselves in the complex social world. However, antisocial behaviors in others such as aggression, callousness, and other unemotional traits can wreck havoc in our social success.
On this episode, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Iowa State University and Director of the Marsee Aggression and Delinquency Lab (MADLab), Dr. Monica Marsee, discusses the nature of reactive and proactive aggression and ways to expand emotional bandwidth so that complex situations can be handled with insight.
About Dr. Monica Marsee
Dr. Monica Marsee graduated from the University of New Orleans in 2005 with a Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Iowa State University and is the Director of the Marsee Aggression and Delinquency Lab (MADLab). Dr. Marsee’s research is generally focused on risk factors for antisocial behavior in children, adolescents, and emerging adults. Topics of interest include the forms and functions of aggression, bullying and victimization, Dark Triad and callous-unemotional traits, emotional dysregulation, and social-cognitive risk factors. Research is also focused on improving the measurement of these constructs. All research questions are grounded in a developmental psychopathology perspective, which allows for the study of the development of behavioral problems within the context of what is known about normal development.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Many preconceived notions and misconceptions often create a barrier to attaining personal success. Here are some frequently unchallenged misconceptions: “Talent is innate and needs to be discovered”, “You either have talent or you don't” and “Just a few lucky ones have it and it only counts if you’re on top!” The growth mindsets captured by popular culture show us that our own fears and vulnerabilities set us up for social comparisons and only by challenging these myths and putting in the hard work, can one harness their personal power.
On this episode, global keynote speaker, facilitator, and guide supporting leaders developing growth mindset cultures, Eduardo Briceño, discusses how mindsets work, why stress is a trigger for a fixed mindset and ways to promote a growth mindset and continuous improvement in ourselves, our children, and our colleagues. Well-cultivated growth mindsets, particularly in the area of challenge, is a mark of strong executive function crucial for personal growth, performance, and resilience.
About Eduardo Briceño
Eduardo Briceño is a global keynote speaker, facilitator, and guide supporting leaders developing growth mindset cultures. Prior to that he was the CEO of Mindset Works, the pioneer in growth mindset development services, which he cofounded in 2007 with Stanford professor Carol Dweck and others, and which he led for over a decade. Before that he was a technology investor with Credit Suisse’s venture capital arm and served on several for-profit and non-profit boards.
Eduardo’s TED talks have been viewed by millions. He is a Pahara-Aspen Fellow, a member of the Aspen Institute’s Global Leadership Network, and an inductee in the Happiness Hall of Fame.
Eduardo grew up in Caracas, Venezuela. He holds bachelor’s degrees in economics and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, as well as an MBA and M.A. in education from Stanford University. Most importantly, he continues to enjoy lifelong learning every day.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Whether it is enduring the process of untangling yarn, cancelling all your credit cards after losing your wallet, or waiting for months to hear back from a college admissions’ office, patience makes the experience more meaningful and less unbearable. As a quality that is considered morally good and desirable in a person, no wonder patience is a virtue as it offers a much-needed chance to maintain or regain our strength while seeing where we are and what we are made of.
On this episode, Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Baylor University and Editor for Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, Dr. Sarah Schnitker, discusses her research in the area of patience, why it is a virtue, and reasons why it’s a tough but worthy skill to master. Strong Executive Function skills help set goals, follow through and accomplish them over time, and learning to become more patient could be an excellent investment in such skill building.
About Dr. Sarah Schnitker
Dr. Sarah Schnitker is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Baylor University. She holds a PhD and an MA in Personality and Social Psychology from the University of California, Davis, and a BA in Psychology from Grove City College. Schnitker studies virtue and character development in adolescents and emerging adults, with a focus on the role of spirituality and religion in virtue formation. She specializes in the study of patience, self-control, gratitude, generosity, and thrift. Schnitker has procured more than $7 million in funding as a principal investigator on multiple research grants, and she has published in a variety of scientific journals and edited volumes. Schnitker is an Associate Editor for Psychology of Religion and Spirituality and an Editorial Board member for Journal of Research in Personality. She is a dedicated mentor, having served as dissertation advisor for more than 20 doctoral students, whom she helps to cultivate intellectual virtues alongside scientific competencies. She is the recipient of the Virginia Sexton American Psychological Association’s Division 36 Mentoring Award and Student International Positive Psychology Association Mentor Award.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Alfred Hitchcock, Sherlock Holmes… these are some of the iconic names dominating the cultural narrative that men far supersede women in talent, accomplishment, and genius. The true question is, while the gender ratio in the world is 101.7 men to every 100 women, why is the genius exclusively favoring one gender or it is that the opportunities to let out one’s own inner genius is not created equal?
On this episode, journalist, TV producer, and author of 15 popular books including the New York Times bestseller, The Gratitude Diaries and The Genius of Women, Janice Kaplan, discusses why the talent and genius of women has been unacknowledged, dismissed, or even wrongfully attributed to men. As we think of educating our girls and position women to make their mark on this world, explicit effort must be made to identify, encourage, and celebrate the unique skills in women because it’s not the norm for them to be recognized as geniuses.
About Janice Kaplan
Dr. Chesney is a licensed clinical psychologist with unique expertise in the application of Janice Kaplan is a journalist, TV producer, and the author of many popular books including the New York Times bestseller The Gratitude Diaries and her newest book, The Genius of Women. Janice was the editor-in-chief of Parade magazine and the executive producer of more than 30 primetime network television specials. She has appeared frequently on TV shows including Today and Good Morning America and she hosts the daily podcast The Gratitude Diaries on iHeartMedia.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
In 2002, American writer Augusten Burroughs’ memoire, Running with Scissors, was launched and spent eight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. The memoir is littered with a litany of bizarre childhood encounters experienced by young Burroughs, whose emotionally unstable, aspiring poet of a mother sends him to live with her psychiatrist. The book, while entertaining, captures the confusion and pain of growing up in a household with no rules, no boundaries, and no guidance. Our good faith effort to raise well-adjusted, emotionally balanced and psychological-wise children and teens is far too often met with challenges, uncertainty, and even chaos revealing the herculean task of preparing children to become responsible adults.
On this episode, licensed clinical psychologist, expert in the application of TEAM CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy) to children and adolescents and director of the new Feeling Good Institute-New York City, Taylor Chesney, Psy.D., discusses how hard it is to educate children on top of raising them to become well-adjusted adults. She shares her work in improving mental health and coping skills while getting kids to cooperate, engage, and manage themselves.
About Taylor Chesney, Psy.D.
Dr. Chesney is a licensed clinical psychologist with unique expertise in the application of TEAM CBT to children and adolescents. A graduate of the School-Clinical-Child Psychology Psy.D. program at Pace University in New York City, Dr. Chesney then trained with Dr. David Burns at Stanford University and her fellow therapists at FGI for several years mastering TEAM CBT. She teaches TEAM CBT for the Feeling Good Institute and is the director of the new Feeling Good Institute-New York City. Dr. Chesney also supervises psychiatry residents in the Department of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Working memory is the most vital component of strong Executive Function as it allows for processing multifaceted information and tracking new systems we deploy to manage change or challenge with adaptive flexibility. For example, greeting people with a handshake or a hug was thrown out the window during the pandemic. In the fall of 2021, when people began to return to business-as-usual, people needed a new system to communicate their level of comfort with social proximity and interpersonal space. Some proposed a three-dot system - green dot for hugs, yellow for elbow bump, and the red for keeping a distance. By thinking on their feet, creative marketers and event organizers created bracelets, stickers, and dots on their lanyards so that the participants could show who’s comfortable with what level of touching and handshaking.
On this episode, retired school psychologist, Associate Professor, School Psychology Program Director at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and current Test Development Project Director for Schoolhouse Educational Services, Dr. Milton J. Dehn, discusses the link between working memory and metacognition and Executive Function and ways to support and promote the development of these skills to improve the learning experience of children and functional outcomes for all.
About Dr. Milton J. Dehn
Milton J. Dehn, Ed.D., was a practicing school psychologist, an Associate Professor, and School Psychology Program Director at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse until his retirement. Currently, he is the test development project director for Schoolhouse Educational Services. His interests include assessment of cognitive abilities, memory, dyslexia, and executive functions and using a pattern of strengths and weaknesses approach to the identification of specific learning disabilities.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
The human frontal-lobe evolution has made it possible to do the right thing, particularly when that right thing is really hard to do. While faith, religion, and spirituality give individuals the essential inner strength, attachment, and security, it is the mature frontal lobes that turn on moral reasoning - a bridge towards an ultimate sense of hope and meaning.
On this episode, licensed clinical psychologist and Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Case Western Reserve University, Julie Exline, Ph.D., shares her research on the interface of clinical, social, and personality psychology, and spirituality, religion, and existential concerns. Her work shows that suffering ignites personal growth and spiritual struggles end up elevating people’s lives.
About Dr. Julie Exline
Julie Exline, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Her research centers on the interface of clinical, social, and personality psychology, with a special focus on topics involving spirituality, religion, and existential concerns. She served as Principal Investigator on two projects funded by the John Templeton Foundation: one on religious/spiritual struggles and another on supernatural attributions. She is a licensed clinical psychologist in Ohio and has been certified as a spiritual director through the Ignatian Spirituality Institute at John Carroll University. She is a Past President of the Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (SPRS; American Psychological Association’s Division 36) and was chosen to receive the Margaret Gorman Early Career Award, Virginia Sexton Mentoring Award, and William James Award from SPRS. With Dr. Kenneth Pargament, she co-authored the 2021 book Working with Spiritual Struggles in Psychotherapy: From Research to Practice. Her current research focuses on a wide array of themes around spiritual struggles and supernatural attributions, including gratitude and anger toward God, perceptions of after-death communication, beliefs about supernatural evil, and the many ways that people perceive “God’s voice” in their lives.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
‘A quick trip to Tahiti’ is what it feels like when our mind wanders. No matter what we do, where we are, or how important or valuable the task in front of us is, our minds wander. Interestingly, the research shows that we are less happy when our mind wanders than when it doesn’t and what we think about during our mind wandering state is a far stronger predictor of our happiness than tasks we are in the middle of performing. Yet, the mind highjacked by mind-wandering can stay oblivious to its short trips.
On this episode, researcher, author, and distinguished professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California Santa Barbara, Jonathan Schooler, Ph. D., discusses his work in human cognition; particularly mind-wandering, its disruptive nature, its hidden benefits, and its link to meta-awareness. As he explains, since the mind is only intermittently aware of engaging in mind wandering, enhancing meta-awareness can be an important process to heighten monitoring and improve executive function.
About Jonathan Schooler, Ph.D.
Jonathan Schooler Ph.D. is a Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California Santa Barbara. He earned his BA from Hamilton College in 1981 and his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1987. His research on human cognition explores topics that intersect philosophy and psychology, such as how fluctuations in people’s awareness of their experience mediate mind-wandering and how exposing individuals to philosophical positions alters their behavior.
He is also interested in the science of science (meta-science) including understanding why effects sizes often decline over time, and how greater transparency in scientific reporting might address this issue. A former holder of a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, he is a fellow of a variety of scientific organizations, on the editorial board of a number of psychology journals and the recipient of major grants from both the United States and Canadian governments as well as several private foundations. His research and comments are frequently featured in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Nature Magazine.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
When we think of equitable teaching and learning we must first get our assumptions right. Instead of thinking of teaching as a process of transmitting knowledge, we need to think about teaching as a process of transforming hearts by making a connection through culture and representation. Those of us invested in teaching and reaching children know that the hardest work we will ever do is to ignite their natural intellectual curiosity while nurturing their sense of belonging. However, according to an at-risk youth and college dropout turned award-winning educator, Brandon P. Fleming, “We can’t reach people we don’t understand”.
On this episode, nationally acclaimed Assistant Debate Coach at Harvard University, Founder/CEO of the Harvard Diversity Project, and author of MISEDUCATED: A Memoir, Brandon P. Fleming, shares his story of struggle, success, and service which has inspired millions around the world. Strong and well-built Executive Function makes it possible to overcome personal adversity, but evolved Executive Function skills make world transformation possible.
About Brandon P. Fleming
Brandon P. Fleming is a nationally acclaimed Harvard educator and author of MISEDUCATED: A Memoir. His story of struggle, success, and service has inspired millions around the world. An at-risk youth and college dropout turned award-winning educator, Fleming is Assistant Debate Coach at Harvard University and Founder/CEO of the Harvard Diversity Project. Fleming was recruited to join the Harvard debate faculty at the age of 27. Harvard later approved Fleming’s proposal to establish a new department within the university system called the Harvard Diversity Project – an unprecedented pipeline program of the Harvard Debate Council. Fleming now leads an executive staff and board that has raised over a million dollars to enroll over 100 students of color into Harvard’s international summer debate residency on full scholarship. Fleming recruits underserved youth with no prior debate experience who he then trains to compete against hundreds of elite debaters from over 25 different countries around the world. For four consecutive years, since the program’s inception in 2017, every cohort trained by Fleming has won the international competition. News of the achievement instantly went viral and broke national headlines, being featured on CNN, ESPN, GMA, and many more. Fleming has established a groundbreaking organization that is pipelining Black youth into Ivy League and elite colleges & universities. Fleming’s story, erudition, and achievements have enabled him to use his voice to inspire and impact lives in places ranging from federal prisons to global platforms such as the United Nations General Assembly. At the age of 29, Forbes Magazine named Fleming to the Forbes 30 under 30 list. In 2020, The Root Magazine named Fleming one of the top 100 most influential African-Americans in the United States. And in May 2021, North Carolina Wesleyan College bestowed upon Fleming the honorary Doctor of Humanities degree.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and soc
What is as ubiquitous as air, water, and earth, but possibly more potent than all three? It’s a story. The human brain, while swept up in the forcefield of stories, is enthralled, molded and shaped by it, but is also readily deceived by the artful embellishments by powerful story-tellers, including an unreliable narrator within. Our daily consumption of narratives presented in the form of news clips, Tiktok clips, social media posts, novella, novels, plays, or films capture our imagination while shaping our beliefs, ideas, and even our ideology. While stories may feel like all they do is carve a path through the landscapes of make-believe, they are far more powerful and integral to our ability to navigate life's complex social-interpersonal conflicts and unimagined or unimaginable human experiences.
On today's podcast, Distinguished Fellow in the English Department at Washington and Jefferson College and an author whose writing is at the intersection of science and art, and whose work has been covered in-depth by publications including Science, Nature, Scientific American, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Oprah Magazine, Jonathan Gottschall, discusses how and why storytelling has evolved as a means to ensuring our survival. Since Executive Function skills allow us to manage our life, our goals, and our actions while tuning out unsavory emotions and amping-up motivation or grit, it might be good to think about the role stories play in tackling mental rigidity and emotional inflexibility that challenges and chaos invoke.
About Jonathan Gottschall
Praised by Steven Pinker as “our deepest thinker about the powerful role of stories in our lives,” Jonathan Gottschall is a Distinguished Fellow in the English Department at Washington & Jefferson College. His writing at the intersection of science and art has been covered in-depth by The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Oprah Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Science, Nature, and on shows like Radiolab, Morning Edition, National Geographic’s StarTalk with Neal de Grasse Tyson, and The Joe Rogan Experience. Jonathan is the author or editor of eight books, including The Professor in the Cage: Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch (Penguin 2015), The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (Houghton 2012), and The Story Paradox: How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears them Down (Basic Books, November 2021), which is a about the dark side of humanity’s storytelling instincts.
Website: http://www.jonathangottschall.com
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emoti
The highest rent you’ll ever pay is for the hurts, sorrows, and unforgiveness that occupy the space in your heart and mind. While thinking of those hurtful breakups, toxic relationships, unresolved lies, or the unrepairable damaging acts of others, it may be hard to channel the wisdom of poet Edwin Hubbel Chapin, "Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge.” However, what ancient wisdom already has known, the research now shows that there's an extraordinary healing power in taking steps to forgive others and even yourself.
On this episode, Commonwealth Professor Emeritus working from the Department of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, clinical psychologist, and author, Dr. Everett Worthington, Ph.D., discusses how forgiveness is a choice and a skill that can emerge with appropriate mental framing and psychological and prosocial practices.
About Everett L Worthington, Jr
Everett Worthington, Ph.D., is Commonwealth Professor Emeritus working from the Department of Psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University. He holds a Faculty Affiliate appointment at the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University (Human Flourishing Program). He continues to be active in research and speaking around the world. He is a licensed Clinical Psychologist in Virginia. He has published over 40 books and around 500 articles and scholarly chapters, mostly on forgiveness, humility and positive psychology, marriage, and family topics, and religion and spirituality. He also has developed the REACH Forgiveness model being tested currently in a global grant-funded randomized controlled trials in 5 countries (six sites), and he has developed numerous other positive psychological interventions.
Website: www.EvWorthington-forgiveness.com
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
What is an intriguing difference between a four-year-old's versus a forty-year old’s approach to the world? Only one of them is inquisitive and inventive with a rich inner explorer. However, by the time the curious and inventive four-year-old enters their late teens, there is a remarkable depletion in their sense of exploration. There’s something about the way we educate and raise children that drains their inquiring minds from investigating life’s mysteries and tackling problems that interest them.
On this episode, Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Founding Director of the Program in Teaching at Williams College and author of multiple books including The Intellectual Lives of Children, Dr. Susan Engel, discusses what fuels children’s curiosity: a sense of inquiry and inventiveness. To raise self-sufficient children who possess strong executive function means to figure out ways to hang back while nurturing their inner Dora the Explorer.
About Susan Engel
Susan Engel is Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Founding Director of the Program in Teaching at Williams College. She is co-founder of an experimental school in NY State, where she was the educational advisor for 18 years. Her research interests include the development of narrative, curiosity, and invention. Her current research examines how children pursue ideas. Her scholarly work has appeared in journals such as Cognitive Development, Harvard Educational Review, and the American Education Research Journal. Her writing on education has appeared in The New York Times, Bloomberg View, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, Salon, Huffington Post, and The Boston Globe. Her books include: The End of the Rainbow: How educating for happiness (not money) would transform our schools, The Hungry Mind: The origins of curiosity in childhood, and The Children You Teach: Using a Developmental Framework in the Classroom. Her ninth book, The Intellectual Lives of Children, was published by Harvard University Press, this past January. She and her husband Tom have three sons and two very young grandchildren.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Entering a space full of strangers can be as scary as entering a snake pit. The brain cannot help but think “oh-no” and is likely to look for an exit strategy. Even though humans are social creatures, approaching or engaging with strangers invokes unparalleled fear or social anxiety that keeps us from making connections, sharing, or seeking help. Is this hesitation to talk with strangers legit and true?
On this episode, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Essex and introvert who has grown to love talking to strangers in her Twitter series #Talking2Strangers, Dr. Gillian Sandstrom, discusses how blind we are to the positive effects of interacting with strangers, and how there’s a way to shift and pivot from such mindsets to grow to making more meaningful connections with the world around us.
About Dr. Gillian Sandstrom
Dr. Gillian Sandstrom is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Essex. She studies the benefits of and barriers to having minimal social interactions, with people like strangers and weak ties (i.e., acquaintances). She is an introvert who has grown to love talking to strangers. She shares her stories of #Talking2Strangers on Twitter @GillianSocial, in the hopes of encouraging more people to reach out and connect.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
British author Somerset Maugham once wrote, “What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one's faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one's memories.” Writers and poets have a lot to say about reminiscing, contemplation, regret and nostalgia, but it often suggests that one must travel far down the road of life to arrive at that point where suddenly our life decisions say more about who we are rather than what we did!
On this episode, professor at Stanford University, director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, and leading scholar of human development across the lifespan and author of A Round of Golf With My Father: The New Psychology of Exploring Your Past to Make Peace With Your Present, William Damon, discusses why the process of Life-Review is a productive way of looking back. Since Executive Function skills provide the guardrail for self-regulated future-forward thinking, the Life-Review process can prove to be a painful or invigorating process depending on our openness to self-change, capacity to admit mistakes, and desire to stay connected to the past-self to shape the journey of the future self.
About William Damon
William Damon is a professor at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence. He is a leading scholar of human development across the lifespan and the author of The Path to Purpose. His recent book, A Round of Golf with my Father: The New Psychology of Exploring your Life to Make Peace with Your Present, is an examination of using a life review to renew personal identity and forge a purposeful direction moving forward. Damon is a fellow in the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Damon has been named by Best Schools as one of the fifty most influential living psychologists in the world today.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Helping children develop their identity is integral to making them self-sufficient and independent, as well as to master their Executive Function skills. In addition to children’s cognitive, linguistic, and emotional development, parents and educators alike must understand the social science behind the development of racial, ethnic, and cultural identities, which play a major role in shaping a child’s lens on life and how they relate to other racial and ethnic groups different than their own.
On this episode, Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum—President Emerita at Spelman College, a clinical psychologist, and the author of several books including the best-selling book Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race, discusses racial identity development among children growing up in the U.S.. Throughout this conversation, she brings to life a crucial perspective raised in her book that “people, by being ignorant or unaware of race, can unwittingly perpetuate a cycle of oppression.”.
About Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum
Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, President Emerita of Spelman College, is a clinical psychologist widely known for her expertise on race relations and as a leader in higher education. In 2013 she was recognized with the Carnegie Academic Leadership Award. Author of several books including the best-selling “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” and Other Conversations About Race, she was the 2014 recipient of the American Psychological Association Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contributions to Psychology.
A civic leader in the Atlanta community, Dr. Tatum serves on the boards of Westside Future Fund, Achieve Atlanta, Morehouse College and the Tull Charitable Foundation. She is also a trustee of Sesame Workshop, Smith College and the Educational Testing Service.
She holds a B.A. degree in psychology from Wesleyan University, and M.A. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Michigan as well as an M.A. in Religious Studies from Hartford Seminary.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
What’s the urgent and yet preventable crisis in America? It’s poverty! The discussion about the maturation of the prefrontal cortex, down-regulation of amygdala as well as the flourishing of Executive Function skills throughout childhood is incomplete when according to the Children’s Defense Fund one in six children in United States live in poverty. The impact of poverty is deep and wide taking not only a biological, psychological, and social toll on children but also on the nation’s GDP in lost productivity, diminished health outcomes, and even elevated crime rates.
On this episode, the nation’s leading authority on resiliency and applied brain science, educational consultant, and author of many books including The Poverty Problem, Horacio Sanchez discusses how building resiliency in children must include assisting them to form meaningful connections and build close relationships. By supporting kids during critical times, we can activate the protective factors and strengthen their Executive Function in spite of the vast array of negative experiences of economic and other hardships.
About Horacio Sanchez
Horacio Sanchez is a highly sought-after speaker and educational consultant, helping schools learn to apply neuroscience to improve educational outcomes. He presents on diverse topics such as overcoming the impact of poverty, improving school climate, engaging in brain-based instruction, and addressing issues related to implicit bias. He is recognized as one of the nation’s leading authorities on resiliency and applied brain science.
Horacio has been a teacher, administrator, clinician, mental health director, and consultant to school districts across the United States. Horacio sits on the True Health Initiative Council of Directors, a coalition of more than 250 world-renowned health experts, committed to educating on proven principles of lifestyle as medicine. He is the author of the best-selling book, The Education Revolution, which applies brain science to improve instruction, behaviors, and school climate. His new book, The Poverty Problem, explains how education can promote resilience and counter poverty’s impact on brain development and functioning.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Douglas Horton has said, “While seeking revenge, dig two graves - one for yourself.” Nothing is quite as satisfying as well-executed revenge where by taking justice into one’s own hands feels empowering, quenching the thirst for fairness. However, there’s another option; conventional wisdom often refers to as taking the higher road; letting the better-self win against the catty, shallow, and spiteful self. So why do we struggle to forgive?
On this episode, Professor of Psychology, Director of Training for the Counseling Psychology Program, and Founding Director of Network Community Counseling Services, Nathaniel Wade, Ph.D., discusses forgiveness as a mechanism for successful emotional, cognitive, and even spiritual coping when dealing with hurt and the transgressions of others. While forgiveness marks emotional maturation and symbolizes personal healing it is as much of an art as science!
About Nathaniel Wade
Nathaniel Wade received his PhD from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2003 and joined Iowa State that same year. He is a Professor of Psychology, the Director of Training for the Counseling Psychology Program, and Founding Director of Network Community Counseling Services. He is also a licensed Psychologist in the state of Iowa. Dr. Wade’s research interests center on the processes and outcomes of psychotherapy. Specifically, he has worked in the area of developing and testing interventions to promote forgiveness, understanding the impact of integrating religion and spirituality into psychotherapy, and exploring and developing interventions to reduce the stigma associated with seeking counseling. He has published over 100 articles and book chapters, he is co-editor of two scholarly Handbooks, and has received grant funding from federal and private granting agencies. When not working, Dr. Wade spends time with his family and loves to pretend he is still in his 20’s and plays soccer each week.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
“I like you exactly the way you are.” These are the words brought to life by beloved TV host, Fred Rogers, and seems to be exactly what children need to know and experience that they are valued and loved. As culture has taken the time to pause and reflect on the powerful teachings of Mr. Rogers in the heavily consumed medium of television, the evidence in the neuroscience, learning, and developmental psychology shows how deeply effective his methodologies have been all along. With multiple documentaries, a bestselling biography, and a movie starring Tom Hanks, the world of child rearing and education has seen a Mister Rogers’ renaissance over the past few years and it is time to take these lessons to heart.
On this episode, authors of the book When You Wonder, You're Learning, Gregg Behr, executive director of The Grable Foundation and science and education writer Ryan Rydzewski discuss “the Fred method”, a blueprint left behind by Mr. Fred Rogers that honors the potential in every child to come into oneself. Pause, reflect and then respond is a primary lesson fervently put into practice by Mr. Rogers and also seems to be the practice that promotes executive function and self-agency in every child.
About Gregg Behr
Gregg Behr, executive director of The Grable Foundation, is a father and children’s advocate whose work is inspired by his hero, Fred Rogers. For more than a decade, he has helped lead Remake Learning—a network of educators, scientists, artists, and makers he founded in 2007—to international renown. Formed in Rogers’ real-life neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Remake Learning has turned heads everywhere from Forbes to the World Economic Forum for its efforts to ignite children’s curiosity, encourage creativity, and foster justice and belonging in schools, libraries, museums, and more. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and also Duke University, Gregg holds honorary degrees from Carlow University and Saint Vincent College. He’s an advisor to the Brookings Institution and the Fred Rogers Center, and has been cited by Barack Obama, Richard Branson, and the Disruptor Foundation as an innovator and thought leader.
About Ryan Rydzewski
Ryan Rydzewski is a writer whose science and education reporting has garnered several awards and fellowships. A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, he taught elementary school in south Louisiana before earning an MFA in nonfiction writing from Chatham University. As a freelancer, his magazine stories focus on everything from schools to space travel to Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and his poems and other pieces appear in several journals. A native of Erie, Pennsylvania, Ryan lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Jacqueline.
Book: When You Wonder, You're Learning: Mister Rogers' Enduring Lessons for Raising Creative, Curious, Caring Kids
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Conventional wisdom propels the notion that children from low-income backgrounds perform poorly because their families are less invested or do not value education as much as those from higher-income backgrounds. However, by applying a sociological framework to education, the evidence shows that schools, instead of contributing to the breaking of economic and social barriers, are actively widening the achievement gap by furthering inequalities. How do we rethink these challenges and actualize our belief that all students are brimming with the same potential to develop an internal drive and curiosity for learning? Fostering a child’s agency means helping them to help themselves in such a way that they can overcome obstacles and create positive changes in their own lives.
On this episode, education sociologist, professor of Educational Leadership at Florida International University, and author of “The Power of Student Agency”, Anindya Kundu, Ph.D., discusses how to help educators and stakeholders build practical resources that enhance children’s lives while inspiring them to take learning into their own hands. No matter how diverse students’ backgrounds may be, all students possess the capacity to leverage resources and master their own Executive Function in order to navigate a world of uncertainty and challenge through a cultivated sense of agency.
About Dr. Anindya Kundu
Anindya Kundu is an acclaimed education sociologist and incoming professor of Educational Leadership at Florida International University. His book, The Power of Student Agency, has been touted as a critical and practical resource for educators and stakeholders in the lives of children. Anindya studies how students overcome challenges and the support systems that help all young people thrive. He is an award winning educator who believes that collective responsibility is what will help us improve our systems of education.
Website:
https://www.AnindyaKundu.com
Book: The Power of Student Agency: Looking Beyond Grit to Close the Opportunity Gap
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
When the New York Times in a student opinion piece asked “How do you think American education could be improved?”, Skye Williams from Sarasota, Florida wrote, ”I think that the American education system can be improved by allowing students to choose the classes that they wish to take or classes that are beneficial for their future. Students aren’t really learning things that can help them in the future such as basic reading and math.” Skye’s comment captures the fact that schooling experiences of American children is far from homogenous and the multitudes of factors that shape their beliefs, behaviors, performance, and identities vary dramatically based on the context, systems, and learning environments.
On this episode, Senior Research Associate and Director of the Equitable Learning and Development Group at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, Camille Farrington, Ph.D., discusses how school structures and teacher practices can and do empower young learners to make sense of their daily schooling experiences and help transform them into well-prepared young adults.
About Camille A Farrington
Camille A. Farrington is a Senior Research Associate and Director of the Equitable Learning & Development Group at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. Her work focuses on understanding learning environments as constructed, developmental spaces in the context of systemic racism and inequality. She seeks to understand how young people make sense of daily schooling experiences and how school structures and teacher practices shape students’ beliefs, behaviors, identities, performance, and development. As a principal investigator for the Equitable Learning & Development Project/Next System Learning Collaborative and the Building Equitable Learning Environments (BELE) Network, she collaborates with educators, scholars, students, and families to reimagine and transform public education to support human learning, development, and well-being. Camille’s publications include Foundations for Young Adult Success: A Developmental Framework (2015); Teaching Adolescents to Become Learners: The Role of Noncognitive Factors in Shaping School Performance (2012); and Failing at School: Lessons for Redesigning Urban High Schools (2014). Camille’s research draws on her 15-year experience as a public high school teacher. She holds a BA from the University of California Santa Cruz and a Ph.D. in Policy Studies in Urban Education from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Website:
https://consortium.uchicago.edu/equitable_learning_and_development
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and
In 2015, at the White House Correspondents' Dinner something hilarious transpired. President Obama invited Luther, his anger translator, on the stage with him and the Comedian Keegan-Michael Key obliged. The tongue in cheek display of Obama’s true frustrations expressed through “Luther” was not only ironic but brilliant reminding us how we all need an anger handler.
On this episode author, researcher and associate dean, Ryan Martin, Ph.D., discusses what anger is, why we get angry, and how it also serves a purpose and has benefits. A predictable response to stress and obstacles in learning is slowly escalating frustration; which tends to manifest itself as irritation or annoyance at first but more of an anger or even rage down the road. Those who are interested in Executive Function can gain insight from this discussion to learn to manage anger and related negative behaviors which often gets undue attention more so than the underlying learning obstacles.
About Dr. Ryan Martin
Dr. Ryan Martin researches and writes on healthy and unhealthy expressions of anger. His book, Why We Get Mad: How to Use Your Anger for Positive Change, explores why people become angry, some of the common consequences of anger, and how people can use their anger in productive ways. Ryan also hosts the popular psychology podcast, Psychology and Stuff. He was trained as a counseling psychologist at the University of Southern Mississippi where he first started studying anger after earning his undergraduate degree in Psychology with a minor in Criminal Justice from the University of St. Thomas. He has worked with clients- angry and otherwise- in a variety of settings including community mental health centers, college counseling centers, and a VA Hospital.
He is a Professor of Psychology and an Associate Dean for the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. His work has been featured in the New York Times, NPR’s Invisibilia podcast, BBC Radio’s Digital Human, TED.com, and elsewhere. When he’s not thinking about feelings, he runs and spends time with his family.
Website:
http://alltheragescience.com/martin/
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
The schooling of American children is marred by our notions that hard and long hours of classroom learning is a defining feature of K-12 school success even though such environments lack a playful approach to learning or room for imaginative interactions with the world. In their book Out of My Skull, Neuroscientists James Danckert & John D. Eastwood write, “When we have a sense of meaning and purpose in life, options for engagement with the world are evident and compelling.” So if we know this about schooling, learning, and engagement then why is it so hard for us to pivot?
On this episode, globally recognized voice in education, Senior Research Fellow at the Learning Policy Institute, and author of many books including a memoir, Learning By Heart: An Unconventional Education, Tony Wagner, Ph.D. discusses how his own childhood learning experiences that were neither pleasant nor rewarding failed to channel his natural curiosity and what it took for him to find his way back to flourishing as a life-long learner.
About Tony Wagner
A globally recognized voice in education, Tony Wagner currently serves as a Senior Research Fellow at the Learning Policy Institute, founded by Linda Darling-Hammond in 2015. Prior to this appointment, Tony held a variety of positions at Harvard University for more than twenty years, including four years as an Expert in Residence at the Harvard Innovation Lab and the founder and co-director, for more than a decade, of the Change Leadership Group at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His previous work experience includes twelve years as a high school teacher, K-8 principal, university professor in teacher education, and founding executive director of Educators for Social Responsibility.
Tony is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences and a widely published author. His work includes numerous articles and seven books, including three best-sellers: Most Likely To Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for The Innovation Era, co-authored by Ted Dintersmith, was published by Scribner in 2015. Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change The World, was published in 2012 to rave reviews and has been translated into 19 languages. His 2008 book, The Global Achievement Gap continues to be an international best seller, with more than 150,000 copies in print. Tony’s memoir, Learning By Heart: An Unconventional Education, was published by Penguin/Random House in 2020.
Tony served as the Strategic Education Advisor for a major new education documentary, “Most Likely to Succeed,” which had its world premiere at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and has since been shown in more than 11,000 communities around the world. He also collaborated with noted filmmaker Robert Compton to create a 60 minute documentary, “The Finland Phenomenon: Inside The World’s Most Surprising School System.”
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emo
Poet and philosopher Rumi once wrote, “Love is the bridge between you and everything.” As much as a loving bond between people may be the starting point for close relationships, the future of it however, is shaped by stress, communication, coping, mental health, and interpersonal support; which are the defining factors that allow those relationships to last or crumble. Bicker, squabble, argue, wrangle, fight, disagree, dispute, and spar are some of things that we do when we’re in a relationship with someone that we care about. Without the full knowledge of the psychological science behind it, it’s hard to know if the behaviors and approaches to conflict resolution are effective or even healthy.
On this episode, relationship expert, award-winning teacher, professor at Monmouth University and author of Stronger Than You Think: The 10 blind spots that undermine your relationship and how to see past them, Dr. Gary W. Lewandowski Jr., discusses how seeking personal growth and undergoing self-expansion can help us grow. Relationships are the vehicles to broaden the lens we use to look at ourselves and inspecting our blind spots can carry tremendous benefit.
About Dr. Gary Lewandowski
Dr. Gary W. Lewandowski Jr. is a an award-winning teacher, researcher, writer, and relationship expert. He is a Professor at Monmouth University and author of Stronger Than You Think: The 10 Blind Spots That Undermine Your Relationship…and How to See Past Them, and co-author of an innovative research methods text, Discovering the Scientist Within. His work has been featured by the Washington Post, IFLScience.com, Daily Mail, Business Insider, Salon, The New Republic, Time, the New York Times, The Atlantic, VICE, CNN, and NPR. His TEDx talk, “Break-ups Don’t Have to Leave You Broken” has viewed over 2 million times, while his relationship articles have been enjoyed by over 3.5 million readers.
Websites:
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
On February 18, 1981, Mr. Rogers asked Jeffrey Erlinger a 10-year old quadriplegic with multiple challenges to show the television viewers how his wheelchair worked and by celebrating Jeffrey with warmth and amazement, Mr. Rogers helped crystalized the modern neurodiversity movement. For a long time, normal and abnormal have been the only two concrete buckets cultures have used to determine an individual’s worth and value based on their capacity to partake in and serve the workforce. And by pathologizing physical or mental challenges and various brain conditions, we have deemed such individuals as either subhuman or useless.
On this episode, author of Nobody’s Normal and Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at George Washington University, Roy Richard Grinker, discusses how disability and the stigma associated with it are social constructs and invites all of us to investigate the history social stigma which has led to the ‘invention’ of mental illness. As today’s citizens do their best to fit in the capitalistic world that demands a productive and self-sufficient worker, let’s not forget that everyone can be productive in their own ways and contribute meaningfully if we expand the definition of normal and socially acceptable.
About Roy Richard Grinker
Roy Richard Grinker is Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Grinker was born and raised in Chicago where his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father worked as psychoanalysts. He graduated from Grinnell College in 1983 and received his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at Harvard University in 1989.
He is the author of Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness and Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism.
Grinker is also the author of In the Arms of Africa: The Life of Colin M. Turnbull, Korea and its Futures: Unification and the Unfinished War, and Houses in the Rainforest: Ethnicity and Inequality among Farmers and Foragers in Central Africa. He is co-editor of Perspectives on Africa: Culture, History, and Representation and Companion to the Anthropology of Africa.
He was a 2008 recipient of the National Alliance on Mental Illness KEN award for “outstanding contribution to the understanding of mental illness” and the 2010 recipient of the American Anthropological Association’s Anthropology in the Media award for “communication of anthropology to the general public through the media.”
Website: www.royrichardgrinker.com
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and so
In his 1890 seminal book, The Principles of Psychology, William James wrote, “There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.” One such key form of indecision is procrastination; and research shows that procrastinators act as if there’s no future. There is a way however, to rein in the reckless disregard for the future-self by evoking the empathic connection between the present and future-self.
On this episode, psychologist and expert on imagination and wellbeing, coach at Impact Hub Ottawa, and owner of Bevy Creative, Eve-Marie Blouin-Hudon, Ph.D. discusses how we can and should help people change their connection to their future-self which has multitude of benefits including reduction in procrastination. A key function of strengthening Executive Function is to alter behaviors and actions to attain goals set by self and bring the needs of the future-self to become fruitful.
About Dr. Eve-Marie Blouin-Hudon
Eve-Marie Blouin-Hudon is a psychologist and expert on imagination and wellbeing. Based on her research, she teaches courses at Carleton University on the psychology of creativity and innovation, coaches at Impact Hub Ottawa, and offers consulting to individuals and organizations through her business Bevy Creative. She is also the Organizational Health lead at Statistics Canada, where her team helps employees adapt to change and experience greater psychosocial health.
Website: http://ww.bevycreative.com
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Not now, later! These are three words we have come to value. The Marshmallow experiment from the 1960s popularized the idea of self-control and brought it into cultural consciousness; however, sometimes it has mislead us to think that kids who don’t wait for two marshmallows at the age of 4 might be destined to lead less fruitful lives. Instead of focusing on self-control through a narrow lens as an individual’s choice-making ability, there's another way to view this complex process using broader constructs such as social regulation in the face of conflicting tendencies, ideas, and desires.
On this episode, Dr. Sabine Doebel, Assistant Professor at George Mason University, discusses how creative and novel experimental designs can help explore the social and conceptual processes behind self-control skills in children across many contexts. Those who care about helping children develop self-regulation should consider giving them opportunities to acquire a wide-range of experiences and knowledge to benefit from the cultural context.
About Sabine Doebel, PhD
Sabine leads the Developing Minds Lab in the Department of Psychology at George Mason University. The lab focuses on questions related to how we become capable of exercising conscious control over our thoughts and actions in the pursuit of goals (executive function), and how this capacity develops through experience, particularly social experience.
She completed her Ph.D. at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota (advisors: Melissa Koenig and Philip D. Zelazo), and her NIH-funded postdoc at the University of Colorado Boulder (advisor: Yuko Munakata). Sabine is interested in cognitive development, with much of her research to date focusing on the development of executive function -- the ability to control thoughts and actions in the service of goals, especially in the face of conflicting habits, desires, or tendencies. She's particularly interested in how social and conceptual processes may support the development of skills in using control across contexts. Sabine is also doing work to promote open science practices in developmental psychology, with the goal of making it easier to help researchers build on one another's work.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
In his short story, The Girl Next Door, essayist and comedian, David Sedaris writes, “In the coming days, I ran the conversation over and over in my mind, thinking of all the fierce and sensible things I should have said.” To some extent, each of us are trapped in our own mind’s echo chamber like David Sedaris describes and if kept unchecked, listening to the unfiltered stream of thoughts can feel like we’re losing control. The neuroscience of self-talk can provide valuable insights to shift our perspective to step outside our heads and step into the world and manage life.
On this episode, the world's leading expert on controlling the conscious mind, award-winning professor at the University of Michigan and the Ross School of Business, and the director of the Emotion and Self Control Laboratory, Ethan Kross, PhD, discusses what exactly is mental chatter and how we can reshape the voice inside of us to gain a sense of control over our mind and our life.
About Ethan Kross, PhD
Ethan Kross, PhD, is one of the world's leading experts on controlling the conscious mind. An award-winning professor at the University of Michigan and the Ross School of Business, he is the director of the Emotion & Self Control Laboratory. He has participated in policy discussion at the White House and has been interviewed on CBS Evening News, Good Morning America, Anderson Cooper Full Circle, and NPR's Morning Edition. His pioneering research has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New England Journal of Medicine, and Science. He completed his BA at the University of Pennsylvania and his PhD at Columbia University.
Book: Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why it Matters and How to Harness It
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
“You stupid idiot!” Most of us in the civilized world would refrain from using such hurtful and aggressive language when addressing others. However, if someone were to be a fly on our mind’s wall and hear the things we say to ourselves, they might be horrified. When individuals face challenges, encounter failures, and make fools of themselves, the harsh and judgmental critic within gets cracking with self-flagellation. However, a learned alternative is to extend self-compassion, which is less about judging yourself positively - when undeserving and more about relating to yourself kindly.
On this episode, one the world’s leading experts on self-compassion, author, and Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Kristin Neff, discusses what self-compassion is, the wide-ranging benefits of engaging in self-compassion, and how self-compassion motivates individuals to improve personal weaknesses while diminishing our tendency to engage in social comparisons. Executive Function skills, when mastered, help create a playbook for personal success and that playbook is incomplete without the teachings from the science of being nice to one's self.
About Kristin Neff, PhD
Kristin Neff is currently an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research, conducting the first empirical studies on self-compassion nearly twenty years ago. In addition to writing numerous academic articles and book chapters on the topic, she is author of the book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. In conjunction with her colleague Dr. Chris Germer, she has developed an empirically supported training program called Mindful Self-Compassion, which is taught by thousands of teachers worldwide. They co-authored the Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook and Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program: A Guide for Professionals. Her newest work focuses on how to balance self-acceptance with the courage to make needed change. In June 2021, she will publish Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power, and Thrive.
For more information on self-compassion, including a self-compassion test, research articles, and practices, go to www.self-compassion.org.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Kofi Annan once said, "Education is a human right with an immense power to transform. On its foundation rests the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development." The question is, how do we help developing minds gain the knowledge of the self-evident or the invisible structural oppression that creates and sustains inequity so that their learning experiences foster a sense of agency over one’s own condition to ultimately commit to taking action against oppressive forces?
On this episode, author, developmental psychologist, and associate professor of education at Simmons University, Dr. Daren Graves, talks about the concept of critical consciousness first conceived by the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire that acknowledges that inequality is sustained when the people most affected by it are unable to decode their social conditions that help sustain it. Dr. Graves explores the question of what role teachers and educators play in cultivating critical consciousness in students so that they undergo a metamorphosis to become highly-engaged citizens whose work elevates the human condition. The key implication is that raised critical consciousness is a mark of strong Executive Function skills in those who understand and have natured their own individual capacities by transforming their thoughts, emotions, and beliefs to take actions that makes them the conduits for social change.
About Dr. Daren Graves
Dr. Daren Graves is an Associate Professor of Education and Social Work at Simmons University and Adjunct Lecturer of Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. His research lies at the intersection of critical race theory, racial identity development, and teacher education. Dr. Graves has reported on his work in a variety of publications including Schooling for Critical Consciousness: Engaging Black and Latinx Youth in Analyzing, Navigating, and Challenging Racial Injustice (Harvard Education Press, 2020). He also co-teaches Critical Race Theory in Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dr. Graves serves as co-Chair of the AERA Hip Hop Theories, Praxis & Pedagogies Special Interest Group.
Website: https://www.darengraves.com/
Books:
- Schooling for Critical Consciousness
- Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire
- Cultivating Genius by Gholdy Muhammad
- Below The Surface by Rivas-Drake and Umana-Taylor
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
What is common between a middle school teacher during the pandemic, a three-generation family living together with a terminally-ill child, and an employee who just lost their job? They all are stretched to the max and stressed to the limit. These individuals and the rest of America is stressed! Studies shows that when asked, close to 80% of doctor visits for health problems are associated with stress; however, as little as 3% of doctors actually talk to patients about methods and approaches to reducing stress.
Research in neuroscience is showing that by learning and practicing eastern mindfulness practices not only can change emotional experiences around stress, but also casts measurable changes in the neurochemistry and structures in the brain.
On this episode, Associate Researcher in the Psychiatry Department at Massachusetts General Hospital and Assistant Professor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School, Sara Lazar, Ph.D., discusses the impact of skillfully developed non-reactivity states on the brain. Exploration such as “If I’m not my mind, then who am I?” is at the heart of contemplative sciences and investing in training the mind to stay open to present experiences and enter a non-judging state while caring deeply for one's self and others can have a profound impact on promoting Executive Function.
About Sara W. Lazar, PhD
Sara W. Lazar, PhD is an Associate Researcher in the Psychiatry Department at
Massachusetts General Hospital and an Assistant Professor in Psychology at Harvard
Medical School. The focus of her research is to elucidate the neural mechanisms
underlying the beneficial effects of yoga and meditation, both in clinical settings and in
healthy individuals. She has been practicing yoga and mindfulness meditation since
1994. Her research has been covered by numerous news outlets including The New
York Times, USA Today, CNN, and WebMD.
More information can be found at https://scholar.harvard.edu/sara_lazar
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
A ticking bomb, an empty room with a hanger from the dry-cleaners, a radiator, two in captivity with their hands tied behind their backs, and that’s it. With less than 60 seconds left on the clock, only MacGyver can stay focused and optimistic, get himself untied, get his companion freed and flip the trick back on the assailant at the speed of lightening. That takes incredible problem solving and grace under fire that only a character on a TV show has. Or is it?
In celebration of the 150th episode of the Full PreFrontal Podcast, Sucheta will talk about applying strong Executive Function to daily problem solving using a "MacGyvering" mindset and Jugaad principles. Human ingenuity is the antidote to "functional fixedness” and is the resource that acts as a catalyst for personal evolution through which each of us can go beyond our personal or circumstantial constraints.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
In the 1830s, Rev. Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet’s method of teaching reading to deaf children was evolutionary and became inviting enough that the then secretary of education, Horace Munn, adopted to teaching it to neurotypical children; the logic being, if the teaching strategy works for the deaf it must work wonders for all. It wasn’t until much later that that it was discovered how ill-fitted such an extrapolation was. For far too long the culture has harbored a dreamy notion that gifted teachers are born and not made and they turn naive children into the learned ones with some magical powers and the techniques involved in teaching are a matter of personal will. What if that’s simply a myth?
On this episode, author, journalist, and CEO and co-founder of Chalkbeat, Elizabeth Green, discusses that becoming a great teacher is attainable to all through the mastery of specific learned key skills unique to the profession of teaching. As Thomas Jefferson warned us, “we cannot be a powerful nation and illiterate too”; we must acknowledge the dazzling intellectual challenge teaching poses and prepare accordingly.
About Elizabeth Green
Elizabeth Green is the CEO and co-founder of Chalkbeat, the nonprofit news organization dedicated to improving educational equity through local, independent, high-impact journalism. Since launching in 2014, Chalkbeat’s reporting has spurred changes in education funding, legislation, policy, and practice and is regularly cited or republished in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Vox, and more. Elizabeth also co-founded the American Journalism Project, the first venture philanthropy firm dedicated to local news. Her book Building a Better Teacher was a New York Times bestseller and notable book of 2014. She has also written about education issues for The New York Times Magazine, U.S. News & World Report, and other publications. Elizabeth has been a Spencer Fellow in education journalism at Columbia University and an Abe Journalism Fellow studying education in Japan.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
America’s struggle with equity was unveiled in a 2011 Department of Education study which showed that 45% of high-poverty schools received less state and local funding than what was typical for other schools in their district. The funding disparities were further brought to light through a 2019 Ed Build report that showed that majority-white districts received $23 billion more in school funding than majority non-white districts. If this data is accurate, the performance gap is truly an opportunity gap and the solution could reside in rethinking our thinking about poverty, potential, and performance.
On this episode, author of 15 books and distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Southern California, Dr. Pedro A. Noguera, discusses how perceptions and stereotypes regarding poor children of color influenced by deficit thinking gets in the way of cultivating the talents in these children. By rethinking one’s own pre-suppositions and by refocusing on tapping into children’s curiosity, the chance that they become independently motivated learners is certain.
About Pedro A. Noguera, PhD
Pedro Noguera is the Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean of the Rossier School of Education and a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Southern California. Prior to joining USC, Noguera served as a Distinguished Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Before joining the faculty at UCLA, he served as a tenured professor and holder of endowed chairs at New York University, Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of 15 books. His most recent books are A Search for Common Ground: Conversations About the Toughest Questions in K-12 Education (Teachers College Press) with Rick Hess and City Schools and the American Dream: Still Pursuing the Dream (Teachers College Press) with Esa Syeed.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Keeping up with the pace, load, and challenge of learning requires emotional and self-management skills – best described as Executive Function. However, when these skills are either delayed, under-developed, or absent it is easy to question the child’s motivations and intentions. The truth of the matter is that some kids simply need more support, scaffolding, and a greater appreciation for their differences.
On this episode, counselor, author, Washington Post contributor, and freelance writer, Phyllis Fagell, discusses how Executive function skills are the skills that help build check-and-balance systems and backup methods that help students stay on top of their own work. When adults involved in helping and guiding children focus on becoming a non-anxious presence, the children themselves are likely to understand how to stay calm, which in turn can help them focus and feel relaxed enough to learn.
About Phyllis Fagell
Phyllis is the school counselor at Sheridan School in Washington, DC, a therapist who works with kids and families in private practice, and an author and journalist. She's the author of “Middle School Matters” and a frequent contributor to the Washington Post. She also freelances for publications including Psychology Today, Working Mother, U.S. News & World Report and Your Teen, and her ideas have been shared in outlets including The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and NPR. Phyllis lives in Bethesda, MD with her husband and three children.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Even though studies after studies show that more than 75% of job success is determined by soft skills ,which in business refers to effective communication, professionalism and work ethics, critical thinking, teamwork, and leadership, the word soft often undermines its nuanced nature and diminishes it potency. In the neuroscience and science of effective communication however, soft skills are nothing but a combination of Executive Function, pragmatic skills, and social cognition and they can be taught and learned with a strategic approach.
On this episode, author, award winning speech-language pathologist, and leading authority in brain injury rehabilitation, Dr. Leila Hartley, discusses how after neurological damage to the brain, difficulties in social and interpersonal communication can create the greatest barrier to returning to independent living and sustaining gainful employment. The discovery of neural plasticity assures us that we can all change our brains, but the work has to be done by ourselves; and competent, caring, and invested speech-language pathologists can help.
About Leila L. Hartley, PhD, CCC-SLP
Leila L. Hartley, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, received her Doctorate in communication sciences and neuropsychology from the University of Florida. She has over 40 years of clinical experience with adult neurogenic communication disorders. She is the author of Cognitive-Communicative Abilities Following Brain Injury: A Functional Approach and other publications in the areas of discourse abilities and functional approaches to rehabilitation following traumatic brain injury. She has a private practice in Atlanta, Georgia.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
A difficult to teach child slows down the learning for others and accentuates the burden of teaching a group of diverse learners that often looms heavily on the teacher. What if disruptive children are actually facing challenges that result from the lack of critical “to not be challenging” skills such as adaptive flexibility, frustration tolerance, and problem solving?
On this episode, renowned author, clinical psychologist, documentary producer, and adjunct professor in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Tech, Dr. Ross Greene, discusses the dilemma of teaching that requires a set of prerequisite learning how to learn skills that facilitate the acquisition of new knowledge but are far less ubiquitous. By prioritizing the building of executive function and self-regulation first, educators are likely to yield greater cooperation from children and far more success in learning engagement.
About Ross W. Greene, Ph.D
Ross W. Greene, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and the originator of the innovative, evidence-based approach called Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS), as described in his influential books The Explosive Child, Lost at School, Lost & Found, and Raising Human Beings. He also developed and executive produced the award-winning documentary film The Kids We Lose, released in 2018. Dr. Greene was on the faculty at Harvard Medical School for over 20 years, and founded the non-profit Lives in the Balance in 2009. He is currently adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychology at Virginia Tech and adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. Dr. Greene has worked with several thousand behaviorally challenging kids and their caregivers, and he and his colleagues have overseen implementation and evaluation of the CPS model in hundreds of schools, inpatient psychiatry units, and residential and juvenile detention facilities, with dramatic effect: significant reductions in recidivism, discipline referrals, detentions, suspensions, and use of restraint and seclusion. Dr. Greene lectures throughout the world and lives in Freeport, Maine.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
What do wigs, cookie jars, pizza dough, supermarket flyers, unpaid invoices, airplane menus, and a mummified human foot have in common? Those are some of the Andy Stuff found amongst 641 boxes left behind by the Pop Art legend Andy Warhol, which is now on display at the Andy Warhol museum in Pittsburg. Truman Capote was once said to refer to Warhol as 'a sphinx without a riddle’; a callous jab at the artist whose quirks and idiosyncrasies accentuated his highly restrictive interests and extremely limited social-interactional interactions. Many individuals on the Autism Spectrum present with Warhol’s vulnerabilities and find social navigation difficult if and when the world around them is less than accepting.
For World Autism Awareness Month, our podcast guest, clinical psychologist, adjunct Professor at Griffith University in Queensland, and consultant psychologist at the Minds and Hearts Clinic, Professor Tony Attwood, discusses the nature of Asperger’s syndrome and the upside and downside of these individuals’ remarkable abilities in a chosen area of expertise. Improving Executive Function skills can positively impact social reciprocity skills allowing mutualized harmonious engagement with the world which has room for all of us.
About Professor Tony Attwood
Tony Attwood, PhD is a clinical psychologist, adjunct Professor at Griffith University in Queensland, and consultant psychologist at the Minds and Hearts Clinic, in Brisbane, Australia. Professor Attwood has over four decades of experience with individuals with ASD and has helped thousands of individuals across the autism spectrum. His books and videos on Asperger’s Syndrome and High-functioning Autism include The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome, Asperger’s Syndrome: A Guide for Parents and Professionals, and the Exploring Feelings program manuals.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
The true meaning of empowering children is to help them claim the rights to their own life so that they can lead with a sense of confidence, clarity, and courage. The key is to trust children to make their own mistakes while trusting yourself to resist the temptation of wanting to do everything for them.
On this episode, leading American educator, author of the book How to Raise Successful People, Vice Chair of Creative Commons, journalist and mother of three accomplished daughters, Esther Wojcicki, discusses how to raise and teach children to become independent thinkers and self-reliant learners. By handing more control over to children, adults are likely to promote the growth of their pre-frontal cortex and inadvertently strengthen their Executive Function for life.
About Esther Wojcicki
Esther Wojcicki is famous for three things: teaching a high school class that has changed the lives of thousands of kids, inspiring Silicon Valley legends like Steve Jobs, and raising three daughters who have each become famously successful. What do these three accomplishments have in common? They are the result of TRICK, Esther’s secret to raising successful people: Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration, and Kindness. Simple lessons, but the results are radical. Esther Wojcicki is a leading American educator and journalist. Mother of YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, Fulbright scholar Janet Wojcicki, and 23&Me founder Anne Wojcicki, as well as a teacher and mentor to James Franco and Lisa Brennan-Jobs, Esther is widely heralded as the most successful parent and educator in the United States. Esther offers essential lessons for raising, educating, and managing people to their highest potential. She is the author of Moonshots in Education (2014) and best seller How to Raise Successful People (May, 2019). She is co founder of Tract.app (2020) an innovative way to empower students using a peer to peer model.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to d
In the increasingly complex world, raising children to become adaptable, communicative, open, creative, and self-reliant thinkers is a tall order. As the raging pandemic is taking its toll on the American psyche, some groups are proving to be more vulnerable than others. The American Psychological Association’s 2021 survey reports that the parents of children under 18 years of age are the highest stressed groups of people in the United States. So we need a universal healing approach and a pragmatic insight to handle the stress.
On this episode of Full PreFrontal, award-winning author of The Dolphin Parent (A Guide to Raising Healthy Happy, and Self-Motivated Kids) and celebrated speaker, Dr. Shimi Kang shares ways to becoming a better parent while re-balancing yourself so that you become a trustworthy and compassionate role-model for your children.
About Dr. Shimi Kang
Dr. Kang is passionate about providing science-based tools that optimize the power of the human brain. She is the founder of Dolphin Kids: Future-Ready Leaders, CEO of Spark Mindset App, and host of the YouTube show; “Mental Wealth with Dr. Shimi Kang”.
She is the author of The Dolphin Parent: A Guide to Raising Healthy, Happy, and Self-Motivated Kids and The Self Motivated Kid. The Dolphin Parent is a #1 National Bestseller and The Self-Motivated Kid won the 2015 US News International Book Award in the Parenting and Family Category. Her books have been released in 12 countries around the world and her newest title, The Tech Solution: Creating Healthy Habits for Kids Growing up in a Digital World is now available for pre-order!
Dr. Kang is represented as a national celebrity speaker with the Speaker’s Spotlight Bureau and is a TEDx Speaker with millions of views. She is a seasoned media specialist, known for discussing both common and complex conditions. You can find some of her articles and appearances in major media outlets, including BBC World News, Washington Post, the Huffington Post, CBC, Psychology Today, South China Morning Post, TIME Magazine, NPR, UK Daily Mail, Der Speigel, Al Jazeera, SETV-Shanghai, and Times of India.
As a result of her endeavors and outstanding community service, Dr. Kang was honored with the YWCA Woman of Distinction Award , Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, and the Sikh Centennial Foundation National Award. She has received five national awards in the field of addictions and mental health including the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry Research Award and an American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) Award. Dr. Kang is most proud of receiving the Diamond Jubilee Medal for her years of outstanding community service and of being the mother of three awesome but exhausting children!
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
What is limited, valuable, and scarce? Attention. As society as a whole tries to navigate the new terrain where attention is the commodity supporting a large part of the economy, it is imperative that humans understand that attention is the gateway to information processing and “knowing what to pay attention to” is probably far more important than simply paying attention.
Since the act of paying attention presents itself in more than one form such as listening, loving, cooperating, collaborating or even being generous and altruistic, we need to build brains that know how to engage their attention and direct it towards intentions so that decisions are made that serve the needs that go beyond the current moment or the current self.
On this episode, award-winning author and journalist known for her pioneering writings exploring social trends, particularly technology’s impact on humanity, Maggie Jackson, joins Sucheta Kamath to talk about why fractured attention often leaves us feeling scattered, fragmented and frustrated. If what Susan Sontag’s words “Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager” are true, then we all must participate in the Attentional Renaissance.
About Maggie Jackson
Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author and journalist known for her pioneering writings exploring social trends, particularly technology’s impact on humanity. Her acclaimed book Distracted (Second Ed., 2018) kickstarted a global conversation on the steep costs of fragmenting our attention. Winner of the prestigious 2020 Dorothy Lee Book Award for excellence in technology criticism, Distracted was compared by FastCompany.com to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring for its prescient critique of technology’s excesses. The book helped inspire Google’s recent digital well-being initiative. A former Boston Globe contributing columnist, Jackson’s commentary and articles have appeared in media worldwide, including the New York Times, NPR, and the noted design-and-philosophy journal New Philosopher. A graduate of Yale University and of the London School of Economics with highest honors, Jackson has won numerous awards and fellowships, including a Visiting Fellowship at the Bard Graduate Center (2016). She lives in New York and Rhode Island. Visit her website: maggie-jackson.com
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Its no joke, adulting is hard. To adult is to do all the things that grown-ups regularly do because they have to including finding a job, keeping it, living independently, paying bills, keeping a thriving social circle and handle the unexpected curve balls that life throws. High school to college and then college to life are transitions marked by the need for a substantial upgrade to one’s own executive function proficiency; if delayed or under-evolved, it can cause massive disruptions in adulting.
On this episode, the founder of LMR Coaching and the creator of the ADHD JOB SQUAD™, Lynn Miner-Rosen discusses how best to coach, instruct, and support college students with (and without) ADHD to transition into the adult world of finding and keeping a job with maturity and balance between their personal, professional, and social life. She discusses the key ingredients for building transferrable skills for success in college and beyond!
Lynn Miner-Rosen, M.Ed, ACC
Lynn Miner-Rosen, M.Ed., ACC, CDCS is the founder of LMR Coaching and the creator of the ADHD JOB SQUAD™ where she provides coaching, instruction, and support to college students and adults with (and without) ADD, ADHD, Executive Functioning Deficits and Learning Differences worldwide. She is a leading expert on ADHD career coaching and is an ICF Credentialed and Board Certified Career Development Coach, ADD/ADHD Coach, Executive Function Coach and Life Coach. Before her work as a whole-life coach, Lynn taught special education for 12 years in New York public schools and prior to that, worked as an executive in the business world. You can connect with Lynn by emailing her at [email protected]
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
The most basic human experience is to be able to communicate; express thoughts and ideas clearly and meaningfully while being fully understood. Most of us are unaware of the nature of these true gifts that allows humans to construct and build relationships from the ground up by launching nuanced skills such as reading faces, reading the room, and reading between the lines. Hence, the foundational skills of a self-regulated learner always includes strong emotional literacy skills which out weighs the emotional stressors of everyday life.
On this episode, Elizabeth Sautter, M.A., CCC, returns to discusses how well-built human communication becomes handy when dealing with meltdowns, mood swings, and a sense of being overwhelmed that big-emotions often bring on. The key to the life-long benefits of successful transitioning from childhood to young adult is having found empowerment in tools to become aware of one’s own emotions and knowing how to guide them.
About Elizabeth Sautter MA, CCC-SLP
Elizabeth Sautter, M.A., CCC, is a Speech and Language Pathologist, award-winning author, blogger, and highly sought after speaker specializing in social and emotional learning since 1996. Elizabeth’s interest in social learning began early in life growing up with a sister who has developmental challenges. She is also a mom of two teens with complex social, emotional, and academic needs. These personal experiences have fueled a passion in Elizabeth to serve individuals and their families who are struggling with everyday challenges.
Elizabeth is the creator of Make Social Learning Stick, which provides consultation, training (including the Make it Stick online parenting course), and resources to assist children, teens, and their families in building skills and practical strategies to manage emotions, navigate social situations, and achieve their goals. She is the co-author of the popular children’s book series, Whole Body Listening Larry. She is a collaborative trainer for the Zones of Regulation, and co-author of the accompanying storybooks, card decks, and games.
Elizabeth is the co-founder of Communication Works, a speech therapy practice providing services to schools, individuals, and their families. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, two teenage sons, a cat, and a dog, and firmly believes that social-emotional learning has changed her life and wants to do the same for others.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Yogi Berra once said, “If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.” High achievers often bring perfection in their work; however, perfectionism can impede ongoing high achievement. The diligence in being perfect is time-consuming and exhausting and since humans can’t give up on the ideas of perfection, it’s prudent to remember that if left unchecked, perfectionistic tendencies can create barriers to transcendence.
On this episode, renowned author whose books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages and popular lecturer whose undergraduate class at Harvard was the most attended in the history of Harvard, Tal Ben-Shahar, Ph.D., discusses ways to shift from perfectionism to optimalism by rechanneling focus and bringing the same intensity of desires to achieve one’s goals. Since Executive Function involves activating the set of mental skills that facilitates the management of thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and actions; letting go of a perfectionistic view does require higher-order executive control to redirect a rigid mindset and pivot to recognize the joys in imperfection.
About Tal Ben-Shahar
Tal Ben-Shahar is an author and lecturer. He taught two of the largest classes in Harvard University’s history, Positive Psychology and The Psychology of Leadership. Today, Tal consults and lectures around the world to executives in multi-national corporations, the general public, and at-risk populations. The topics he lectures on include leadership, happiness, education, innovation, ethics, self-esteem, resilience, goal setting, and mindfulness. His books have been translated into more than twenty-five languages, and have appeared on best-sellers lists around the world.
Tal is a serial entrepreneur, and is the co-founder and chief learning officer of Happiness Studies Academy, Potentialife, Maytiv, and Happier.TV.
An avid sportsman, Tal won the U.S. Intercollegiate and Israeli National squash championships. Today, for exercise, he swims, dances, and practices Yoga. He obtained his PhD in Organizational Behavior and BA in Philosophy and Psychology from Harvard.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
“The only thing that could impede me was me“ are the words spoken by Amada Gorman, the first ever Youth Poet Laureate. Amanda for many years suffered from a speech impediment and an auditory processing disorder that made it difficult to communicate intelligibly what her beautiful mind was so eloquently able to construct. Amanda’s personal discovery that I am more than my garbled speech encapsulates the growth mindset which comes into play when hardship looms over and seeing the possibility for a better self or better future turns bleak.
On this episode, David Yeager, Ph.D., an Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, addresses how a growth mindset injects doubt into that fixed mindset worldview and how a cultivated growth mindset can go on to unravel personal gifts that not only bring joy to oneself but are an abundant benefit to the world.
About David Yeager
David Yeager is an experimental development psychologist in the department of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. In his academic research, he examines the causes of and solutions to adolescent health problems, such as bullying, depression, academic achievement, cheating, trust, or healthy eating. He often focuses on adolescent transitions—the transition to middle school, the transition to high school, or the transition to college—as a place where there is great opportunity (and risk) for young people’s trajectories.
Yeager was the subject of a major New York Times Magazine article (“Who Gets to Graduate?”) by education speaker Paul Tough, in which he was named “one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of education.” He has co-authored work on grit and grit-testing with Angela Duckworth, and on growth mindset with Carol Dweck. He chaired and co-hosted a national summit on mindset interventions at the White House Office for Science and Technology Policy, which led to the launch and co-chairing of the “Mindset Scholars Network,” an interdisciplinary research network housed at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), where he was a fellow. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Scientific American, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and more.
He is a William T. Grant Foundation scholar, a Faculty Research Associate at the UT Population Research Center, and was formerly a Fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching . His research has earned awards from the Spencer Foundation, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, the Society for Research on Child Development, the American Educational Research Association, the APA Science Directorate, and the International Society for Research on Aggression. He is a member of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group and the New Paths to Purpose network at the University of Chicago.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Randomly scattered stars light up the night sky, but it is human inventiveness and imagination that has connected these cosmic dots into the constellations we know so well. As the podcast Full PreFrontal: Exposing the Mysteries of Executive Function celebrates its 100th episode, we have the same pleasure of connecting the scattered ideas that experts have shared with us over the past two years into a meaningful constellations of Executive Function concepts. We’ll explore these concepts and their impact on learning, education, self-efficacy, interpersonal connectivity, and the human story of personal progress.
Here are 10 lessons learned from 100 interviews with researchers, psychologists, neuroscientists, educators, authors, journalists, and thought leaders who believe that the power of the brain is a gift to us all – a gift we must take the time to unwrap with careful attention to details, mindfulness, and tremendous self-control.
10 Things Learned:
Even though life has many moving parts, including those that create utter chaos as well as those that bring sheer joy, this podcast hopes that you will find a message
This is a repeat of episode 101 brought back as one of my favorite episode.
Uncertainly, unceasing demands, and all around unrest can provoke the feelings of restlessness, a state of irritability, and intense worrying and general dissatisfaction. But clinically speaking, these feelings of being on the edge are the signs of anxiety and often when they exceed the threshold of bearability a sense of unending despair can follow.
On today’s podcast, psychiatrist, author of the book “The Moment of Insight”, educator, and celebrated speaker, Dr. Suvrat Bhargave from the Center for Family Psychiatry, discusses the true nature of the “growing pains” of children for whom the world is a large mass of unknown. He says anxiety is within the range of human experience and human emotion and by cultivating inner awareness, one can bring about important and meaningful changes and remind children that “HOPE is the possibility of something good”.
About Suvrat Bhargave, MD
Suvrat Bhargave, M.D. is a renowned and respected educator, author, speaker, and board-certified psychiatrist, specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry. His uncanny ability to relate to a multi-demographic audience has allowed his practice to reach an unparalleled level of success based on empathy, education, and empowerment. His book, A Moment of Insight: Universal Lessons Learned from a Psychiatrist’s Couch, offers practical strategies and thought provoking narratives to not only understand and persevere through challenging dilemmas, but to see greater purpose during these times. He demonstrates this through poignant patient stories and personal accounts.
Affectionately known for his “relatable expertise”, Dr. Bhargave is highly sought after to lecture locally and nationally on a broad range of topics pertaining to personal growth, effective parenting, relationship satisfaction, and mental health conditions. After completing his residency training and specialty fellowship from Duke University, Dr. B (as he is lovingly called by his patients) continued his practice in hospitals, community health, and private practice settings. Throughout the years, he has been most inspired by the impact his caring nature, education, and treatment have had on others to facilitate change and to experience fulfillment through gradual but dynamic moments of “insight and awareness”. A passionate advocate for healing and empowerment, Dr. B is compelled to bring a world of change to each person one moment at a time. To learn more about Dr. B and invite him to speak at your next event, visit.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
If you come across a Wall Street trader, an ER physician, a trial lawyer, a sky-diving instructor, a trapeze artist, or a stand-up comedian, more than likely there is a race-car brain that has been well channelled in spite of its high propensity for intense stimulation and a desire to live on the edge. Experts say that a perennially super-charged and “always on the go” ADHD mode may or may not always translate into the most productive or fullfilling life because of the underlying executive dysfunction that results from the ADHD diagnosis.
On today’s podcast, psychiatrist, NY Times bestselling author, and a leading authority in the field of ADHD, Dr. Edward (Ned) Hallowell discusses how the ongoing unexplained underachievement is the hallmark signature of of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD); a challenging neurodevelopmental disorder. However, those with the right diagnosis and proper treatment can go on to unraveling their gifts which not only bring joy to themselves, but can benefit the world.
Edward "Ned" Hallowell, M.D.
Edward (Ned) Hallowell, M.D. is a board-certified child and adult psychiatrist, thought leader, NY Times bestselling author, world-renowned speaker and a leading authority in the field of ADHD. He is the Founder of The Hallowell Centers in Boston MetroWest, New York City, San Francisco and Seattle. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Tulane Medical School. He was a distinguished Harvard Medical School faculty member for 21 years and currently devotes his full professional attention to his clinical practice at the Hallowell Centers, speaking to audiences around the world, writing books and hosting the Distraction podcast. He has authored 20 books on various psychological topics, including ADHD, raising happy children, forgiveness, managing your "crazy busy” lives and most recently, his personal memoir. He has appeared on Oprah, CNN, Dr. Oz and other major networks.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Our body is a screen onto which our inner experiences are frequently projected. Authors, through their writings, vividly illustrate the imprint of the mind onto the body; for example, Caroline Hanson says “Nervousness made her feel nauseous, almost like she had two hearts frantically beating in her chest, instead of one.” The human interoception system processes the internal sensations and let’s us feel what is happening in our bodies and through body-regulation we can strengthen our Executive Function by self-regulating our thoughts, behaviors, and actions without the sense of being overwhelmed. If loving oneself is the greatest revolution, then the body is its frontline fighter!
On this episode, award winning occupational therapist, author, and faculty at Elizabethtown College, Dr. Kelly Mahler discusses how to understand the signals from our body and how cultivating the abilities to know the meaning behind these signals is the key to live a healthy life.
Dr. Kelly Mahler
Kelly Mahler OTD, OTR/L, earned a Doctorate in Occupational Therapy from Misericordia University, Dallas, PA. She has been an occupational therapist for 18 years, serving school-aged children and adults. Kelly is winner of multiple awards including the 2020 American Occupational Therapy Association Emerging and Innovative Practice Award & a Mom’s Choice Gold Medal. She is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Occupational Therapy at Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, PA and is actively involved in several research projects pertaining to topics such as interoception, self-regulation, trauma & autism. Kelly is an international speaker and presents frequently on topics related to the eight resources she has authored:
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Nobel prize winner behavioral economist, Daniel Kahneman's remarkable work brought the concepts of System 1 and System 2 into the mainstream. Contrary to the conventional wisdom which associates human capacity with rational thought and logical thinking (features of system 2), our system 1 (the autopilot) has a much stronger hold on our psyche. It is only the slower and deliberate System 2, or Executive Function, when engaged in conscious self-regulation can overrule the intuitions and freewheeling impulses of the System 1. So why not focus our attention on building System 2?
On this episode, author, researcher, neuropsychologist, Diplomate of the American Academy of Pediatric Neuropsychology and professor at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Dr. George McCloskey returns to discuss life-long implications of strong and well-developed Executive Function skills that open up the capacity to override reflexive thoughts and intuitive judgement and transcend personal limitations.
About George McCloskey, Ph.D.
George McCloskey, Ph.D. is a professor and Director of School Psychology Research in the School of Professional and Applied Psychology of the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and holds Diplomate status with the American Academy of Pediatric Neuropsychology. Dr. McCloskey has amassed 40 years of experience in test development, teaching, research, and assessment and intervention work with a wide range of clients and has developed a comprehensive model of executive functions that can be used to guide assessment and intervention. He frequently presents at international, national, and state conferences and consults with a number of school districts and private schools nationwide on issues related to improving students’ executive functions.
Dr. McCloskey is the lead author of the books Assessment and Intervention for Executive Function Difficulties and Essentials of Executive Functions Assessment. He also is the author of the McCloskey Executive Functions Scales (MEFS) Teacher (2016) and Parent (2019) Forms that have been standardized and published with Schoolhouse Educational Services. Dr. McCloskey is co-author with his wife, Laurie McCloskey of the children’s book titled The Day Frankie Left His Frontal Lobes at Home (in Press).
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
In her book Mirror: The History, author Sabine Melchoir-Bonnet tracks the curious journey of a tiny reflective glass once thought to be the most fascinating invention which over time eventually has gotten demoted to the status of an ordinary gimmick. The mirror that captures the presentation of self in everyday life comes through with its promise of unveiling fascinating yet terrifying personal information. However, there is nothing equivalent to a mirror that successfully reflects back the inner workings of the self. Until that invention becomes a reality, the best tool we have is Executive Function; the capacity to self-reflect.
On this episode, author, researcher, neuropsychologist, Diplomate of the American Academy of Pediatric Neuropsychology and professor at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, Dr. George McCloskey discusses self-regulation, Executive Function, and ways to become self-reliant and the distinctions between learning difficulties and producing difficulties.
About George McCloskey, Ph.D.
George McCloskey, Ph.D. is a professor and Director of School Psychology Research in the School of Professional and Applied Psychology of the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and holds Diplomate status with the American Academy of Pediatric Neuropsychology. Dr. McCloskey has amassed 40 years of experience in test development, teaching, research, and assessment and intervention work with a wide range of clients and has developed a comprehensive model of executive functions that can be used to guide assessment and intervention. He frequently presents at international, national, and state conferences and consults with a number of school districts and private schools nationwide on issues related to improving students’ executive functions.
Dr. McCloskey is the lead author of the books Assessment and Intervention for Executive Function Difficulties and Essentials of Executive Functions Assessment. He also is the author of the McCloskey Executive Functions Scales (MEFS) Teacher (2016) and Parent (2019) Forms that have been standardized and published with Schoolhouse Educational Services. Dr. McCloskey is co-author with his wife, Laurie McCloskey of the children’s book titled The Day Frankie Left His Frontal Lobes at Home (in Press).
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
The most vital skills of making and keeping friends, figuring out COVID-19 social etiquette, and navigating the social world with adaptive flexibility is far from being innate or natural. While we have barricaded ourselves in our homes and in spite of 24/7 access to the internet that gives us the illusion of hyper-connectivity, many are struggling to artfully connect with others and find meaning in isolation. Figuring out ways to fine-tune our social-emotional acumen by managing our emotions skillfully and navigating social situations willfully seems to be the key.
On this episode, award-winning author, blogger and Speech Language Pathologist, Elizabeth Sautter, M.A., CCC, discusses how listening, communication, and relationship skills build better friendships. She emphasizes that social-emotional skills can and do improve and grow with special attention to the underlying skills building process.
About Elizabeth Sautter MA, CCC-SLP
Elizabeth Sautter, M.A., CCC, is a Speech and Language Pathologist, award-winning author, blogger, and highly sought after speaker specializing in social and emotional learning since 1996. Elizabeth’s interest in social learning began early in life growing up with a sister who has developmental challenges. She is also a mom of two teens with complex social, emotional, and academic needs. These personal experiences have fueled a passion in Elizabeth to serve individuals and their families who are struggling with everyday challenges.
Elizabeth is the creator of Make Social Learning Stick, which provides consultation, training (including the Make it Stick online parenting course), and resources to assist children, teens, and their families in building skills and practical strategies to manage emotions, navigate social situations, and achieve their goals. She is the co-author of the popular children’s book series, Whole Body Listening Larry. She is a collaborative trainer for the Zones of Regulation, and co-author of the accompanying storybooks, card decks, and games.
Elizabeth is the co-founder of Communication Works, a speech therapy practice providing services to schools, individuals, and their families. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, two teenage sons, a cat, and a dog, and firmly believes that social-emotional learning has changed her life and wants to do the same for others.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Japanese author Haruki Murakami said it well, “A person's life may be a lonely thing by nature, but it is not isolated. To that life other lives are linked.” A key ingredient in transforming lonely human nature into a well-linked life is the faculty of mature social skills which make it possible to show interest in others, know how to make friends, read social situations, reciprocate in person or via text, put oneself in others’ shoes and collaborate successfully. Executive Function is equally essential in managing social goals, solving social problems, and propelling our social connectivity with thoughtful reflection. However, not everyone is intuitive and equipped to form social connections and nurture interpersonal relationships well and hence may require specific skills training.
On this episode, Founder/Director of the UCLA PEERS® clinic, associate clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA and licensed clinical psychologist, Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson discusses key components of evidence-based social skills program for preschoolers, adolescents and young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders and other social impairments.
About Dr. Elizabeth Laugeson
Dr. Laugeson is a clinical psychologist and an Associate Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. Dr. Laugeson is the Founder/Director of the UCLA PEERS® Clinic, an outpatient hospital-based program providing parent-assisted social skills training for preschoolers, adolescents and young adults with ASD and other social impairments. She also serves as the Training Director for the UCLA Tarjan Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities (UCEDD).
Dr. Laugeson has been a principal investigator and collaborator on a number of studies funded by the NIH and CDC investigating social skills training for youth with developmental disabilities from preschool to early adulthood and is the co-developer of an evidence-based social skills intervention for teens and young adults known as PEERS®.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Legend has it that after forgetting the lyrics to one of her well rehearsed songs during a concert at New York’s Central Park, celebrated singer and actress, Barbra Streisand, lost her confidence. Petrified by the embarrassment and riddled with anxiety, Streisand withdrew from public performances for almost 36 years. Clearly, a bad experience can leave psychological scars including ongoing discomfort of subtle apprehension to debilitating anxiety, making it hard to live fully and meaningfully.
On this episode, distinguished professor of psychology at Macquarie University, Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow, and the Founding Director of the Centre for Emotional Health Dr. Ron Rapee talks about anxiety in developing minds and the barriers created in childhood. When anxiety becomes persistent, it begins to affect many aspects of life and stops children from achieving their best. Ordinary support may not be sufficient, but rather well-proven techniques such as the Cool Kids suite of programs can work wonders.
About Dr. Ron Rapee
Ronald M. Rapee, PhD, is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Macquarie University, in Sydney, Australia, and former Director of the University's Centre for Emotional Health. He is best known for his theoretical models of the development of anxiety disorders and his creation of empirically validated intervention programs that are widely used internationally. Dr. Rapee is a recipient of the Distinguished Career Award from the Australian Association for Cognitive and Behaviour Therapy and the Distinguished Contribution to Science Award from the Australian Psychological Society. He is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and has been appointed as a Member of the Order of Australia for his contributions to clinical psychology.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Imagine being more than 2,500 feet above the ground; with no harness, no ropes and no safety equipment. Alex Hannold scaled Yosemite’s El Capitan solo, seemingly effortlessly and with great command over the rock. The most remarkable aspect of the near impossible feat of accomplishment is Alex’s grit, a strength-based psychological skill that propels most humans to carve out a path to reach goals that are once thought to be unattainable. The question is, can we cultivate grit?
On this episode, educational scholar, lecturer in Curriculum & Instruction at Baylor University, and author of “A student’s guide to grit and greatness”, Dr. Laila Y. Sanguras, discusses how we can help kids recognize the value of effort influenced achievement. By focusing on grit, educators can unveil the secret that anyone who is at the top of their game got there by practicing the invisible micro skills, enduring innumerable obstacles and committing to life’s big goals.
About Dr. Laila Sanguras
Laila Y. Sanguras, Ph.D., is a lecturer in the department of Curriculum & Instruction and co-editor of the Gifted Education Review, a newsletter for teachers and parents of gifted children. Dr. Sanguras earned a B.S. in education from Western Oregon University, followed by a master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Portland State University and Ph.D. in educational research from the University of North Texas.
Dr. Sanguras’ primary scholarly interest is the development of psychosocial skills, particularly grit and coping, and how teachers and parents can support their children to succeed academically and personally. She works closely with school districts and parent organizations to bring research to practice. Dr. Sanguras also presents at numerous professional conferences and enjoys mentoring students on their personal research projects.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Every Halloween, when the late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel invites parents to video tape lying to their children having eaten all of their Halloween candy, it never fails to produce funny, hilarious, and some heart-wrenching videos of kids having officially lost their mind over the prank. However, it’s truly astonishing to find a kid or two who mange to stay calm and collected in the face of candy-distress. It is reasonable to ask how children regulate themselves during a conflict or disappointments of everyday life and bring themselves in the zone of an emotionally balanced internal state.
On this episode, Sucheta interviews author and creator of the Zones of Regulation® framework, Occupational Therapist, and autism specialist, Leah Kuypers, who talks about the benefits of the cultivated ability to achieve a preferred state of alertness that corresponds to the context where one has to act and behave. By figuring out and knowing the science of how the body and emotions are interconnected everyone can stay calm and carry on.
About Leah Kuypers
Leah Kuypers earned a Bachelors of Science in Occupational Therapy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Graduate Certificate in Autism and a Master of Arts in Education from Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. She has practiced as an OT/autism specialist in school and clinical settings, specializing in self-regulation and social learning, and has worked with students of all ages and challenges, including anxiety, ADHD, and ASD.
Leah created The Zones of Regulation® (www.zonesofregulation.com), a framework designed to teach self-regulation, and is author of the book and two apps by same name (2011, Social Thinking Publishing; 2013, 2016 Selosoft, Inc). In addition to working with students, she provides trainings and consultation to parents and professionals on self-regulation and challenging behavior, as well as conducts workshops on the Zones to groups across the world. She resides in Minneapolis, MN with her husband, son, daughter and dog.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
“The builder said he was very sorry” writes Louis Sachar in the introduction to his children’s book, where instead of building a school one-story high with thirty classrooms, he ends up building a thirty stories high Wayside School with one classroom per floor. Readers discover that, none the less, the stories from such a strange and silly place are simply delightful.
Similarly, however challenging it is to raise complex kids wired for impulsivity, disorganization, neediness, disengagement, and occasional resistance, it can also be a great source of immense joy, pride, and gratitude. And their stories of courage can invoke hope for many to create harmony in shared spaces.
On this episode author, parent educator, certified coach, co-founder of ImpactADHD.com, and a co-creator of Sanity School®, Elaine Taylor-Klaus, discusses how parenting is a daily exercise in letting go. By using effective tools, every family can create connected, fulfilling, and empowering relationships with their real, unique, and amazing kids.
About Elaine Taylor-Klaus
Elaine Taylor-Klaus is an author, parent educator, and certified coach. The co-founder of ImpactADHD.com, co-creator of Sanity School® (an online behavior therapy program), and co-author of Parenting ADHD Now! Easy Intervention Strategies to Empower Kids with ADHD, she provides coaching, training and support for parents of complex kids – and parents raising kids in complex times. Her newest book, The Essential Guide to Raising Complex Kids with ADHD, Anxiety and More will be out in September 2020, and is available on pre-order with bonus gifts including a “Parenting in a Pandemic” supplement. Elaine has served as a parent advisor for the American Academy of Pediatrics and on the national Board of Directors of CHADD. She is the mother in an ADHD++ family of six.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Napoleon Hill once said, “strength and growth comes from continuous struggle and effort,” but what about those who struggle to know how best to direct their effort during the ongoing struggle? Children and adults with ADHD suffer from this exact problem which makes it hard for them to find their voice, fit in, and fully flourish with all the gifts they have. A true loss for everyone is when the world castigates children and adults with ADHD as disposable assets and inadvertently ends up dismissing the true capability of brains that are simply wired differently.
On this episode, our guest, Peter Shankman, successful entrepreneur, author of bestsellers, and the host of the #1 podcast on ADHD shares how embracing his ADHD and everything else that makes him different has proven advantageous to become a leader and lead a meaningful life. By better regulating one’s self-sabotaging inattention and accepting structure and processes that tame executive dysfunction, ADHD can truly be a gift that keeps on giving.
About Peter Shankman
The New York Times has called Peter Shankman "a rockstar who knows everything about social media and then some." He is a 5x best selling author, entrepreneur and corporate keynote speaker, focusing on customer service and the new and emerging customer and neurotatypical economy. With three startup launches and exits under his belt, (most notably Help a Reporter Out) Peter is recognized worldwide for radically new ways of thinking about the customer experience, social media, PR, marketing, advertising, and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and the new Neurodiverse and Remote economies.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Solving BIG problems requires big thinking. John Wooden once said, “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” Even though preparing children to take charge of their learning and their future happens in the classrooms, in actuality, it is set in motion through the mission and vision of personal and institutional leadership; without which, classrooms will simply be ships without sails. With skills to master, personal and situational setbacks to overcome, and trying to make a difference in the world, a lot rides on how we innovate systems that promote student learning, teacher preparedness, and community collaboration.
On this episode, our guest Dr. John E. Deasy, recently retired superintendent of Stockton Unified School District in Los Angeles, former State superintendent of the year, former high school principal, and former teacher talks about leading the way in shaping education through principles and practice. Schools and educational institutions as whole can cast a seismic shift through introspective culture, deliberate decisions to bring everyone on the same page, and inspirational practices in everyday learning – essential ingredients of successful schooling.
About Dr. John E. Deasy
Dr. John E. Deasy is the recently retired superintendent of Stockton Unified School District in California. During his tenure he oversaw a massive upgrade of new curriculum, technology for all youth, counselors and mental health clinicians in all schools, championed homeless issues and saw strong improvement in all youth indicators of success.
He was the Board Chair and former CEO of Reset: New Day, New Year, which is an alternative prison for young men 18-25 in the Bay Area of California. He was the founding Editor-In-Chief of The Line. The Line is a magazine dedicated to civil discourse in dealing with the most pressing matters for those on the front lines of social justice, entrepreneurship, and education. John also serves at a Superintendent In Residence for the Broad Center and facilitates work in the Broad Academy while coaching a number of current and emerging national education leaders. John also maintains a management consulting practice. John is also an Aspen Fellow from the inaugural cohort of the Aspen Institute’s fellowship of entrepreneurs in education and is a senior moderator for the Institute.
John led dramatic improvements in each school district that he served as superintendent which propelled student achievement, high school graduation rates, and access rates to high quality courses and schools to historic levels, while simultaneously reducing suspension and drop out rates in each district he served as the leader. Dr. Deasy was superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, where he championed a “youth first” agenda credited with reversing the district’s school-to-prison pipeline, raising achievement and helping more students graduate ready for college and the workplace than at anytime in the District’s history.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
How to nurture a healthy relationship with life experiences, particularly undesirable, uncomfortable or unfavorable ones, is best captured in Pema Chodron’s quote “Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.” However, setbacks may lead to more setbacks for those with under-developed executive function including a lack of self-awareness, rigidity and a failure to problem solve.
On this episode, the former Head of Executive Leadership Development at Nike and author of “Flourish or Fold: The Five Practices of Particularly Resilient People” Dr. Taryn Marie Stejskal discusses ways to leverage the wisdom gleaned from decades of research on resilience. She shares how each and everyone of us can prioritize strengthening resilience through a shift in mindset and by inculcating specific practices so that we can rise above personal adversities.
About Dr. Taryn Marie Stejskal
Dr. Taryn Marie is a foremost international expert on resilience, in both leadership and life. She is the author of “Flourish or Fold: The Five Practices of Particularly Resilient People”, and is featured in the forthcoming documentary Breaking Free, both expected to release in 2021. She is the former Head of Executive Leadership Development at Nike, Global Leadership Development at Cigna, and founded Resilience Leadership, where she serves as the Chief Resilience Officer (CRO), leveraging over a decade of research on resilience, that gave birth to the empirically-based framework, The Five Practices of Particularly Resilient People, for executive coaching, top-team effectiveness, high potential leadership programs and workshops, and inspirational keynote addresses. She is a sought-after coach for executives, athletes, musicians, and actors who are looking for an edge by way of understanding and harnessing their inherent resilience.
Dr. Taryn Marie is a Co-Founder of Resilience Element 75 (RE75), focused on making resilience accessible to the world through film and wearable technology as well as serving as one of Marshall Goldsmith’s Top 100 Coaches across the globe. Her groundbreaking research on resilience has been featured in publications such as Ariana Huffington’s Thrive Global, Ladders, LA Progressive, and Women’s Daily Magazine, on television broadcasts, and featured online by Happify, eMindful, and Powerful Universe.
Dr. Stejskal received an undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Michigan along with a master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) and a doctorate degree from the University of Maryland, College Park. She completed pre- and post-doctoral fellowships at Virginia Commonwealth Medical University. She serves as an ambassador for The African Community and Conservation Foundation (ACCF) as well as several non- and for-profit boards.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
None of us are fans of being bored; a state often marked by restlessness and mild forms of agitation. That’s why we all try and avoid the angst that seems to be associated with boredom. But surprisingly, scientists who study the brain, suggest that boredom isn’t too bad for us, but rather the brain’s nudge to get out of that state, take action, and bring about change.
On this episode, neuroscientist, trained Clinical Neuropsychologist, and co-author of “Out of My Skull”, professor James Danckert discusses the neural correlates of boredom, how to structure our thinking about it, and the significance of boredom in school, at work, and in life.
About James Danckert, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience
James Danckert trained as a Clinical Neuropsychologist in Australia before moving to Canada to pursue a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Melvyn Goodale at London Ontario. He was awarded a Canada Research Chair at the University of Waterloo where his research explores the neural and cognitive correlates of boredom, how the brain builds and updates mental models, and the consequences of stroke for attention and vision.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Emotions are the heartbeat of human existence and the human drama that is full of anxiety, sadness, anger, fury, joy, or love feels like we are either riding a roller-coaster or floating gently in a boat that’s in a calm and placid lake. Emotions that disrupt our relationship with the world require regulation, but conventional wisdom approaches might get us off track as we might train ourselves to either not feel the feelings or not react to them.
On this podcast episode, father of the CBT-TEAM approach, author of the best seller “Feeling Good”, and host of the Feeling Good Podcasts, Dr. David Burns talks about why it is important to understand that all feelings are caused by thoughts and focusing on grouping emotions into positive and negative emotions may not serve us well, but rather redirecting unhealthy negative as well as unhealthy positive emotions can and will allow us to live our human experience to its fullest.
About Dr. David Burns
David D. Burns, MD is an Adjunct Clinical Professor Emeritus at the Stanford University Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. His best-selling book, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy, has sold more than five million copies worldwide. Many published research studies have indicated that 65% of individuals with moderate to severe depression who are given a copy of his book improve dramatically within four weeks with no other treatment.
Dr. Burns has won many awards for his research and teaching. His weekly Feeling Good Podcasts will hit three million downloads this year. His latest book, Feeling Great, is now listed on Amazon.com and will be published in September 2020. He is also working on a new Feeling Great App that will feature two powerful new mood-changing technologies to show people how to break out of severe and mild mood slumps quickly.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
The parents’ job is to protect their children, offer safety and security, and above all, love them unconditionally. But there are visible and invisible barriers and everyone struggles. In order to raise children with strong executive function, parents need to help cultivate a strong foundation where the brain knows not to go into overdrive or over-react. By activating their own strong executive function, parents can build a nurturing relationship with their children.
On this episode, author, parenting expert, and the founder of AhaParenting.com, Dr. Laura Markham, explains how the most effective discipline strategy parents could choose is to have a close bond with their children. She shares meaningful approaches to raising resilient and joyful children.
About Dr. Laura Markham
Dr. Laura Markham trained as a Clinical Psychologist at Columbia University, but she's also a mom, so she understands kids -- and parents! She uses her Ph.D. to translate proven science and child-development research into the practical solutions you need for the family life you want.
Dr. Laura Markham is the author of three best-selling books:
The founding editor of AhaParenting.com, Dr. Laura Markham makes frequent TV and radio appearances and has been interviewed for thousands of articles by publications as diverse as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Real Simple, Newsday, Men's Health, Redbook and Parents Magazine. 150,000 parents subscribe to her weekly Parenting Tips, which you can sign up for here.
Dr. Laura Markham's relationship-based parenting model, which she calls Peaceful Parenting, is research-based and parent-tested. She's helped thousands of families across the U.S. and Canada find transformative solutions to everything from separation anxiety and sleep problems to sass talk and cell phones. She lives in Brooklyn, New York and is the proud parent of two happy, kind, responsible and accomplished young adults who were raised with Peaceful Parenting.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Popularized by the business community, the term "soft skills" might imply that these skills are neither nuanced nor hard to obtain. But scientists and researchers who study these skills refer to them as pragmatics, the way one uses language and communication to achieve social and interpersonal goals and believe that soft skills are critical to conveying intent, working harmoniously in situations of conflict and help us moving ahead in the world collaboratively. When disrupted or impaired however, the subpar soft skills rake in unimaginable hardship causing disruption of trust, joy, and social harmony.
On this episode, Dr. Lyn S. Turkstra, a researcher, author and a professor of Rehabilitation Science and Assistant Dean for Speech-language pathology at McMaster University, takes a hard look at soft skills. This discussion focuses on how best to help improve these critical social-interpersonal skills and ways to consider the need and context to design training to make a difference for the individual involved.
About Dr. Lyn S. Turkstra
Dr. Turkstra is a Professor in the School of Rehabilitation Science at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, and Assistant Dean for Speech-Language Pathology.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
We are often astonished to read or hear in the news about a kid who grabs a classmate’s hair, or snatches food from their tray, or even kicks their teacher. The average person might focus on the obvious disrespectful and unacceptable in-school behaviors. However, we will be missing point if we think that kids should come to school already fully knowing how to behave “properly”. Instead, we need to receive them with open arms, find out what they can do, and provide them with the necessary help to teach them what they don’t yet know.
On this episode, Dr. Cheryl Rice, a Behavior Intervention Specialist and a Certified Instructor of Mindset Non-violent Crisis Intervention (De-escalation) Training for Educator shares what’s at the heart of meeting kids where they are in order to advance educator-learner interactions to shape nurturing learning communities.
About Cheryl Rice
Cheryl Rice has been a Special Education Teacher for over 20 years. Currently, she is a Behavior Intervention Specialist for public school elementary students grades prek through 5th. Cheryl has her Masters and Education Specialist degrees in Education, with an emphasis on working with Young Children with Special Needs. She has a National Board Certification in the area of Young Children with Special Needs. Cheryl was an Adjunct Professor at Valdosta State University in Special Education Department. She completed her Doctoral Studies in the area of School Improvement with an emphasis on Educational Leadership.
Cheryl is a Certified Instructor of Mindset Non-violent Crisis Intervention (Deescalation) Training for Educators. She is also an Early Intervention Specialist for Georgia Department of Education through GA PINES (Parent and Infant Network for Early Intervention Services). Finally, Cheryl is a lifelong resident of Georgia and a mother of 2 grown boys.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
There is no generation like Gen Z whose stressors have been quadrupled by the times they have grown up in - the economic dotcom burst, highly skilled stressed out parents always in-between jobs, anxiety of a flattening world, and a technology/social-media enabled personal life. Naturally, the question emerges as to how do we help this generation of kids master their executive function and help them strive for personal self-sufficiency in spite of all the things considered.
On this episode, Founder & CEO of Growing Leaders and prolific author of more than 30 books, Dr. Tim Elmore shares how best to empower Gen Y and Gen Z to focus on growing from within.
About Dr. Tim Elmore
Dr. Tim Elmore, Founder & CEO of Growing Leaders, is a world-renowned expert on leadership as well as Generation Y and Generation Z. He uses his knowledge to equip educators, coaches, leaders, parents, and business leaders to impart practical life and leadership skills to young adults. He has trained thousands of leaders in partnership with nationally renowned schools and organizations like the Kansas City Royals, Stanford University, University of Alabama, National Football League, Ohio State University’s Athletic Department, Chick-fil-A, and more. Dr. Elmore has also authored more than 30 books including the best-selling curriculum – Habitudes®: Images that Form Leadership Habits and Attitudes.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Nothing is more invigorating than watching a young mind at work. Fascinated by curiosity and deeply enthralled in untangling its pieces, learning brings joy and satisfaction to both the teacher and the learner. But how does one make sure that the learner falls in love with learning? How much of that is the responsibility of an educator versus a parent versus a student himself? And what are the ways to lay out a blueprint for increasing learner autonomy and locus of control so that it directly influences a student’s personal achievement?
On this episode, award winning educator, professor of engineering, and co-creator of the largest online MOOK Coursera class called “Learning How to Learn,” Barbara Oakley, Ph.D., discusses the neural scaffolding involved in information processing, memory formation, and learning. Dr. Oakley’s insights expands upon the quote by Brian Herbert, “The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice.”
About Barbara Oakley, Ph.D.
Barbara Oakley, PhD, PE is a Professor of Engineering at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan; the Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning at McMaster University; and Coursera’s inaugural “Innovation Instructor.” Her work focuses on the complex relationship between neuroscience and social behavior. Dr. Oakley’s research has been described as “revolutionary” in the Wall Street Journal—she has published in outlets as varied as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. She has won numerous teaching awards, including the American Society of Engineering Education’s Chester F. Carlson Award for technical innovation in engineering education. Together with Terrence Sejnowski, the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute, she co-teaches Coursera – UC San Diego’s “Learning How to Learn,” the world’s most popular massive open online course.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Do emotions mess up clear headed thinking? For centuries, culture and science has dismissed the value of emotions when it came to thinking about intelligence, learning, and critical thinking. This may have led to classrooms with a certain level of sterility and emotional reciprocity. Instead however, by focusing on how students feel, what emotional connections they make during their learning experiences, and how they translate that experience into a personal narrative is proving to be at the heart of transformative personal growth.
On this episode Professor of Education, Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, and founding director of the USC Center for Affective Neuroscience, Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, discusses what creates a tapestry of rewarding and engaging learning experiences for all kinds of learners. Through her work she suggests, “learning is dynamic, social and context-dependent because emotions are, and emotions form a critical piece of how, what, when and why people think, remember and learn.”
About Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang is a Professor of Education, Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, and the founding director of the USC Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education. She studies the psychological and neurobiological development of emotion and self-awareness, and connections to social, cognitive and moral development in educational settings. She uses cross-cultural, interdisciplinary studies of narratives and feelings to uncover experience-dependent neural mechanisms contributing to identity, intrinsic motivation, deep learning, and generative, creative and abstract thought. Her work has a special focus on adolescents from low-SES communities, and she involves youths from these communities as junior scientists in her work.
She has received numerous awards for her research and for her impact on education and society, among them an Honor Coin from the U.S. Army, a Commendation from the County of Los Angeles, a Cozzarelli Prize from the Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences editorial board, and early career achievement awards from the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Association of Psychological Science (APS), the International Mind, Brain and Education Society (IMBES), and the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences Foundation (FABBS).
Immordino-Yang was a Spencer Foundation mid-career fellow. She served on the U.S. National Academy of Sciences committee writing How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts and Cultures https://www.nap.edu/read/24783/, and on the Aspen Institute’s National Commission on Social, Emotional and Academic Development, writing: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/the-brain-basis-for-integrated-social-emotional-and-academic-development/
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About Host, Suchet
When talking about independence and self-sufficiency in their students, educators often use the term “Personal Responsibility” which refers to the set of mental skills that neuroscience describes to be Executive Function. Teachers recognize that in order to develop a level of independence and agency, educators must have a plan to transfer the “process tools” from the teacher to the students just as a relay-race runner passes his baton to the athlete that follows him. The question is, how do teachers create and foster a learning environment that centers around facilitating a sense of personal responsibility in children while helping them build their knowledge?
On this episode, educator, researcher, author, and member of the California Reading Hall of Fame, Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. discusses the role of Executive Function in teaching and learning and how his highly specialized Gradual Release of Responsibility Modelprompts students towards greater autonomy and self-initiation. Finally, he discusses how essential it is to understand the tools and strategies deployed to move learning from the surface to something more deep and meaningful.
About Doug Fisher, Ph.D.
Douglas Fisher is Professor and Chair of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University and a leader at Health Sciences High & Middle College having been an early intervention teacher and elementary school educator. He is the recipient of an International Reading Association William S. Grey citation of merit, an Exemplary Leader award from the Conference on English Leadership of NCTE, as well as a Christa McAuliffe award for excellence in teacher education. He has published numerous articles on reading and literacy, differentiated instruction, and curriculum design as well as books, such as PLC+: Better Decisions and Greater Impact by Design, Building Equity, and Assessment-capable Learners.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Having difficulties can be discouraging and counterproductive. Children with ADHD experience far more defeats and discouragements compared to their counterparts. It’s no surprise that promote thriving in struggling learners depends on the right support, the right tools, but above all, the right environment that conveys a message of acceptance and hope.
On this episode, our guest, Sharon Saline, Psy.D., an author and a clinical psychologist, discusses the unique needs created by the dopamine deficient ADHD brain and how best to coach, train, and support these brains to summon extra dopamine for something they don’t love or care.
About Sharon Saline, Psy.D.
Sharon Saline, Psy.D., clinical psychologist and author of the award-winning book, What Your ADHD Child Wishes You Knew: Working Together to Empower Kids for Success in School and Life and The ADHD Solution Card Deck specializes in how ADHD, learning disabilities and mental health issues affect children, teens, young adults and families. She helps families navigate the confusing maze of information, emotions, stress and conflict related to ADHD, appreciate the positive aspects of living with ADHD and create successful dialogues, interventions and connections.
Dr. Saline has also worked extensively with schools and educators on understanding and assessing mental health issues in the classroom. An internationally sought-after lecturer and workshop facilitator known for combining her expertise in psychology with a background in theater, she addresses topics such as understanding ADHD and executive functioning, discovering new tools for managing anxiety, making sense of the teen brain and working with different kinds of learners. Dr. Saline is a regular columnist for ADDitudemag.com and Psychologytoday.com and is a part-time lecturer in the Continuing Education Program at the Smith School for Social Work. She appears monthly on WWLP’s Mass Appeal show as their resident child and family psychologist. A magna cum laude graduate of Brown University, she received her master’s degree in psychology from New College of California and her doctorate in psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology at Alliant University.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
What do cooking, fishing, putting together a bookshelf, and a fixing a wall mount in the garage for your bike have in common? They are far easier to do by yourself than to teach it to someone. Those who teach recognize the challenge in going beyond learner engagement and external rewards or punishment; instead setting learners’ intrinsic motivation on fire by making them curious and engaged children.
On this episode cognitive psychologist, prolific author, columnist for American Educator magazine, and professor of psychology, Daniel Willingham highlights the applicability of the fundamental principles from cognitive psychology and neuroscience which, when understood, can create a tapestry of successful and pleasurable learning experiences for all.
About Daniel Willingham
Daniel Willingham earned his B.A. from Duke University in 1983 and his Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from Harvard University in 1990. He is currently Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, where he has taught since 1992. Until about 2000, his research focused solely on the brain basis of learning and memory. Today, all of his research concerns the application of cognitive psychology to K-16 education.
He writes the “Ask the Cognitive Scientist” column for American Educator magazine, and is the author of Why Don’t Students Like School?, When Can You Trust the Experts?, Raising Kids Who Read, and The Reading Mind. His writing on education has appeared in sixteen languages.
In 2017 he was appointed by President Obama to serve as a Member of the National Board for Education Sciences.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Vincent van Gogh once wrote, “If I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it – keep going, keep going come what may.” Of course, this kind of striving and searching van Gogh is referring to is likely to guarantee one thing and that one thing is – encountering unsurmountable challenges. Sometimes we don’t even go looking, but still face unsurmountable challenges like right now, during this pandemic. Everyone can benefit from successful ways to cope with and rise above challenges. Group of peoples together can handle challenging and extraordinary times.
On this episode, our host Sucheta Kamath, talks about one such particular group – families! She answers questions such as, how do families ride the wave of crisis, challenges and come to the other side with integrity and resilience? Tune in today to discover the characteristics of a resilient family unit which survives and emerges safe, sane, and even skilled.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Children are an enigma! Full of surprises and full of promise. However, one can be easily baffled when their boisterous high energy turns into an unmanageable rambunctiousness disrupting the household and relationships. Until recently, it was unconceivable for kids to have a mental disorder which made it hard to navigate the impact of various conditions on overall behaviors; particularly, maladaptive dysregulation.
On this episode, our guest, developmental and behavioral pediatrician and author, Dr. Raun D. Melmed, discusses the overlap and distinctions between the two most common and co-occurring developmental disabilities: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Every child deserves the experts to use their discerning eye to evaluate critical factors in the child’s history and then arrive at the right diagnosis to formulate a plan that is likely to work.
About Dr. Raun Melmed
Raun D. Melmed, MD, FAAP, developmental and behavioral pediatrician, is director of the Melmed Center in Scottsdale, Arizona and co-founder and medical director of the Southwest Autism Research and Resource Center in Phoenix. He is Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Arizona and on faculty at Arizona State University.
Dr. Melmed is an investigator of novel therapeutic agents in the treatment of autism, Fragile X, Angelman’s disorder and ADHD and collaborates on studies of tools used in the early diagnosis of developmental disorders.
He is the author of Autism: Early Intervention; Autism and the Extended Family; and the ST4 Mindfulness Book for Kids series including Marvin’s Monster Diary – ADHD Attacks, Timmy’s Monster Diary: Screen Time Attacks!, Harriet’s Monster Diary – Awfully Anxious, Marvin’s Monster Diary 2 (+ Lyssa): ADHD Emotion Explosion (But I Triumph, Big Time), and soon to be released, Marvin’s Monster Diary 3: Trouble with Friends (But I Get By, Big Time!). )
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic
The struggles of kids with ADHD are unmistakably unique and undoubtedly complex, but their lack of mental readiness to accept help is equally confusing. Nothing is more discouraging or draining for educators and parents than kids who resist direction instead of leaning into the help they receive. Since disrupted executive function in ADHD kids often interferes with their ability to accomplish tasks and manage personal success, their transition into young adulthood does not resemble that of the pre-teens and teens without ADHD and hence they need the help to work for them.
On this episode, Margaret Sibley, an Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and a licensed clinical psychologist, shares her insights into the motivational and executive function difficulties in adolescents and young adults with ADHD. She discusses how best to develop both the skills to manage ADHD symptoms and the skills essential for transitioning into young adulthood.
About Professor Margaret Sibley, Ph.D.
Margaret Sibley is a licensed clinical psychologist and researcher on executive function and motivation difficulties in adolescents and young adults. She directs programs of research in Miami (Florida International University) and Seattle (Seattle Children’s Hospital). Dr. Sibley is the author of Parent-Teen Therapy for Executive Function Deficits and ADHD: Building Skills and Motivation. She has published over 75 scientific articles on ADHD and related disorders. Her research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Department of Education, and the Klingenstein Third Generation Foundation. Dr. Sibley is a member of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT) and an expert on parent-teen collaborative and peer-delivered treatments for adolescents with ADHD.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
The brain’s prefrontal cortex is often described as the “work in progress” intimating that there exists a continuum of neural development shaped by an interplay between biology and behavior; each influencing the other. Naturally, Executive Function, a set of skills controlled by the prefrontal cortex, emerges slowly allowing humans to form future goals and gain independence in order to become more and more self-possessed. Based on the past few decades of research, educational and cognitive scientists have confirmed that every aspect of modern life requires strong executive function including daily planning, workplace productivity, ability to make and keep friends, marital harmony, abiding by law, and warding of social and legal troubles. This understanding has created an urgency to address the disruptions in executive function as they interfere with students succeeding in school, employees at work, and individuals in their social circle.
On this episode, cognitive neuroscientist, Professor Adele Diamond, discusses how inhibition, self-control, mental flexibility, and many other Executive Function skills are valuable for everyday success. Her work suggests that “if we want children to do well in school and in life, we need to help them develop healthy executive functions.”
About Professor Adele Diamond, PhD, FRSC, FAPA, FAPS
Adele Diamond is the Canada Research Chair Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience at UBC in Vancouver. She was educated at Swarthmore, Harvard, and Yale. Her specialty is “executive functions” (e.g., self-control, problem-solving, mentally playing with ideas, flexibly adjust to change, thinking outside the box) which depend on the brain’s prefrontal cortex and interrelated neural regions. Her work has emphasized that executive functions can be improved even in the very young and very old, and anywhere in-between. Dr. Diamond’s work on the unusual properties of the dopamine system in prefrontal cortex have improved medical treatment for ADHD and PKU, improving millions of children’s lives.
Dr. Diamond offers a markedly different perspective from mainstream education in hypothesizing that focusing exclusively on training cognitive skills is less efficient, and ultimately less successful, than also addressing emotional, social, spiritual, and physical needs. Dr. Diamond also offers a perspective markedly different from traditional medical practice in hypothesizing that treating physical health, without also addressing social and emotional health is less efficient or effective.
Recently, Dr. Diamond has turned her attention to the possible roles of music, dance, storytelling, martial arts, sports, and play in improving executive functions and academic and mental health outcomes.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Nothing about the COVID-19 pandemic is business as usual. In fact, the social and economic stressors are taking a toll on every single person’s sense of well-being. Those taking care of children and those in frail health have the added burden of creating a safe home environment while providing critical support with patience, compassion, and positivity; in spite of feeling the opposite. The good news is that decades of research has shown that while being in home confinement and socially distancing, those who will successfully figure out ways and forge a path towards anchored sanity are likely to bounce back like a skilled ninja.
On this episode, guest Dr. Linda Graham, an experienced psychotherapist and Mindful Self-Compassion teacher, shares her expertise about how the mind, body, emotions, heart, and spirit react to threats, losses, and rejections. She discusses how individuals, families, and communities can work together while building protective factors to react to the world of challenge with abundant resilience.
About Linda Graham, MFT
Linda Graham, MFT is an experienced psychotherapist and Mindful Self-Compassion teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the author of Resilience: Powerful Practices for Bouncing Back from Disappointment, Difficulty, and Even Disaster, and Bouncing Back: Rewiring Your Brain for Maximum Resilience and Well-Being. Her weekly Resources for Recovering Resilience are archived at www.lindagraham-mft.net.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
What do extinct dinosaurs, shrinking planet Mercury, pygmies from Africa, Mesopotamian pottery, Roman bath houses, and the COVID-19 virus have in common? These are topics that once children know about, can build their knowledge of the world and expand their world view. Considering that in modern America, education is the best hope in minimizing the effects of inequity, we are better off exposing children to expansive topics, stories, ideas, and concepts that can frame successfully their innate curiosity and build early childhood learning readiness.
On this episode, Natalie Wexler, journalist and author of the book, The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System—and How to Fix It, shares why a comprehension problem in reality is a knowledge problem. Even though it’s well intended, she believes that the universal approach of focusing on comprehension to improve reading skills may fail to form essential knowledge. Her research emphasizes that the surprise benefit of a content rich curriculum is such that it provides an opportunity to all learners to discover something they didn’t know they were even interested in and shape them into engaged and self-driven students.
About Natalie Wexler
Natalie Wexler is the author of The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System—and How to Fix It, and the co-author, with Judith C. Hochman, of The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and other publications, and she is a senior contributor on education to Forbes.com.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
There is a widespread acknowledgement that experts are made and not born and those who investigate how experts become experts that have studied the fields like surgery, computer programming, chess, ballet, music, or even firefighting agree that excellent training, deliberate practice, and exposure to masterful mentors are some key ingredients that seem to matter. So those who teach could benefit from the evidence that in order to put forth the best teaching teachers need to witness and interact with the best practitioners. That way, we might be able to rethink the concepts of the best students or the best classrooms by focusing on creating the best teacher experts.
On this episode, co-founder, executive director, and language arts teacher, Kim Bearden from the Ron Clark Academy, will share ideas on inspired teaching and awesome student engagement. She will discuss teaching methods that bring the students’ desire to learn into focus and inspire them to work hard on their challenges.
About Kim Bearden
Kim Bearden is the cofounder, executive director, and language arts teacher at the highly acclaimed Ron Clark Academy, an innovative middle school and educator-training facility in Atlanta. Over 62,000 educators from around the world have visited Kim’s classroom and have attended her workshops to learn better ways to promote success in their own schools.
In 2016, Kim was honored at the White House by President Obama for being inducted into to the National Teachers Hall of Fame. She was selected from 70,000 nominations as the Disney American Teacher Awards Outstanding Humanities Teacher, and the Milken Family Foundation selected her for the Award for Excellence in Education. She is the winner of the InfluencHer Award, the UGA Outstanding Educator Award, and the Turknett Character Award for Servant Leadership. Mercedes-Benz recognized her in their Greatness Lives Here campaign, and Women Works Media Group has named her one of Georgia’s Most Powerful and Influential Women. Over the past thirty-three years, she has been a teacher, instructional lead teacher, curriculum director, school-board member, staff-development trainer, and middle-school principal. Kim is a bestselling author of two books. Her newest book is Talk to Me: Find the Right Words to Inspire, Encourage, and Get Things Done.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
The classroom neurodiversity happens to pose a challenge to educators not because we have a surge in the neurodiverse student body but more likely that we have acquired newer insights into how to differentiate different learners. The question remains however, what do we know about ways in which to impart knowledge and teach skills needed for their future? Since Executive Function challenges are insidious in nature, it is often hard for educators to distinguish the motives behind “can’t do” over “won’t do” behaviors. The art of teaching comes down to adjusting expectations without offering a free pass or lowering accountability while supporting skill building.
On today’s podcast, guest and head of the AIM Academy, Chris Herman, discusses how creating school-wide beliefs, principles, and approaches which include teaching and reinforcing growth in executive skills can promote strong outcomes for all students.
About Chris Herman, M.Ed
Chris Herman is Head of School at AIM Academy in Philadelphia where he has been for 14 years. There, he remains devoted to bringing school to life for children with learning differences every day. He is an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education and Long Island University. He is an adjunct professor of Education at St. Joseph’s University.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
All parents want their children to grow up, be independent, and find happiness. Their conventional wisdom says, let me push my child to do well in school, work hard on stuff, and take part in various activities to “find” themselves. Because to a parent, the path to success has a formula “Education + Passion + Excellent Performance = Career” which equals to a life of bliss! And well-meaning parents want their children to find a career and then through that connect to their passion. But what if the formula runs into a glitch?
On this episode, guest Clinical Neuropsychologist and co-author of The Self-Driven Child, William Stixrud, Ph.D., discusses effective psychological approaches that are likely help parents reset their “reality”, help teachers adjust their task specific support, and help learners understand and accept that reinventing one’s self is a lifelong process.
About Dr. William Stixrud
William R. Stixrud, Ph.D., is a clinical neuropsychologist and founder of The Stixrud Group, a lifespan neuropsychology practice. He is also a member of the Adjunct Faculty of the Children’s National Medical Center, and he holds a faculty appointment as Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the George Washington School of Medicine. Additionally, Dr. Stixrud is a frequent lecturer, and he has authored scientific articles on Transcendental Meditation and book chapters on meditation and the integration of the arts into education. Dr. Stixrud has been quoted often in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times of London, Scientific American, Time.com, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Barron’s, and Vogue.
Dr. Stixrud holds a doctorate degree in School Psychology from the University of Minnesota. He did his training in neuropsychology at the Children’s Hospital of Boston (as a fellow of the Harvard Medical School) and Tufts New England Medical Center. Dr. Stixrud is also a rock and roll musician and plays in the band Close Enough.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Uncertainly, unceasing demands, and all around unrest can provoke the feelings of restlessness, a state of irritability, and intense worrying and general dissatisfaction. But clinically speaking, these feelings of being on the edge are the signs of anxiety and often when they exceed the threshold of bearability a sense of unending despair can follow.
On today’s podcast, psychiatrist, author of the book “The Moment of Insight”, educator, and celebrated speaker, Dr. Suvrat Bhargave from the Center for Family Psychiatry, discusses the true nature of the “growing pains” of children for whom the world is a large mass of unknown. He says anxiety is within the range of human experience and human emotion and by cultivating inner awareness, one can bring about important and meaningful changes and remind children that “HOPE is the possibility of something good”.
About Suvrat Bhargave, MD
Suvrat Bhargave, M.D. is a renowned and respected educator, author, speaker, and board-certified psychiatrist, specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry. His uncanny ability to relate to a multi-demographic audience has allowed his practice to reach an unparalleled level of success based on empathy, education, and empowerment. His book, A Moment of Insight: Universal Lessons Learned from a Psychiatrist’s Couch, offers practical strategies and thought provoking narratives to not only understand and persevere through challenging dilemmas, but to see greater purpose during these times. He demonstrates this through poignant patient stories and personal accounts.
Affectionately known for his “relatable expertise”, Dr. Bhargave is highly sought after to lecture locally and nationally on a broad range of topics pertaining to personal growth, effective parenting, relationship satisfaction, and mental health conditions. After completing his residency training and specialty fellowship from Duke University, Dr. B (as he is lovingly called by his patients) continued his practice in hospitals, community health, and private practice settings. Throughout the years, he has been most inspired by the impact his caring nature, education, and treatment have had on others to facilitate change and to experience fulfillment through gradual but dynamic moments of “insight and awareness”. A passionate advocate for healing and empowerment, Dr. B is compelled to bring a world of change to each person one moment at a time. To learn more about Dr. B and invite him to speak at your next event, visit.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Randomly scattered stars light up the night sky, but it is human inventiveness and imagination that has connected these cosmic dots into the constellations we know so well. As the podcast Full PreFrontal: Exposing the Mysteries of Executive Function celebrates its 100th episode, we have the same pleasure of connecting the scattered ideas that experts have shared with us over the past two years into a meaningful constellations of Executive Function concepts. We’ll explore these concepts and their impact on learning, education, self-efficacy, interpersonal connectivity, and the human story of personal progress.
Here are 10 lessons learned from 100 interviews with researchers, psychologists, neuroscientists, educators, authors, journalists, and thought leaders who believe that the power of the brain is a gift to us all – a gift we must take the time to unwrap with careful attention to details, mindfulness, and tremendous self-control.
10 Things Learned:
Success stems from the complex balance between talent, effort, and effective orchestration of future-forward thinking. Such skills are known as Executive Function, which allow us to map out our thoughts, behaviors, and actions in order to yield favorable outcomes that benefit the future-self. Here are the 10 takeaways:
Even though life has many moving parts, including those that create utter chaos as well as those that bring s
When you shoot before you aim you get bad results. But that’s what everyday impulsiveness looks like for someone with ADHD. Pencil tapping, restless legs, inability to sit too long, distracted mind, interrupting others, and getting bored too quickly are some additional commonplace behaviors that highlight the habits and symptoms of those with ADHD. But beneath the surface the mismanagement of the goals, missing the forest for the trees, shooting from the hip, or regretting bad decisions is invisible to the naked eye.
On today’s podcast, clinical psychologist, celebrated author, and director of the Brown ADHD Clinic for ADHD, Thomas Brown, Ph.D. discusses the complex syndrome of ADHD and its developmental impairments which often are situationally specific and its chronic and ongoing interference with life can be exhausting.
About Thomas E. Brown, Ph.D.
Dr. Brown is a clinical psychologist who received his Ph.D. from Yale University and is Director of the Brown Clinic for Attention & Related Disorders in Manhattan Beach, CA. He specializes in assessment and treatment of high-IQ children, adolescents and adults with ADD/ADHD and related problems.
After serving on the clinical faculty of the Yale Medical School for 20 years, Dr. Brown resigned to relocate to Manhattan Beach, California where he directs the Brown ADHD Clinic for ADHD and Related Problems in children and adults. He holds an appointment as Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. He is also an elected Fellow of the American Psychological Assn.
Dr. Brown has presented papers, workshops, courses and symposia at national meetings of the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, National Association of School Psychologists, International Neuropsychological Society, the National Attention Deficit Disorder Association and CHADD. He has also lectured at universities and international meetings of professionals in more than 40 countries.
He is author of 5 books on ADHD; his work has been published in six different languages. His most recent books are: Smart but Stuck: Emotions in Teens and Adults with ADHD (2014) and Outside the Box: Rethinking ADD/ADHD in Children and Adults-A Practical Guide (2017).
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skil
The answer to the question “What percentage of 16 million children living below the poverty line have a book in their home?” is 33%. While that is devastating, the real question is, does this query truly capture the complexities of developing reading skills in children living in these disadvantaged circumstances and would the exposure to more books promote the development of reading. The first truth about reading is that it is a skill; a skill that needs to be learned and taught. It takes systematic instructional effort to create access to the treasures that are underneath the surface of printed words. And the true failure in education is not approaching “reading” that way.
On this episode, Louisa Moats, Ed.D., a teacher, psychologist, researcher, graduate school faculty member, and author of many influential scientific journal articles, books, and policy papers, will educate everyone how the brain was not wired for reading and how the complexities involved in acquiring proficiency in reading warrants special attention and specific training of educators who are in charge of making our children literate. We cannot talk about Executive Function and students’ capacity to manage information until we address the issue of successful transition from learning to read and then reading to learn.
About Louisa Moats, Ed.D.
Louisa Moats, Ed.D., has been a teacher, psychologist, researcher, graduate school faculty member, and author of many influential scientific journal articles, books, and policy papers on the topics of reading, spelling, language, and teacher preparation. She was Co-Principal Investigator of an NICHD Early Interventions Project in Washington, D.C., public schools and Principal Investigator on two small business innovation research (SBIR) grants from the National Institutes of Health. In addition, she led the committee that developed the International Dyslexia Association’s Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading. Dr. Moats developed her current approach to teacher training, called LETRS, from her experiences as an instructor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, St. Michael’s College in Vermont, the Dartmouth Medical School Department of Psychiatry, and the University of Texas, Houston.
Dr. Moats’ awards include the prestigious Samuel T. and June L. Orton award from the International Dyslexia Association for outstanding contributions to the field; the Eminent Researcher Award from Learning Disabilities Australia; and the Benita Blachman award from the Reading League.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Violet is the first to admit that people like her, who themselves have ADHD, suffer from “foot in mouth disease”. Getting herself in a jam by blurting out things, starting things but not finishing, procrastinating, and allowing chaos to continue without intercepting it with some remedy were a few things that made Violet’s life with ADHD harder than it needed to be. Becoming a parent to two kids with ADHD at a time when neither she or husband were diagnosed yet was brutal. But this a story of Violet finding her footing in challenging circumstances where respite came when she began to rethink solutions by reframing the problem. As lawyer by training, Violet always knew how to advocate or make her case, but through therapy and our work together, Violet has learned the secret to building a team that makes anything in the world possible.
Join us to hear how a mom with ADHD champions harder than anyone in her life because she knows you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear and you shouldn’t try to!
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Thomas Wolfe said it best, “Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs”. A school culture and a home culture can have a profound impact on children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development. Executive Function engages the brain’s self-guiding system that takes us from challenges to mastery, from self-blindness to self-awareness, and from indifference to self-compassion. And that’s why it is important that growing brains and young learners from kindergarten through high school receive specific guidance to develop these skills with a strong cultural guardrail that sets the stage for future resilience in anticipation of elevated demands and ongoing everyday unpredictability.
Today’s episode features a team from the Springer School and Center from Cincinnati, Ohio who discusses how their school engages the school leadership, teachers, students, as well as parents to cultivate and promote the ProEF Culture. Springer’s Principal Eldrich Carr, School psychologist and Center Program Coordinator Dr. Mary Mulcahey, and Springer’s Director of Learning Programs Carmen Mendoza will share how best to help children that we know need help.
About Dr. Mary Ann Mulcahey, Eldrich Carr, and Carmen Mendoza
Springer School and Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, has many dedicated professionals, including Dr. Mary Ann Mulcahey, Eldrich Carr, and Carmen Mendoza. Springer is the only school in the region devoted entirely to the education of children with learning disabilities (LD) in grades 1-8. Springer is a unique environment where children learn the tools and strategies to address their learning disabilities and to find real success in school and throughout their adult lives.
Through its outreach programs, parents and professionals develop an understanding of learning disabilities and the most effective means to address them. Springer School and Center is the leading LD resource for children, families, and professionals throughout southwestern Ohio, northern Kentucky and southeastern Indiana.
Dr. Mary Ann Mulcahey, a clinical psychologist, is a Center Program Coordinator and educates parents and professionals through the development of courses. Her most popular courses help to educate the community about executive functioning.
Eldrich Carr is Springer’s Principal and is responsible for the day to day school operations. He works with families, teachers, and school leaders to develop an outstanding program for students who attend Springer.
Carmen Mendoza is Springer’s Director of Learning Programs and oversees curriculum and programming for students, parents, and the community.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school st
Well-cultivated attentional processes help orient us to the right information in the environment which in return, presents us with the greatest opportunities for learning and success. But research shows that those diagnosed with ADHD possess far less interest in tasks and particularly, those tasks that present with delayed rewards. The entire academic experience – working hard on something that builds knowledge over time even though momentarily it appears to serve no purpose in the immediate life – creates an insurmountable challenge for those who are bright, but have ADHD.
On this ExFiles episode I interview my client, Ansley Kaplan, who candidly describes her journey as a determined young college student who showed up with a known diagnosis of ADHD, but without having a clue of the real ramifications of executive dysfunction that had coexisted silently for years. All her life, Ansley channeled her smarts to be #1 while internalizing the performance anxiety that had resulted from not knowing better methods, or how best to cultivate a flexible perspective or more refined ways to self-direct for superior future outcomes. At the end of our therapeutic work, Ansley emerges with tools and insights which now have opened the pathways which allow her to access her infinite potential without the anxiety of the unknown.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Ancient wisdom has rightfully identified problems with the human mind which is ill-fitted to deal with the perceptual ambiguity that includes frequent gaps between one’s perceptions and reality. This creates a tussle between the intuitive system of the brain versus the reflective one, which often results in a “self-blind” mind that doesn’t know itself. As a result, the human mind and brain ends up spending a lifetime untangling the clash of the titans, or the intuitive and reflective systems.
On today’s podcast our guest, Christopher Chabris, Ph. D., a cognitive psychologist, an author, an Ig Nobel prize winner and a Professor at Geisinger, an integrated healthcare system, will discuss what cognitive psychology has discovered about mental illusions and it’s effect which leads us to harbor mistaken judgments about our true limitations. Because by design the brain doesn’t know how it operates and those interested in Executive Function, self-awareness, and self-regulation need to reconsider methods of coaching, training, or educating others.
About Christopher Chabris, Ph.D.
Christopher Chabris is a Professor at Geisinger, an integrated healthcare system in Pennsylvania. His research focuses on attention, intelligence (individual, collective, and social), behavior genetics, and decision-making. He received his Ph.D. in psychology and A.B. in computer science from Harvard University. In 2019 he was selected as a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. Chris is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us, which has been published in 20 languages to date. He shared the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize in Psychology (awarded for “achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think”), given for the scientific experiment that inspired the book. Chris has spoken to audiences at major conferences and businesses, including PopTech, Google, Credit Suisse, and Procter & Gamble, and his work has been published in leading journals including Science, Nature, Psychological Science, Perception, and Cognitive Science. He is a chess master, poker amateur, and games enthusiast; for three years he wrote the monthly “Game On” column in The Wall Street Journal. He also contributes to The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Slate, and other publications.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
21st century living has put a strain on our brain’s capacity to plan for the future, process and retain information, and pursue the goals of a multifaceted life. And while moving through the highly-wired and totally connected world, one often wonders if we are truly benefitting from the advancements provided by the technology that has the potential to augment the brain’s limitations or are we being enslaved by it? Often the key is to take the time to assess and appropriate the use of technology to one’s own personal needs and then to develop the insight as well as the skills to avoid the built-in lure that pleases the thrill-seeking mind. With effective coaching and training, even those with executive function challenges can learn to augment their lives with a second brain.
On this episode, speech-language pathologist, author, and expert in assistive technology, Joan Greene, will discuss how to improve our relationship to technology while commanding it to serve our needs on a daily basis. Those who help others have no excuse but to up their technology game so that the brains that are wired with technology can fire together.
About Joan Green, SLP
Joan always has an eye out for affordable cutting-edge technologies to help others thrive in life. Her mission is to help young children, students and adults not only overcome communication, literacy, and cognitive challenges, but to maximize success and happiness.
For the past 30+ years, Joan has been providing forward-thinking speech therapy services to individuals of all ages who have a wide variety of speaking, understanding, reading, writing, learning and attention challenges. She received her undergraduate as well as graduate education at Northwestern University. After spending time working for others in hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and home care, she formed Innovative Speech Therapy in the Washington, DC area in 1992, so that she could provide top quality rehabilitative and intervention services using her unique approach combining cutting-edge technology with individualized action plans. She continues to prioritize her own learning by attending and presenting at workshops and conferences, networking with colleagues, and exploring emerging technologies.
In addition to providing 1:1 therapy as well as and professional development and online webinars and courses, Joan has published 4 books. Her most recent bestselling publication was published in 2018 titled, Assistive Technology in Special Education, 3rd Edition: Resources to Support Literacy, Communication and Learning Differences.
She has received several awards for her unique approach to helping others and is actively involved with many local, online and international groups and associations. Joan is ASHA certified and licensed in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC. She was born and raised in Buffalo, NY and lives in Potomac, MD. She is the proud mother of 4 wonderful young adults and 2 dogs.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of
In their song “Stuck in the Middle With You,” Scottish folk rock band Stealers Wheel’s lyrics go something like this –”Yes I’m stuck in the middle with you, And I’m wondering what it is I should do, It’s so hard to keep this smile from my face. Losing control, yeah, I’m all over the place.” These words capture the plight of a young and developing brain that often gets stuck in black and white thinking when caught in the throws of daily challenges, emotional setbacks, and unexpected wrenches. Simple redirection and cajoling is not enough to unhook that brain from the debilitating inflexibility and emotional stickiness.
On this episode, our guest Hanna Bogen Novak, M.S., CCC-SLP, Speech-Language Pathologist, Division Director at the Center For Connection, and co-creator of a curriculum called the Brain Talk Curriculum, will discuss the secrets of self-regulation, how best to understand the metacognitive needs of children with Executive function challenges, and how to provide strategies and resources that can enrich their lives.
About Hanna Bogen Novak, M.S., CCC-SLP
Hanna Bogen Novak, M.S., CCC-SLP is a Speech-Language Pathologist and Social-Cognitive Specialist based in Los Angeles, CA with a primary focus on interventions that support self-regulation, social communication, executive functioning, social-emotional development, and speech and language deficits. Hanna is the owner of Bogen Speech & Language Therapy, The SLP Division Director at The Center for Connection, and the co-creator of The Brain Talk Curriculum. In addition to clinical work, Hanna provides trainings and consultations to schools, therapy teams, and parents to support greater understanding of her focus areas, as well as to provide strategies and resources professionals can use with students.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
According to Dr. Stuart Brown, “divinely superfluous neurons” orchestrate a seemingly purposeless voluntary act that we call play. But let’s not underestimate the necessity and impact of play on the developing mind and overall human flourishing. Even though play is natural to babies, exciting to children, and helpful to even adults, not everyone gets equal opportunity to play and those who grow up with play deficits are known to either behave inflexibly or experience mild chronic depression.
In this big-picture episode, Sucheta will discuss the value of the everyday human experience of play that leads to playfulness in home and work life. Sucheta’s friends, Lisa & Laurie, will share their childhood memories that will be sure put a smile on your face. I hope you’re inspired to value play as you solve problems and think flexibly for everyday success.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Americans were never that concerned about the issues of educating children until it dawned on everybody that children are in fact “economically useless, but emotionally priceless” as described by Viviana A. Zelizer. Since then, being over-consumed by current competition and future career success, well-educated upper-middle class affluent families, schools and communities are caught up in ensuring their children’s success, rather than preparing them for life.
On today’s podcast, our guest Suniya S. Luthar, Foundation Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University and Professor Emerita at Columbia University’s Teachers College returns to obliterate the counterintuitive notion that privilege wipes away any liability. Her focus in this episode is school culture and how it can bring awareness to the social, psychological, and emotional risks that exist in these communities.
About Professor Suniya Luthar
Suniya S. Luthar is Foundation Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, and Professor Emerita, Columbia University’s Teachers College. Her research has involved understanding pathways to resilience in diverse populations, and developing interventions to address these.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
No one is spared from the drama and trauma of growing up, not even affluent kids. However, as hard as it is to imagine, the children of highly-educated parents with abundant material comforts and lifestyles of privilege have their own set of challenges, which surface in their own unique ways. They are growing up in highly-competitive environments with an immense pressure to excel, are frequently exposed to social comparisons, and have highly-driven and extremely busy parents who are not always available to relieve psychological distress or offer help.
On this episode, our guest Suniya S. Luthar, Foundation Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University and Professor Emerita at Columbia University’s Teachers College, dives deep into the challenges of growing up in affluence, being a widely stretched and stressed parent, and the best ways to build authentic connections that foster deeper understanding and promote the wellbeing of the whole child.
About Professor Suniya Luthar
Suniya S. Luthar is Foundation Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, and Professor Emerita, Columbia University’s Teachers College. Her research has involved understanding pathways to resilience in diverse populations, and developing interventions to address these.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Seeing an under-producing, under-performing, or generally disengaged kid is quite painful. They often struggle to connect with purpose and persevere when school activities get challenging. Sometimes educators attempt to engage children with fear or praise or even by trying to entertain them, which too doesn’t always yield self-driven motivation. The world comes at these kids with a great deal of ideas and suggestions to engage them. So what’s the right way to coach children and adolescents that will lead to intrinsic and self-sustaining effort which ultimately drives student success beyond academics?
On this episode, our guest Mr. Michael Delman, founder of Beyond Booksmart, talks about the best ways to coach children who struggle with attention, organization, and memory because of various ailments, but ultimately are in dire need of change. Coaching is essential in managing problems with underdeveloped Executive Function skills, but its true success it is rooted in interpersonal wisdom.
About Michael Delman, M.Ed.
Massachusetts Distinguished Educator Michael Delman is a pioneer and leader in the area of Executive Function coaching. He has served as CEO and founder of Beyond BookSmart, the nation’s largest Executive Function coaching company, since 2006. Prior to that, Michael co-founded and was principal of McAuliffe Charter School in Framingham, Massachusetts. Michael has presented at conferences such as The Learning Disabilities Association of America, the 2018 International Conference on ADHD, and numerous regional organizations. He has been featured in The Times of London, CBS Boston affiliate WBZ TV, and dozens of media outlets across the country. In 2018, he published his first book Your Kid’s Gonna Be Okay: Building the Executive Function Skills Your Child Needs in the Age of Attention. Michael brings his trademark enthusiasm to his work with students and adults alike, helping people discover their strengths, develop their confidence, and become more effective at whatever challenges they face.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emoti
What’s common between a soccer mom who has a flat tire on the way to her son’s game, a Wall Street dad who just got told to stay in the office for the markets in the East to open, and a middle school girl who just got her new smart phone? They are all struggling to cope with feeling either anxious, lonely, stressed out, or tired. A dysregulated frontal lobe system often causes our executive function to crash and burn. Through mindfulness, one can cultivate a form of awareness that can bring attunement to knowing what you’re doing as you’re doing it.
On this episode our guest, Dr. Christopher Willard (PsyD), a psychologist and educational consultant specializing in mindfulness, talks about the elements of mindfulness training and flexibility training.
About Dr. Chris Willard
Dr. Christopher Willard (PsyD) is a psychologist and educational consultant based in Boston specializing in mindfulness. He has been practicing meditation for 20 years, and has led hundreds of workshops around the world, with invitations to more than two dozen countries. He currently serves on the board of directors at the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, and is the president of the Mindfulness in Education Network. He has presented at TEDx conferences and his thoughts have appeared in the New York Times, The Washington Post, mindful.org, and elsewhere. He is the author of Child’s Mind (2010) Growing Up Mindful (2016) Raising Resilience (2017) and eight other books for parents, professionals and children, along with six sets of cards and therapeutic games, available in more than ten languages. He teaches at Harvard Medical School.
On the personal side, he enjoys traveling, hiking, cooking, reading and writing, and being a father.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Psychologist and author Alexandra Horowitz says “Attention is an intentional, unapologetic discriminator. It asks what is relevant right now, and gears us up to notice only that.” It’s a gift to have such attentional acumen, but not everyone is lucky to have such a natural capacity for discrimination. In fact, in a neurogenetic and neuropsychiatric disorder like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), the brain isn’t wired to successfully ignore things once they get noticed.
In this big-picture episode, Sucheta discusses how and why ADHD is more like a disorder of Executive Function rather than simply a disorder of attention and how the management needs to include a comprehensive neurogentic & neurocognitive approach that centers around medication, behavior therapy, environmental modifications, and skill development.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
If you are taking a stroll on the beach while you have parked your car at a meter, you have to set aside some mental resources to think about the time and to make decisions to either return to your car to add money to the meter or take a chance or bear the pain of having to pay a fine later. But the human struggle of balancing the desire to be in the moment while also considering the future is exacerbated by conditions such as ADHD and that’s why many people struggle to cater to the needs of their future self while being their current self.
On today’s podcast, our guest Ari Tuckman, Psy.D., a practicing psychologist, author of “ADHD After Dark: Better Sex Life, Better Relationship”, and a host of the Podcast “More Attention, Less Deficit”, talks about the disorder of ADHD and how it is truly all about executive function and shortening the unimaginable distance between the need of the current self and future self.
About Ari Tuckman, PsyD, CST
Ari Tuckman, PsyD, CST has given more than 350 presentations and routinely earns excellent reviews for his ability to make complicated information understandable and useful. He is the author of four books: “ADHD After Dark: Better Sex Life, Better Relationship”, “Understand Your Brain, Get More Done”, “More Attention, Less Deficit” and “Integrative Treatment for Adult ADHD”. His “More Attention, Less Deficit” podcast has more than 100 episodes and more than two million downloads. He is a psychologist and sex therapist in private practice in West Chester, PA, a former board member of CHADD National, and co-chair of the CHADD conference committee.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
If an athlete on the high school varsity football, lacrosse, or soccer team happens to be more than typically distracted, taking too long, has become inconsistent with routines or happens to frequently doze off in history class, the teacher’s first assumption might be to question the student’s motivation and him hitting his head three weeks ago might be long forgotten. But the data shows that 12% of those children with a mild brain injury continue to have persistent symptoms beyond 1 year and it is vital that all those involved educating such children be informed about the nuances of this hidden epidemic.
On this episode, Dr. Ann Glang, a special education researcher who for over 25 years has designed and studied interventions to support children and adolescents with TBI, educators, and families, will share how a brain injury as a condition differs from other disabilities and how best to support the needs of these students in the classroom and beyond. Considering the prevalence of traumatic brain injuries in children is on the rise, it is no surprise that they all end up in our schools and many in regular classrooms. By learning about the educational impact of such injuries to the brain, teachers and parents will gain the power and agency to make a difference in the life of every child.
About Ann Glang, Ph.D.
Dr. Ann Glang is a special education researcher who for over 25 years has designed and studied interventions to support children and adolescents with TBI, educators, and families. Dr. Glang has served as a principal investigator for numerous National Institutes of Health and Department of Education-funded projects in her role as a researcher and Director of the Center on Brain Injury Research and Training at University of Oregon. Her research interests include childhood brain injury prevention and interventions for helping teachers and families support children and adolescents with brain injuries.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
The greatest philosophical writings over the centuries have often examined the idea of the meaning of life. After the World War II, Viktor Frankl’s writing often explored the idea of the existential vacuum, which plagued those who entered the concentration camps giving them no reason to fight for life. What we realize now is that a sense of purpose and meaning plays a vital role as it offers protection from life’s undeniable hardships and discovering that purpose for oneself can be the meaningful journey in and of itself.
On this episode, our guest William Damon, Ph.D., a professor and psychologist at the Stanford School of Education, says that stress isn’t the biggest problem growing up today: It’s meaninglessness. Tune into Sucheta’s interview with Dr. Damon as they discuss how to help children build meaning beyond themselves.
About William Damon, Ph.D.
William Damon is Professor of Education at Stanford University, Director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is one of the world’s leading researchers on the development of purpose and author of The Path to Purpose. Damon’s other books include The Moral Child; Greater Expectations (winner of the Parent’s Choice Book Award); Some Do Care: Lives of Moral Commitment (with Anne Colby); Good Work (with Howard Gardner and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi); and The Power of Ideals: The Real Story of Moral Choice (also with Anne Colby). Damon’s present work includes a study that explores the development of purpose in the college years and a study of family purposes across generations. Damon has been elected to membership in the National Academy of Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Traveling through time, visiting imaginary places, witnessing wars and famines, and reliving crusades, is all made possible by reading. It engages visual imagination, invokes emotions, and challenges our preconceived notions and it single-handedly helps us change our mind. The reading journey begins from making sense of a written word to gathering new information from English, science, or social studies texts to eventually connecting it all to one’s own knowledge, ideas, and beliefs. But such a profoundly relevant, complex, and meaningful learning process is often overlooked.
On this episode, my guest Kelly Cartwright, Ph.D., who’s motto is “Good readers and good thinkers” joins us to discuss why educators must make every attempt to teach executive function skills to actively support reading comprehension.
About Kelly B. Cartwright, Ph.D.
Kelly B. Cartwright is Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Teacher Preparation at Christopher Newport University (CNU) where she directs the Reading, Executive function, and Development (READ) Lab. Kelly’s research explores the development of skilled reading comprehension and the neurocognitive and affective factors that underlie comprehension processes and difficulties from preschool through adulthood. Her work has appeared in Journal of Educational Psychology, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Research in Developmental Disabilities, and a range of other research publications. Her books on reading comprehension include Executive Skills and Reading Comprehension: A Guide for Educators, Word Callers: Small-Group and One-to-One Interventions for Children who “Read” but Don’t Comprehend. and Literacy Processes: Cognitive Flexibility in Learning and Teaching, which was nominated for the Ed Fry Book Award in 2008. Kelly has served on the Board of Directors of the Literacy Research Association and was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. Her research has been supported by grants from the Virginia State Reading Association and the United States Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. Kelly regularly works with teachers in public and private schools throughout the US to better understand and improve reading comprehension for struggling readers, and these experiences inform her research.
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Our lives have become so complex that surviving without shopping lists, calendars, scheduling apps, timers and alarms is nearly impossible. On top of that, sometimes, the information overload gets so out of hand that there’s no time left to pick our scattered selves up to set helpful systems up in the first place. In order to help raise organized and independent school-ready children it is important that parents do their bit that goes beyond just the neat and tidy homes.
Tune in to today’s Big Picture episode as I discuss the myths surrounding developing the mastery of organization skills, the role of organization of space, time and tasks in successful goal-management, and the connection between an organized mind and an organized life.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Rarely in a curriculum while learning, we ask children where they feel their emotions in their own bodies and whether those feeling change as their emotions change. Children who feel safe to tackle challenges, assured that they have the skills they need and are comfortable to seek help when needed, do well in school and life. Though in its early stage, research in contemplative studies and mindfulness practices is beginning to show a promising impact of such training on children’s emotional regulation and self-control.
On this episode school psychologist, Debra A. Krodman-Collins, Ph.D., NSCP, RYT, co-author of S.T.O.P. and Relax; a yoga-based curriculum, will discuss how to use yoga-based self-calming techniques for school-aged children to conquer their primitive lizard brain with the wizardry of executive function. With focused and intentional effort to connect mind and body, one can master the mechanism that governs Executive Function.
About Debra A. Krodman-Collins, Ph.D., NSCP, RYT
Debra Krodman-Collins is a Florida licensed psychologist, Nationally Certified School Psychologist, and Registered Yoga Teacher. Prior to her 30 years with Florida’s Broward County Schools, Dr. Collins served in Bermuda with the Child Development Project, Ministry of Education, and Education Planning Team. She taught psychology as an adjunct professor at Bermuda College and at Broward College. Dr. Collins’ work includes diagnostic evaluation of children’s learning and behavior, interventions to promote students’ progress, and trainings for psychologists, teachers, counselors and parents. She is co-author of S.T.O.P. and Relax. This yoga-based curriculum equips teachers or therapists to use visual cues and physical exercises to teach self-calming to children with developmental disabilities such as autism. The forthcoming book Stories of School Yoga: Narratives from the Field, expected from SUNY Press in September 2019, includes a chapter discussing her work. Most recently Dr. Collins has focused on training students and staff to support self-regulation of attention, emotions, and behavior. Dr. Collins has conducted workshops for national and international conferences, including the Autism Society of America, Learning & the Brain, the Young Child Expo & Conference, and the International Conference on Autism, Intellectual Disability & Developmental Disabilities.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdT
Other than air, what is invisible, omnipresent, affects every single human being and yet is taken for granted? The answer is the cultural norms. They are the unspoken rules of social behaviors and shared conventions that everyone is expected follow, but may be doing so without really connecting it to the WHY.
On this episode, our guest, distinguished university professor and professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, Michele Gelfand, Ph.D., discusses the concept of looser or tighter cultures and how our deep cultural programming shapes our views and informs our implicit understanding of what’s permissible in public versus private settings. In order to achieve goals we aspire, we need strong Executive Function and self-regulation skills that allow us to activate versus inhibit certain decisions and actions. However, without the true understanding of the social or cultural context or the understanding of social conventions, one might fail to comply because of having failed to code-switch.
About Dr. Michele Gelfand
Michele Gelfand is Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park. Gelfand uses field, experimental, computational and neuroscience methods to understand the evolution of culture and its multilevel consequences. Her work has been published in outlets such as Science, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Psychological Science, Nature Scientific Reports, Nature Human behavior, PLOS 1, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Research in Organizational Behavior, Annual Review of Psychology, American Psychologist, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, among others.
Gelfand is the founding co-editor of the Advances in Culture and Psychology annual series and Frontiers of Culture and Psychology series (with CY Chiu and Ying-Yi Hong, Oxford University Press). She is the Past President of the International Association for Conflict Management, Past Division Chair of the Conflict Division of the Academy of Management, Past Treasurer of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, and co-founder of the Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution. She received the 2016 Diener award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the 2017 Outstanding International Psychologist Award from the APA, the 2019 Outstanding Cultural Psychology Award from SPSP, the 2109 Science-Practitioner award from SIOP, and the Annaliese Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation which was given to 7 scientists worldwide for outstanding contributions in their fields. Her work that was published in Science was honored with the Gordon Allport Intergroup Relations Prize from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed
One shouldn’t be discouraged by the fact that learning is full of struggles as these struggles are inherent to the process of gathering facts, acquiring new knowledge, and gaining vivid insights. However, the struggles that go beyond a certain threshold built into learning should be examined and responded to. On this episode, author, life-long learner, and experienced educator, Kathleen Kryza, discusses the relationship between student struggles and the incorporation of brain-based differentiated instruction and cooperative learning to elevate the learner experience.
About Kathleen Kryza
Kathleen Kryza is a life-long learner, an experienced educator and an outstanding presenter/coach/consultant. Kathleen is passionate, informed and committed to bringing the best educational practices to educators and parents so that they can help ALL children succeed.
Kathleen is co-author of “Transformative Teaching: Changing Classroom Culturally, Emotionally and Academically.” (Solution Tree Press, Oct. 2015). She is also the co-author of Developing Growth Mindsets in the Inspiring Classroom, Inspiring Learners Press (2011) and the Corwin Press books, Inspiring Secondary Learners (2007), Inspiring Elementary Learners, (2008,) Differentiating in the Real Classroom (2009), Winning Strategies for Test Taking (2009). Kathleen is featured in the video, Differentiating Instruction in the Intermediate Grades, Bureau of Education and Research (BER), 2008.
Kathleen has a Masters Degree in Special Education, and a Bachelors Degree in Elementary Education. She has also done extensive training over the years with giants in the field on topics such as differentiated instruction, brain-based learning, cooperative learning, co-teaching, coaching, and content literacy. She has presented for school districts locally, nationally, and internationally for over 30 years on various educational and motivational topics.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Life is complicated and we all are doing the best we can to manage its inherently challenging nature and predictably unpredictable flow. Developmental disorders like ADHD, and mental disorders like anxiety and depression, further exaggerate this uncertainty and creates a permanent state of flux.
On this episode, our guest, Dr. Mark Bertin, a developmental pediatrician and an author of multiple books, talks about best ways to understand ADHD and augment care through the lens of mindfulness. Such approach allows children and parents with ADHD to see things as they are; just with more clarity. ADHD and Executive Dysfunction are synonymous entities and the management approach leads to greater success if it is rooted in compassion and human wisdom. There cannot be a better guide to survival than that!
About Mark Bertin, M.D.
Dr. Bertin is a developmental pediatrician and author of How Children Thrive, Mindful Parenting for ADHD and The Family ADHD Solution, which integrate mindfulness into the rest of evidence-based pediatric care. He is a contributing author for the book Teaching Mindfulness Skills to Kids and Teens. Dr. Bertin is on faculty at New York Medical College and the Windward Teacher Training Institute, and on the advisory boards for the non-profits Common Sense Media and Reach Out and Read. He is a regular contributor to Mindful Magazine, and his blog is available through Mindful.org and Psychology Today. For more information, please visit his website at www.developmentaldoctor.com.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
You might be great at problem solving but the true test of executive function proficiency is not just helping someone get their car out of a ditch, but applying those same skills and principles to help yourself and get your own car out of a ditch. The process of self-directed learning is gradual and insidious where the individual gathers knowledge through experiential learning and subconsciously assimilates and integrates ideas to bounce back.
In this big-picture episode, Sucheta discusses how parents can guide children to develop the self-directed thinking, which has a self-help component to it, so that they can survive everyday roadblocks, set-backs and disappointments and “MacGyver” through everyday problems.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Learning is magical but not every teacher is a magician! Astronaut Scott Kelly celebrated for his curiosity for space missions, struggled to find his footing in the midst of “dull and boring” high school years. More than ever before, distracted, disengaged, and disillusioned kids finding themselves stuck in the ever widening gap between a ”ready to learn” mindset and a “ready to be inspired” mindset.
On this episode, Dr. Judy Willis, a board-certified neurologist and a former classroom teacher, shares her passion that integrates neuroscience research regarding learning and the brain to galvanize the educators to let the glitter spill all over their classroom floor. By reintegrating effective and practical ideas into teaching, Dr. Willis believes every teacher can sprinkle magic dust that unleashes one’s inner zeal for discovery.
About Judy Willis, M.D.
Dr. Judy Willis combined her 15 years as a board-certified practicing neurologist with ten subsequent years as a classroom teacher to become a leading authority in the neuroscience of learning. Dr. Willis has written nine books and more than 100 articles about applying neuroscience research to classroom teaching strategies. She is on the adjunct faculty of the Williams College.
Dr. Willis travels nationally and internationally giving presentations, workshops, and consulting while continuing to write books and staff expert blogs for NBC News Education Nation, Edutopia, Psychology Today, and The Guardian. In 2011 she was selected by Edutopia as a “Big Thinkers on Education.”
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of Ex
When learning, why is it that people often use the most exactly ill-fitted strategies or fail to appreciate the ones that do work? An educator who assumes the role of parting knowledge without much attention to imparting the wisdom of learning HOW to learn is churning our unenlightened students who could never take charge of their learning and self-knowledge.
On this episode, Professor Mark McDaniel returns to discuss the idea of gaining more durable knowledge through effort, problem solving, and rehearsal. Tune in to find out why such processes create life-long effective learning.
About Mark McDaniel, Ph.D.
Mark McDaniel is a Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and the Co-Director of the Center for Integrative Research on Cognition, Learning, and Education. He received his Ph.D. from University of Colorado in 1980. His research is in the general area of human learning and memory, with an emphasis on prospective memory, encoding and retrieval processes in episodic memory and applications to educational contexts. His educationally relevant research includes a series of studies on elaborative study techniques and enhancing learning through testing (repeated retrieval), with much of this latter work being conducted in actual college and middle school classrooms. This research was sponsored by the Institute of Educational Sciences and the James S. McDonnell Foundation.
McDaniel has served as Associate Editor of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition and as President of the Rocky Mountain Psychological Association and of Division 3 of the American Psychological Association. He has published over 275 journal articles, book chapters, and edited books on human learning and memory, and is the co-author with Peter Brown and Henry Roediger of the recent book: Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (Harvard University Press, 2014).
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
The charm of entering college camouflages the real invitation to become responsible for yourself by figuring out what you want while taking care of the mundane, yet obligatory tasks of daily student life. The dread of “adulting” is further muddled by having to navigate the world with the unseen layers of executive function challenges that compromise attention, new learning, slower thinking, and goal management, pushing away the dream of joining the workforce and transitioning into successfully adult life.
On this episode, Mary R.T. Kennedy, Ph.D., Professor and Chair at the Communication Sciences and Disorders at Chapman University, discusses the special challenges and the proposed road to recovery for college students after a traumatic brain injury.
About Mary Kennedy, Ph.D.
Mary R.T. Kennedy, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, is Professor and Chair, Communication Sciences and Disorders at Chapman University, Orange, CA. She is a certified speech-language pathologist and is a fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). Dr. Kennedy has extensive clinical and research experience working with individuals with cognitive impairments after traumatic brain injury, specifically executive functions, metacognition and self-regulation. Her work to translate scientific evidence into practice has helped practitioners engage in evidence-based practice (EBP). In recent years, her work has focused on how best to support college students with brain injury. In 2017, she authored a book for rehabilitation professionals and educators titled, Coaching College Students with Executive Function Problems, by Guilford Publishing.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
We have all done it; followed the GPS blindly and reached the international terminal instead of the domestic one or forgotten to turn off the car lights, leaving them on overnight. The only solution is to pay attention to attention and see how to get it under our conscious control.
On this episode, Courtney Stevens, PhD, a developmental cognitive neuroscientist and Associate Professor of Psychology at Willamette University in Portland discusses selective attention and the bearing it has on learning, thinking, and behavior throughout your lifespan. Attention is a gateway to information processing and it’s vital that a connection be made transparent between attention, thinking, and Executive Function.
About Dr. Courtney Stevens
Courtney Stevens, PhD, is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist and Associate Professor of Psychology at Willamette University. She is an expert in the development and plasticity of the human brain, including the role of stress and early socioeconomic adversity on neural systems. In the course of her research, Stevens has partnered with preschool, K-12, and college programs to study factors that influence students’ academic success and emotional well-being. In one line of research, she has contributed to the development and evaluation of a program to support families with preschool children living in poverty, including adaptations for different cultural contexts. Her research has been funded by the NSF and NIH. Dr. Stevens has been recognized with national awards for excellence in teaching and neuroscience outreach. She has presented her research nationally and internationally, to academic, policy, and community audiences. Dr. Stevens completed her undergraduate degree at Reed College and her master’s and doctorate at the University of Oregon.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Well-built Executive Function lends itself to thoughtful decision making and on-point problem solving, advantageous to meeting personal goals. However, the shifting nature of cognitive resources warrants keen attention to making crafty adjustments to our daily schedules to actualize the best results. William James was onto something when he wrote, “The great thing, then, in all education, is to make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and to guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague.”
On this episode, we talk with Daniel Pink, the author of six provocative books including his latest book When that challenges the perception that all times of day are created equal. He offers the valuable science behind the world changing idea of “timing”, which if taken seriously can offer insights into an optimally functioning self.
About Daniel Pink
Daniel H. Pink is the author of six provocative books — including his newest, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, which has spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list and has been named a best book of 2018 by Amazon, iBooks, Goodreads, and several more outlets. His other books include the long-running New York Times bestseller A Whole New Mind and the #1 New York Times bestsellers Drive and To Sell is Human. His books have won multiple awards and have been translated into 39 languages. He lives in Washington, DC with his family.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Goals may not change but circumstances do. Executive Function means to accomplish the goals by changing gears, repurposing solutions, and shifting perspectives by successfully adapting to the changed conditions And doing it without losing focus, waning interest or destabilizing emotions. Tune in to this Big Picture episode as I discuss the brain finest ability to orchestrate actions when put to good use yields outcomes that are emotionally desirable, appropriate, and future centered.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
In 2018, John Legend became the 13th and the youngest winner of "EGOT" which stands for the big-four possible outstanding awards in the entertainment industry: Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. An awe worthy accomplishment certainly points out the talent in John Legend, but is it cultivated? There are those who do things, those who do it well, and those who do it exceptionally well. An expert performer produces superior or exceptional performance without an exception. The journey to gain expertise however, is far from simply being effortful.
On today’s podcast, Professor Anders Ericsson, and co-author of the book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, will discuss how particular skill-sets and particular mindsets shapes the mastery of skills, which are attainable to all. At the heart of superior Executive Function is goal-directed actions and tolerance for discomfort and annoyances that interfere while building skills. So through focused effort to strengthen Executive Function, one can easily forge the path towards developing expertise.
About K. Anders Ericsson
K. Anders Ericsson, PhD, is presently Conradi Eminent Scholar and Professor of Psychology at Florida State University. After his Ph. D. in Sweden, he collaborated with the Nobel Prize winner in Economics, Herbert A. Simon on verbal reports of thinking leading to their classic book “Protocol Analysis: Verbal Reports as Data” (1984). Currently he studies the measurement of expert performance in domains, such as music, chess, nursing, law enforcement, and sports, and how expert performers attain their superior performance by acquiring complex cognitive mechanisms and physiological adaptations through extended deliberate practice.
He has edited several books on expertise, the influential “Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance” consisted of over 40 chapters and 900 pages and the recent “Development of Professional Expertise, which appeared in 2009. His most recent book (2016) “Peak: Secrets from the new science of expertise” was co-authored with Robert Pool. His research has been featured in cover stories in Scientific American, Time, Fortune, Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
He has been invited to give keynote presentations at conferences of surgeons, musicians, teachers, clinical psychologists, athletes, and coaches as well as professional sports organizations, such as Philadelphia Eagles (American football), San Antonio Spurs (basketball), Toronto Blue Jays (baseball) and Manchester City (soccer).
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
What do Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, academy award winning actor Leonardo de Caprio, designer Ralph Lauren, and entertainment mogul Jay Z have in common? They all grew up poor. Their success is enviable, but breaking the cycle of poverty is a mammoth task; one that requires educational opportunities that compensate for the disadvantages created by the socio-economic gap, appropriate structural support, and exposure to the larger world. Every young mind has the right to dream big, but not all dreams are destined to become a reality.
On this episode, Elise Davis-McFarland, the Immediate Past President of American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA 2019) and an ASHA Fellow, discusses how poverty is a serious condition and a potential cause of deprivation and educating students from low income families warrants more than just tolerance, but strong cultural competence. Robust Executive Function and self-regulation are essential ingredients for raising independent children, but ongoing environmental stressors and economics adversity can prove to be an obstacle in bringing forth future-ready children.
About Dr. Elise Davis-McFarland
Dr. Elise Davis-McFarland has enjoyed a rewarding career in higher education that includes teaching, development, and leadership of speech-language pathology programs; research; and executive-level college administration. She began her career as a school speech-language pathologist (SLP) in North Carolina where she provided diagnostic and therapeutic services for children in pre- and elementary schools. Following an audiology internship at the VA and Duke Hospitals and graduate study, she joined the faculty of the University of Houston as an assistant professor where she taught graduate courses in language development, childhood language disorders, early literacy development, and assessment and diagnosis of childhood communication disorders.
In Charleston, South Carolina—in the absence of an academic program in her discipline—she took advantage of new experiences, first as vice president of Governmental Affairs for the Charleston Chamber of Commerce and later as Director of Institutional Research at The Citadel. Dr. Davis-McFarland was also elected as a commissioner for the state’s Medicaid program by the South Carolina Legislature. At the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), as an associate professor the opportunity to develop and lead the interdisciplinary graduate Communication Sciences and Disorders program in the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences where Occupational and Physical Therapy programs were housed led to a teaching award and to her research at the MUSC hospital. Later, she became Vice President for Student Affairs at Trident College, where she provided executive-level leadership and supported the successful matriculation of students with autism and Asperger’s Syndrome into the college.
Dr. Davis-McFarland is an ASHA Fellow. Her service to ASHA includes membership on the Committee on Practice Guidelines for SLPs, the Professional Practices Committee, the Ethics Committee, the Executive Board Subcommittee on Examination Performance, and the Multicultural Issues Board. She was one of ASHA’s representatives on the committee formed by ASHA and the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care (IAPAC). She chaired the Committee on Honors and was the coordinator for SIG 14. Until her election as ASHA’s president-elect she served on the SLP Advisory Council as a representative from South Carolina, and the SIG 17 Coordinating Committee. She has also been a reviewer for Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools and the African Journal of AIDS Research. Her areas of research and publication include sp
The name Shepherd Ivory Franz won’t ring a bell for many, but he is a notable individual in the arena that is now known as neuropsychiatry and neuropsychology. Close to 100 years ago, he was testing the ability to relearn after performing an ablative brain surgery on cats that he had initially “taught”. This type of work and eventual application to the veterans who survived brain trauma provided Franz with early insights into neuroplasticity, which is the foundation of the current approach to cognitive retraining.
On this episode, Rick Parente, Emeritus Professor at Towson University in Baltimore and a celebrated expert in the field of cognitive retraining will discuss how targeted and specific interventions after a traumatic brain injury are more effective than comprehensive, but non-targeted ones. Because finding ways to help people to learn, remember, and think is as much an art as science, this discussion will lead us all to deploy careful scrutiny when assessing symptom presentation, functional needs, and perceived limitations of the brain.
About Rick Parente, Ph.D.
Rick Parente is an Emeritus Professor at Towson Univeristy in Baltimore. He teaches courses on Neuropsychological Assessment and NeuroRehabilitation. He has published over 75 journal articles and three books on NeuroRehabilitation. He is a Licensed Psychologist and Certified Cognitive Rehabilitation Therapist.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
“Executive Function refers to your choreographed ability to make yourself DO and take actions using the capacity and vision for self to yield outcomes that are socially-emotionally desirable, future centered and appropriate for personal advancement.” - Sucheta Kamath
After a year and half interviewing the world’s leading authorities, researchers and educators Sucheta brings her own expertise in helping people master their own Executive Function to the table as she launches her special series “The Big Picture”. In this episode, she breaks down the key ingredients of Self-Optimization. Tune in to find out why and how to rethink problems, question one’s own methods, evaluate outcomes every step of the way and finally, willingly and readily change one’s approach to reach one’s own best version.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Over the last several decades, the public’s understanding of a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and the cognitive, behavioral, and emotional sequelae of the same has undergone radical transformation. There is ample evidence that supports the fact that rehabilitation is a critical part of the road to recovery and making treatment functional can be done successfully by a bridge into the community where the TBI survivor hopes to thrive. However, what’s still missing is the society’s lack of awareness of the needs of those who have sustained a TBI and are experiencing life-altering consequences.
On this episode, the Senior Health Scientist on the Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Team at the Center for Disease Control (CDC), Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa, PhD, returns to discuss the therapeutic consideration to successfully manage a TBI. This episode offers an expanded view on how to accentuate the lifestyle change in the form of skill building, use of compensatory strategies, and family support to build the person's hope back.
About Julie Haarbauer-Krupa, Ph.D.
Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa, PhD, is a Senior Health Scientist on the Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Team in the Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention (DUIP) at the Injury Center. As a behavioral scientist, her role on the TBI team is to devise research projects and products to better understand trends in TBI in the U.S., and to improve health outcomes for individuals living with a TBI. She is project lead on the Report to Congress, the Management of Traumatic Brain Injury in Children, and the Return to School Projects in the division. Recent publications include: a report on life expectancy and unemployment outcomes for moderate to severe TBI; PTSD in mild TBI; point of healthcare entry for children with concussions; talking to young children about concussions; and service delivery systems for children with TBI.
Dr. Haarbauer-Krupa has 30 years of experience and has authored over 20 publications and presentations in the area of TBI with specialties in rehabilitation and pediatric populations. She previously served as a faculty member at The University of Pittsburgh, George Washington University, and Georgia State University, and currently holds an adjunct position in the Department of Pediatrics at Emory University’s School of Medicine.
Websites
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-
What hazard could really be posed by daily activities like driving, biking, climbing, or walking? They don’t, until they do. An awkward step, a sudden turn, an unanticipated slip or a fall can alter the direction in which one’s life is going. The Brain Injury Association of America reports that at least 2.5 million people encounter a traumatic brain injury each year. For some, the recovery may be quick and simple, while for others, it may be a life that has no semblance of normalcy.
Since one in every 60 people in the U.S. lives with a disability that is a result of traumatic brain injury, it is critical that we understand how to identify, diagnose, and manage them. On this episode, Dr. Julie Haabauer-Krupa from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), will discuss how traumatic brain injury impacts attention, memory, speech, communication, movement, coordination, decision making, and executive function. This is an invitation to create communities that thrive by engaging in discussions to raise awareness on the long-standing impact of TBI on individuals, family members, caretakers, and society.
About Julie Haarbauer-Krupa, Ph.D.
Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa, PhD, is a Senior Health Scientist on the Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Team in the Division of Unintentional Injury Prevention (DUIP) at the Injury Center. As a behavioral scientist, her role on the TBI team is to devise research projects and products to better understand trends in TBI in the U.S., and to improve health outcomes for individuals living with a TBI. She is project lead on the Report to Congress, the Management of Traumatic Brain Injury in Children, and the Return to School Projects in the division. Recent publications include: a report on life expectancy and unemployment outcomes for moderate to severe TBI; PTSD in mild TBI; point of healthcare entry for children with concussions; talking to young children about concussions; and service delivery systems for children with TBI.
Dr. Haarbauer-Krupa has 30 years of experience and has authored over 20 publications and presentations in the area of TBI with specialties in rehabilitation and pediatric populations. She previously served as a faculty member at The University of Pittsburgh, George Washington University, and Georgia State University, and currently holds an adjunct position in the Department of Pediatrics at Emory University’s School of Medicine.
Websites
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital l
Ability, inability, and disability rest on a continuum where the human story comes to life. Living with a disability; whether it is a physical, mental, or a learning disability is life-long work and having able partners can make the journey pleasant. But, the able partner is not just someone without a disability, but one who is willing to embrace the unique human experience with authenticity and inclusivity.
On this episode, our guest Dan Habib, an award-winning documentary film maker, an activist/advocate, a past-member of the Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities (appointed by President Obama) and a father who sought inclusive education for Samuel, his son with cerebral palsy with full well-knowledge that these encounters are mutually transformative. A key element of Executive Function is the capacity to think flexibly, shift perspectives and change one’s mind by broadening the world view. Today’s conversation, invites listeners to reconsider how we conceptualize, verbalize and process the idea of “normal”.
About Dan Habib
Dan Habib is the creator of the award-winning documentary films Including Samuel, Who Cares About Kelsey?, Mr. Connolly Has ALS and many other films on disability-related topics. Habib is a filmmaker at the University of New Hampshire’s Institute on Disability.
He has recently released his new documentary, Intelligent Lives, which examines our society’s narrow perceptions of intelligence. The Intelligent Lives project also contains four short films focusing on effective practices in transition for youth with disabilities from high school to higher education and employment.
Habib received the Champion of Human and Civil Rights Award from the National Education Association, and the Justice for All Grassroots Award from the American Association of People with Disabilities. In 2014, Habib was appointed by President Barack Obama to the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities.
Habib and his wife, Betsy, live in Concord, NH, with their sons Isaiah, 22, and Samuel, 19.
Website
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Gerald Belcher once said, “The best education is not given to students; it is drawn out of them.” It captures the notion that learning and teaching are intertwined and this relationship deepens when educators keep inventing new ways to inspire kids, help make creative connections, and allow their passion to come through.In these moments, there’s nothing higher than the human spirit as a child succeeds in learning.
On this episode, our guest a neuroscientist, author, blogger, and a frequent contributor to Psychology Today, William Klemm, Ph.D. returns to speak on brining learning strategies into classroom teaching.
About Professor W.R. Klemm
Dr. W. R. (Bill) Klemm is a Professor of Neuroscience at Texas A&M University who has studied basic and applied research on learning and memory and has published 20 books, many of them for lay audiences. He provides teachers with lectures and workshops on teaching learning skills. He has over 2.5 million reader views of his posts on learning and memory at Psychology Today, and his blog (thankyoubrain.blogspot.com).
Website
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Rajveer Meena from India successfully recalled 70,000 decimal places of pi (π) and broke the previous Guinness World Record of reciting 67,890 digits of pi held by Lu Chao of China since 2005. By reading about such a feat of accomplishment, you can easily see the giant rift between "memory athletes" and ordinary citizens. However, memory is more of a skill than a gift which means everyone is capable of such an "athletic" feat.
On this episode, our guest, a neuroscientist, author, blogger, and a frequent contributor to Psychology Today, William Klemm, Ph.D., speaks on the topic of memory, memory structure, and the relationship between memory, learning, and Executive Function.
About Professor W.R. Klemm
Dr. W. R. (Bill) Klemm is a Professor of Neuroscience at Texas A&M University who has studied basic and applied research on learning and memory and has published 20 books, many of them for lay audiences. He provides teachers with lectures and workshops on teaching learning skills. He has over 2.5 million reader views of his posts on learning and memory at Psychology Today, and his blog (thankyoubrain.blogspot.com).
Website
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
The hopeful expectation of living into old age is often marred by the fear of the irreversible decline in one’s abilities and mental faculties. When it comes to Alzheimer’s disease, the scientific community, professionals and society in general is dedicated to pursuing a three-pronged approach: find ways to irradiate the disease, delay the onset of the disease, and finally, figure out the most effective and comfort-centered approach to care-giving.
Since brain imaging studies reveal that the damage to the brain begins decades prior to the symptoms ever starting to interfere with daily functions, on this episode our guest, Kenneth S. Kosik, M.A. M.D., returns to discuss ways to envision the vitality of the neural landscape to build a better brain and elevate well-being, a sure way to reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Dr. Kosik is a Harriman Professor and Co-Director of the Neuroscience Research Institute at UCSB, and is a highly celebrated award-winning research scientist who has coauthored a book called Outsmarting Alzheimer’s Disease: What You Can Do To Reduce Your Risk.
About Dr. Kenneth S. Kosik
Kenneth S. Kosik, M.A. M.D. served as professor at the Harvard Medical School from 1996-2004 when he became the Harriman Professor and Co-Director of the Neuroscience Research Institute at UCSB. His awards include Whitaker Health Sciences Award (MIT), Milton Foundation Award (Harvard Medical School), Moore Award (American Association of Neuropathologists), Metropolitan Life Award, Derek Denny-Brown Award (American Neurological Association), Zenith and Temple Awards (Alzheimer’s Association), Ranwell Caputo Medal (Argentine Society of Neurochemistry), NASA Group Achievement Award to Neurolab Team, the Premio Aventis (Academia Nacional de Medicina, Colombia), a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Santa Barbara Innovation Star Award. He co-authored Outsmarting Alzheimer’s Disease and The Alzheimer’s Solution: How Today’s Care is Failing Millions and How We Can Do Better. His work, including the characterization in Colombia of the largest family in the world with familial Alzheimer’s has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, BBC, CNN, PBS and CBS 60 Minutes. His 2016 UCSB commencement address was archived at the Graduation Wisdom Best Commencement Speeches web site.
Website
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Even while leading a healthy mental and physical life, no one can be certain about the aging brain’s destiny. The stage of life marked by walkers, hearing aids, and memory lapses is averted by a few, but dreaded by all. Since Alzheimer’s Disease is one of the three leading causes of death in the elderly population, how to keep performing at the top of one’s game, even in old age, is of interest to many.
On this episode, our guest, a Harriman Professor and Co-Director of the Neuroscience Research Institute at UCSB, and highly celebrated, award-winning research scientist, Kenneth S. Kosik, M.A. M.D., will speak on the topic of Alzheimer’s, aging, and age-related changes. Since age-related cognitive decline goes beyond just remembering and forgetting, it’s important to understand how it all relates to Executive Function and self-sufficiency.
About Dr. Kenneth S. Kosik
Kenneth S. Kosik, M.A. M.D. served as professor at the Harvard Medical School from 1996-2004 when he became the Harriman Professor and Co-Director of the Neuroscience Research Institute at UCSB. His awards include Whitaker Health Sciences Award (MIT), Milton Foundation Award (Harvard Medical School), Moore Award (American Association of Neuropathologists), Metropolitan Life Award, Derek Denny-Brown Award (American Neurological Association), Zenith and Temple Awards (Alzheimer’s Association), Ranwell Caputo Medal (Argentine Society of Neurochemistry), NASA Group Achievement Award to Neurolab Team, the Premio Aventis (Academia Nacional de Medicina, Colombia), a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Santa Barbara Innovation Star Award. He co-authored Outsmarting Alzheimer’s Disease and The Alzheimer’s Solution: How Today’s Care is Failing Millions and How We Can Do Better. His work, including the characterization in Colombia of the largest family in the world with familial Alzheimer’s has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, BBC, CNN, PBS and CBS 60 Minutes. His 2016 UCSB commencement address was archived at the Graduation Wisdom Best Commencement Speeches web site.
Website
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
There’s no guarantee you will step on a treadmill right after stepping off a scale with disappointing number. Goals clash with fears and anxieties resulting in procrastination, which is a common place phenomenon. But by connecting to values and committing to actions, we can treat daily tasks like a workout rather than a race to finish.
On this episode, our guest a professor of psychology, award winning teacher, successful author and a prolific podcaster, Dr. Tim Pychyl, returns to explore strategies for overcoming procrastination and manage emotional reluctance to take on important tasks that have become undesirable. Essentially, by learning ways to overcome procrastination, we can master executive dysfunction and avert frequent encounters with existential crises.
About Tim Pychyl, Ph.D.
Dr. Tim Pychyl is the Director of the Centre for Initiatives in Education and Associate Professor of Psychology at Carleton University, Ottawa. Tim has developed an international reputation for his research on procrastination. In addition to journal articles summarizing his research with his students, Tim has co-edited two books, the most recent of which is Procrastination, Health and Well-Being (2016, Elsevier). He is also author of Solving the Procrastination Puzzle: A Concise Guide to Strategies for Change (2013, Tarcher/Penguin). You can learn more about his research and access his Psychology Today blog or his iProcrastinate podcast at procrastination.ca.
Tim’s research is complemented by his passion for teaching for which he has won numerous awards including the 3M National Teaching Fellowship, Ontario Confederation of University Associations Teaching Award and University Medal for Distinguished Teaching. Tim has been an invited speaker across the country working with professors in universities and colleges to enhance teaching and learning.
Website
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
No one has been spared from the strong impulse to put things off for later. You might find yourself cleaning out the refrigerator when you should really be working on your taxes. Dilly-dallying and lallygagging are a few ways one’s aversion for impending tasks manifests itself. In the Netflix series, The Kominsky Method, Alan Arkin’s character loses his wife of nearly 50 years to cancer and at the funeral, his daughter who never visits her ailing mother during her illness shows up. The upset father asks why and to which she replies, “Because I was busy”. When pressed further, the daughter blurts out, “Because I didn’t think she’ll die.” In this case, the daughter’s procrastination went too far.
On this episode, our guest, Tim Pychyl, Ph.D., professor of psychology, award-winning teacher, successful author, and prolific podcaster, will talk about why we procrastinate. Since the hallmark of executive dysfunction is inefficiency, poor task management, and lack of goal achievement, this conversation will add a critical perspective to methods of supporting individuals with Executive Function.
About Tim Pychyl, Ph.D.
Dr. Tim Pychyl is the Director of the Centre for Initiatives in Education and Associate Professor of Psychology at Carleton University, Ottawa. Tim has developed an international reputation for his research on procrastination. In addition to journal articles summarizing his research with his students, Tim has co-edited two books, the most recent of which is Procrastination, Health and Well-Being (2016, Elsevier). He is also author of Solving the Procrastination Puzzle: A Concise Guide to Strategies for Change (2013, Tarcher/Penguin). You can learn more about his research and access his Psychology Today blog or his iProcrastinate podcast at procrastination.ca.
Tim’s research is complemented by his passion for teaching for which he has won numerous awards including the 3M National Teaching Fellowship, Ontario Confederation of University Associations Teaching Award and University Medal for Distinguished Teaching. Tim has been an invited speaker across the country working with professors in universities and colleges to enhance teaching and learning.
Website
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
When talking about his sad mess of a childhood, author Augustine Boroughs’ fantasy of normalcy resembled to that of "fabric-softener, tuna-salad-on-white, PTA-meeting normal". In his autobiography, Running with Scissors, Boroughs writes about his guardian conjuring a mental health excuse by giving him the directive to pop pills, drink liquor and fake his own suicide so that he could get out of going school. As a reader you can’t help but think in what ways these childhood experiences shaped Boroughs’ life views. Being prepared to respond to life’s events as you know best and to bounce back from personal, social, and societal adversity is the hallmark of resilience.
Our guest, Dr. Robert Brooks, returns with his brilliant insights to help us make the connections between resiliency, self-discipline, and parenting and how the we must place great importance on the idea of goodness of fit!
About Robert Brooks, Ph.D.
Dr. Robert Brooks is a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School (part-time) and former Director of the Department of Psychology at McLean Hospital, a private psychiatric hospital. He has lectured nationally and internationally and written extensively about such themes as motivation, resilience, school and work climate, parenting and family relationships, and balancing our personal and professional lives. He is the author or co-author of 17 books including “Raising Resilient Children,” “The Power of Resilience: Achieving Balance, Confidence, and Personal Strength in Your Life,” “Handbook of Resilience in Children,” and “Children’s Classroom Behavior: Creating Sustainable, Resilient Classrooms.”
Website
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Roberto Benigni’s critically acclaimed role in the movie Life is Beautiful, which earned him an Oscar, poignantly illustrates what a caring, charismatic adult does to shield a young boy from the horrors of captivity in a concentration camp as they were thrown into the atrocities of war. With his resilient ways, Guido Orefice, the father in this movie, interacts reassuringly with his son and helps him gain a sense of control over his life in the midst of chaos. The question then arises: Are all adults inherently equipped to cast a positive influence on a child? When polled, American adults always indicate their genuine concern for the budding American youth; however, children of misfortune are often stamped from the beginning with heavy odds weighing against their wholesome development. Researchers agree that the consistent factor that tips the scale in a child’s favor is a caring and influential adult.
On this episode, psychologist and prolific author, Dr. Robert Brooks, whose expertise includes resiliency, motivation, and parenting, talks about the role of a charismatic adult in developing well-adjusted children.
About Robert Brooks, Ph.D.
Dr. Robert Brooks is a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School (part-time) and former Director of the Department of Psychology at McLean Hospital, a private psychiatric hospital. He has lectured nationally and internationally and written extensively about such themes as motivation, resilience, school and work climate, parenting and family relationships, and balancing our personal and professional lives. He is the author or co-author of 17 books including “Raising Resilient Children,” “The Power of Resilience: Achieving Balance, Confidence, and Personal Strength in Your Life,” “Handbook of Resilience in Children,” and “Children’s Classroom Behavior: Creating Sustainable, Resilient Classrooms.”
Website
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
As a youngster growing up in 70s, if I had struggled to retain facts, or to learn a second (more like third) language or did not grasp advance math or failed to finish the exam on time, I would have been lectured or yelled at. In that era, I would been reprehended for not trying hard enough or for not caring enough about my learning. Thankfully, the development in neuroscience and the deeper understanding of psychology of learning has opened our eyes to the possibilities that student’s learning difficulties may not stem from his/her stubbornness nor is it an indication of poor character. In the 21st century, if a child has a persistent cold, the parents will take him/her to the doctor without hesitation. But a struggling learners’ difficulties often lead to confusion and inconsistent cultural recommendations because the parents are often unsure as to what learning challenges are serious enough to require formal action.
On this episode, Dr. Judy Wolman returns to discuss why barriers in learning require specific steps, the benefit of formal evaluation, and how proper investigation clears the way for selecting the right environment for the child to thrive.
About Judy Wolman
Judy Draisin Wolman is a psychologist in Sandy Springs, Georgia, specializing in psychoeducational evaluations, family therapy regarding child-related issues, and psychotherapy for children and adolescents.
She received her Ph.D. in Developmental School Psychology at Georgia State University in December of 1984. Prior to that, she received a Masters in Learning Disabilities in 1976, and a Bachelor of Science in Special Education and Elementary Education from the University of Maryland in 1974.
Dr. Wolman has been practicing in the Sandy Springs area for almost thirty years. She was previously with the Dekalb County School System for ten years as a school psychologist, as part of a preschool assessment team, and as a Learning Disabilities Resource Room teacher. Dr. Wolman speaks to many school and community groups on topics such as behavior management of preschool and elementary age children, living happily with pre-adolescents, building self-esteem, identifying Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorders and Learning Disabilities, and other topics related to successful parenting.
She is an actively involved member of many professional associations, including the American Psychological Association, the Georgia Branch of the International Dyslexia Association, the Georgia Psychological Association, and the Learning Disabilities Association.
Dr. Wolman is married and has two children, who have made it through the child and adolescent stages she addresses in her practice and lectures. She is now a proud grandmother, as well.
Website
Materials
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
No one is free form worrying about their children and their success. From sippy cups, nap times, and play dates, parents move on to worrying about lost papers, missing homework, too much cell-phone use, or not getting a part in a school play. Normal mishaps aside, a struggling child can cause even greater worry. Email exchanges like this one are not uncommon. “Johnny seems to work tremendously hard in school, but he is struggling to get his work done efficiently. I am concerned that he’s falling behind, and his effort is not reflected in his test performance. Johnny also seems to struggle in socializing with his peers and he doesn’t seem to have any friends. I think Johnny needs help.”
At the start of each year, teachers anxiously wait to see what their classes are going to look like and within few weeks the chips begin to fall as they may as the students who are likely to need more individual attention and specific help begin to emerge with their struggles; sometimes subtly and sometimes vividly. Teachers share their concerns with the parents and then the parents begin to worry as they try and make sense of these observations. Parents, teachers, LD specialists, SLPs, and school psychologists begin to begin to put the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together as they sort, assess, and find ways to label these issues to correctly guide their learning journey. What is needed is a clarity that informs the decision about the next step. On this episode, Dr. Judy Wolman, an education psychologist, will discuss the process of evaluating the relationship between the brain and behavior and how that impacts education.
About Judy Wolman
Judy Draisin Wolman is a psychologist in Sandy Springs, Georgia, specializing in psychoeducational evaluations, family therapy regarding child-related issues, and psychotherapy for children and adolescents.
She received her Ph.D. in Developmental School Psychology at Georgia State University in December of 1984. Prior to that, she received a Masters in Learning Disabilities in 1976, and a Bachelor of Science in Special Education and Elementary Education from the University of Maryland in 1974.
Dr. Wolman has been practicing in the Sandy Springs area for almost thirty years. She was previously with the Dekalb County School System for ten years as a school psychologist, as part of a preschool assessment team, and as a Learning Disabilities Resource Room teacher. Dr. Wolman speaks to many school and community groups on topics such as behavior management of preschool and elementary age children, living happily with pre-adolescents, building self-esteem, identifying Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorders and Learning Disabilities, and other topics related to successful parenting.
She is an actively involved member of many professional associations, including the American Psychological Association, the Georgia Branch of the International Dyslexia Association, the Georgia Psychological Association, and the Learning Disabilities Association.
Dr. Wolman is married and has two children, who have made it through the child and adolescent stages she addresses in her practice and lectures. She is now a proud grandmother, as well.
Website
Materials
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of
Sutter Keely is a smart, goofy, sensitive, troubled, unserious, and lost teenager who doesn't have the best Executive Function skills. Sutter is the main character in the movie ‘The Spectacular Now’ whose life choices are not that off the mark for a teenager but do certainly stand out from his sweet, focused, ambitious, and future-centered ex-girlfriend or the studious, hard-working, curious, engaged, and caring new girlfriend. This movie beautifully captures the angst of a young man who hasn't yet discovered the purpose of learning, the value of good habits, nor has he tamed the wild emotions such as anger, loneliness, and sadness that rule his decision making. But all in all, this movie helps us understand how to look for the composite portrait of a young life trying to make it. The movie invites us to become gardeners as we think of the grand beauty and power that lays dormant within a bud that blossoms into a spectacular flower.
On this episode, my guest MaryAnn Brittingham, the author of Respectful Discipline, Motivating the Unmotivated, Dealing with Difficult Parents and the co-author of Transformative Teaching: Changing Today’s Classrooms Culturally, Academically and Emotionally will discuss how to be the gardeners.
About MaryAnn Brittingham
MaryAnn Brittingham MS, has a Master’s Degree in Family Counseling and a Bachelor’s Degree with a dual certification in both Special and General Education. She’s the author of Respectful Discipline, Motivating the Unmotivated, Dealing with Difficult Parents and the co-author of Transformative Teaching: Changing Today’s Classrooms Culturally, Academically and Emotionally.
Throughout her 35 years in education, she’s worked as a special education teacher, adjunct instructor at the graduate level, teacher consultant, and has provided counseling services to children and families.
MaryAnn, a behavior consultant and well-known international speaker focuses on social and emotional skill development, effective classroom management and discipline, self-regulation and mindfulness practices. MaryAnn is wholeheartedly committed to helping teachers reflect on and transform their own behavior in order to better serve their students. This passion was the springboard that led her to create her own international business, Brittingham Professional Development Seminars, to provide training that offers hope and inspiration to create a safe compassionate learning environment.
Website
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curr
A child opens a fun little children’s book and comes across two words ‘trogglehumper’ and ‘frothbuggling’. He’s immediately drawn in. You can hear him wonder, “what’s that?” What a way to capture a kid's interest and tickle their imagination! Celebrated children’s author, Roald Dahl, had knack of doing that. He once said, “If you want to remember what it’s like to live in a child’s world, you’ve got to get down on your hands and knees and live like that for a week.” Roald Dahl recognized that inspired kids take their curiosity into every corner of their learning world.
It’s great to want inspired and motivated kids in the classroom but what if that’s not the case? Is it the educator’s responsibility to motivate students? What role do the teachers play in engaging the children? This episode, our podcast guest, MaryAnn Brittingham, the author of Respectful Discipline, Motivating the Unmotivated, Dealing with Difficult Parents and the co-author of Transformative Teaching: Changing Today’s Classrooms Culturally, Academically and Emotionally will share some great ideas to transform the learning experience.
About MaryAnn Brittingham
MaryAnn Brittingham MS, has a Master’s Degree in Family Counseling and a Bachelor’s Degree with a dual certification in both Special and General Education. She’s the author of Respectful Discipline, Motivating the Unmotivated, Dealing with Difficult Parents and the co-author of Transformative Teaching: Changing Today’s Classrooms Culturally, Academically and Emotionally.
Throughout her 35 years in education, she’s worked as a special education teacher, adjunct instructor at the graduate level, teacher consultant, and has provided counseling services to children and families.
MaryAnn, a behavior consultant and well-known international speaker focuses on social and emotional skill development, effective classroom management and discipline, self-regulation and mindfulness practices. MaryAnn is wholeheartedly committed to helping teachers reflect on and transform their own behavior in order to better serve their students. This passion was the springboard that led her to create her own international business, Brittingham Professional Development Seminars, to provide training that offers hope and inspiration to create a safe compassionate learning environment.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through th
A recent headline read, “Demonic child on flight” that described a passenger who filmed his horrific experience while traveling with a screaming 3-year-old on a long flight from Germany to the USA. The video stirred up a Facebook controversy where many empathized with the mother while the rest blamed her for failing to control the child. Misbehavior implies the intention to misbehave. Dealing with a screaming 3-year-old on an 8-hour international flight or handling a student with challenging behaviors is a daunting task. While most would be tempted to punish the child or write off unsettled students, an adult with a positive and supporting approach can steer them onto the path for success.
Children’s experiences of challenges and failures in regulating themselves is inevitable but their ill-fitted behaviors are less likely to induce empathy. In their book, Children: The Challenge, Rudolf Dreikurs and Vicki Soltz poignantly say, “A Misbehaving child is a discouraged child”, inviting us to let go of the conventional wisdom. On this episode, Dr. Nancy Rappaport returns to discuss a framework to help implement successful behavioral plans to help redirect anxious, oppositional, or withdrawn children so that educators can re-imagine the possibilities for their struggling students.
About Nancy Rappaport, MD
Dr. Rappaport received the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s Sidney Berman Award for the School-Based Study and Treatment of Learning Disorders and Mental Illness in 2012. She also received Cambridge Health Alliance’s Art of Healing Award in 2013 – an award given to one who “transcends boundaries, joyfully embraces humanity, and profoundly inspires the healing of body and spirit.” Rappaport is the author of the memoir In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother’s Suicide (Basic Books, September 2009), winner of the Boston Authors Club’s 2010 Julia Ward Howe Prize. In a starred review, Publisher’s Weekly called the book “Fearless … a stunning narrative of perspective, profound sadness and unrelenting hope.” She is also the author of The Behavior Code: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Teaching the Most Challenging Students (Harvard Education Press, April 2012), written with behavioral analyst Jessica Minahan.
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Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Recently, during a baptism ceremony, an 89-year old French priest lost his cool and slapped a 2-year old toddler in the face, who wouldn't stop crying. The whole incident was caught on camera and went viral as one can imagine. The priest later said. “It was something between a caress and a little slap. I was trying to calm him down, I didn’t really know what to do.” Somewhere, the switch in the priest’s brain flipped where he felt compelled to react with anger towards a baby, which he certainly knew was wrong. Nothing about this story feels good but it poignantly illustrates the challenge in gifting children with nurturing care as they struggle with their own emotions.
What’s most evident in a person is their behavior and not their thoughts, feelings, beliefs, or even their true potential. Teaching children whose behaviors do not exude eagerness, commitment, or love for learning can be problematic for teachers and students alike. On this episode, the associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and celebrated co-author of the book, the Behavior Code, Dr. Nancy Rappaport will discuss the challenge that, if not careful, by zooming in too much on their behaviors we could potentially sideline the child’s struggle and get distracted by the challenge they pose.
About Nancy Rappaport, MD
Dr. Rappaport received the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s Sidney Berman Award for the School-Based Study and Treatment of Learning Disorders and Mental Illness in 2012. She also received Cambridge Health Alliance’s Art of Healing Award in 2013 – an award given to one who “transcends boundaries, joyfully embraces humanity, and profoundly inspires the healing of body and spirit.” Rappaport is the author of the memoir In Her Wake: A Child Psychiatrist Explores the Mystery of Her Mother’s Suicide (Basic Books, September 2009), winner of the Boston Authors Club’s 2010 Julia Ward Howe Prize. In a starred review, Publisher’s Weekly called the book “Fearless … a stunning narrative of perspective, profound sadness and unrelenting hope.” She is also the author of The Behavior Code: A Practical Guide to Understanding and Teaching the Most Challenging Students (Harvard Education Press, April 2012), written with behavioral analyst Jessica Minahan.
Website
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
For a west Philadelphia high school dropout, Troy Carter has had an incredibly impressive career where as a talent scout, manager, and producer he has launched artists like Lady Gaga to fame. However, his creative entrepreneurship transcended industry silos as he has become first of his kind to be an angel investor in more that 100 Silicon Valley startups including Spotify. But as a child, Troy was so tiny that he would always be in the front and center in all school pictures while class giants would tower over him in the back. While kids were busy teasing him for his small stature, Troy’s 5th grade teacher Ms. Moore always addressed him as “big guy” making him feel like he was 6’5”. When asked about the confidence he brings to the boardroom as he sits among market-savvy and highly educated folks with mile-long credentials, Carter fondly gives all the credit his favorite teacher who made him feel not only that he belonged, but that he was special.
On this episode, Dr. Kathy Perez, a Professor Emerita at Saint Mary’s College of California, returns to talk about what it means to invest in every child and what the key ingredient is to empowering children to be their best. Dr. Perez’s personal love for children and teaching is quite inspirational.
About Dr. Kathy Perez
Dr. Kathy Perez, an international consultant, teacher, administrator and author has worked with students from preschoolers to university graduates. Dr. Kathy is currently a Professor Emerita at Saint Mary’s College of California. She has extensive teaching experience as a general and special educator, literacy/ESL coach, district administrator, site principal, and curriculum/staff development coordinator.
Her innovative and interactive workshops are loaded with teacher-tested materials and activities teachers can use immediately and share with others. Kathy provides a lively and informative day of hands-on and minds-on learning.
Dr. Kathy has worked extensively with teachers, administrators and parents throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Qatar, Brazil, Colombia, Caribbean, Africa, China, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Dr. Perez is the recipient of an International Rotary Fellowship and has been selected for The Reading Hall of Fame due to her commitment and passion for literacy and learning around the planet.
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empo
Each day, more than 7 million children in the United States are left to their own devices for at least some period of time after the school day ends. And research shows that children who are deprived of a supervised environment by a supportive adult are likely to develop a gamut of academic and behavioral problems. Sometimes the only nurturing adult in a child’s life is a teacher who encourages them to take academic and social initiatives, crafts opportunities for inner growth, and bonds emotionally to provide the loving care needed for the development of the whole child. The most engaged learners demonstrate secure interpersonal relationships, sound social awareness, and strong self-regulation. Similarly, the most engaged teachers have strong executive function and they use them to till the classroom soil.
On this episode, Dr. Kathy Perez, a Professor Emerita at Saint Mary’s College of California, will discuss importance of the social-emotional learning (SEL) in everyday curriculum and the secret to fostering deeper learner engagement.
About Dr. Kathy Perez
Dr. Kathy Perez, an international consultant, teacher, administrator and author has worked with students from preschoolers to university graduates. Dr. Kathy is currently a Professor Emerita at Saint Mary’s College of California. She has extensive teaching experience as a general and special educator, literacy/ESL coach, district administrator, site principal, and curriculum/staff development coordinator.
Her innovative and interactive workshops are loaded with teacher-tested materials and activities teachers can use immediately and share with others. Kathy provides a lively and informative day of hands-on and minds-on learning.
Dr. Kathy has worked extensively with teachers, administrators and parents throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, Qatar, Brazil, Colombia, Caribbean, Africa, China, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Dr. Perez is the recipient of an International Rotary Fellowship and has been selected for The Reading Hall of Fame due to her commitment and passion for literacy and learning around the planet.
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
When Office Depot® sells a pencil on their website the description says, “Brand Basic Wood Pencils, #2 Medium Soft Lead, Pack Of 36”. Now take a look at Nick Offerman’s website and see how he sells a pencil. He’s the actor who famously brought the character of Ron Swanson, a colorful crank, to life in the sitcom Parks and Recreation. First of all, Offerman Wood Shop (OWS) calls it a Mistake Stick and the description says, “Keep an OWS pencil in your beard/bun at all times because you never know when you’ll need to jot down a cut list, bifurcate a compound angle, label your jerky or add a few inches to your scratching reach.” As you can see, language has the capacity to tantalize the curiosity, tease the appetite, tickle the funny bone, or simply transport you to an imaginary place. With a gift of enriched language and mature executive function skills, you can even sell snow to an Eskimo.
On this episode, Dr. Julie Ann Washington from Georgia State University returns to discuss challenges in raising and educating children from low socio-economic backgrounds whose disadvantages are compounded by chronic stress, minimal exposure, and a lack of resources. For these children, specific language impairment and impoverished language can impact the development of written language, general educational trajectory, and overall mastery of executive function.
About Dr. Julie Washington
Dr. Julie Washington is a Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology, Special Education and Communication Disorders in the College of Education and Human Development at Georgia State University (GSU) in Atlanta. She is also Director of the Communication Sciences and Disorders Program. Dr. Washington is an affiliate faculty of Georgia State University’s Center for Research on the Challenges of Acquiring Language and Literacy Currently, Dr. Washington’s research is focused on understanding the role of cultural dialect in the identification of Learning Disabilities in school-aged African American children and on disentangling the relationship between language production and comprehension on development of reading skills for children growing up in poverty. Dr. Washington’s research program is funded by the National Institutes of Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute on Child Health and Human Development.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle a
On April 11, 1734, a tiny notice appeared in the small corner of the Pennsylvania Gazette owned by Benjamin Franklin that read, “Ready money for old rags”. People poured in just as expected. Franklin, the entrepreneur extraordinaire, who also held a license to print paper currency, began to send these rags to the mill he owned to convert it into paper money; thus popularizing the notion, rags to riches. Since then, the American psyche has been steeped into the belief that everyone who has the will and the self-control to influence their life can rise above all odds; including poverty and socio-economic disparity.
On this podcast, Dr. Julie Ann Washington from Georgia State University talks about the idea that not only that all learners are not created equal, but neither are their learning environments and many are detrimental to a child’s future. In a society that values autonomy, agency, and everything that says self-made, parents and educators are trying their best to reconcile with those who are simply flailing around. The brain’s Executive Function guides and redirects behaviors and attitudes towards goal-oriented actions and flailing around is a sign of the brain not doing too well. Dr. Washington invites us to dive deep into the complexities of educating the marginalized and the disadvantaged.
About Dr. Julie Washington
Dr. Julie Washington is a Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology, Special Education and Communication Disorders in the College of Education and Human Development at Georgia State University (GSU) in Atlanta. She is also Director of the Communication Sciences and Disorders Program. Dr. Washington is an affiliate faculty of Georgia State University’s Center for Research on the Challenges of Acquiring Language and Literacy Currently, Dr. Washington’s research is focused on understanding the role of cultural dialect in the identification of Learning Disabilities in school-aged African American children and on disentangling the relationship between language production and comprehension on development of reading skills for children growing up in poverty. Dr. Washington’s research program is funded by the National Institutes of Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute on Child Health and Human Development.
Resources
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awarenes
Every day we go to bed knowing we have left many things unfinished, allowed intrusive thoughts about unfinished business interrupt the work flow, and wasted a lot of time. Even though, the productivity guru Stephen Covey has famously said, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing” many of us can’t decide fast enough or well enough what that main thing is. The researchers agree that having to make decisions, small or big, every step of the way depletes the mental resource available to each person on a daily basis and the best antidote to that is to not start the day without a plan; and yet, many find themselves wasting this limited but most prized resource without much thought.
On this episode, the world-renowned research psychologist and accomplished author of over 35 books, Dr. Roy F. Baumeister, talks about goal-pursuit, self-efficacy, roadblocks to planning, and ways to rethink a daily plan.
About Roy Baumeister, Ph.D.
Roy F. Baumeister is currently professor of psychology at the University of Queensland. He among the most prolific and most frequently cited psychologists in the world, with over 600 publications. His 35 books include the New York Times bestseller Willpower. His research covers self and identity, self-regulation, interpersonal rejection and the need to belong, sexuality and gender, aggression, self-esteem, meaning, consciousness, free will, and self-presentation. In 2013 he received the William James award for lifetime achievement in psychological science (the Association for Psychological Science’s highest honor).
Resources
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
A secret ingredient in the life of an easy-going, popular kid with lots of friends and good grades is self-control. Eventually, this kid grows up into a focused, accomplished, and well-adjusted adult who lives a physically well-disciplined and financially secure life without ever brushing against the law or criminal justice. On the other hand, those who fail to deploy self-restraint bear the brunt of an onslaught of bad decisions and a life of discontent.
On this episode, the world-renowned psychologist and author of the New York Times bestseller Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, Dr. Roy F. Baumeister talks about the mechanism behind self-control - the brain’s internal reins that help pull back and inner brakes to cease oneself from moving forward.
About Roy Baumeister, Ph.D.
Roy F. Baumeister is currently professor of psychology at the University of Queensland. He among the most prolific and most frequently cited psychologists in the world, with over 600 publications. His 35 books include the New York Times bestseller Willpower. His research covers self and identity, self-regulation, interpersonal rejection and the need to belong, sexuality and gender, aggression, self-esteem, meaning, consciousness, free will, and self-presentation. In 2013 he received the William James award for lifetime achievement in psychological science (the Association for Psychological Science’s highest honor).
Resources
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Wired magazine once challenged 39 sci-fi writers and creative types to put their artistry to test by writing a 6-word story. Author of beloved Wicked series, Gregory Maguire came back with a clever riposte, “From torched skyscrapers, men grew wings.” These simple string of words sets the brain’s into motion. It wonders, what are the men are thinking, what are they feeling, what was the author thinking, and what do the other readers make of this. While a good writer tickles the reader’s imagination, a good reader imagines the mind and the inner workings of the imaginator extraordinaire. The brain’s highly developed prefrontal cortex is responsible for the Theory of Mind or granting humans the ability to think about one’s own thinking and thinking of others. This episode, my guest Dr. Carol Westby returns to discuss the ways to promote the development of Theory of Mind.
About Carol Westby, Ph.D.
Carol Westby, PhD, CCC-SLP, is a speech-language-pathologist and educational consultant. She has written and presented workshops nationally and internationally on play, language-literacy development and disabilities, theory of mind, social-communication impairments, and multicultural issues in assessment and intervention. She has received the Honors of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
Resources
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
In the world of limitless possibilities, there is a limit as to how much one can know about the minds of others. Take an example: Have you ever been in your head so much that your insecurities catch up with you and you fail to gauge what others are thinking and feeling? It all simply begins when a friend doesn't return your call; or at least not right away. You begin to guess what her reasons are to not call and from there on, it escalates into this drama inside where you end up wondering if your friend actually hates you or maybe, doesn’t want anything to do with you. Then on Monday morning, you get a call from your friend saying that she went to her dentist on Friday and left her phone there. Your mind failed you!
This episode, my guest, Dr. Carol Westby, will discuss the concept of Theory of Mind which enables us to understand others’ intentions, feelings, and beliefs by directing our attention to “reading” the minds of others. She will explain how the key to unlock the social struggles of those with Executive function challenges often lies in this “mentalizing” ability.
About Carol Westby, Ph.D.
Carol Westby, PhD, CCC-SLP, is a speech-language-pathologist and educational consultant. She has written and presented workshops nationally and internationally on play, language-literacy development and disabilities, theory of mind, social-communication impairments, and multicultural issues in assessment and intervention. She has received the Honors of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
Resources
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Frank Darabont’s most prudent decision came when he spent just a $1 for one of Stephen King’s 1982 short stories Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption only to write a mind-blowing screenplay based on the story. Eventually, he directed it into the critically acclaimed and commercially successful film, Shawshank Redemption, which depicts how a wrongfully accused and imprisoned for life Andy Dufresne gets a new lease on life after breaking free from the indestructible shackles. No one needs to go to prison to know being in prison sucks.
This episode, my guest, Paul Hegarty, tells us why he relates to the struggles of the lead character Andy Dufresne and how in just a few seconds, he went from being a good samaritan to a victim with a substantial brain-injury that brought upon a life of struggle and despair. Just as Andy met Red, a fellow inmate played by Morgan Freeman who knows how things work and helps figure out a way to escape, Paul too met many people along the way who have helped him to rise above his challenges and restore his life into a joyful endeavor. Personally, I’m thrilled to have been Red! Paul’s story inspires everyone to search for the key so that we too can raise our hands in triumph when we get out!
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
What war can you win with a deck of cards, a bible, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry? A war against the drudgery of daily mundane. To bring a semblance of normalcy, to push against her personal limits and to invoke her creative genius, for many years, Maya Angelou rented a hotel room where she placed these four simple objects and did her best work. Known for her prolific writing career, Maya Angelou could not have accomplished her success if it weren’t for a complete surrender and a deal of great respect for carefully crafted meaningful routines.
On this episode of the Full PreFrontal podcast my guest Dr. Christine Carter, the author of the best-selling books including, “The Sweet Spot: How to Achieve More by Doing Less” (2017) returns to talk about ways to elevate personal productivity while enjoying the day-to-day rigmarole.
About Christine Carter, Ph.D.
Christine Carter, Ph.D., is the author of best-selling books The Sweet Spot: How to Achieve More by Doing Less (2017) and Raising Happiness (2011). A sought-after keynote speaker and coach, Dr. Carter writes an award-winning blog, Brave Over Perfect. She is a sociologist and Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, where she draws on scientific research to help people lead their most meaningful, joyful, and authentic lives.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Have you ever wondered if you’re doing it right, particularly when it comes to parenting? Have your good intentions to push your kids failed you? Have you reacted in an unflattering way when dealing with your kids’ distractibility, stubbornness, or argumentativeness or have your children pointed out that your reactions of frustration and anger are very unbecoming of you? It turns out that just because you're a talented, successful, and good person doesn’t mean that you will automatically be an effective parent. Everybody needs a little help in raising well-adjusted kids.
On this episdoe my guest, Dr. Christine Carter, a sociologist and Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center and a very successful author of many books including “Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents” will address important issues including the connection between parenting and self-regulation, becoming less of a critic and more of a model, and how to raise well-adjusted kids.
About Christine Carter, Ph.D.
Christine Carter, Ph.D., is the author of best-selling books The Sweet Spot: How to Achieve More by Doing Less (2017) and Raising Happiness (2011). A sought-after keynote speaker and coach, Dr. Carter writes an award-winning blog, Brave Over Perfect. She is a sociologist and Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, where she draws on scientific research to help people lead their most meaningful, joyful, and authentic lives.
Book
Resources
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
The game of Chutes and Ladders, originally invented in India and known for the snakes instead of chutes, is a great allegory for life. With the luck of the draw, you get a leg up when you land on the ladder only to be taken down a several notches often to an irretraceable set back. It takes a lot of mental maneuvering and an executive control to handle the frustration of sliding down from 87 to 24 and to patiently wait to rise up again or watch others win. And it’s true wisdom to not lose sight that after all, it’s just a game! On this podcast, our guest, Dr. Ronald D. Siegel, a renowned author, psychotherapist, and great teacher of mindfulness practices will discuss how mindful self-regulation is the seat of resiliency and how it allows us to gain a sense of equilibrium.
About Dr. Ronald Siegel
Dr. Ronald D. Siegel is an Assistant Professor of Psychology, part time, at Harvard Medical School, where he has taught for over 35 years. He is a long-time student of mindfulness meditation and serves on the Board of Directors and faculty of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy. He teaches internationally about the application of mindfulness practice in psychotherapy and other fields, and maintains a private clinical practice in Lincoln, Massachusetts.
Dr. Siegel is coeditor of the critically acclaimed text, Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, 2nd Edition; author of a comprehensive guide for general audiences, The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems; coeditor of Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy: Deepening Mindfulness in Clinical Practice, with a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama; coauthor of the professional guide Sitting Together: Essential Skills for Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy; coauthor of the self-treatment guide Back Sense: A Revolutionary Approach to Halting the Cycle of Chronic Back Pain, which integrates Western and Eastern approaches for treating chronic back pain; and professor for The Science of Mindfulness: A Research-Based Path to Well-Being produced by The Great Courses. He is also a regular contributor to other professional publications, and is co-director of the annual Harvard Medical School Conference on Meditation and Psychotherapy.
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About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader
World-class athletes, politicians, artists, and even entrepreneurs have fallen from grace because of their personal salacious digressions or public tantrums. The talent that makes them rich and famous is not the same talent that helps them ward off the chaos in their vulnerable mind. The emotional brain is inherently wired to duck from social perils or to protect itself from the painful misery of negative experiences. If mindlessness is at the heart of impulsive, silly, or even dumb mistakes then it's the well-cultivated mindfulness that insulates the human being from thoughtless words, judgmental attitudes, or harmful actions. On today’s podcast, our guest Dr. Ronald D. Siegel from Harvard University and author of Essential Skills for Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy, will discuss the link between emotional-regulation and Executive Function and the path to well-being through mindfulness.
About Dr. Ronald Siegel
Dr. Ronald D. Siegel is an Assistant Professor of Psychology, part time, at Harvard Medical School, where he has taught for over 35 years. He is a long-time student of mindfulness meditation and serves on the Board of Directors and faculty of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy. He teaches internationally about the application of mindfulness practice in psychotherapy and other fields, and maintains a private clinical practice in Lincoln, Massachusetts.
Dr. Siegel is coeditor of the critically acclaimed text, Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, 2nd Edition; author of a comprehensive guide for general audiences, The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems; coeditor of Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy: Deepening Mindfulness in Clinical Practice, with a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama; coauthor of the professional guide Sitting Together: Essential Skills for Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy; coauthor of the self-treatment guide Back Sense: A Revolutionary Approach to Halting the Cycle of Chronic Back Pain, which integrates Western and Eastern approaches for treating chronic back pain; and professor for The Science of Mindfulness: A Research-Based Path to Well-Being produced by The Great Courses. He is also a regular contributor to other professional publications, and is co-director of the annual Harvard Medical School Conference on Meditation and Psychotherapy.
Book
Resources
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning
Would you be willing to head-butt a ram for an icy cold bottle of Mountain Dew? That’s the kind of lighthearted foolery that got a lot of laughs during a Super Bowl commercial one year. At the end, we see the young man sipping from the winning drink, but you’re not quite sure if he is okay because you can hear a stutter in his speech as he staggers away in a disoriented haze. Even though our precious brain comes in a special protective casing, not everyone is lucky enough to keep it safe from harm. Whether it is a tiny bump, a big jolt, or a hard blow to head, the result can often be life altering. This episode, my guest, Professor Jerry Hoepner, will discuss the art and science of neurorehabilitation after a traumatic brain injury and its relationship with executive function and real-world functioning.
About Jerry Hoepner, Ph.D.
Jerry Hoepner, Ph.D., CCC-SLP is an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire. He teaches coursework in adult neurogenics, including Anatomy & Physiology, Neuroanatomy & Physiology, Aphasia, Acquired Cognitive Disorders, Dysphagia, and Counseling. He is co-developer of the UW Systems SoTL Think Tank, an annual disciplinary consortium of faculty interested in evidence based instruction and scholarship of teaching and learning research. He is a founding editor and editor-at-large of the Teaching and Learning in Communication Sciences and Disorders (TLCSD) journal. Jerry’s teaching research focuses on non-course based learning
opportunities, pedagogy, and training CSD students as educators. This research has been published in a variety of journals, including: the Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and Journal of Teaching and Learning with Technology.
He also remains active in clinical research, including student and camper outcomes at the Chippewa Valley Aphasia Camp, social networking applications for individuals with aphasia, Video Self-Modeling interventions for individuals with acquired cognitive disorders, and communication partner training. This research has been published in a variety of journals including Brain Injury, Aphasiology, and the Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders. In addition, Dr. Hoepner has published several chapters in edited texts. He remains active in community programming for individuals living with traumatic brain injuries and those living with aphasia, including being a co-founder of the Chippewa Valley Aphasia Group, Chippewa Valley Aphasia Camp, Mayo Mild Brain Injury Group, and Blugold Brain Injury Group.
Book
Digital Seminar
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
In NBC’s award winning series, This is Us, Mandy Moore’s character Becca, a new mother of three, leaves the house for the first time after the childbirth to buy groceries so that she can make something special for her husband, Jack. Ordinarily, Becca plays by the book and goes with the flow but an encounter where another shopper grabs the last bag of yellow onions that Becca wanted for herself leads to a massive meltdown. One can clearly see what happens when the demands on a capable and caring person like Rebecca exceeds her capacity as woman who’s recovering from postnatal blues and warding off the unlimited pressure of raising babies. This episode, my guest, Professor Jerry Hoepner, will talk about the daily tug of war where a novel context causes a seismic shift in the demands and deterioration in the performance as it exceeds capacity.
About Jerry Hoepner, Ph.D.
Jerry Hoepner, Ph.D., CCC-SLP is an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire. He teaches coursework in adult neurogenics, including Anatomy & Physiology, Neuroanatomy & Physiology, Aphasia, Acquired Cognitive Disorders, Dysphagia, and Counseling. He is co-developer of the UW Systems SoTL Think Tank, an annual disciplinary consortium of faculty interested in evidence based instruction and scholarship of teaching and learning research. He is a founding editor and editor-at-large of the Teaching and Learning in Communication Sciences and Disorders (TLCSD) journal. Jerry’s teaching research focuses on non-course based learning
opportunities, pedagogy, and training CSD students as educators. This research has been published in a variety of journals, including: the Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and Journal of Teaching and Learning with Technology.
He also remains active in clinical research, including student and camper outcomes at the Chippewa Valley Aphasia Camp, social networking applications for individuals with aphasia, Video Self-Modeling interventions for individuals with acquired cognitive disorders, and communication partner training. This research has been published in a variety of journals including Brain Injury, Aphasiology, and the Journal of Interactional Research in Communication Sciences and Disorders. In addition, Dr. Hoepner has published several chapters in edited texts. He remains active in community programming for individuals living with traumatic brain injuries and those living with aphasia, including being a co-founder of the Chippewa Valley Aphasia Group, Chippewa Valley Aphasia Camp, Mayo Mild Brain Injury Group, and Blugold Brain Injury Group.
Book
Digital Seminar
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
What’s the difference between blowing bubbles in the yard, watching a drunk shovel snow in a shopping cart, and listening to Rodney Dangerfield deliver a monologue? The first one is fun, the second one is funny, but only Rodney Dangerfield’s one-liners makes you laugh every time. It takes Executive Function skills such as adapting off-stage comedic talent to the stand-up comedy environment, restructuring the jokes, and adjusting your timing to succeed in the business of entertainment. But talented individuals with ADHD experience everyday chaos as their lives are riddled with a lot of mismanagement, impulsivity, and poor decision-making. This makes it difficult to let the talents be discovered or actualized.
This episode, in a candid interview, my client, Karate (Kate) Wellington, talks about finding a home in comedy and entertainment and how her creativity has always managed to surface and give her hope in spite of the painful realization that ADHD is there to stay and Executive Dysfunction is a beast that needs to be tamed. See how Kate has come to acknowledge that the secret of finessing her progress as a comedian lies in mastering her Executive Function.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Taking care of children by feeding them, protecting them, and loving them is not the same as preparing them for their future. American education has been through an evolutionary process; which is just a few centuries old and the quest is yet to be fulfilled. We forget, a century ago, attending school past age 12 was not mandatory, the classrooms were often filled with 50-60 kids of varying ages and demanding kids to recite and regurgitate facts was a standard practice. Forecasting the needs of tomorrow continues to be an enigma in spite of the rapidly evolving information technology age and serving the needs of all types of learners continues to be as opaque as ever. This episode, my guest, Dr. Sam Goldstein, a clinical neuropsychologist, will discuss how to rethink educating self-sufficient students with Executive Function at the heart of learning.
About Sam Goldstein, Ph.D.
Sam Goldstein, Ph.D. ABPdN is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine. He is Clinical Director of the Neurology Learning and Behavior Center. Dr. Goldstein has authored fifty books as well as over three dozen book chapters and thirty research articles. He has also co-authored six psychological tests. He currently serves as Editor in Chief of the Journal of Attention Disorders and sits on the editorial boards of six peer reviewed journals. Currently he has three books and four psychological tests in development.
Websites
Books
Recommended Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
If you’re trying to bum a cigarette from someone outside a bar after midnight be prepared for them to say no. Talented actor, Shia Lebeouf, wasn’t prepared. Ironically, he who has painstakingly portrayed Tennis’ tempestuous bad-boy, John McEnroe, in “Borg vs McEnroe,” himself has been arrested one time too many for emotional volatility, impulsivity, and disorderly conduct. Not everyone has strong executive function to circumvent life’s obstacles with grace. Today, my guest, Dr. Sam Goldstein, a clinical neuropsychologist, will discuss how Executive Function helps us negotiate everyday bumps and insulates us from bad decisions and self-destruction.
About Sam Goldstein, Ph.D.
Sam Goldstein, Ph.D. ABPdN is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine. He is Clinical Director of the Neurology Learning and Behavior Center. Dr. Goldstein has authored fifty books as well as over three dozen book chapters and thirty research articles. He has also co-authored six psychological tests. He currently serves as Editor in Chief of the Journal of Attention Disorders and sits on the editorial boards of six peer reviewed journals. Currently he has three books and four psychological tests in development.
Websites
Books
Recommended Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
The creator of The Simpsons, Matt Groening, once described Homer Simpson as “a loving father but he’s ruled by his impulses”. Homer often comes across more of a juvenile adult than a parent; never quite equipped to handle Bart’s bratty behaviors or Lisa’s intellectual curiosity. In spite of being endowed, the virtuous, talented, and sensitive middle child Lisa is often ignored in the Simpsons household. As it is, parenting is hard but it’s even harder to tailor it to an individual child’s needs. Today, my guest, Dr. Stephanie Carlson, in her second interview will expatiate on how certain type of parenting can be instrumental in raising autonomous children who learn to temper their behaviors and emotions into resiliency.
About Stephanie Carlson, Ph.D.
Stephanie is currently a Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Director of Research at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, and Co-founder and CEO of Reflection Sciences, Inc.
Dr. Carlson is a developmental psychologist and internationally recognized leader in the measurement of executive function in preschool children. She conducts research on ways to promote the healthy development of EF in children and their caregivers. Her work has received continuous funding since 2002 from federal agencies and non-profit foundations, including the National Institutes of Health, Institute of Education Sciences, John Templeton Foundation, and the Character Lab. Dr. Carlson’s research is highly cited and has been featured in several media outlets, including Time, New York Times Magazine, and National Public Radio.
Education
B.A. (summa cum laude) with Honors in Psychology, Bucknell University (1991)
Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology, University of Oregon (1997)
Organizations & Memberships
Dr. Carlson is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. She has served on several editorial boards, as Vice President of the Jean Piaget Society, and as an advisor to Transforming Education, the Minnesota Children’s Museum, Sesame Workshop, Playworks.org, and Understood.org. She has been nominated as a “Favorite Professor” by undergraduates and is frequently invited to speak at national and international meetings.
Websites
Books
Articles
When, “What to Expect When You’re Expecting” hit the bookstores in 1984, authors Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel had no idea that their book would become a bible for expectant parents and it would top the Best Seller’s list for years to come. Even though the parents’ search to figure out the mysteries of parenting does not dwindle once the baby is born; it surely gets complicated and there is no single book that guides parent to raise self-disciplined children. Today, my guest Dr. Stephanie Carlson, will demystify Executive Function and children’s capacities to successfully self-regulate their thoughts, feelings, and actions to function autonomously and independently by pausing for reflection.
About Stephanie Carlson, Ph.D.
Stephanie is currently a Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Director of Research at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, and Co-founder and CEO of Reflection Sciences, Inc.
Dr. Carlson is a developmental psychologist and internationally recognized leader in the measurement of executive function in preschool children. She conducts research on ways to promote the healthy development of EF in children and their caregivers. Her work has received continuous funding since 2002 from federal agencies and non-profit foundations, including the National Institutes of Health, Institute of Education Sciences, John Templeton Foundation, and the Character Lab. Dr. Carlson’s research is highly cited and has been featured in several media outlets, including Time, New York Times Magazine, and National Public Radio.
Education
B.A. (summa cum laude) with Honors in Psychology, Bucknell University (1991)
Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology, University of Oregon (1997)
Organizations & Memberships
Dr. Carlson is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science. She has served on several editorial boards, as Vice President of the Jean Piaget Society, and as an advisor to Transforming Education, the Minnesota Children’s Museum, Sesame Workshop, Playworks.org, and Understood.org. She has been nominated as a “Favorite Professor” by undergraduates and is frequently invited to speak at national and international meetings.
Websites
Books
Articles
The end of the year inventory often reveals a track record of failed diets, disorganization, and an ever-so thinning bank balance which is why a recent poll suggested that "lose weight," "get organized," and "spend less money" are the top 3 New Year’s resolutions. To change your ways upon self-reflection you need strong Executive Function skills. It’s the self-aware people who create attainable and reasonable New Year’s resolutions, but better yet, it is the self-regulated people who see them through. Striving to better oneself means developing a better relationship with yourself and cultivating strong habits. Today, my guest, Phil Zelazo, Ph.D. discusses how parents and teachers can promote the development of strong Executive Function and how better regulated members of the classroom, household, or community foster better, more modulated responses – which is the true foundation of a harmonious society.
About Philip Zelazo, Ph.D.
Philip David Zelazo (PhD, Yale, 1993) is currently the Nancy M. and John E. Lindahl Professor at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota. He was previously on the faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto, where he held the Canada Research Chair in Developmental Neuroscience. Professor Zelazo’s research has helped shape current scientific understanding of executive function and its development, including the key roles of reflection, rule use, hierarchical complexity, mindfulness, and emotion (hot versus cool EF). This work has led to the design of widely used standardized measures of EF skills (e.g., the NIH Toolbox measures of EF) and to the creation of effective interventions for promoting the healthy development of EF in early childhood. Professor Zelazo’s research has been honored by numerous awards, including a Boyd McCandless Young Scientist Award from the American Psychological Association (APA), and a Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 Award. He is a Fellow of APA, the Association for Psychological Science (APS); Senior Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute; and Scientific Advisor for Vroom and Understood.org. He serves on numerous editorial boards (e.g., Development and Psychopathology), was lead editor of the Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness (2007) and was editor of the two-volume Oxford Handbook of Developmental Psychology (2013).
Websites
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
“In order to avoid buying those unnecessary items, don't go shopping at those stores.” Says a financial adviser Michael Markey. But anyone who is not a stranger to temptations knows that it takes a lot to resist the holiday shopping season, starting with Black Friday to Cyber Monday and until the day-before Christmas eve, the online as well as brick and mortar retailers craft seductive deals to trap every eager consumer and last-minute shopper. For every ad, e-blast, and coupon that goes out into the cyber space, the self-help realm bulges with tips and suggestions for us to curtail powerful craving, desires, and temptations. Today, my guest Phil Zelazo, Ph.D. discusses two distinct systems – a top down a reflexive versus a bottom up more of a deliberate that blocks the onslaught of internal chatter and external distractions.
* This is Dr. Zelazo’s first Podcast where he discusses brain’s Executive system that is activated by engaging conscious awareness and deliberate intentionality.
About Philip Zelazo, Ph.D.
Philip David Zelazo (PhD, Yale, 1993) is currently the Nancy M. and John E. Lindahl Professor at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota. He was previously on the faculty in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto, where he held the Canada Research Chair in Developmental Neuroscience. Professor Zelazo’s research has helped shape current scientific understanding of executive function and its development, including the key roles of reflection, rule use, hierarchical complexity, mindfulness, and emotion (hot versus cool EF). This work has led to the design of widely used standardized measures of EF skills (e.g., the NIH Toolbox measures of EF) and to the creation of effective interventions for promoting the healthy development of EF in early childhood. Professor Zelazo’s research has been honored by numerous awards, including a Boyd McCandless Young Scientist Award from the American Psychological Association (APA), and a Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 Award. He is a Fellow of APA, the Association for Psychological Science (APS); Senior Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute; and Scientific Advisor for Vroom and Understood.org. He serves on numerous editorial boards (e.g., Development and Psychopathology), was lead editor of the Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness (2007) and was editor of the two-volume Oxford Handbook of Developmental Psychology (2013).
Websites
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
What does a fatal plane crash by a veteran pilot and a patient death from a wrongful dosage by an expert nurse have in common? They both might have been interrupted in the middle of critical procedures and may not have remembered to come back to where they left off. While processing information in working memory, your attention acts like a 360° searchlight and whatever it happens to illuminate is what gets attended. Even though we cannot multitask or ‘multi-attend,’ our mind foolishly persuades us that we can. Today, my guest, world-renowned working memory expert, Dr. Randy Engle, discusses how the secret of training our working memory lies in managing our attention and intention.
About Randall Engle, Ph.D.
Randall W. Engle, went to W. Va. State College because it was the only school he could afford to attend but it was one of the transforming experiences of his life. State was a public all-black college prior to 1954. As a consequence, most of his faculty were outstanding scholars who could not get jobs at top universities.
He graduated with nearly as many hours in zoology and math as he had in psychology so it was probably inevitable that he gravitate to experimental psychology. The job market was tough in 1972 and Engle was lucky to land a job at King College in Tennessee. His two years there, with 10 classes per year, made him a teacher. Fortunately, two of his classes each year were senior research seminars, which he used to conduct experiments. At the end of two years, he had two publications, enough to land him a job at the University of South Carolina where he spent the next 21 years.
He moved to the School of Psychology at Georgia Institute of Technology as Chair, a position he held for 13 years. He stepped down as chair to found the GSU/GT Center for Advanced Brain Imaging (CABI) on the Georgia Tech campus. He is editor of Current Directions in Psychological Science and has been on the editorial board of numerous other journals over his career. His research for the past 30 years has explored the nature of working memory, the nature and causes of limitations in working memory capacity, the role of those differences in real-world cognitive tasks, and the association of working memory capacity and cognitive control to fluid intelligence. His work has been funded by various agencies including the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and Office of Naval Research. His work has been highly influential across a wide array of areas including social psychology, emotion, psychopathology, developmental psychology, psychological testing, and has contributed to modern theory of cognitive and emotional control. Harzing’s Publish or Perish shows that Engle’s work has been cited over 17,000 times. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, Association of Psychological Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Society of Experimental Psychology, and the Memory Disorders Research Society. He has served as Chair of the Governing Board of the Psychonomic Society, Chair of the Board of the Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology (COGDOP), and President of Division 3 of APA. He received the first APA Division 3 Lifetime Achievement Award.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle
If life was a play, some activities would be the star of show and others would be just ‘extras’. The mind is often full of thoughts about the upcoming main act while plowing through the mundane, such as unloading the dishwasher, taking out the garbage or rescheduling a doctor’s appointment. But no matter what the task is we are always deploying Working Memory. Working Memory is the fine-china of cognition on which you either serve an ordinary burger and fries or a rib-eye steak. On today’s podcast, Dr. Randy Engle will talk about the fascinating ‘system’ that let’s you hold on to, for example, a riddle, “Throw away the outside and cook the inside, then eat the outside and throw away the inside” and solve it without getting distracted by cars honking, people talking, or computers humming.
About Randall Engle, Ph.D.
Randall W. Engle, went to W. Va. State College because it was the only school he could afford to attend but it was one of the transforming experiences of his life. State was a public all-black college prior to 1954. As a consequence, most of his faculty were outstanding scholars who could not get jobs at top universities.
He graduated with nearly as many hours in zoology and math as he had in psychology so it was probably inevitable that he gravitate to experimental psychology. The job market was tough in 1972 and Engle was lucky to land a job at King College in Tennessee. His two years there, with 10 classes per year, made him a teacher. Fortunately, two of his classes each year were senior research seminars, which he used to conduct experiments. At the end of two years, he had two publications, enough to land him a job at the University of South Carolina where he spent the next 21 years.
He moved to the School of Psychology at Georgia Institute of Technology as Chair, a position he held for 13 years. He stepped down as chair to found the GSU/GT Center for Advanced Brain Imaging (CABI) on the Georgia Tech campus. He is editor of Current Directions in Psychological Science and has been on the editorial board of numerous other journals over his career. His research for the past 30 years has explored the nature of working memory, the nature and causes of limitations in working memory capacity, the role of those differences in real-world cognitive tasks, and the association of working memory capacity and cognitive control to fluid intelligence. His work has been funded by various agencies including the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and Office of Naval Research. His work has been highly influential across a wide array of areas including social psychology, emotion, psychopathology, developmental psychology, psychological testing, and has contributed to modern theory of cognitive and emotional control. Harzing’s Publish or Perish shows that Engle’s work has been cited over 17,000 times. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, Association of Psychological Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Society of Experimental Psychology, and the Memory Disorders Research Society. He has served as Chair of the Governing Board of the Psychonomic Society, Chair of the Board of the Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology (COGDOP), and President of Division 3 of APA. He received the first APA Division 3 Lifetime Achievement Award.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed
Fame and success is not necessarily an antidote to self-doubt. Oscar-winning singer-songwriter, Sam Smith, once said, “I still doubt myself as a singer every day. Every time I step off the stage, I have ask someone what it was like. ...I really think I need to work on it.” The young performer’s life has seen some ups and downs, such as losing anonymity and putting his foot in his own mouth in front of 9 million people by inaccurately stating a fact during his Oscar acceptance speech, for which he was heavily criticized. Reading about Sam Smith you can learn that if you channel that self-acceptance through artistic courage into creating personal and confessional songs, people will respond to it and you yourself grow from it.
My client, Trevor Belmont, opens up to his vulnerabilities that have made his educational journey arduous as a young student with ADHD, depression, and Executive Dysfunction. This episode will give you an insight into Trevor’s process of reconciling with the fact that his talents and smarts were clogged in the funnel self-demonstration by his inabilities and weaknesses. And yet he has prevailed!
Jung-ah Choi writes that during a parent-teacher conference she discovered that her son was misbehaving in his kindergartner class. Upon further inquiry it turned out that her son was having a hard time complying with the class rule about not invading other people’s personal space. The teacher called it the “do-not-pop-the-bubble” policy. Choi’s son did not know how best to achieve the balance of engaging his classmates playfully without grabbing onto their hands or pulling them closer. A teacher expects her students to cooperate in the class, meet the policy expectations, and those who can’t or don't know how to ‘not-pop-the-bubble’ often get in trouble. When such trouble escalates, it leads to suspension or even expulsion. This episode, my guest, Clancy Blair, Ph.D. will talk about ways to promote fundamental abilities, which helps children meet the classroom expectation of HOW to regulate yourself.
About Clancy Blair, Ph.D.
Clancy Blair, PhD is a Professor of Cognitive Psychology in the Department of Applied Psychology in Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University. He earned a BA at McGill University and an MPH in maternal and child health, and MA and PhD in developmental psychology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has been conducting research on the development of self-regulation in early childhood for over two decades. The specific focus of this research has been on the development of executive function abilities. This research has demonstrated that executive functions are central to school readiness and school achievement in the elementary grades, are substantially influenced by experience and by the characteristics of the family and the home environment, and highly interrelated with the regulation of stress response physiology. An important focus of this research is on the ways in which experience ‘gets under the skin’ to influence the development of executive functions through the stress response. This mechanism is one that appears to be particularly relevant to the effect of poverty on children’s development and may be one primary route through which childhood poverty exerts long-term influence on cognitive and social-emotional development into adulthood.
Blair is currently completing a trial of a parenting program designed to foster self-regulation including executive functions in parents and children participating in Early Head Start programs (funded by the US Administration for Children and Families), is collecting normative data on a computer-based assessment of executive functions that he developed with his colleague Michael Willoughby (funded by IES), and is in the beginning stages of a study designed to examine prenatal and early postnatal influences on the development of executive functions in children (funded by the National Science Foundation).
He serves as a consultant on numerous research projects and in addition to serving as a scientific advisor to the Urban Child Institute, serves on the advisory boards of several initiatives focused on early childhood education and child wellbeing including First Things First in Arizona; the Early Childhood Comprehensive Assessment System, in Maryland and Ohio; the Exploring Implications of Emerging Insights from Psychology for Self-Sufficiency Programs project, Mathematica, Washington DC; and the BUILD K-3 Formative Assessment Consortium, North Carolina.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entre
At age 6, his mother said to him, “Why don't you just kill yourself? You’re such a burden to me.” At age 9, his mother drove him away from home to the unfamiliar part of Baja, California and walked him into an orphanage saying that she found this orphan kid and left him there for 90 days before his grandmother got a hold of him and brought him back. Throughout his elementary school she beat him senselessly. This is a story of a gangster, Sergio, from the roughest neighborhood of LA as told by father Greg Boyle in his book, Barking to the Choir. This gut wrenching and sad story traces the roots of a young man turning to the streets to escape his misery. Children who grow up in poverty, unstable homes, and highly unpredictable circumstances experience chronic and unabating stress, which takes a toll on the very shock-absorbing system in the brain, the Executive Function. Today, my guest, Clancy Blair, Ph.D., will discuss the distinction between acute and short lasting stress that buffs the adaptive and resiliency skills and chronic stress which dismantles it.
About Clancy Blair, Ph.D.
Clancy Blair, PhD is a Professor of Cognitive Psychology in the Department of Applied Psychology in Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University. He earned a BA at McGill University and an MPH in maternal and child health, and MA and PhD in developmental psychology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has been conducting research on the development of self-regulation in early childhood for over two decades. The specific focus of this research has been on the development of executive function abilities. This research has demonstrated that executive functions are central to school readiness and school achievement in the elementary grades, are substantially influenced by experience and by the characteristics of the family and the home environment, and highly interrelated with the regulation of stress response physiology. An important focus of this research is on the ways in which experience ‘gets under the skin’ to influence the development of executive functions through the stress response. This mechanism is one that appears to be particularly relevant to the effect of poverty on children’s development and may be one primary route through which childhood poverty exerts long-term influence on cognitive and social-emotional development into adulthood.
Blair is currently completing a trial of a parenting program designed to foster self-regulation including executive functions in parents and children participating in Early Head Start programs (funded by the US Administration for Children and Families), is collecting normative data on a computer-based assessment of executive functions that he developed with his colleague Michael Willoughby (funded by IES), and is in the beginning stages of a study designed to examine prenatal and early postnatal influences on the development of executive functions in children (funded by the National Science Foundation).
He serves as a consultant on numerous research projects and in addition to serving as a scientific advisor to the Urban Child Institute, serves on the advisory boards of several initiatives focused on early childhood education and child wellbeing including First Things First in Arizona; the Early Childhood Comprehensive Assessment System, in Maryland and Ohio; the Exploring Implications of Emerging Insights from Psychology for Self-Sufficiency Programs project, Mathematica, Washington DC; and the BUILD K-3 Formative Assessment Consortium, North Carolina.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a
In 1885, William Bentley placed a snowflake under his camera lens and took a first-of-its-kind photo only to then spend the next 50 years of his life capturing snowflakes with these incredible, vibrant designs. Apparently, the crystal of a snowflake starts as a tiny spec of dust or even pollen that attracts water vapor to form a preliminary hexagon called "diamond dust." After that, it’s sheer randomness how all the rest of the shape expands to form a beautiful and yet unique structure. The scientists know that factors such as temperature and humidity have some influence, but they are not completely certain as to why each snowflake is unique.We can apply the scientific truth behind the statement, "no two snowflakes are alike," to the human brain as no two brains are alike. At this point, we are not certain what makes each child’s brain unique and how it influences the development of self-regulation. Today, our guest, Dr. Fred Morrison, will shed light on the fact that we do know that when our students become self-regulated learners we will have more engaged learners in the classroom, greater ease in navigating the classroom instructions, and direct ways of impacting students’ abilities to persist.
About Fred Morrison, Ph.D.
Dr. Morrison is currently Professor of Psychology, Professor in the Combined Program in Education and Psychology and Research Professor in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. In recent years, his research has focused on understanding the nature and sources of children’s cognitive, literacy and social development over the school transition period. The work ranges from conducting basic research studies utilizing natural experiments and large-scale longitudinal descriptive studies of children’s developmental trajectories to developing, implementing and evaluating two major school-based interventions aimed at improving children’s learning during the preschool and early school years. Recently, he has been exploring schooling effects on brain and behavioral measures of children’s self-regulation. He has been recognized for his contributions to development and education, being awarded the Dina Feitelson award for the second time, for the best research article published in 2005 and 2015. He has been continuously funded by federal grating agencies for 25 years. Over that period, he has served on national review panels at NICHD, NSF and IES. He has mentored approximately 50 graduate student and 8 post-doctoral fellows.
Book
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
The Google search for “how to teach a child to tie shoes” comes up with approximately 7.5 million hits. Obviously, parents and adults in general have recognized that folding over the shoelaces, crossing the bunny ears, and looping them to tie a knot needs to be taught with great care. However, you walk into any hallway in elementary, middle, or high school and two distinct trends appear. The shoes with laces are completely replaced with Velcro and many of those who ARE wearing shoes have their laces untied. Developing self-assessment to know when the shoelaces are untied and then engaging the impulse control to stop everything and tie the shoelaces to prevent a potential fall, is the hallmark of self-regulation. But a great deal of individual variability in learning self-control can pose a grave challenge to parents and teachers. My guest Fred Morrison, Ph.D., will discuss how to think about self-regulation and Executive Function as a volitional self-directed control across the lifespan.
About Fred Morrison, Ph.D.
Dr. Morrison is currently Professor of Psychology, Professor in the Combined Program in Education and Psychology and Research Professor in the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. In recent years, his research has focused on understanding the nature and sources of children’s cognitive, literacy and social development over the school transition period. The work ranges from conducting basic research studies utilizing natural experiments and large-scale longitudinal descriptive studies of children’s developmental trajectories to developing, implementing and evaluating two major school-based interventions aimed at improving children’s learning during the preschool and early school years. Recently, he has been exploring schooling effects on brain and behavioral measures of children’s self-regulation. He has been recognized for his contributions to development and education, being awarded the Dina Feitelson award for the second time, for the best research article published in 2005 and 2015. He has been continuously funded by federal grating agencies for 25 years. Over that period, he has served on national review panels at NICHD, NSF and IES. He has mentored approximately 50 graduate student and 8 post-doctoral fellows.
Book
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
People like Dr. Mae C. Jemison live by the dictum, “if you're bored, you are not paying attention.” That philosophy has served her well as she is a former NASA astronaut and the first woman of color in the world to go to space. She could pay attention and direct her curiosity in whichever direction she wanted. Dr. Jemison got work done and kept on achieving. This was not the case for my client, "Scott Joplin," whose learning struggles began as a child when he was diagnosed with not one, not two, but multiple developmental disabilities which made his learning very laborious and paying attention quite exhausting. Scott had no shortage of intelligence and creative imagination, but the access to his own full capacity was upstaged by his difficulty in expressing his comprehension and delivering work when needed. He needed someone like me to untangle learning from learning-to-learn and the results were outstanding! Scott is a charming, caring, and very successful computer scientist whose commitment to self-development has payed off.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Have you ever tried to point out mistakes in someone – maybe in your child, spouse, employee, or even your boss? And what do you get? A sharp rebuttal or a strong push back. Peace comes to those whose self-concept and behaviors are in harmony with each other. If not, the result is cognitive dissonance. When you do something wrong, your brain is wired to try and relieve the tension it feels by immediately making up excuses for you. On this show, our guest, Dr. Carol Tavris, will give us some tips to handle this subconscious process so that we can learn and grow from our mistakes instead of simply denying and self-justifying.
About Carol Tavris, Ph.D.
Carol Tavris is a social psychologist, writer, and lecturer who has sought to use the contributions of psychological science to dispel some of the harms of pseudoscience. Her book with Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), explains why people don’t change their minds, recognize the harms they inflict, or give up useless practices simply because the evidence says they should. Carol is also author of the classic Anger: The misunderstood emotion and The Mismeasure of Woman:Why women are not the better sex, the inferior sex, or the opposite sex. She has written hundreds of articles, essays, and book reviews on topics in psychological science, and she currently writes a column, “The Gadfly,” for Skeptic. Carol has given lectures, workshops, and keynote addresses to diverse audiences around the world. She is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science; her other awards include an honorary doctorate from Simmons College for her work in promoting critical thinking and gender equity; an award from the Center for Inquiry, Independent Investigations Group, for contributions to skepticism and science; and the Media Achievement Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Your 20-something-year-old son decides to buy a car without your help and you come to find out that he got ripped off. He tells you the story of what happened and you cannot believe it. Apparently, your son agreed to buy a car off Craigslist, gave your home address to a stranger, and thought nothing of the request to pay in cash, even when the seller showed up with a car that looked nothing like the one in the online ad. When you point out these red flags to your son, all he does is get mad and come up with reasons of self-justification, which makes you furious. Our guest, Dr. Carol Tavris, will say that, in fact, your son is just a victim of his brain’s own deception. Find out about the perils of cognitive dissonance and why we find it hard to accept our own mistakes.
About Carol Tavris, Ph.D.
Carol Tavris is a social psychologist, writer, and lecturer who has sought to use the contributions of psychological science to dispel some of the harms of pseudoscience. Her book with Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me), explains why people don’t change their minds, recognize the harms they inflict, or give up useless practices simply because the evidence says they should. Carol is also author of the classic Anger: The misunderstood emotion and The Mismeasure of Woman:Why women are not the better sex, the inferior sex, or the opposite sex. She has written hundreds of articles, essays, and book reviews on topics in psychological science, and she currently writes a column, “The Gadfly,” for Skeptic. Carol has given lectures, workshops, and keynote addresses to diverse audiences around the world. She is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science; her other awards include an honorary doctorate from Simmons College for her work in promoting critical thinking and gender equity; an award from the Center for Inquiry, Independent Investigations Group, for contributions to skepticism and science; and the Media Achievement Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
On a daily basis we direct our attention, guide our instincts, and move from making micro to macro decisions feeling that we are fully in control of our inner machinery called the brain. While exploring the nature and development of Executive Function skills and its impact on learning and self-awareness, one can’t help but notice that many of us are unaware of ‘why we do what we do’. On the podcast, a world-renowned primatologist and celebrated author, Professor Fran de Waal, brings a perspective that we are not so different from the animals and the Interconnectedness between the good, the bad, and the ugly tendencies that form the true human nature are quite closely related to our animal counterparts.
About Frans de Waal, Ph.D.
Frans de Waal is a Dutch/American biologist, born in the Netherlands in 1948, having lived in the USA since 1981. His passion is primate behavior, and the comparison between primate and human behavior. He pursues the first as a scientist and the second as a writer of popular books. For him, there is nothing more logical than to look at human society through the lens of animal behavior.
Frans has a Ph. D. in zoology and ethology (the study of animal behavior) from the University of Utrecht, and now teaches Psychology at Emory University, in Atlanta. He is also a Distinguished Professor at the University of Utrecht.
His first book, “Chimpanzee Politics,” compared the schmoozing and scheming of chimpanzees involved in power struggles with that of human politicians. The book even reached the reading list of the congress in Washington. Ever since, Frans has drawn parallels between primate and human behavior, from aggression to morality and culture.
Since childhood, he has been an animal lover, and in fact — even though his career has focused on primate behavior — he is very much interested in all sorts of animals, including fish and birds, but also elephants and dolphins.
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Pre-teen years are a breeding ground for pimples, mood swings, eye-rolls, and social awkwardness. But that’s not the only stuff these kids have to adjust to. There is a remarkable shift in academic demands that’s far out and equally daunting. During the Middle School years, kids have to actually learn how to study for tests, independently write papers by elaborating on ideas, and manage their priorities to put together projects. The system assumes that somehow these kids will learn to swim just because we have thrown them into the water of self-management. Lynn Meltzer, Ph.D., returns for the second time to discuss ways to teach these essential and intricate skills that go into managing goals and priorities to help support the development of Executive Function skills.
About Lynn Meltzer, Ph.D.
Lynn Meltzer, Ph.D. is the President and Director of Research at the Research Institute for Learning and Development (ResearchILD) and Director of Assessment at the Institute for Learning and Development (ILD) in Lexington, MA. She holds appointments as an Associate in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Tufts University Department of Child Development. She is a fellow and Past-President of the prestigious International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities. Her 35 years of assessment and clinical consultation with children, adolescents, and adults have emphasized the critical importance of the theory-to-practice cycle of knowledge.
Her research, publications, and presentations have focused on understanding the complexity of learning and attention problems using a multi-dimensional model to bridge the gap between theory, research, and practice. Her extensive publications and professional presentations include articles, chapters, and books relating to the assessment and treatment of learning difficulties with an emphasis on the importance of metacognition, strategy use, cognitive flexibility, self-concept, and resilience.
Books
Websites
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
If not properly handled, some projects can spiral out of control like a runaway train. Assignments involving project-based learning professes that children learn best when they experience the real-world problems and solve them on their own. In one of the elementary schools I had worked with, students were spotted to rush in with awkwardly large homemade robots as part of their 4th grade project. The teacher’s conditions were such that each student had to design the robot without spending more than $5, assemble it without parents’ help, put together an operating manual, and finally present everything in front of the class. Project management involves the finer aspects of executive function skills and is rarely taught systematically. So did this project truly help inculcate the crucial skills for real world problem solving? My guest Lynn Meltzer, Ph.D., will discuss this very idea of ways to increase student’s control over his or her learning.
* This is Lynn’s first podcast episode where she discusses Executive Function, managing long range goals, and learning the how of learning.
About Lynn Meltzer, Ph.D.
Lynn Meltzer, Ph.D. is the President and Director of Research at the Research Institute for Learning and Development (ResearchILD) and Director of Assessment at the Institute for Learning and Development (ILD) in Lexington, MA. She holds appointments as an Associate in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Tufts University Department of Child Development. She is a fellow and Past-President of the prestigious International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities. Her 35 years of assessment and clinical consultation with children, adolescents, and adults have emphasized the critical importance of the theory-to-practice cycle of knowledge.
Her research, publications, and presentations have focused on understanding the complexity of learning and attention problems using a multi-dimensional model to bridge the gap between theory, research, and practice. Her extensive publications and professional presentations include articles, chapters, and books relating to the assessment and treatment of learning difficulties with an emphasis on the importance of metacognition, strategy use, cognitive flexibility, self-concept, and resilience.
Books
Websites
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
What do a sponge, a needle, or a drill bit fragment have in common?Well these are the most common but harmful things that a surgeon can leave inside you that don't belong there. Remembering to retrieve things out of patient’s cavity before suturing the patient up requires prospective memory – remembering to remember. It's the most critical Executive Function process essential in managing life’s goals. Our guest Professor Mark McDaniel, will be talking about ways to help carry out our future intentions and prevent dire consequences of our forgetfulness. *This is Professor McDaniel’s second podcast episode that provides an overview of tools and processes to manage prospective memory and Executive Function.
About Mark McDaniel, Ph.D.
Mark McDaniel is a Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences (1980 Ph.D., University of Colorado), and the founding Co-Director of the Center for Integrative Research on Cognition, Learning, and Education (CIRCLE) at Washington University in St. Louis. McDaniel is internationally known for his work in the application of cognitive psychological principles to education. Over the past 35 years he has published numerous papers related to education, including topics such as pre-questions, discovery learning, feedback, mental models, analogical learning, and classroom studies on testing effects.
McDaniel has developed a number of other research foci in the general area of human learning and memory, including projects investigating the learning processes by which people acquire complex concepts. An important aspect of this work is exploring individual differences in the tendency for learners to focus on abstraction versus learning of examples when attempting to acquire complex concepts. His research also includes an emphasis on prospective memory (remembering to perform an intended action at some future moment).
McDaniel has published over 270 articles, chapters, and books in the area of human learning and memory. To facilitate dissemination of research literatures pertinent to learning and education, with Peter Brown and Roddy Roediger, he co-authored a book published by Harvard University Press entitled Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (2014).
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Elephants never forget! But I guess we do. Forgetting to drop off dry cleaning, book a hotel or register for a class on time can cause disruption if not devastation. Everyday we make plans to do things in the future. We have great intentions and a confident mental state that makes us believe that all of our plans will materialize; however, often our failed memories surprise us. Listen to my guest Professor Mark McDaniel talk about what prospective memory is all about and why we have trouble remembering to remember.
About Mark McDaniel, Ph.D.
Mark McDaniel is a Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences (1980 Ph.D., University of Colorado), and the founding Co-Director of the Center for Integrative Research on Cognition, Learning, and Education (CIRCLE) at Washington University in St. Louis. McDaniel is internationally known for his work in the application of cognitive psychological principles to education. Over the past 35 years he has published numerous papers related to education, including topics such as pre-questions, discovery learning, feedback, mental models, analogical learning, and classroom studies on testing effects.
McDaniel has developed a number of other research foci in the general area of human learning and memory, including projects investigating the learning processes by which people acquire complex concepts. An important aspect of this work is exploring individual differences in the tendency for learners to focus on abstraction versus learning of examples when attempting to acquire complex concepts. His research also includes an emphasis on prospective memory (remembering to perform an intended action at some future moment).
McDaniel has published over 270 articles, chapters, and books in the area of human learning and memory. To facilitate dissemination of research literatures pertinent to learning and education, with Peter Brown and Roddy Roediger, he co-authored a book published by Harvard University Press entitled Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (2014).
Books
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
However creative we might be, the human blind spot disallows us from imagining ourselves vividly in the distant future. Neuroscience says we are far better at constructing our past from memory as compared to projecting ourselves as a distant future-self. For example, in theory, posting 100,000 post-it notes all over the high school as a senior prank sounds creative and harmless, right? It was only after 29 Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk High School students got suspended that they were able to imagine what pickle they got themselves into. Interestingly, the class of 2012 Valedictorian and Salutatorian were among the suspended 29. We assume smarts makes us better at seeing our future-self but it may be not be so. On this episode, my guest, Professor Hal Hershfield from the UCLA School of Management, will help connect Executive Function and the concept of future-self.
About Hal Hershfield, Ph.D.
Hal Hershfield, Assistant Professor of Marketing at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, aims to understand how thinking about time can alter people’s judgments and decisions, and transform their emotions. He investigates the factors that promote well-being as it manifests in financial decisions, health, and happiness. His central line of work examines the ways that people consider their future selves, and how feelings of connection to these distant selves can impact saving decisions, retirement choices, and ethical decisions.
Prior to UCLA, Hershfield taught at NYU’s Stern School of Business, and was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Tufts University in psychology and English, and a PhD in psychology from Stanford University.
Website
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Since I read about Jeff Bezos’ email from June 9, 2004, I have concluded that my clients need my training to survive at Amazon!” Why?” you ask. Well, Bezos is demanding that his team use their Executive Function when making a pitch for a new idea. He wants everyone to move away from the simplistic bullet-point lists in PowerPoint presentations. Rather, he wants his employees to submit a 4-6 page "narrative" that he calls memos. Executive Function lets you orchestrate ideas into a complex sequence and then expand them into a cohesive form that we collectively call “impressive writing.”
In her second podcast appearance, my guest, Dr. Bonnie Singer, who is an expert in this and also happens to be a brilliant fellow Speech-Language Pathologist, will talk about teaching writing. Please give it a listen and share with all the parents you know.* This is Bonnie’s second podcast episode that discusses important techniques to improve the writing process with the lens of Executive Function.
About Bonnie Singer, Ph.D.
Bonnie Singer, Ph.D. is the Founder/CEO of Architects For Learning, where she trains educators and consults with schools world-wide and she directs a staff in the Boston area that provides academic intervention, assessment, and consultation services. With expertise in language, literacy, and learning, she is passionate about working with students who struggle academically, especially with written expression. In her 30 years of clinical practice as a speech-language pathologist, she has worked with students of all ages, developing practical approaches to instruction that foster the development of listening, speaking, reading, writing, and executive function skills. In partnership with Dr. Anthony Bashir, she developed EmPOWER™, a method for teaching expository writing, and Brain Frames®, graphic scaffolds for language, literacy, teaching, and learning. Her research and publications focus on the relationship between spoken and written language, cognition, spatial processing, and self-regulated learning.
Website
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
We love stories because they change our perspective. They give us a window into the lives of many through which we get to witness extraordinary evidence of human resilience. Noam Chomsky once said, “It is quite possible, overwhelmingly probable, one might guess – that we will always learn more about human life and personality from novels than from scientific psychology”. What do novels do after all? They tell stories of people. They unlock our imagination to help us see that people’s narratives are strangely similar to ours or uniquely different from anyone we know. Introducing the Special Edition of my Podcast, Full PreFrontal, I am calling “ExFiles: Stories That Matter”. Come along with me and listen to the first episode as one of my clients, Lynn Seaward, shares the true challenges of Executive Function and how she has managed to rise above it!
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
“For sale. Baby Shoes. Never worn.” These 6 words capture your attention, hook your emotions, and unleash your imagination. Apparently, legend has it that during an afternoon lunch with friends, Hemingway bet that he could write the shortest novel in six words. And he did. Whether Hemingway really wrote that or not, the hardest thing you’ll ever learn to do is write! As a successful author, Hemingway certainly had all the support he needed from his brain’s air-traffic controller, his Executive Function. Join me in listening to expert, Dr. Bonnie Singer, present a compelling perspective on writing as the highest form of Executive Function proficiency.
About Bonnie Singer, Ph.D.
Bonnie Singer, Ph.D. is the Founder/CEO of Architects For Learning, where she trains educators and consults with schools world-wide and she directs a staff in the Boston area that provides academic intervention, assessment, and consultation services. With expertise in language, literacy, and learning, she is passionate about working with students who struggle academically, especially with written expression. In her 30 years of clinical practice as a speech-language pathologist, she has worked with students of all ages, developing practical approaches to instruction that foster the development of listening, speaking, reading, writing, and executive function skills. In partnership with Dr. Anthony Bashir, she developed EmPOWER™, a method for teaching expository writing, and Brain Frames®, graphic scaffolds for language, literacy, teaching, and learning. Her research and publications focus on the relationship between spoken and written language, cognition, spatial processing, and self-regulated learning.
Website
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
It might be a little late in the game if you are just beginning to formulate a parenting strategy for your college-bound student so that they will communicate, collaborate, or reciprocate to parental guidance. Recently at a parent coffee meeting, a few folks came up to me to ask how ‘hands-on’ or ‘hands-free’ they should be with their high school kids. On this episode, my dear friend and esteemed colleague Nancy Beane will explain how the parenting work for “college-readiness” begins in high school or even in younger grades. She will discuss what students themselves can do to prepare themselves for the realities of a multifaceted college life where you and only you are in charge of your success.
About Nancy Beane
Nancy Beane grew up in Tennessee. She graduated with honors with a B.A. in History from Agnes Scott College, has an M.A.T. in History from UNC-Chapel Hill, and has an Ed.S. in Social Studies from Georgia State University. Counting her student teaching, she spent fifteen years in public schools at every grade level but eighth before moving to The Westminster Schools in 1989. There she taught history until 2015 and has done college counseling since 1992. Her fervent belief is that every person has the potential for a positive future, and she has always encouraged her students to take advantage of opportunities for growth and development while believing in themselves.
She has been actively involved in various professional organizations and is currently the President of the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). She also served as President of the Southern Association for College Admission Counseling (SACAC) from 2004 to 2005, was a member of the Board of Directors of NACAC from 2008-2011, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Association of College Counselors in Independent Schools (ACCIS) from 2012-2015. She has been actively involved with College Board and the Georgia Independent Colleges Association. She is an Associate Member of the Georgia Independent Counselors Association (GSCA) and an Affiliate Member of ASCA.
Website
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
As parents, we pride ourselves on getting our teenagers ready to take off and succeed on their own. We have placed them into schools with a similar hope that they will leave prepared with skills to make good choices and to adjust to new challenges. But is thatenough? There is no disagreement among experts that it takes more than just raw talent to succeed in school, a job, or in life. So what does it take? On today’s podcast, my dear friend, esteemed colleague, and college counseling expert Nancy Beane will discuss the nature of the relationship between the ‘noncognitive factors,’ often referred to as soft skills, and college readiness. She believes that the key to a solid start to adulthood is well-developed Executive Function.
About Nancy Beane
Nancy Beane grew up in Tennessee. She graduated with honors with a B.A. in History from Agnes Scott College, has an M.A.T. in History from UNC-Chapel Hill, and has an Ed.S. in Social Studies from Georgia State University. Counting her student teaching, she spent fifteen years in public schools at every grade level but eighth before moving to The Westminster Schools in 1989. There she taught history until 2015 and has done college counseling since 1992. Her fervent belief is that every person has the potential for a positive future, and she has always encouraged her students to take advantage of opportunities for growth and development while believing in themselves.
She has been actively involved in various professional organizations and is currently the President of the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). She also served as President of the Southern Association for College Admission Counseling (SACAC) from 2004 to 2005, was a member of the Board of Directors of NACAC from 2008-2011, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Association of College Counselors in Independent Schools (ACCIS) from 2012-2015. She has been actively involved with College Board and the Georgia Independent Colleges Association. She is an Associate Member of the Georgia Independent Counselors Association (GSCA) and an Affiliate Member of ASCA.
Website
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
It’s hard to sympathize with a kid who never finishes his classwork on time, doesn't put away his toys without a reminder, or cannot seem to carryover that love and focus for video games into school work. Strong Executive Function skills are required to stay engaged, get organized, control impulsive actions, and rein in inappropriate emotional reactions. On this podcast, our guest Dr. Peg Dawson, co-author of “Smart but Scattered,” will share how these crucial ‘habits of mind’ can be taught explicitly.
About Peg Dawson, Ed.D.
Peg Dawson, Ed.D., received her doctorate in school/child clinical psychology from the University of Virginia. She worked as a school psychologist for 16 years in Maine and New Hampshire, and for over 25 years has worked at the Center for Learning and Attention Disorders in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she specializes in the assessment of children and adults with learning and attention disorders. Along with her colleague, Dr. Richard Guare, she has authored several books, including a book for professionals, Executive Skills in Children and Adolescents: A Practical Guide to Assessment and Intervention and two books for parents, Smart but Scattered and Smart but Scattered Teens. Their book, Coaching Students with Executive Skills Deficits has been recently augmented with a planner (Work Smart Academic Planner). Their most recent book, The Smart but Scattered Guide to Success is written for adults. Dr. Dawson is a past president of both the National Association of School Psychologists and the International School Psychology Association. She is also the 2006 recipient of NASP’s Lifetime Achievement Award and a 2010 recipient of the International School Psychology Association Distinguished Services Award.
Books
Websites
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
In recent years, Hollywood has glorified and glamorized the stories of “epic failures to launch” with great humor and light-heartedness. The untold story behind each failure is an utter lack of discipline, no impulse control, and zero goal planning. The brain’s executive function skills interfere with all the ingredients for a launch: one’s persistence, planning, prioritizing, and execution. On this podcast, Dr. Peg Dawson will discuss what is Executive Function and how it helps us to “launch” ourselves.
About Peg Dawson, Ed.D.
Peg Dawson, Ed.D., received her doctorate in school/child clinical psychology from the University of Virginia. She worked as a school psychologist for 16 years in Maine and New Hampshire, and for over 25 years has worked at the Center for Learning and Attention Disorders in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she specializes in the assessment of children and adults with learning and attention disorders. Along with her colleague, Dr. Richard Guare, she has authored several books, including a book for professionals, Executive Skills in Children and Adolescents: A Practical Guide to Assessment and Intervention and two books for parents, Smart but Scattered and Smart but Scattered Teens. Their book, Coaching Students with Executive Skills Deficits has been recently augmented with a planner (Work Smart Academic Planner). Their most recent book, The Smart but Scattered Guide to Success is written for adults. Dr. Dawson is a past president of both the National Association of School Psychologists and the International School Psychology Association. She is also the 2006 recipient of NASP’s Lifetime Achievement Award and a 2010 recipient of the International School Psychology Association Distinguished Services Award.
Books
Websites
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
No doubt that the child who is late, disorganized and scattered needs help. But are you lecturing, punishing or giving zeros to that child in hopes that he will stop messing around and just get over it? On this Podcast, Dr. Russell Barkley will discuss how to train the brain’s Executive Function skills so that children can succeed in learning and life.
About Russell Barkley, Ph.D.
Russell A. Barkley, Ph.D., is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina. He is a Diplomate (board certified) in three specialties, Clinical Psychology (ABPP), Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, and Clinical Neuropsychology (ABCN,ABPP). Dr. Barkley is a clinical scientist, educator, and practitioner who has published 23 books, rating scales, and clinical manuals numbering 41 editions. He has also published more than 270 scientific articles and book chapters related to the nature, assessment, and treatment of ADHD and related disorders. He is the founder and Editor of the bimonthly clinical newsletter, The ADHD Report, now in its 25th year of publication. Dr. Barkley has presented more than 800 invited addresses internationally and appeared on nationally televised programs such as 60 Minutes, the Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS Sunday Morning, CNN, and many other programs on behalf of those with ADHD. He has received awards from the American Psychological Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Board of Professional Psychology, Association for the Advancement of Applied and Preventive Psychology, American Professional Society for ADHD and Related Disorders, New England Educational Institute, the Wisconsin Psychological Association, and Children and Adults with ADHD (CHADD) for his career accomplishments, contributions to research in ADHD, to clinical practice, and for the dissemination of science.
Books
Websites
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
Anyone struggling with inattention or distractibility, general impulsivity and poor motivation is going struggle with learning. However, conventional wisdom trivializes underachievement related to these struggles and there’s a risk that the sufferers may not get proper help they need. On this Podcast, Dr. Russell Barkley will discuss how the brain’s Executive Function brings behaviors under its control and directs actions towards successful learning.
About Russell Barkley, Ph.D.
Russell A. Barkley, Ph.D., is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina. He is a Diplomate (board certified) in three specialties, Clinical Psychology (ABPP), Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, and Clinical Neuropsychology (ABCN,ABPP). Dr. Barkley is a clinical scientist, educator, and practitioner who has published 23 books, rating scales, and clinical manuals numbering 41 editions. He has also published more than 270 scientific articles and book chapters related to the nature, assessment, and treatment of ADHD and related disorders. He is the founder and Editor of the bimonthly clinical newsletter, The ADHD Report, now in its 25th year of publication. Dr. Barkley has presented more than 800 invited addresses internationally and appeared on nationally televised programs such as 60 Minutes, the Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS Sunday Morning, CNN, and many other programs on behalf of those with ADHD. He has received awards from the American Psychological Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Board of Professional Psychology, Association for the Advancement of Applied and Preventive Psychology, American Professional Society for ADHD and Related Disorders, New England Educational Institute, the Wisconsin Psychological Association, and Children and Adults with ADHD (CHADD) for his career accomplishments, contributions to research in ADHD, to clinical practice, and for the dissemination of science.
Books
Websites
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
I am excited to announce that the Full PreFrontal Podcast has officially launched! Each episode will be a conversation between me and a top researcher, neuroscientist, cognitive psychologist, educator, learning expert, or thought leader about the inner workings of the brain. These are not just theoretical discussions or academic conversations – each episode is focused on translatable ideas and applicable strategies that you can use right away to become more self-aware in order to guide and mentor yourself or others to facilitate an inner change.
About Host, Sucheta Kamath
Sucheta Kamath, is an award-winning speech-language pathologist, a TEDx speaker, a celebrated community leader, and the founder and CEO of ExQ®. As an EdTech entrepreneur, Sucheta has designed ExQ's personalized digital learning curriculum/tool that empowers middle and high school students to develop self-awareness and strategic thinking skills through the mastery of Executive Function and social-emotional competence.
En liten tjänst av I'm With Friends. Finns även på engelska.