Hi, and welcome to the In the Cortex podcast.
We are your hosts.
I'm Paloma Garcia.
And I am Dani Paraconi.
And we're the founders of In the Cortex, an online community with programs that show people
the tools that they need to change their lives through brain reorganization.
No medication, just movement.
When you get your brain out of survival mode and regulate your nervous system, you start
to live in the fun, logical part of the brain, the cortex.
Subscribe today and learn how to live your best in the cortex life.
And now, on to today's episode.
Let's listen to today's Cortex moment.
My name is Akosal.
I'm seven years old.
And I can be one of the call of love school, make new friends, and I transitioned to do
lots of brain work, and I love to crawl, creep, and do a lot of stuff.
And I train, and I also like to do everything that my mom says to do.
I feel more confident.
Yeah, I'm pushing myself to kick the ball to my friend at soccer.
I can now change my attitude faster.
On to today's episode, we are going to talk today all about education and what we're doing,
what we want to do, and what we think really education needs nowadays and the system, the
stuff that the system could use, right?
Danny, I wanted to ask you before we get started to kind of talk a little bit about your experience
with the educational system, because you have two kids.
One of them is kind of not really in the system, right?
And kind of share a little bit of why you decided to go that route.
Yeah, definitely.
And you know, it's crazy because our world today is obviously so different than what
it's ever been.
And so this is the current situation of a lot of parents that I talked to about how
we have to adapt to what's happening in today's world.
And you aren't really having to have this conversation until you're in it.
So I didn't really have these thoughts until I actually had kids.
And then I was like, Oh, wow, let's actually look at what's going on.
So there's a lot of reasons why I chose the route of education that I have.
And a lot of it is my son, who seven has a specific learning style.
And I just knew that his style of learning would have gotten lost in the situation of
what we're seeing.
And let's just go with mainstream public models.
Yeah.
My mom always says, like, if she had been able to homeschool my brother, who had a lot,
I think had a very similar brain to Axel's brain.
She's like, he would have been so great.
He always, always, always is like, gosh, I wish I knew that that was an option back when
he was little.
For sure.
And that's where there's such a stigma right now with homeschool.
And it's actually like breaking through when you say you homeschool your child.
It's no longer like, oh, you have the weird kid, you know?
Yeah.
You're starting to like, yeah, like mean girls like.
Yeah.
And so now there's there's a new I think we're really starting to form a whole new future
of education.
I think it's really coming through.
And I just knew that Axel was just he would have been the kid that would have been completely
overlooked because he doesn't advocate for himself.
But he would have also just been sitting there like picking his nose, like, I don't know
what's going on, you know, and like literally like we're working on that habit.
Not going to lie.
And and so he definitely wasn't that child that could sit down and regurgitate what was
being taught to him.
He is so not that kid.
And at the same time, as I know so much about the brain as what we've been, you know, learning
over the 14 years we've been doing this work is the brain needs movement.
And what we know about the mainstream model is that there's not a lot of movement involved
in schooling.
And there are teachers who do it and there are teachers who get it.
But you know, it's a luck of the draw.
Right.
And so for Axel, he learns his best when he's moving and running around and able to get
up.
So that was a big push.
And so I have homeschooled him for kindergarten and first grade.
And my approach to schooling for my children has always been let's focus on the emotional
well-being.
Let's get the basics down and start enjoying learning and starting to just, you know, learn
the fundamentals, how to hold a pencil, how to write, how to do all those things.
But I haven't been hardcore about pushing for reading and making sure they're mastering
anything at this point.
Right.
Because that's also because you know about the brain and you should not really even start
to teach reading until seven years old, which is when all the muscles are fully developed
and their eyes are able to team and look at the same object at the same point.
And just quickly to mention that kids are being taught to read at four or five years
old right now.
Their eyes are totally not ready for it.
And so it takes kids months and months and months and months, sometimes even years to
truly be proficient readers when, for example, in Finland, they don't start until they're
seven years old to start to teach reading.
And the kids learn like that.
They're like, you know, everybody's reading because their eyes are prepped for it.
Right.
So it's not about excluding certain skills.
It's just about knowing when is the right time for the brain.
Right.
And we sometimes I think in our culture and society, we think that, oh, my gosh.
And this goes back to when parents are like, oh, my child was walking at nine months and
we're like, no.
And it's the same thing as like you think that your child so advanced because they're
able to do a skill, but it's called a splinter skill where you're able to do something sooner
than what you're developmentally appropriately able to do.
So reading.
So there are a lot of like child prodigies that can read at three, four years old, but
that is not the norm.
And we should not make that the norm ever.
And we should allow for the kids that are wanting to learn at three and four to do it.
Right.
But the rest of the kids, let's give them some grace.
Let's not even start education like serious education until seven.
Like that would be a dream if we started kinder at seven years old.
Right.
And we have to get everything back because that's actually the trend we're seeing in
today's world anyways.
Yeah.
But for everybody who's listening, that is such an important piece.
And the Scandinavians have this figured out where you do not put in until seven and they
have like they're thriving in the education world.
Like they are they are ranked as like number one and two Sweden and Finland is having like
the best schools in the world for a developed country.
And ours is about number 16 in the US.
So it's kind of interesting.
But we're the number one power in the world.
So you can kind of see maybe we're funding's going.
I don't know.
I'm not going to get into a whole political talk here, but you can see what we are putting
our energy and effort into.
And that was also a big part for why I chose to homeschool Axel because I knew he was not
at that readiness to be able to even be dropped off.
And there was a lot of trauma for him.
He has some abandonment stuff going on.
And then obviously getting divorced and dealing with all that stuff that comes with it brought
on a lot more of, you know, just an aversion to being dropped off.
So if he was already starting that moment of like in survival mode and it was just not
going to like course correct.
I mean, I tried preschool where I dropped him off and he cried for like the first 20
minutes.
And I remember me, I was wired the exact same way.
Attachment style was rooted in anxiety.
And so there's fear.
And so whatever that fear was, my goal was to help my child break through that and not
live like I did with anxious attachment for the first 20 years of their life.
So that was what I focused on for kinder in first grade.
And then it got to a point where he I don't think since he didn't have a grasp of what
the rest of the kids were doing, like he hangs out with all the other kids at soccer or baseball,
but he didn't know what they were doing.
So he didn't know what he didn't know.
And so he didn't really understand that like kids can't that most kids go into a classroom
with 28 other kids and sit down and have to work on their own.
He just expected me to sit next to him at all hours.
And so then I got to a point I can't actually work anymore.
Like how am I supposed to be a working parent?
So I was really calling out into the universe of I need a solution.
And then I just met an amazing mom at one of his baseball practices one day.
And we ended up being on the same page.
And then she's like, hey, we're starting a pod.
And I was like, what?
So we've put together a community of moms that are coming and dads, mainly the moms
though, let's be real.
And we're coming together and we're supporting the kids for where they're at.
So we're hiring tutors, which is totally this cool thing that homeschool families are doing
where they're coming in as a community, hiring other people to help guide your students.
So now they have an outside authority.
They're socialized with kids, but it's more of an environment that's conducive to actually
how we're meant to learn.
But it's really this going back to that one room schoolhouse and it's all ages together
and it's bringing in a whole different approach, but not really.
It's actually just going back to the basics of what did we used to do and why are we far
away from it?
Exactly.
And what are the real reasons that we go to school?
If you think about it, you want to go to school, of course you're going to do the reading,
writing, arithmetic, but you also have to go, like you just said, to socialize, to understand
how to follow directions, to understand how to be a part of a group, to share, to figure
out how to problem solve things with other people in other situations.
And that's one of the main things that kids learn there because those are things that
you're not necessarily going to be able to learn at home always.
And of course, they're also learning all of these academic skills.
But the difference, I think, in also what we've seen in the Scandinavian models and
kind of what you and I talk about all the time when we talk about the ideal school,
the ideal world is I think this US system is very, very hyper-focused on the stats and
the numbers and the percentages.
I mean, standardized testing, if you tell, when you tell somebody that it's from Europe
or a different background about standardized testing, they're like, what?
It is the most ridiculous thing ever.
And I think anybody who's listening to this probably agrees with us.
But also, nobody's getting the scores that we're supposed to, right?
Hair quotes.
And we just looked at the stats.
25% to 30% of fourth and eighth graders are actually at proficiency level for reading
and math.
What?
Like, what's happening?
Like, clearly, the model isn't working.
And these percentages are getting obviously way lower after COVID because that did a number
on everybody.
And so it's this hyper-fixation on those large scale numbers that's making it so people
are losing sight of what actually school is supposed to be about.
And so I think that's something that happens with teachers all the time.
I mean, you and I have been teachers.
You start and you have all these ideas and you have all these new things that you want
to innovate.
You want new approaches.
You read this book, you listen to this podcast, and you take it to your director and you're
like, hey, I want to do this thing.
Oh, we can't because of blah.
Okay, well, no problem.
Next week, hey, I want to try out this new approach for this kid.
Oh, yeah, but you know what?
It's not going to work because of blank.
After that happens 25 times, you're like, okay, I'm just never going to try out.
Try that again.
I worked in schools for like eight years, almost nine years.
And that after that happening time and time and time and time again, you just stop trying.
And I was in a different position.
I wasn't always in the classroom.
You know what I mean?
But the teachers are there for a reason.
They're passionate.
They want to help kids.
They want to shape the minds of the future.
You know, it sounds corny, but it's true.
Like it's a really a vocation.
Teaching is not just a job.
It's a vocation.
And after you get shot down so many times, then you lose the will to even think about
innovating.
And then when your light starts to dim as a teacher, what light are you able to give
to your students?
Right.
And so then it just turns into you just fit into the system and you just go through the
motions and so many teachers are just waiting to retire.
Right.
Because there's like, I can't wait to get out of this because now it never I got into
it for that exact reason, like you mentioned, but now I'm not able to do so much.
My hands are constantly tied and I can't help the kids that actually need help the way they
need it.
So I'm just going to give up now and just do what I have to do, put my head down and
get through it.
And so now we're seeing that combined with kiddos that are just not able to do the things
that they should be able to do.
And when we say should, most of the time teachers assume because this is what they went to school
for, a kid should be able to sit down and listen for six hours a day, be able to hold
a pencil, be able to block out the noises that are happening behind them, be able to
regulate their emotions, like all those things that they think should be automatic aren't.
And so now we're seeing the behaviors in kids.
They're moving in their chairs constantly.
They're constantly falling out of their chairs.
They're hitting their pencils against the desk.
They're getting up and walking around the classroom all the time.
They're picking fights.
They're not getting along with other friends.
And that turns into more intense behaviors too after a while, you know, and it's also
not all kids are going to go into that fight mode, right?
So that's your brain being in survival mode, fight, flight, freeze.
Some kids are going to do the overt behaviors, the throwing things, the hitting, the tantrums,
the whatever.
Yeah.
Their kids are going to do the opposite.
They're like flight.
I'm just going to sit here quietly, not really call a lot of attention to myself and be as
make myself as little as possible so I can get through this.
Right.
And so this is why the ratios that exist in classrooms just don't make sense.
You know, a teacher that has 30 students, how are you going to I used to work in a place
where I had a maximum of three students at one time.
Even then, I'd be like, oh my gosh, I didn't pay that much attention to this one kid in
that period.
I mean, right.
And how are you going to do that with 30 of them?
Yeah, you know, it's and then that's also kind of this way that it doesn't make sense
because you're ignoring neurodiversity.
You're ignoring the fact that people have different ways they have different learning
styles that have different ways of processing everything.
And so that's ultimately why this model doesn't work.
It was designed for a quote unquote majority of people that can do those skills or could
do those skills at some point.
Maybe I don't even know if that's true or assuming that they should be able to do these
things.
Carla Hannaford has an amazing book called Smart Moves.
Right.
And it's all about how important movement is for kids.
And she has all these like really cool case studies and stuff of the classrooms that have
implemented movement in a much more intentional way to help kids thrive.
And that's the opposite of what's happening in a lot of classrooms.
And of course, we're not saying every single classroom, but a lot of the time, that's what
happens.
Right.
And so it's this whole cycle and there's just so many different components.
And on top of that, teachers are making like zero money for doing one of the most important
jobs in society.
Right.
Literally, once again, shaping the minds of the future.
And it's not a whole cycle that's just really unfair and doesn't really work for anybody
in the end.
You know, and it's time.
So the government in the US is spending one point three trillion dollars a year on education.
And yet it feels like we have nothing to really show for it because we're not even close to
Finland and in Sweden, the Scandinavian countries that have got it more figured out.
But we're going off of, like you said, the standardized testing.
So what and I remember because Axel has to take those the star tests is what we call
them in California.
And it's like such an unrealistic model to go from now we're on a computer taking a test
that's adaptive that all of a sudden gets like super hard when you get two questions
in a row.
And they're actually designed to not do well.
It's kind of weird.
So they actually make it so they are thriving on it.
But then that's but here's a big piece, too, is so now we have a classroom where there's
one child who needs tapping of a pencil.
The child next to him can't handle the tapping of the pencil.
Stay focused.
And now the teacher is saying sit still and pay attention.
And the child, both all of them are like, to what to the kid tapping to the kid walking
to you talking, I don't understand what you're telling me to you know, there's so many different
distractions and things that are coming into the brain and they cannot filter it out.
And now we go and call him the child who's trying to filter out all the things that are
not supposed to be bothering them.
And then you ask him a question and then they just look like deer in headlights and they
freeze and then all the kids are staring at them.
Right.
And then we do know this about the way that kids operate.
Then there's some bullying that might come online.
And then that child then internalizes, I must be dumb.
I can't answer this question.
So because their brains are not doing what we asked them to do automatically, now we've
created subconscious beliefs about ourselves that we are not smart enough.
And I will tell you, that has been a program that has run through my head since like second
grade.
I'll never forget when I was called on in class, I wasn't paying attention because like
I just mentioned, I was a kid that was trying to block all the things out.
Teacher calls on me and I'm just a deer in headlights.
And I'm like, in my head, I'm like, I know the answer, but I just couldn't get it out
because I was completely in a fight or flight.
And that's a reflex.
It's a primitive reflex.
Exactly.
It's the fear of paralysis.
So now that I know that, and then the morrow comes online right after it, because then
I turn bright red and I'm like, oh my gosh, everyone's looking at me.
Or when you had to do popcorn reading, oh my gosh, I couldn't stand that.
So my brain was disorganized, but then I'm carrying around this program within me for
the rest of my life that I am dumb and there's something wrong with me because I'm not able
to do what the kids next to me are doing.
And so this is another thing that if we're going through schooling and we're expecting
kids to do things they're not wired to do, now we label them.
Now we say there's something wrong with you.
Now you have a learning disability.
Now you're this, this and this.
And now we just diagnose it.
And I've had so many teachers.
I've sat in IEP meetings for many, many times over the years and they just immediately want
to label them.
Go ahead, get some meds.
And I'm not saying meds are bad, but it's such like an immediate go-to that we're not
looking for.
Why?
Why is that child not able to sit in a chair?
Let's peel back the layers there.
So this is going to bring us to like what we really feel like our solution is and what
we're currently doing.
So we are currently right now, we have our in-school program.
That is effectively coming into the classrooms and we are hoping these more teachers because
we've got a few really amazing teachers that are pushing past the red tape, the bureaucracy
of what's going on in the schools and saying, I don't really care if I can't do this with
that.
You know, I'm not getting all the funding I need, but I'm going to get creative and
figure out how to make this happen in the school.
And they're seeing the changes.
They're now seeing kids who used to be completely dysregulated, throwing chairs, saying every
word under the sun to now wanting to do their brain work.
They're seeing kids who weren't able to sit still and stay focused, sit still and stay
focused.
They're seeing kids work as a team and share.
And we're bringing that in through our in-school program.
So that's super exciting because number one, it's sharing that is absolutely possible to
shift the whole entire classroom by everyone doing these movements together.
And this is where we want educators to know that if they can go back to the floor, give
the brain the movement, see how they're moving and go, oh, now I know what this child has
access to at this point.
Now I know where I can push them and where their brains at.
Think about how education will completely just shift in a whole new way.
It's the point of teaching, right, is to truly be able to teach each person for what they
need, right?
Originally, or I guess theoretically, that's kind of what you want.
And there's so many and they're amazing teaching methodologies out there that embrace all of
this.
It's just that it's not the mainstream right now.
But also, once you know the brain profiles, you know which ones are compensating in which
ways.
So like, for example, when you were saying, I'm dumb because I can't do these things that
all my peers can do.
You don't know what the kid next to you was having to do, right?
They probably had the same exact internal monologue and they were thinking you were
really good at it.
And so the whole in school program is basically doing the exact same movements we do in our
personal program, but at school.
And so we teach the teachers how to guide the students and they're doing all of the
creeping, the crawling, the primitive reflex integration all in the classroom.
What we do is we talk about why and we talk about the fact that some things are really
hard.
And so it's also okay to acknowledge that we have challenges.
And I think that that's something that really is changing about society nowadays.
People are talking about the stuff that is hard and that I love that because there's
always somebody that's going to resonate with that one struggle.
And you and I have seen this on TikTok so much when we post our videos.
And there's so many videos which you just said about the popcorn reading, people being
like, you know, when you're sitting in the classroom and you counting how many kids are
coming before you.
And so you pre read the paragraph so that you don't mess up when you're reading it.
Like that holds up.
You're not listening to anything else is reading.
You're hyper focused on like having to do like it perfectly.
Right.
And that's the thing.
You don't know the teacher doesn't know who's doing that or who truly is just like reading
along calmly and able to write pick right up when is their name is called.
Right.
And so this is really the cool thing about doing the brain work is we're giving people
these skills and these tools, I should say, to help regulate when they need it.
But we're also not stigmatizing having challenges.
We're not stigmatizing sometimes feeling totally dysregulated.
Right.
Sometimes feeling so many emotions that you don't know what to do about it or sometimes
feeling no emotions and being disconnected from yourself.
And this goes for any age.
And so that's a really cool piece of the program that I love because it's the kids start to
really connect with their own bodies and the way that the brain is meant to operate, which
is through the connection with our entire body.
I mean, that's it.
You cannot learn when you're in survival mode.
You are literally surviving.
And just like Pullma said, if you're busy reading the paragraph ahead because you don't want
to look stupid or dumb or whatever, and you don't want to mess up the words, you're not
even present for what you're there to do.
Children understand so much.
Yes, so much that's happening.
And when you talk to them in a way where they understand what's going on with themselves,
they feel this deep sense of, OK, I'm now with you.
I want to be on this team with you versus fighting you and versus feeling like you're
the enemy.
So many times we thought of our teachers as enemies, right?
And like, oh, that she was out to get me.
And they probably were like, like Miss Turnbull from Matilda, right?
Crunch Bull.
Miss Trench Bull from Matilda.
She was like this evil woman.
But you and this is what's crazy.
This is we hope to help educators understand too, is that you are now alongside children
who are humans who have emotions and what they do, just like when you're a parent, they
highlight wounds within you and they bring to the forefront the stuff that you have yet
to work through and grow through.
And this is life is a journey.
We all have heard that cheesy cliche.
Life's a journey.
I'm just on the you know, right in the waves.
But it's true.
None of us have it all figured out.
And the goal of schooling is to give our children the tools to handle the challenges later.
All of us adults listening have challenges.
Things are hard for us.
If there was something that I mean, if you went through life and literally nothing was
hard for you, then why are you even here at this point?
You know, like the whole point of life should be studied.
Yeah.
Like you should be challenging yourself in some capacity.
That's the purpose of why we're here in my personal opinion.
So if you're with a teacher who's and we've had teachers that do this, they literally
will tell us like, yeah, that child really challenges me and I'm feeling really triggered
by them.
Teaching is one of the most emotional things you can do because you have this bond with
these kids.
Yeah, you know them.
And then sometimes, you know, especially like you and I, I worked with a lot of kids that
had like emotional disturbances and lots of stuff that was going on at home and stuff.
And sometimes they will say these things or do these things.
And it's so hard to not take it personally.
But then you have to look at it from the brain perspective and from the emotional perspective.
Right.
And I will say, Trunchbull, listen, she was hurting.
I don't think she was.
Yeah.
I think she was just acting out her own trauma.
Right.
Like, exactly.
That's what we all do.
We understand.
And so this is also a really cool way for young kids to start to understand other people
I love.
I know you've said this before on the podcast, but I love when Axel and Siggy will look at
somebody who's having a really hard time, whether it's a kid or an adult.
They often will just say, oh, that person really needs to creep.
Looks like their brain's a little bit disorganized.
Like, it looks like their brain needs a little brain work.
It's so cool.
It's like they have that empathy already built in because they've been learning about all
this stuff.
I want to talk about our vision so we can all like start to like bring this in and attract
it as a society and have this ripple effect take hold and really change what's going on
in the world because we're seeing it happen.
So we are holding space for our future where we can bring in the three R's so kids can
understand how to read, write, and do math with ease.
So it's not a chore and it's not a struggle.
And doing it in a way where we're hands on, we're outside, we're doing it really in nature
and being able to wait and be patient, express yourself, critically think, being OK with
people who have different viewpoints as you.
And then also just talk about moving and how important it is to do for the rest of our
lives.
You know, you're not going to be able to do everything perfectly, but you can always work
on it and you can always keep pushing yourself.
That's why we say our program is for anyone with a brain.
It doesn't matter what point in life you're in.
We have so many people who are in their later years of life that are in their 60s and up
and they are deciding that it's finally time.
It's finally time to take it back.
And so many people that are in our comment section and TikTok and Instagram that said,
oh, my gosh, if I had known that meaning to wiggle in a chair or spin around or tap my
leg, if I had known that that was a sign of a disorganized brain, my life would have looked
so different.
And that's what we're trying to help with is just to help ease the pain of what everyone's
experiencing because there is so much extra pain, so much extra like just wounding that's
getting thrown around at other people.
And we just want to destigmatize that that we're all human.
We all have our stuff.
And these are tools that will literally help you work through it with ease and not feel
like life has to be this insane challenge.
I think also something that's really important is like when you're saying people say, I wish
I had known this before.
We're looking for a world where every kid that goes into school has a screening of where
their brain is, where their primitive brain is.
We got the creeping, the crawling, the primitive reflexes, and the teachers know all about
it.
And they know how to work with each kid starting there.
And they get their brain work done in the first years of life, but going through like
four or five years old, because lots of kids miss those movements in the first year when
they're quote unquote meant to be done.
But meant to be doesn't mean anything nowadays.
Everybody has a completely different brain.
And sometimes your brain's like, nope, I'm not going to creep.
I'm not going to crawl.
I want to walk early.
And for parents and teachers, instead of freaking out and be like, oh my God, no, my kid is
walking early, whatever.
Just say, okay, great.
The good thing is I know this information now and my kid can do it later.
And so we look at a world where this is just a part of every single kid, every single person's
life.
And so they don't have to think later on.
After all those struggles.
Oh, I wish I had known this before, because they already got it under control.
Right.
Got it done.
That was our episode for today.
We are so excited for next week.
We have an interview with Amy, one of our wonderful, wonderful teachers who is implementing
this program in her school.
She's going to talk all about her experience.
And so please tune in.
It's going to be a really, really good episode.
Now talk to us on social media.
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Our email is hello at in the cortex dot com.
And yeah, just keep emailing us.
Keep asking us questions.
We are so inspired by all the things that people are sharing with us.
And remember to tag us in your creeping and crawling videos and we'll give you a quick
little free assessment and see what your percentage is.
And remember, if you haven't used it yet, our promo code is brainiac to get 10 bucks
off your very first payment of our program.
Remember, it's a lifestyle program.
It is a program that you have a really long payment plan.
It's a one year payment plan.
But after that, you never have to pay anything again.
You have lifetime access because guess what?
It's a lifestyle that we want everybody to live the cortex life.
And that's it.
Thank you so much for being here.
Bye bye.
Ok bye.