Award Winning Author David A. Sousa on "How the Brain Learns"

Welcome back to the Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning podcast, episode #78 with David A. Sousa, an international educational consultant and author of more than 16 books that suggest ways that educators and parents can translate current brain research into strategies to improve learning. Watch the interview on YouTube here.  It was David Sousa’s How the Brain Learns book Series[i]  that is now in its 4th Edition (that includes How the Brain Learns, How the Brain Learns to Read, How the Gifted Brain Learns, and How the Special Needs Brain Learns) that I was given by an educator when I was urged to add the most current brain research to my programs. When reading this series, I was told from other respected colleagues that this book series is one that every educator should read. It also helped me as a parent of a struggling reader to understand how my own child learns to read and gave me more understanding and patience to help put into practice some of the secrets for accelerating literacy that I will share throughout this interview. I also discovered How the ELL Brain Learns[ii]  that helped me to create a webinar for an educational publisher called “Nine Brain-Based Strategies to Skyrocket Literacy and Achievement”[iii] and there’s also Differentiation and the Brain and How the Brain Learns Mathematics. The Leadership Brain suggests ways for educators to lead more effectively in today’s schools. He also has a book for educators, Engaging the Rewired Brain that examines how technology changes the way students' brains function and how educators can adapt instruction to keep students motivated and The Power of Student Teams[iv]: Achieving Social, Emotional and Cognitive Learning in Every Classroom Through Academic Teaming[v] that describes a path to predictable success for every student, in every classroom, in every school—all backed by student data, neuroscience research, and experiences from superintendents, school leaders, teachers, and students who have made the shift, teaching through the power of student teams.  David is a member of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society[vi], has conducted workshops in hundreds of school districts on brain research, instructional skills and science education at the K-12 to University levels. Welcome David, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. It feels surreal after studying your books for the past 6 years. Q1: David, I really don’t think that I would have understood how the brain learns, enough to teach it to others without your How the Brain Learns Series that I was given 6 years ago, but at first, it wasn’t like I read the books and understood the workings of the brain instantly. I was a bit intimidated by the memory charts and thought that understanding this topic might a bit over my head without a degree in neuroscience. I was lucky to have a neuroscience researcher to help me with my questions, and with time, I really started to understand this fascinating organ that I had never really thought of before.  Can you go back a bit to BEFORE you wrote these books and share where this series originated from, in addition, how did you take into consideration that many people, like me, at first glance, might be afraid of the complexity of this topic? Q2: I love how each book starts with a practitioner’s corner, assessing your current knowledge of reading, or myths about giftedness, or the special needs brain, to bring out some important differences with how the brain learns to read. Can you explain what happens (in the brain) when a child is learning how to read, and perhaps some of the secrets that we can look for to accelerate reading, like “how quickly and successfully the brain learns to read is greatly influenced by the student’s ability to speak?” and how is the Gifted Brain Different than the Special Needs Brain, or the ELL Brain when it’s learning to read? Q3: We’ve all heard the statistics about the importance of reading proficiency by 3rd