Feb. 17, 2026
Inside NeuroWell: Safer, Happier Classrooms That Work with Lisa Riegel
Send a text The biggest problem in schools isn’t disengagement—it’s relevance. We sit down with education leader and author Lisa Riegel to unpack NeuroWell, a practical framework that aligns brain science with daily classroom life so students feel safe, seen, and ready to learn. From belonging cues to behavior de-escalation, Lisa shows why culture design is the hidden lever for academic gains and healthier staff. We explore how to build a true learning community: clear norms, student roles, ...
The biggest problem in schools isn’t disengagement—it’s relevance. We sit down with education leader and author Lisa Riegel to unpack NeuroWell, a practical framework that aligns brain science with daily classroom life so students feel safe, seen, and ready to learn. From belonging cues to behavior de-escalation, Lisa shows why culture design is the hidden lever for academic gains and healthier staff.
We explore how to build a true learning community: clear norms, student roles, shared rituals, and goal setting that give every learner purpose. Lisa explains emotional and intellectual safety—why routines, predictable feedback, and strengths-based language regulate nervous systems and unlock attention. We also talk inclusion that works for neurodivergent students by matching roles to strengths and creating frequent, low-stakes social practice through short “learning sprints” and positivity prompts.
Then we tackle technology and AI with nuance. Phones off can help, but the deeper fix is designing work that matters. If a chatbot can do the task, the task needs to change. Lisa shares ways to assess thinking, collaboration, and iteration by observing process, not just products, and how leaders can define graduate skills—critical thinking, empathy, communication—and backward map adult practices that reliably grow them. With teacher burnout high, we highlight how leadership culture, clear outputs, and consistent measures make change stick.
If you care about safer classrooms, stronger relationships, and lessons students remember because they matter, this conversation offers field-tested moves you can use tomorrow. Check out Lisa’s book NeuroWell on Amazon and connect with her via LinkedIN for workshops, book studies, or coaching. In addition, Lisa is also has her new book Aspirations to Operations: A leader's guide to making transformative change stick available on Amazon.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisariegel/
https://www.amazon.com/Aspirations-Operations-leaders-making-transformative/
https://www.amazon.com/NeuroWell-Applying-science-supportive-proactive
Enjoyed the episode? Subscribe, share it with a colleague, and leave a quick review to help more educators find the show. What’s one ritual you’ll add to boost belonging this week?
00:00 - Welcome And Stakes For Education
02:09 - Meet Lisa Riegel And NeuroWell
03:59 - The Science Behind Behavior And Engagement
04:16 - Building Belonging As A Foundation
07:22 - Emotional And Intellectual Safety
09:02 - From Hierarchy To Learning Community
11:50 - Roles, Rituals, And Classroom Jobs
14:23 - Including Neurodivergent Students Through Strengths
17:03 - Invisible Students And Relationship Gaps
19:23 - Learning Sprints And Positivity Prompts
21:22 - Tech, Cell Phones, And Balance
23:56 - Relevance Over Rote Content
26:11 - Rethinking AI And Assessment
28:56 - Measurement, Outputs, And Critical Thinking
31:58 - Future Skills And Brain-Aligned Teaching
35:22 - Teacher Burnout And System Barriers
38:31 - Culture Shift And People Skills
WEBVTT
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Hello everyone and welcome to today's episode of On the Spectrum with Sonia.
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Now, more than any other time, is it been where education systems have been challenged, especially now with people wanting the eradication of the Department of Education and school systems being affected, and more and more cases of the need for trauma-informed trainings and learning to work with people of all different abilities that need that help and support.
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Here to discuss in what a framework she worked on is Lisa Regal.
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She wrote a book called NeuroWell.
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She herself has a doctorate in education leadership.
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And she is here to discuss with us that framework, why it's important in school systems, how educators can benefit from it, and how it helps shape a learning environment so that we have better equipped students ready to take on the world when they graduate high school.
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So without further ado, Lisa, thank you so much for being here.
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You're welcome.
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I'm happy to be here.
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Wow, we're happy to have you here.
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So, Lisa, walk us through a little bit now.
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You came up with a framework called NeuroWell, and you're all about helping education systems and helping just overall school systems be have a more healthier environment, be happier, be able to better cater to people's needs.
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And especially now with the, you know, that always people wanting to get rid now of the Department of Education and just things in the political climate that are affecting education systems.
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Tell us a little bit about how this framework is also touching upon those things.
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Sure.
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So I have worked in schools for many, many years.
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And basically I'm kind of an implementation and engagement expert.
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So, you know, schools, schools are trying so many things to address student needs and the student population is really changing.
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We've got reduced executive function coming in.
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We have kids' behavior is escalating.
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We have a lot of disengagement, absenteeism, we have a lot of problems in schools.
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And, you know, just as we recently, we just went through the science of reading kind of initiative that said, hey, if we align the science of learning reading to how we teach reading, we're going to have better impact.
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And so my book is really about if we align the science of behavior, the neuroscience of engagement, of perceptions, of stress management, if we align those two things, then we can make a better environment for teachers and students that can be safe, supportive, and proactive.
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So with that being said, and you know, providing a better system all together, walk us through like how this would be implemented.
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Like if we were to just be following a blueprint of what that could look like, what what would like educators be expected to see?
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What would students see differently?
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Sure.
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So I think part of it is starting with developing a culture that has a sense of belonging.
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So there's some social scientists that have studied what they call collective identity.
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And basically they the the research actually grew out of the they looked at all the initiatives we've done around diversity and multiculturalism.
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And they said, why isn't it working?
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We still have people hunkering down in like groups.
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We're not like the um the stock photos where there's one of everybody who's great friends.
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So they were like, What happened?
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And what they started to look at is where are there places where people have a strong sense of belonging and close ties?
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And they looked at the army and they said, Okay, you've got people from the north, south, east, west, black, white, purple, green, blue, different religions, different everything.
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And yet they form these really strong ties.
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And the army and the military service in general is really intentional about doing that.
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So when we have schools, we have a lot of kids who come into school and they don't belong.
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They don't feel a sense of belonging.
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Um, and and so when you don't feel a sense of belonging, your body will respond as if you're in danger.
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So, like if, you know, if you go to a meeting and you walk in and you you look around right away and you go, these are not my people, then you kind of shut down.
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Where if you walk into a meeting and you're like, oh, it's my people, you know, you're wide open and ready to go and and ready to engage.
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So, really, the foundation of a neurowell culture is starting with that sense of building the sense of belonging.
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And, you know, in schools, a great example is Ohio State.
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People wear Ohio State gear who never even went to Ohio State.
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And it's like, you know, they want to be part of that Buckeye nation.
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If you see someone who has Ohio State gear on, it's like, hey, and you know, you start talking and you start engaging right away.
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And there's a lot of contextual factors that make kids have school anxiety and they don't want to be there.
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So that's the first step.
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Then the second step is how do we make our classrooms and our schools safe?
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And safety we think of through the lens of like locking doors and keeping people out, that physical safety.
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But in neuro well, I talk about the emotional and intellectual safety as well.
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So, how are we setting up routines to help de-escalate students to keep our bodies regulated?
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How are we setting up instruction so that it's intellectually safe?
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And then it moves into kind of how to create supportive environments, develop relationships, and then how to be proactive.
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We do a lot of reactive stuff in education.
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We wait till the problem's there instead of thinking ahead, knowing it's coming.
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So, how would an example play out?
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Let's say now you want people to bond, right?
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So let's say you got a classroom, there's a lot of diversity in that classroom.
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What could be like a tool to get people to open up and feel like, okay, we are together as one?
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So it starts with defining it as a learning community.
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So, like when I was teaching, I would start out and say, hey, our mission in class is to learn.
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We're a learning community.
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You know, you have the right to decide not to learn, but you don't have the right to take that away from anybody else in the classroom.
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We're a community.
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And right now, a lot of classes are set up like I'm the queen of the classroom, you're gonna do what you're told, and you're my subordinate.
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So I shift that to be more community building.
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And then um, and then we define what is a good learner?
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What are the characteristics of somebody who does really well learning?
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What are the characteristics of a good community member?
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And we create concrete explanations of what that is.
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And then I have students set goals.
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So everybody's not good at everything.
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Maybe I'm not good at, you know, coming to class prepared, or maybe I'm not good at letting people finish talking before I interrupt, or maybe I'm not good at getting started on my work.
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So we have students set goals and then we put them in groups so they can peer support each other.
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The second thing we do is we uh create a class name, a mascot, a mantra, a chant.
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You know, you think about we're never too old for that.
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And I know high school teachers sometimes roll their eyes and I'm like, well, the NFL does it, sororities and fraternities do it.
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You know, Ted Lasso, everybody hits the believe sign on their way out.
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You know, there's there's things that bring you together that make you feel like a family.
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You can give each other nicknames.
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You know, nicknames, if I I'm, you know, your name is Sonia.
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If I called you Sonny, that means that you and I are probably good friends, right?
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It it creates a familiarity.
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And and so creating some nicknames, just some of those kinds of things.
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And then I talk about is having students have jobs in the classroom.
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So if things are getting too noisy, the sound manager turns the lights off.
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Or I've had teachers use like um doorbells, you know, they can click a doorbell that says, Hey, too loud.
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Have a tech manager that passes out the computers, have a previewer that looks at the learning targets for the day and starts class.
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So it's a student starting the class.
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So they're seeing different jobs that you can have students do and and it gives them a purpose in the classroom.
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So now they have kind of a sense of I belong here, they have a sense of purpose, and then setting up the expectations for behavior in the lens of um a learning community makes it so that people feel like it's not about just I'm a loner in the classroom alone.
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I have responsibility to these group of people.
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So it seems like it's all about everybody plays a role in it, everybody is doing something.
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So it doesn't feel like it's all student teacher only.
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How would this account, though, for let's say somebody who there may be people who are neurodiverse and maybe not good with social skills or maybe have people get turned away from those kinds of kids because they don't understand?
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How do we like learn to incorporate that as well?
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Because I love this idea that everybody feels part of a community, and it very much goes into that Edlyan theory that, you know what, everybody wants to feel like they belong to something, right?
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Yep.
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Yeah, we're social creatures.
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And I think it it comes down to just like in any community, you want to play to your strengths, right?
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So if you have neurodivergent students who maybe don't feel comfortable, you know, like one of the jobs might be to stand in front of the class and do the preview.
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So today we're working on this, here's what we're doing.
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You know, you can have a reviewer at the end.
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So this is what we did today, this is what we are doing later.
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If you've got a kid who's not comfortable with that, then you might put them in the job as the supply manager.
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So they pass out the supplies and, you know, or a cleaner that comes around and kind of wipes the tables before the end of the class period.
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So it's just kind of a matter of figuring out who's comfortable with what.
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I've even had some teachers that put the jobs out there and have students apply for the ones they want and they know what they're comfortable doing.
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But what's critical is that right now a lot of kids come in and it's just they're alone.
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They come in and it's just, I feel alone, I feel by myself, I sit in a desk, nobody notices me, and then I put my head down and I then I leave and they're not engaged.
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So this kind of creates a community responsibility.
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I did an exercise once in a school where we put all the students' names on a page and we had the teachers put a red dot next to any of the students that they had had a meaningful conversation with in the past week, not just like do your homework or something, but something that was a relationship-building conversation.
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And what was really amazing was how many invisible students there are.
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Students that not one teacher had had a conversation with over the last week about anything.
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So we've got a whole lot of sort of ghost students.
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They come in, they sit down, they may be quiet, so we don't realize that there's a problem, or they may be acting out because there is a problem, but they get no feedback from adults and and they're just alone.
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And that's unfortunately a problem that people are finding themselves in at school.
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I see this, I hear this from even clients too, about how they used to feel like they'd walk through the halls and no one would notice them, or they would just be virtually all by themselves.
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And sometimes they'll be paired to do group work with people, and sometimes the peers that they were paired to do things with not the most amicable to them.
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Yeah.
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Well, and I think the other piece too is that the solution to this is positivity.
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And so if you develop an inclusive culture that's positive and strengths-based, and so, like, even one of the things I talk about with teachers is doing learning sprints.
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So instead of doing like, I'm gonna talk at you for 45 minutes, because people don't have the attention span for that, being proactive and saying, okay, I'm gonna chunk this lesson, I'm gonna do 10 minutes of learning, and then I'm gonna do maybe two or three minutes or five minutes of unstructured conversation.
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Or I might have positivity prompts like, hey, turn to your neighbor and tell them one thing you really like about them, or what's one good thing that happened today, or what's one thing that you that people don't know about you, but you think, you know, makes you special.
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Things to give people an opportunity to kind of toot their own horn and share who they are.
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Um, and it's really powerful.
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And the kids love it because it gives them a quick mental break, then you get right back to to working.
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And I hear teachers a lot of times and and parents complain, you know, these kids today don't know how to socialize.
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Well, they're never gonna learn that if we don't give them chances to practice in an environment that's safe.
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Exactly.
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And how do you feel like technology, though, in the schools is impacting that?
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Because I had a guest who came on here before and he said that in the schools in New York City, they banned students from having their cell phones in class.
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Yep.
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A lot of states have made that legislation.
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Ohio is that way too.
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Okay.
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So Ohio, there's no cell phones in the class, but still it's very technology based now with learning, because this is what I hear from clients, you know, that come into my office is that, you know, everything is on the computer.
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They've even shown me their uh school, their notebook that they all get, you know, in the beginning of the year.
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And I know for some students they tell me that people are bringing in headphones to class.
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I understand some people need it because of sensory issues.
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I get that.
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You know, I'm in full support.
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If you have a sensory issue, you need to have your headphones to help you regulate with some of the noise.
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You know, having one button or something, fine.
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But, you know, I feel like I feel like one of the foundational problems that I've seen is when we started connecting student test data to teacher quality, we moved we moved away from teaching kids to teaching content.
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Yes.
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And we, you know, neuro well is about, I mean, health is about relationships and connectedness.
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And so we're losing that because we're so focused on just the academic pieces.
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And so now you see kids who spend an a crazy amount of time on computers.
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And so it's really it, it's just we've gone too far in that direction.
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You know, some computer-aided learning is great, but you need to balance that with social learning and the ability for kids to think about what they're learning and apply it.
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And that doesn't happen necessarily on a computer as effectively.
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So I'm not anti-computers, but I just think it's a matter of balance.
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And I, you know, you can go into a classroom and in five minutes you can see whether a teacher's teaching content or teaching kids.
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And so you see that that's the difference, right?
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Versus like actually teaching content versus teaching the kids.
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Yeah, it's kind of taking the human factor out.
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You'll hear teachers say things like, I have to move on, I gotta get through this content, I gotta get through this curriculum.
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And it's all about just getting through the stuff versus being able to say, Hey, what's Sonia need?
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Like, let's let's take a minute to just talk about how, why is this information relevant?
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You know, I read an article recently that was talking about everybody's talking about disengagement and absenteeism.
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And they were saying this isn't a disengagement problem, it's a relevance problem.
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You know, we're we're so focused on just teaching this kind of content.
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And, you know, I've been talking to schools about the initial purpose of school was to teach us to read so we could vote.
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Then we went to we're gonna be renaissance men, right?
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We're gonna know a little bit about everything.
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Well, then the internet democratized information.
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So now we're in this, we're gonna do career readiness, which is great, except now AI is coming in and the pathways to career are getting real fuzzy.
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And we're actually finding that what we actually need for our future workforce are all these skills that we're not focusing on in schools.
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We're not focusing on creativity and communication and social engagement and passions, and we're not focusing on those things.
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We're just focusing on get your math done, get your reading done.
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It's very disconnected from life.
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And kids are saying, this isn't even relevant for me.
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I can go to Chat GPT and get this done in five minutes.
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Why do I have to learn how to do it?
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And we're not providing a relevant answer for them.
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Yeah.
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And like, yeah, I noticed that that's been a big problem too, because I've had clients who were teachers at schools, and they were even saying that one of the challenges they were facing is kids are not even researching anymore, and they're just real heavily relying on Chat GPT to do their papers.
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And so they actually had, I know, a seminar a couple of years ago that one of my clients attended where it teaches it was to provide teachers information on how to check for plagiarism out of Chat GPT and have, you know, come up with a system so that they, you know, are able to catch it, you know, and not allow it to continue.
00:17:02.059 --> 00:17:05.259
And see, that's where I think that's framing the problem in the wrong way.
00:17:05.420 --> 00:17:08.059
The problem isn't kids are cheating on Chat GPT.
00:17:08.140 --> 00:17:12.059
The problem is that we're giving them assignments that chat GPT can do.
00:17:12.220 --> 00:17:19.900
And so if we want to build their brains to be prepared for the future that they're gonna face, we need to be thinking about how do we use chat.
00:17:20.140 --> 00:17:21.579
I use Chat GPT all the time.
00:17:21.740 --> 00:17:22.299
I love it.
00:17:22.539 --> 00:17:33.259
But the point is, if if I'm being asked to do, if somebody asks me to do a task that I can plug into Chat GPT and be done, my coworkers would say, oh wow, that's so cool.
00:17:33.420 --> 00:17:34.059
That's so smart.
00:17:34.140 --> 00:17:38.539
But when we ask kids to do stuff that Chat GPT can do, then we say you're cheating.
00:17:38.779 --> 00:17:49.019
So my challenge is we need to start thinking about what we're teaching and how we're cre how we're having kids generate knowledge and showcase their knowledge and make applications.
00:17:49.180 --> 00:17:54.299
We have to find a gap where chat GPT is a tool and not the answer.
00:17:54.539 --> 00:17:55.420
Correct.
00:17:55.900 --> 00:18:02.700
But until we shift our thinking away from we're teaching this content to we're teaching humans, then that's not going to happen.
00:18:02.860 --> 00:18:03.100
Right.
00:18:03.180 --> 00:18:10.860
And I feel like, you know, when you're dealing with schools too, and correct me if I'm wrong on this, it's very bureaucratic, a lot of red tape, right?
00:18:10.940 --> 00:18:21.259
And you also deal with that idea of state testing and funding and people having to pass with the certain score levels in order for schools to continue to get funding.
00:18:21.580 --> 00:18:24.779
How do you feel like this also interplays with that as well, right?
00:18:24.940 --> 00:18:26.860
Like what what's your take on some of that?
00:18:27.100 --> 00:18:32.060
Well, I mean, I I think at the end of the day, what you measure matters, and if you measure it, it then matters.
00:18:32.220 --> 00:18:41.500
And so, you know, if we want kids to be happy and healthy and successful, we need to not just measure their math score.
00:18:41.660 --> 00:18:45.019
And so we've we've come to where we let the tail wag the dog.
00:18:45.259 --> 00:18:51.500
So I actually have a book coming out at the end of the month that is called Aspirational to Operational, and it's for leaders.
00:18:51.660 --> 00:18:53.100
And it talks a lot about this.
00:18:53.259 --> 00:19:00.860
It's like, you know, a lot of times you say, okay, here's the resources we're going to use, here's the action we're going to do, and then we're going to improve math scores.
00:19:01.019 --> 00:19:05.340
But you're missing within any logic model of change, you're missing your outputs.
00:19:05.420 --> 00:19:09.100
What are the adults going to do to make that needle move?
00:19:09.340 --> 00:19:16.940
And so I think having some clarity around what, how can we measure, how can we observe good culture in a school?
00:19:17.100 --> 00:19:18.460
Or how can we observe?
00:19:18.620 --> 00:19:25.980
I just had a conversation this morning with a school principal, and I said, his big movement is we got to get kids to think critically.
00:19:26.220 --> 00:19:31.019
And I said, okay, well, the first step then is we need your staff to define critical thinking.
00:19:31.180 --> 00:19:31.740
What is it?
00:19:31.900 --> 00:19:32.779
What does it look like?
00:19:32.940 --> 00:19:34.860
What does it sound like when they're doing it?
00:19:35.019 --> 00:19:43.420
And then they need to create measures that measure whether or not kids are using critical thinking, because otherwise it just becomes a fluffy word.
00:19:43.500 --> 00:19:47.100
And then at the end of the day, we're only measuring the product they produced.
00:19:47.180 --> 00:19:55.500
And if they produced it in Chat GPT or whatever, we don't know because we haven't created the assessment in a way that we can measure and view and see their thinking along the way.
00:19:55.820 --> 00:20:05.259
What I'm hearing a lot of is reframing how we do things, reframing so that we get a better result while also having it be in a beneficial way.
00:20:05.500 --> 00:20:05.980
Right, right.
00:20:06.140 --> 00:20:14.940
I think it's reframing away from because right now, if you look at what we measure, we measure math, reading scores, and we have some end-of-course exams.
00:20:15.100 --> 00:20:17.259
So we're measuring content, right?
00:20:17.340 --> 00:20:24.620
We're measuring content and basic function skills like being able to read or being able to pull an idea out of a passage or something.
00:20:24.860 --> 00:20:28.299
What we're not measuring are the skills that kids are going to need in the future.
00:20:28.460 --> 00:20:39.580
We're not, and if you're measuring, do you know the year, you know, this particular war started, or do you know, you know, what the definition, what were the high characteristics of the 1920s or something like that?
00:20:39.820 --> 00:20:40.940
I can look that up.
00:20:41.100 --> 00:20:44.220
But that's what we're measuring in schools, and kids are bored.
00:20:44.299 --> 00:20:47.900
They don't want to do it, they're not interested, and it doesn't have relevance.
00:20:48.060 --> 00:20:53.019
And they look into the future and they say, This isn't the stuff I'm gonna need to know when I'm out in the world.
00:20:53.420 --> 00:20:53.660
Yeah.
00:20:53.820 --> 00:21:04.299
I mean, so it seems to me like there's a lot of things that could be done differently, a lot of things that will promote self-esteem and confidence boosting, the positivity framework.
00:21:04.460 --> 00:21:11.660
There's a lot of need to address the gap in how things are being taught to what do you want that outcome to be, right?
00:21:11.980 --> 00:21:16.539
Well, and when you're teaching, when your focus is I'm teaching kids, they learn the content.
00:21:16.700 --> 00:21:19.660
They learn it a lot faster because you're making connections.
00:21:19.740 --> 00:21:23.420
And you know, our brain learns through repetition, experience, and emotion.
00:21:23.660 --> 00:21:26.380
So I always use the example of like, I've had two kids.
00:21:26.539 --> 00:21:35.100
I don't need to have 42 kids to know what it feels like to be pregnant or have a baby or be a mother because it's such a highly experiential and emotional experience.
00:21:35.340 --> 00:21:41.019
You look at like the way we teach currently, think about math, it's repetition, repetition, repetition.
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