SPEAKER_01 0:00

You're listening to the Support Ed Learning Podcast, where we challenge the status quo of education and reimagine what learning should be. I'm Dr. Joe Sebastian, and in every episode we dive into critical thinking, Bloom's taxonomy, educational innovation, and how AI is shaping the future of learning. Whether you're a teacher, parent, policymaker, or lifelong learner, you're in the right place to rethink, reshape, and revive education. Your kid says they studied, they swear they studied, and then they bomb their test. Does that sound familiar? Gretchen Wegener has spent 15 years figuring out why, and she's built a system to fix it. We're breaking it all down today. Welcome back to the Supported Learning Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Joe Sebastian. Families often ask me how to navigate the maze of college emissions, college prep without wasting thousands of dollars and spending hours of time. And it usually involves finding the people who have figured out the rules of the game that the schools aren't telling you. And that's why I'm thrilled to welcome Gretchen here today. She's the founder of the Anti-Boring Learning Lab, a former Fulbright fellow and credentialed teacher, an academic life coach with 15 plus years of experience and the co-host of the College Prep Podcast with over 440 episodes. And she's trained over a thousand educators in her system and coached hundreds of students through the exact struggles of our family's fates each and every day. Gretchen, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Thank you. Good to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:30

Absolutely. Thanks for coming. Um I've given them the highlight reel, but kind of like, let's hear from you. How did you get into this from where you started?

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Yeah. Well, I'll make it as short as possible, but it was a long and winding journey. But I, my very first job out of college was as an actor educator, traveling to schools all around Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin. And I always wanted to teach in interesting, could we say anti-boring ways, but I didn't have the words for it yet. But fast forward, I got my teaching license and I got a teaching job. And then I did not like teaching at all. I hated asking kids to do things that they didn't want to do. And that's that's kind of the definition of a teacher through one lens. So I actually was invited not to return to my school. That is a fancy way of sort of saying fired. And I looked for other work and I was hired as an academic coach. And Wiki realized this was my work in the world, loved it, quickly branched away from the people who had hired me and created my own business. And then now I train educators in what I call the anti-boring study skills toolkit. And it fits my quirky way of being to be self-employed this way.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

So, okay, so you you were a teacher, you you left, and now you're doing you're teaching something completely different to kids.

SPEAKER_02 3:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

But you've done this for over 15 years. Yeah. What's the pattern? What's the number one thing you're seeing kids struggle with?

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Well, there's something that's always been the same over the last 15 years, and then of course, post-pandemic, there's something that's shifted. So I'll start with like, what is always the case? And what is always the case is that students aren't actually taught how to think about learning, how to actually understand what's happening in the brain when they're learning and what tools help you learn more effectively. Students aren't taught this, but frankly, teachers aren't taught this either. So, like, nobody is really taught how do we think about how to be independent learners. And so students do whatever they think they should do, which is usually rereading books, highlighting passages, falling asleep over before it was your textbooks, now it is your computer screen. And the actions that make you feel like you might be studying actually just aren't effective, according to brain science. So that's something we could talk about later if we want to. But I would say that's been the biggest mistake all along is doing things that make you feel busy and make you feel like you're doing something, but it actually doesn't impact your learning so well. So that was the pre-pandemic and three for today thing. Do you want to hear what's changed post-pandemic or should you?

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Yeah, tell me because it's like a different world right now.

SPEAKER_00 4:35

It is. It I mean, and I know you're seeing it in your work with students and in your job as well. But since the pandemic, more and more students are struggling with mental health, and more and more students are struggling with executive function skills and strategies. How do I actually get stuff done in this world where there's so much coming at my attention, including my own emotions, and they're not very positive? And so I'm seeing that students need a toolkit that I call the learn, do, feel toolkit. Like they need strategies for how to deal with each of those verbs, learning, getting stuff done, and dealing with yucky feelings.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

What do you what do you see kids getting consistently stuck on even after learning strategies? Like what do you see it just not taking?

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Yeah, I mean, they'll learn the strategy and they can understand. They can even pair it back to me often like what is the science behind how this will work? But everyone is just consistently overwhelmed and overloaded. And so figuring out how to take consistent action, just because you know how to do something doesn't mean that you yet have the skills to do it. You need lots of practice with whatever the skills you're learning in class are and with whatever the study strategies are, and students just don't know how to prioritize what to do because there's always so much to do all the time.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Do you think that is the issue? Or do you think that one of the biggest reasons we don't know how to prioritize is because everything there is no way to actually prioritize anything because everything is in one medium, screen information. So like I think part of the the error of us going to one-on-one, one-on-one devices, bringing devices in the classroom is now all the medium has changed to digital. And a screen, scrolling screen versus your Google Classroom, it's still a screen. It's in just all this information in one medium, and there's no way for kids to really prioritize what they need to do.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

Right. Well, if you think about prioritizing, meaning, like, how do you like think about it? How do you wrap your hands around what is everything I need to do? And how do I actually do it? And if everything is flattened off on a screen. I mean, I don't know about you, Joe, but I I struggle myself when everything's on the screen. It's one reason you can't see it, but right over here, I have a whiteboard and I have markers and I have paper. Yep, you got your piece of paper there. And so it's not always easy to convince students, but definitely, increasingly, I and the coaches I've trained try and have kids think to if you're gonna do things digitally, how do you also get your analog component? How do you what are your physical tools to be able to get things out of the computer and into your hands in a manipulatable way so that your body and brain can understand it better? And it's a hard sell.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

I like when I'm in meetings and and uh with struggling kids, they have them, they they're they're just a mess, right? No matter what. Like they're they can't figure it out, they don't um even and in and I mean I mean that respectfully too. Like they're just like, okay, well, he's struggling this, struggling this, well, you just need to do this better. And that's like that's the strategy. Just need you just need to do better. You just need to work, and like no one actually teaches them how to do it, how to do it better, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:08

How to do it, period, and then how to do it better. Like, what does better mean? And if we don't have a way to actually help students visualize and see it, see what better looks like in action, it's just gonna feel like people just want you to be different than you are, and there's a certain viewpoint perfectionism that's created, and then kids get up like, ah, I don't know how to do that. So let me just not try.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

So talk to us about the anti-boring approach for us and how does it work? What does it look like? What's the study cycle? What do you take kids through with that?

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Yeah, well, so let me explain first what why I say anti-boring, because some people critique me. Okay, like, isn't it better to say what the thing is that you should be doing rather than the thing that you shouldn't be doing? And to that I say, have you ever talked to a teenager? Like, I tried to tell my teenager clients, I can make school fun for you. Like, we can do this. And they would just roll their eyes. There's no way that you're gonna make school fun. And you know what? Point taken. School didn't didn't feel very fun for me back when I was a teacher either. So then I started saying, okay, well, here's what I can do. You can't control whether your teacher's boring or whether your school environment is boring, but you sure can control whether you bore your own brain. And I can teach you strategies for how not to bore your brain when you are learning. And guess what? Study time is the only time in a student's school career where you get to have total control over how you learn. And that's a pretty cool thing when you think about it. In the classroom, your teacher is controlling exactly how you do it, what activities do you do, how do you get tested. But when you're studying at home, you are the one who is in control. And guess what? The strategies you probably use are ones that the scientists have shown are actually the most boring to the brain. It it makes it hard for the brain to learn. So then we talk about what are those strategies that are boring and how do you make it anti-boring. And the study cycle is my solution to how to make things anti-boring.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

So what and and what does that look like? I don't, and I don't want to be bored. I want like what does that look like to you? What does that look like in practice?

SPEAKER_00 10:36

So, in practice, you know, I didn't actually prepare any blank whiteboards in front of me. Otherwise, I'd draw it for you right now, but I'll get my finger out so we can imagine. But I uh have a process when I'm working with students where I teach them using something I call the consent burger. So I am gonna get to the study cycle, but I'd like to tell you a little bit about what that is. In the consent burger, like students are so used to turning off their brains because adults lecture at them. And I have the luxury of working one-to-one with students, and so do all the coaches who I train. And so one of the things we do to try and get students to feel a little bit more motivated about learning the actual effective strategies is we the top bun of the burger is asking them, Are you willing? Are you willing to learn? Blah, blah, blah. It'll take about 10 minutes for me to teach you the most important things you need to understand from the science of how the brain learns. Are you up for spending 10 minutes with me that way? Usually they say yes if it's set up in a way where they really know that they get to choose. And then the burger, the middle part is the lecture, is the part that I want to actually teach them. But we all know it's kind of hard to hold a burger if there's no bottom burger. So the bottom burger is then stepping back after I've taught them the piece about how the science of learning and then saying, What do you think? Is this helpful for you? How is it helpful? And then in it getting them to apply it to their own lives. So, step number one, like if they're people are gonna take nothing else from this, if you're a parent, just try using that three-part structure and you're communicating with your students and you might notice a difference. And if you're an educator, especially a tutor or coach, just try embedding anything that you feel like a student needs to learn inside this burger. So usually when I'm setting up the study cycle, my burger might sound something like, Joe, gosh, it sounds so frustrating to have made three C's in a row on your test when you feel like you're studying really well. Is that true? Are you feeling frustrated? Yes. Well, here's the deal. I know some science that students rarely get taught about how the brain likes to learn. I teach it to you in about 10 minutes, and then I think you might understand why you got those Cs. Are you willing? Yes. Guessing you would say yes. And then so the study cycle, when drawn on a whiteboard, can imagine this. And I'll tell folks later how they can actually get a copy of it if they want. But there's uh a book at the bottom of the whiteboard and a brain at the top of the whiteboard. And I say there are three steps to how the brain learns. Step number one is we have to be exposed to information for the first time. Stuff has to get from the book and we draw an arrow up to the brain. It just has to, we have to be exposed to it. This is called encoding. The scientists call it encoding. It's the first time we learn something. But often the first time we hear it, it doesn't stick necessarily. Some stuff sticks, some stuff doesn't stick. And so there's a second part to the study cycle. This part two is on the other side, and it goes, there's an arrow that we draw from the brain down again towards that book that's at the bottom. And guess what? It turns out that this step two is the single most effective action we can take to learn anything. And it is, it's gonna sound boring. So just it's gonna be anti-boring eventually, but right now, this thing is gonna sound boring that we need to test ourselves to see what we know and what we don't know. And too many students wait for teachers to test them to find out what they know and what they don't know. And that is the mistake. There are lots of ways. If you're interested, we can talk about them where you can test yourself. It doesn't even have to take more than 30 seconds to three minutes to do what the scientists call retrieval practice, to see what stuck and what didn't. So that's step two. Step one is encode, step two is in is retrieve, and then there's one more step. Because when you're doing really good retrieval practice, you discover did I know it or did I not know it? And if you didn't know it, then there's a third thing you need to do, which is you need to encode it again, but this is crucial in a new way, not the same boring way you learned it or studied it the first time, but actually you need to give yourself a new, interesting way to relearn it so that the brain is paying attention.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

You're listening to the Support Ed Learning Podcast, where we challenge the status quo of education and reimagine what learning should be. I'm Dr. Joe Sebastian, and in every episode we dive into critical thinking, Bloom's taxonomy, educational innovation, and how AI is shaping the future of learning. Whether you're a teacher, parent, policymaker, or lifelong learner, you're in the right place to rethink, reshape, and revive education.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

No, I was gonna say, so so when you explain that and when you walk it through that, does it make it and then you're actually now connecting it through the learning process? That would does there like an aha moment that goes off the majority of the time?

SPEAKER_00 16:02

I mean, it it depends on the student, it depends on their neurodiversity, and I would say it also depends on the level of what I would call school trauma that they have experienced growing up in other in prior grades. So it depends. But usually there is a moment where students go, Oh my God, why did no one ever teach me this before I started taking tests? One of my favorite stories is from one of our anti-boring coaches in our community who works in a library. She does her tutoring and coaching in a library. And there was a student who was, I think, an older middle schooler, eighth grade, who learned the study cycle, pretty much as I shared it with you right now. What we didn't model was the bottom of the burger where we would then talk about. Now, knowing these three steps, did you do these three steps when you were studying for those tests that you got seasoned? So the coach did that full conversation. And then, you know, libraries, you're supposed to be quiet. But this girl yells, Oh my God, I can't believe no one ever taught this to me before. So she was really inspired by it. And inspiration does not necessarily mean effective action yet, but it's the first step. And then with their coaches practicing, then okay, how do we actually apply it? How do we actually, what do you need more practice in? Do you need more practice in how to practice retrieval? Do you need more practice in encoding in a new way? And then, well, let's practice over time. And so part of academic coaching is really internalizing what do those three steps look like super specifically, and do students have enough tools to put them into action.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

So parents hear the words executive function. Some know what it means, some don't, some are just like kind of lost to it. I think it's also just called like being a functioning adult. Like being able to, but now have now have a need to teach it because it's obviously not being taught, and kids don't know how to do this stuff. I've heard soft skills, all these different things, and it's just another thing that's put on the school. And there is obviously a skill deficit, obviously, because you're an executive functioning coach, but well, how do you explain it to parents on why it's necessary?

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Yeah. So again, for me, knowing the brain science is always what I fall back on. And I think a lot of people these days use the phrase executive function and think that it means, oh yeah, just doing stuff, using a planner, time management, whatever. That's executive function. But actually, executive functions are a part of the brain, a part of the prefrontal cortex that manage lots of specific parts of our getting things done process. And some students actually do have very compromised executive function skills. And there are, depending on the person you talk to, there are between like four and 16 different executive functions. So the world of executive function science is still kind of working with how do we translate what's firing in the brain in a way that talking to parents and students and adults can help them take action. So, for example, there's something called working memory. I don't know if you know what that is. I don't know if it'd be helpful to share more what it is, but I'll just say that working memory is one of the executive functions that is the number one predictor of academic success. And it is often just compromised in general when we are overloaded. And then if you have some kind of neurodiversion, let's say ADHD, because it's increasingly common, you have especially compromised working memory. And so when parents or teachers even say, just use a planner or just organize this way or just do this, one of the things they're not understanding is yes, those are actions that can help us get stuff done, but that's different than understanding which executive functions are compromised, and then developing strategies that help the student support or accommodate for that specific brain function.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

Still still think need to make it tangible, right? Still need to write it down because just seems like it it really just kind of boils down to some simple things like that as well.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

I mean like writing things down, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

I mean, to do to-do list to get the dopamine to actually make it visual to get. I mean, how many kids actually do that for you? How many kids do you teach that and then they become functioning at a higher level?

SPEAKER_00 20:44

Well, everyone for the most part functions at a higher level once they've practiced over time. The question is, how much practice do they need? Some of my clients stayed for just a semester, some stayed for three semesters, or sometimes three or four years if they were students with PhD. But I will say that it never looked the way I thought it should look. Like I wanted many of my clients to actually have a planner, you know, the paper planner, the days of the week, and with their schedule on the planner to make time visible, and with the list of things they needed to do. And that just is not gonna work for many students, at least at the beginning, because it also turns out, let's just as an example, organization and planning, those are two executive functions, but they are higher level executive functions. So you can't actually implement them effectively until you've worked on some of the executive functions like working memory that are the more foundational ones.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

How do you determine if it's a content and knowledge gap or a skills gap when you work with students?

SPEAKER_00 21:59

Well, one. Thing is, I like to ask them. I find that students are actually quite thoughtful about their own processes when you ask them. But also I like to draw out, like I shared with you earlier the study cycle and the drawn model of the study cycle. There's another one that I find really crucial for students, which is understanding cognitive overload and how our brains go into overload. And there are different things that affect our overload. So the information that we're learning coming too fast or coming in a way we don't understand, that is just one kind of overload. But there's also logistical overload. Maybe there's too much happening, too many depths you can't keep up with. There's also emotional overload that you have lots of big feelings. And there are other kinds of overload too. And I find that when I teach students about this with one of our 10-minute mini lectures and draw the different kinds of overload and then engage them in conversation about those kinds of overload, we find out pretty quickly what it might be. And then as a coach, I have them show me there, like show me your teacher's curriculum out. We think it's the content overload. Let's see how your teacher teaches. Maybe it's actually not that the content is too hard, but maybe it's being delivered in a way that doesn't actually work for your brain or where your executive function challenges are. And so there's always a process of asking the student and then being given a tour and being shown, and then using my own smarts to assess what's happening here.

SPEAKER_01 23:36

Got it. Okay. So let's shift gears here for a second and talk about some of the mistakes. The mistakes that parents make when their kid is struggling academically. What is the biggest mistake you see there make?

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Oh gosh. It's so it's it's so specific to different students, but I but maybe is the for the biggest thing is just to assume that your student's not trying hard enough or assuming that your student is lazy. I personally believe that there is more or less no such thing as lazy. There's just a student who's encountering a challenge that they don't know how to deal with. And then there's also an expectation mismatch between the parents and how they're interpreting the student's behavior. So that's probably the biggest one that I hear the most often.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

And what does that typically look like when parents come to you frustrated with their struggle? And how do you coach them through that more than the student themselves?

SPEAKER_00 24:37

You know, this is the question of the day in my line of work. I just literally earlier today had a webinar with one of the parent coaches who I'm connected with in an organization called Impact Parents. And they came to talk to us. And when I say us, I mean all of the academic and executive function coaches in the anti-boring learning lab about how do we work with parents. So I think actually parents are a bigger key than they know to helping a student. And I think a lot of times a parent just wants us coaches to just fix the kid, teach them what they need to know, practice, you go fix the kid. When actually there is a real tangible connection between the parent's willingness to grow and the student's willingness to grow. And so one of the things we're trying to be better at at the very beginning when we're meeting the parents who might engage us for coaching with their student is to find out what the parent thinks is happening in terms of their own limitations as a parent. And it's a very vulnerable conversation because parents don't want to admit it or don't want to see it. But the more we can get underneath to what they're really afraid of, what are you really worried about? And how do the strategies you choose with your kiddo, how do they actually come from that place of fear? If we can get a parent to really talk honestly about that, then we can help them see the ways that they're likely engaging with their kid that makes it worse rather than better for their kid.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

What are parents afraid of?

SPEAKER_00 26:21

I think they're afraid of their uh kid not being successful. They're afraid of the financial impact of college and that they're gonna be really having to sacrifice. They're gonna have to sacrifice, or their kids are gonna have to sacrifice, and then their kid isn't gonna take good advantage of the circumstances. I think we're all probably quite afraid and don't know how to talk about it, about the future and what what is the future gonna look like now that AI is here and growing?

SPEAKER_01 26:54

Why is sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

I think deep down that they're they're doing something wrong and that their kid is that they their kid is broken. I I hear that.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

Right. I I hear that too from a lot of the calls, too. We don't know what's going on. The why is try harder the worst advice you could probably give your kid.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

Yeah, I guess I would, you know, if I were talking to a parent, I would say, what happens when somebody tells you to try harder in something you're struggling with? Uh what does it mean to try and what is harder? Like that is actually when you think about it, those are words that have almost no meaning to them because everybody is different. And also everybody might interpret it differently. So, for example, more students than you would think come into coaching because they are perfectionists. Now they don't look perfectionists, they look what parents would say, lazy. And parents have told them to try harder, try harder, try harder. And the kid wants to succeed, and so they do what they think they should do to try harder, but it's not the most effective thing. And then it doesn't work, and then they give up, they're like, Well, screw it, I can't do this. So I'd rather just not do anything than fail. So we need to be specific with how we are supporting students to understand how is my brain, how is it showing? What does it need to be successful? And then how can I incrementally build the skills towards that success?

SPEAKER_01 28:34

So you get a kid that is a procrastinator, parent comes to you, they wait till the very last minute to prepare, to do anything. How do you fix that?

SPEAKER_00 28:45

I don't know that the word fix.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

How do you call that?

SPEAKER_00 28:51

How do I work with that?

SPEAKER_01 28:53

How do you work with them? Fix it, come on.

SPEAKER_00 28:56

One of my favorite things to do is to help students become experimenters of their own habits. So I would spend some time. First of all, we have to figure out how to separate the student. Like they they think there's a way they should be. The school has told them that, the student, the parents have told them that. So I have to I have to really help them understand we are here not because we're trying to meet anybody else's shoulds, but we're here because we're trying to figure out how do you own your learning and your life. Sometimes it takes a little while to help have a student believe that I'm really here to support them. That's number one. And then number two is to try and get a sense after. I mean, usually kids will tell me, I procrastinate. Like, oh, like it's this terrible, horrible secret. And so the other thing I do is like, you and everybody else, I procrastinate. We all procrastinate. The brain is actually built to want to resist effort. It's in our brains, the structures are there that we if especially if we're not passionate about or if there's not something interesting about the task, the brain is designed to not want to do it. So we need to get to know what are we resisting? First of all, and be real specific. It's not just that I don't want to do that project, but like why does that feel effortful to your brain? And how do we break things down into small enough parts till we find the increment that you are actually willing to do or curious to do, and only do that much at the beginning. Practice getting into action.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

So for an AP student specifically, kids that want to get high scores of fours and fives, what is your uh what does your system look like for a kid juggling that type of load?

SPEAKER_00 31:05

Yeah, I mean, the system is always the same. So it would be to teach them both for, especially for an AP student, I would probably teach them my two, those two mini lectures, the cognitive overload mini lecture and the study cycle, because I want them to understand the power of retrieval. I want to find out if they have good strategies for encoding in a new way. Most students don't. Most of them go, huh? How am I supposed to do that? And most students think they are broken if they're not learning well. And they apply the try harder thing you mentioned, but they don't understand how to track their own overload and specifically how to track their working memory capacity. Since it is the number one predictor of academic success, how you work with your working memory, students need to be past that. And it's the same whether you're a low performing student or a super high performing student. So I would teach them all of this first. The good news with an AP student is usually it goes pretty fast because once I teach them the science and I say, so tell me, where are you applying the science well in your study processes for the AP tests? And where are you not applying it well now that I've taught them to you, taught it to you? And usually they can see pretty easily where their mistakes are, and their mistakes are different for every student. Some of them, it's just like death by flashcards. Right. Which flashcards are a wonderful way to practice retweetal, but they can also be god-awful boring if you don't know how to really work with your brain.

SPEAKER_01 32:36

What would you before we get to uh lightning round? What do you see as the biggest opportunity right now post-pandemic? Executive functioning gaps are like wider than ever. What should families be doing? What is the biggest opportunity right now to make those gains?

SPEAKER_00 32:53

I don't know if parents would really want to hear this, but I would say please, please research executive functions. Please understand what they are. And I would even say specifically research what are the foundational executive functions and what are the advanced executive functions. And then have a conversation in your family. And it's not a one-time conversation, it's an ongoing conversation where everybody, parents and kids, reflect about where their challenges are and where their strengths are. And then practice having it doing experiments around the areas that are their challenge. And but it's so important to me that parents don't just try and do this to their kids. Like we all are struggling right now. I am. I know others are. I don't think it's just the kiddos who are having trouble following through with all the things they need to do. And so having it be an ongoing conversation that is based in the science of executive function and is based in compassion, trying to understand ourselves so we can find the strategies that work for us. That's what I would recommend. And I'm so aware it doesn't sound like the fancy magic wand. I wish it did.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

But that's the reality. So all right. Lightning round, answers that come to your head, like first thing that comes to your mind. Sure. No explanation needed, but it's if you want to, it's okay. All right. Um, one book that changed how you think about learning.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

Yeah, for me, it was the book Make It Stick, the Science of Successful Learning.

SPEAKER_01 34:28

If you can go back and tell yourself one thing when you started coaching, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 34:36

Teach students the science behind why strategies work, not just my favorite strategy that worked for me when I was a student.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

Worst study advice you hear people giving right now.

SPEAKER_00 34:50

Well, you already took the just try harder. I would say spend more time, spend more time, spend more time, rereading, rereading.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

One thing parents overthink about their kids' academics.

SPEAKER_00 35:06

I think I would say parents overfeel their fear without actually being clear about what they're afraid of. Parents force their fears onto their students, but they're doing it unconsciously.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

One thing parents underthink.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

The power of emotional dysregulation to hijack our ability to think.

SPEAKER_01 35:32

Well, if someone could only do one thing after listening to this, what should it be?

SPEAKER_00 35:39

Um practice the consent, like if nothing else, practice asking students if they're willing to hear you lecture before you lecture. But then the second thing would be if you actually want to see the study cycle or the cognitive overload mini lecture in action, I have them available on my website. So go to my website, antiboringlearning lab.com, to the free resources section.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

And um, okay, yeah, I was gonna say for people who want to find out more about you, like where should they go?

SPEAKER_00 36:13

I think the website is the best place, antiboringlearning lab.com. My social media of choice is LinkedIn. So you could also follow me, Gretchen Wegner, on LinkedIn, and you'll you'll see lots of stuff there too.

SPEAKER_01 36:27

Awesome. Um, Gretchen, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for your time. Yeah. Um, I hope you'll join us again, maybe later on, uh, talk a little bit more about some deeper, deeper uh executive functioning skills, specific strategies we could share with our parents. So um one question you wish I asked before we wrap that I didn't get the chance to.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Oh, one question I wish you'd asked. Nothing has actually come into mind.

SPEAKER_01 36:57

All right, cool. So, all right. Well, thank you very much, Gretchen, for your time again. And uh for all those listening. You will put the links and all the information in the descriptions and the show notes. And we will see you next time on the Supported Learning Podcast. Have a good one. Thanks for joining us on the Supported Learning Podcast. If today's conversation inspired you, challenged you, or sparked a new perspective, be sure to subscribe and share with a fellow change maker. We'll be back soon with more voices, more insight, and more ways to elevate the future of learning together. Until then, keep learning and keep pushing the conversation forward.