Who’s Really Struggling? When Student Behavior Reflects Adult Systems

Student behavior is often treated as an individual problem, when it is more accurately a reflection of the systems adults design and maintain. This session challenges punitive, reaction-driven discipline and makes the case for proactive, positive systems that give students real reasons to engage, comply, and persist in school.

Using a real case study from a school system in Hermiston, Oregon, participants will explore how creative engagement strategies, clear behavioral contracts, and authentic work opportunities can dramatically shift behavior and belonging, including for students with disabilities. Attendees will leave with concrete ideas for redesigning school systems, so behavior improves because purpose and connection increase, not because punishment escalates.

Student Engagement: The How and the Why

Student engagement is not about compliance or entertainment—it is a brain-based response to learning environments that foster safety, relevance, challenge, and connection. This professional development session explores the neuroscience of engagement and offers practical, high-impact instructional strategies educators can apply immediately in their classrooms.

Participants will examine how the brain’s emotional and cognitive systems influence attention, motivation, and persistence, and how engagement serves as the gateway to deeper learning, rigor, and resilience.

Learning Outcomes

• Understand the neuroscience of student engagement and its impact on learning
• Identify instructional practices that increase cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement
• Design lessons that promote curiosity, relevance, and productive struggle
• Create classroom conditions that support belonging, motivation, and student ownership

Wired to Learn: Applying Neuroscience to Modern Learning Strategies

This presentation bridges insights from modern neuroscience with proven learning strategies to help learners thrive in fast-paced, digitally rich environments.

Participants will discover why traditional approaches often fail—and how strategies such as spaced practice, retrieval, interleaving, metacognition, and emotionally relevant learning can significantly improve retention and transfer.

Growing Great Human Beings: The Neuroscience of Rigor, Relevance, and Resilience

This session connects neuroscience research with the R3 Framework to help educators design learning environments where students thrive academically and emotionally.

Educators will explore how instructional design can reduce cognitive overload, increase engagement, and foster belonging—resulting in learning that is both challenging and supportive.