Episode 42: Discover the SECRET to Better Teaching and Learning with Neuroscience with Mark Williams
December 9, 2024 • 47 mins
In this episode, Tyler welcomes Dr. Mark Williams, an internationally recognized neuroscience expert and bestselling author of The Connected Species. Dr. Williams shares his inspiring journey from a challenging youth to becoming a leader in neuroscience research and education. Discover actionable insights on collaboration, overcoming adversity, and applying neuroscience to improve teaching and learning.
🔥 Key Highlights: Collaborative Learning: Why connection matters more than content delivery in classrooms. Brain-Friendly Strategies: How simple habits like handshakes can boost learning outcomes. Overcoming Adversity: Dr. Williams' powerful journey from dropout to neuroscience leader.
📍 Action Steps: What neuroscience strategy will you implement today? Comment below! Like, subscribe, and share to spread these impactful lessons!
📌 Connect with Dr. Mark Williams: Website: https://www.drmarkwilliams.com
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⏱️ Timestamps with SEO Questions:
00:00 - What is Dr. Mark Williams' inspiring story from adversity to success?
03:08 - How do core values shape professional and personal growth?
10:12 - What neuroscience principles can improve classroom learning?
18:59 - How does technology affect our brains and learning?
21:25 - What simple strategies foster brain health and collaboration?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
we didn't become the alpha species on this planet Earth because we're the largest speciesor because we're the fastest species or because we're the strongest species or because we
(00:09):
have the largest brain, right?
We actually became this alpha species because we empathize and we collaborate and wecommunicate with each other really well.
(00:36):
Hello and welcome to the Elemental Educator podcast.
I'm your host Tyler and today we are joined by Dr.
Mark Williams, an internationally recognized neuroscience professor with over 25 yearsexperience conducting behavioral and brain imaging research, focusing on our social skills
and how we learn.
He has received numerous awards for teaching and research, taught the fundamentals ofneuroscience to everyone from kindy kids to adults, published more than 70 scientific
(01:01):
articles and worked at MIT, USA and multiple universities in Australia.
Mark draws on his extensive scientific background to work with organizations to developevidence -based practices using neuroscience to improve productivity, innovation, and
mental health.
Mark's new book, The Connected Species, is a number one bestseller and his work has beenhighlighted in the media, including The Guardian, UK, New York Times, Forbes, The
(01:25):
Economist, and New Scientist.
Welcome to the Elemental Educator podcast, Dr.
Williams.
It is a pleasure to have you here.
Thank you for having me, Tyler.
Really good to here.
The pleasure is all mine, Mark, and I'm so happy that I get to learn from you along withthe listeners get to learn from you and your story.
And I want to go to the big question right away, which is how did you get to where you arenow?
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I'm in my 50s now so that could take a while.
How did I get to here?
I don't really know.
It was a very windy road but not one that I would change because it made me who I amtoday.
I grew up in a small country town in Victoria which is down the bottom of Australia.
(02:11):
It was very high unemployment in Australia, especially in country towns back then.
and my mother had a mental illness so I actually hated school when I was at school and myprincipal actually told me that I'd be dead or in prison by the time I was 25 when I was
about 15.
Yeah, so I wasn't very academic at all and it wasn't until I was like 25 that I had twofriends who had drug overdoses and it made me realise that I...
(02:37):
wanted to change something, so I went back to school.
And I had an amazing physics teacher that convinced me that I was actually bright enoughto go to university, which I'd never thought I was.
So I did.
I went to university and did science and then did a PhD in medicine and then ended upworking at MIT, which is pretty cool.
(02:57):
That's incredible.
And Mark, could...
for each little micro story you just told there, we could do entire episodes unpackingwhat that is.
I want to dive into our earth element though, which represents core values and rootingyourself in your beliefs.
How have your core values guided your journey from, you know, a small town in Victoria tobecoming an internationally recognized professor of cognitive neuroscience?
(03:22):
And how do these values influence your work today in making neuroscience accessible to thegeneral public?
Yeah, it's a great question.
When I read that I was sort of thinking about how it's really, my values have reallychanged.
I don't think I had values for the first 25 years or so.
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It wasn't until I had the experience of that teacher and then when we went to universityand fell in love with learning that I think I really established my values.
And I think that's one of the big problems in society today is that a lot of people don'trecognize or don't have values that they actually work on.
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And I think with everyone they change throughout your life, but I think we all need to bethinking about what our values are at this point in time.
Because I mean, we're constantly evolving and we're constantly a working practice.
And yeah, my most important value now is
is collaboration, is understanding that we've all got something to contribute and lovingthat.
(04:31):
aspect of us as humans that we can all contribute to each other and teach each otherlessons.
I was on a train the other day to the airport and a gentleman got on and he looked prettyscruffy and he had a bottle of wine in his hand and he was a native Australian Aboriginal
Torres Strait Islander and I just smiled and said hello and he was very you know happy tochat and it turns out he's he's the grandson of probably one of the most famous Aboriginal
(05:00):
people here in Australia.
who actually changed a lot of the laws here in Australia.
It was fascinating to have the opportunity to talk to him and him talking about his goodgreat grandfather and how...
what that was like growing up in that small country town when his grandfather was goingthrough all that political stuff that he went through.
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that was just somebody on a train who probably most people wouldn't have even looked at.
Yeah, so I think that's probably my main one at the moment, which I've moved towards,which is everyone's got value and we should be chatting to them all.
Thank you so much for sharing and sharing that one of your core values is that idea ofcollaboration really makes me think back to an earlier episode I recorded, the
(05:50):
transformative principle in Canada.
His name is Jethro Drones.
He gave a very powerful quote to me, which is, while the people at the bottom are busycompeting, the people at the top are too busy collaborating.
And there's something to be said about that idea of collaboration and a collectivemindset.
just, you know, in Canada, teachers are just coming back to work, kids are just gettingready to return to school.
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And one of the messages we just talked with our staff about was the mindset of havingcollective teacher efficacy.
And we dove into the research that John Hattie put together around what is optimalpractice and collective teacher efficacy was at the top, that idea of collaboration.
Now,
You share a very vulnerable thing, which is you didn't have values and you found them.
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How did you go about finding what they were?
I think one of the things, when I was doing my undergraduate in science and I was majoringin psychology and physiology, neurophysiology specifically, I decided I wanted to learn
more about people.
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And so I volunteered at a hospice.
It was an end of life hospice.
But to actually become a volunteer, you had to go through a whole training.
program and so this was people who were at the last two weeks of their life and so theywent there to actually die and so I went through this pretty intense training program and
during that we really had to get in touch with who we were and what we valued and why wewere there and yeah it was very intense.
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It would be, yeah.
more for me than for the people that I worked with.
And so that's when I first really started getting in touch with what my core values wereand what I actually wanted to shape in me and focus more on.
Now a little off script here, but you shared collaboration as one of the values.
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Are you willing to share a few of the other ones that are close to you?
Yeah, sure, absolutely.
Another one is respect.
I think we all need to have respect for each other.
And again, it goes back to that whole idea that we all have something to offer.
And we're all living...
our best lives at this moment and we never know what's happening in someone's personallives and especially with teachers I mean I really feel for teachers because you've got
(08:13):
what at 15, 20, 25 students coming into your classroom and you never know what's happenedto them prior to them walking in or last night or last week or whatever and so yeah having
respect for everybody that we meet and I was always told by my father and I didn't realizethat until I was much older.
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He treated everybody the same, didn't matter who you were or what you did.
Everybody was exactly the same and treated exactly the same.
And I try to do that wherever I am and whenever I'm around people because I think that'sreally important.
And Dr.
Jody Carrington says it best.
It's not so much what's wrong with you, but what happened to you?
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What events occurred that led to who you are now?
Now, shifting a bit, your background is described as colorful.
And at one point, your life could have taken a very different direction.
How did your core beliefs, if they were there at the time, weren't there at the time, howdid they help you navigate those challenging times and steer you toward an academic and
professional success?
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That was through the teacher.
I mean, that's why I have so much respect for teachers.
That was through my physics teacher who I had.
I think because I was a mature aged student and most of the students there at TAFE, or youcall it Community College, I think in Canada, were much younger.
We both were right into records and into grunge was big at the time when we were both intogrunge.
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So we used to talk a lot about that.
And he really...
convinced me that I had more to offer and that I should go to university.
And so that's really what spurred on my interest.
And then I got to university and there was all these wonderful people who had wonderfulinsights into the world, right?
And that...
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spurred me on even more and then I started getting into psychology and intoneurophysiology and understanding our brains and understanding what had gone wrong with my
mother who had mental illness and yeah it just sort of went from there it just snowballedfrom there I really loved it.
I think because I had all the experiences before that it enabled me to connect with a lotof people at different levels and so
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I was really lucky and I was accepted into that whole academic sphere.
That's wonderful.
And in your work with schools and businesses, what core principles do you emphasize toensure that the neuroscience concepts you teach are both accessible and impactful for your
audience?
Yeah, the big one's connection.
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I think we've lost a lot of that connection these days.
And I think what we need to understand, I mean, we didn't become the alpha species on thisplanet Earth because we're the largest species or because we're the fastest species or
because we're the strongest species or because we have the largest brain, right?
We actually became this alpha species because we empathize and we collaborate and wecommunicate with each other really well.
(11:10):
and we learn from each other and we learn across generations with no other speciesactually does and that's what teachers do right and that's why teachers are so valuable.
So when I'm working with organisations or with schools it's always comes from that pointof view is that our brains have actually evolved for us to connect and for us to
collaborate.
And we've got to do that, we've got to connect first before we can teach, we've got toconnect first before we can collaborate.
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And so coming from that point of view and learning the important tools to actually doingthat and connecting with either students or connecting with work colleagues so that we can
collaborate, so we feel like we actually want to actually help each other.
But we know we don't collaborate with people who we don't connect with, right?
And we don't learn from people who don't connect with.
(11:55):
Beautiful study done recently where they put...
EEG headsets on both the teacher and all the students and they showed that the studentsthat the teacher was connected with, their brains started oscillating together and when
they were actually being taught something and so they actually sync up when they'reactually connected with each other and the students who weren't connected with the teacher
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didn't sync up but then they looked at what happened when when they were synced up andwhether or not they remembered the information and the students remembered the information
when they was in sync.
And when they're out of sync, they didn't remember the information the teacher wasteaching them.
So, you know, it's so important for us to make that connection first.
And we've got to remember that our brains are the same squishy, grey matter that they were25 ,000 years ago.
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They haven't changed in the last 25 ,000 years.
So we were hunter -gatherers back then and we were spending lots of time together and wewere actually really connected to each other and we were learning from the more senior
people there.
so learning is something we do really easily and really quickly but it's when we'reconnected, when we feel as though we're part of that group.
So that's one of the things we work on first.
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and you talk about collaboration, it is so important and I love that you went back to thereptilian brain because it's still in us and we talk about the idea of fight, flight or
freeze and we get to the idea that most of the time without collaboration, we're alwaysgoing to be in fight mode.
Our brain is going to not create that link to go to cognitive thinking.
We're gonna get stuck in emotional behavioral thought.
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We're gonna have fight responses and we're not gonna go back for that second opinion.
And when you have collaboration, when you have that idea of learning together, you'recreating a space where your brain can move past the first stage of flight and come back
for second thought.
And then you can get to your cognitive learning.
And that's that in sync part you're talking about that's so effective and so powerful.
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Now with that, Mark, sorry, go ahead.
Go ahead.
and we know that you don't learn if you're correct, right?
So if you're correct, if you get something right, you haven't learned anything because youactually knew it already.
That's why you got it correct.
You only learn when you actually get things wrong and you get corrected by the teacher.
And you're not going to actually be willing to listen to that correction unless youactually connect with the teacher, unless you're actually calm and relaxed.
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and in a state where you trust the teacher and you trust what they're Whereas if you're inthat negative space, then you're not gonna wanna actually listen to the teacher who's
correcting you.
And so you're not gonna learn anything.
So it's so important to have that.
Yep.
And learning is, the process of going from incompetence to competence back to incompetenceagain.
And it's a vicious cycle that goes over and over again.
(14:31):
But yeah, with that mark, air symbolizes embracing and overcoming adversity.
Can you share a significant challenge you faced in your journey, particularly during yourtransition from a colorful youth to an accomplished neuroscientist and how you overcame
it?
Yeah, was again, it's through having people that I was connected with, right?
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It was actually having people that I could go to.
was my core friends at that stage took a lot of drugs and did a lot of, you know,partying.
And I needed to get out of that.
So having family and friends that I could say, hey, can I sleep on your couch so that Ican get away from people who, you know, I shouldn't be around because, you know, it's
(15:17):
habitual, right?
A lot of this behavior is habitual.
so being able to shift from that one group to another group and having a range of groupsthat I was actually friends with really allowed me to do that.
so having, yeah, lots of different people and people who would support me and knew that Iwas trying
to do something positive in my life meant that I was able to shift to a more positivearrangement if you like or a more positive environment and therefore then study and
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therefore do well.
And moving from a, we'll call it a challenging early life, to a career at prestigiousinstitutions like MIT and Universities in Australia, it must have involved overcoming some
significant barriers.
What specific adversities did you face there and how did you find that resilience tosucceed?
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Yeah, I've always, mean, everybody talks about imposter syndrome and I think that's verystrong.
It was very strong in me.
It still is.
I still get very nervous, which seems ridiculous when I do so many presentations thesedays.
But yeah, it was a whole imposter syndrome and did I really deserve to be here?
(16:32):
And had I actually entered, I mean, I was at MIT with...
other colleagues who had worked their asses off all their lives, right?
They'd got credible marks all through school and so on.
And here I was a dropout who'd then gone to a community college and struggled through andthen ended up being successful.
(16:53):
So having that to compete with was really difficult and was a real struggle for a longtime.
I was lucky because once you get to university,
People only really care about what you know now, not what you've done before, which isbeautiful.
that's one thing whenever I talk to students, especially more senior students, is onething I really try and talk to them about.
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I do a lot of work with kids in gangs and so on about the fact that they can change theirlives.
if they get into university, that's an opportunity for a complete reset.
Because once you get to university, then no one's going to look at whether you gotexpelled from a school.
got suspended or whatever.
(17:40):
yeah, having that, getting past that, getting past that idea that I really didn't deserveit because these people had worked all their lives and I'd been lucky.
And there's two mindsets there to that.
You know, I'm in my doctorate right now and the very first course I did, I was questioninggrades.
I was wondering why I got them.
And then I reflected on that and I go, these don't even matter.
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No one's gonna look and say, how did you do on your doctorate course?
Hey, how did you do on B?
And I stopped caring about it.
And boy, did I just dive into what I wanted to do.
And it was so much more beneficial to the work that I'm trying to do out there.
It changes how you feel about imposter syndrome because you no longer look at the gradeand say, maybe I'm not supposed to be here.
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And I think, you know, a very interesting study that I hope can be done on a global scaleat some point is the idea and the effect that empowerment has on removing imposter
syndrome.
You know, I start every year off by reminding my teachers, you are the expert.
You're the expert in your room.
We brought you here for a reason.
You have this position because you know it the best.
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I don't know it the best and I can help you as best as I can, but you're there living it.
You see it every day.
You're the expert.
We need to trust your judgment.
And those simple conversations empower these people and they start to feel less likeimposters and more like they belong where they're supposed to be.
you know, maybe we're sparking a study here that can happen that studies the effects ofempowerment on imposter syndrome.
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I love that, that'd be great.
Because it is pervasive, mean, imposter syndrome.
Everybody talks about it and it'd be great to look at something.
it has to do somehow with mirror neurons and seeing what's around you and trickingyourself into thinking you're not there, right?
So now in your programs focused on brain health and neuroscience, how do you helpindividuals and organizations overcome the adversities posed by modern technologies, you
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know, such as the impact of smartphones on our brains?
Yeah, that's a great question.
mean, it's a really difficult issue at the moment.
And so most of what I talk about is just getting restrictions on the phones.
The problem with the phones is that they're constantly distracting us.
We know those beeps and buzzes and those things are constantly capturing our attention,which then wipes our working memory, which means that then we're not actually focusing on
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what we should be focusing on.
So simply by getting rid of the phones.
for periods of time to mean that you can actually focus on one thing and actually getstuff done.
And so whether it's an organization or at school, it's just about getting rid of thephones and using them as they should be used, which is when you actually need to
communicate with someone elsewhere, all right?
(20:20):
When you're in a classroom, you don't need to communicate with someone else when you needto communicate with your teacher.
So there shouldn't be any devices in that case.
It should be one or, know.
not one on one, but you should be communicating with the people in that room and notthinking about what's happening elsewhere.
And so we need to get rid of them.
And same with organisations.
If you're in a meeting, there's no reason to have smartphones in the meeting becauseyou're in the meeting to talk to the people who are actually there.
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And I think we need to get to a point where we realise that it's the person in front ofyou in that room that's the most important person, not somebody dinging you on your phone.
would love to see the effect of those kids that were in sync on an EEG when they haveaccess to their phone and they're on their phone.
And if it throws them out of sync and what that does, because we know that if they're insync, it benefits what they're able to learn.
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And does the phone throw them out of sync?
That would be something that I'm wondering right now.
You know, not only that you're so right.
And the problem with it is we're so reliant and dependent on the technology and on thecell phone that taking it away is a fight and it's a problem.
And, know, I've got a two and a half year old at home and we're all guilty at, know, youneed to make supper.
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So you put something on and, know, the days that we put something on are the days we havemore behavior.
Those are the days that, that we're fighting a lot more and fighting is not the rightword, but what, we're more challenged by each other and something needs to change.
Now.
Speaking of change, Mark, water represents the ability to implement change.
How have you driven meaningful change in the fields of education and neuroscience,particularly through your programs that bring cutting edge research to schools and
(21:54):
businesses?
Yeah, great question.
So it's a lot around actually realizing how our brains work and how our brains haveactually evolved.
And that's to actually collaborate, to actually look at someone in the eye, talk to them,collaborate with them and actually make those connections.
And so that's the thing that I really focus on because we know more of our brainsdedicated to that than anything else we do.
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And we know that if you look at any of the top
performing companies, have a lot of restrictions on when they can use devices and whenthey can't use devices.
Google has areas where devices are allowed and areas where they're not allowed becausethey know that they need areas where they're not allowed so that people can actually
collaborate in those areas.
And if you look at top performing schools or top performing districts or top performingcountries when it comes to outcomes, they have very few devices in their actual schools
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because they know again that by decreasing the number of devices,
and limiting them to programs where you actually need a device rather than where it's justeasier, you get much better outcomes because the students are connected to the teacher and
the students are actually working better with the teacher.
And then talking about how we connect and how we've evolved to connect and how importantit is to do that.
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so, mirror neurons and the C fibers in our skin around touch and simply, know, simply gointo the door for a teacher, simply go into the door.
and shaking the hand of each student as they enter the room will release oxytocin andserotonin in their brain, which will make them more connected to the teacher, which means
that they're going to be more settled and they're going to learn better from the teacher.
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I mean, it's a really simple thing to do, but it actually makes a huge difference to us ashumans because we have these C -fibres in our skin, which release those neurotransmitters
simply to make us more connected.
So yeah, there's lots of really simple ways we can improve.
learning and we can improve collaboration, can improve innovation and creativity by justthinking about how our brains have evolved and using them in those ways and then using
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technology to do the stuff that our brains aren't very good at which unfortunately wedon't do.
mean the thing that I find crazy is I don't want artificial intelligence to be writingbooks for me or to be drawing pictures for me.
I want to be doing those things and I want to have the time to do those things and I'dlike AI to be cleaning the house and to be
(24:22):
doing the dishes and to be cooking with you know what I mean like let's let's let's designthis technology to do all the stuff that we don't want to do rather than designing it to
do the stuff we want to do so it takes our jobs I mean just seems ridiculous at the momentthat we're chasing we're yeah going down the wrong route completely
And not just for teachers, not just for principals, leaders, listen to this.
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If you want to build a connection, if you want to see improvement, step one is think aboutyour proximity to the people you're working with.
If you are physically distancing yourself from people, it will impact your organization.
as something as simple as a handshake.
It doesn't even need to be a handshake.
Standing at a door and greeting, open door policies.
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When somebody's coming into your office or workspace to greet you, don't be sitting atyour desk in your seat waiting for them to come greet them at the door.
That proximity is so important for just showing people you care.
Now, your decision to take voluntary redundancy and focus on making neuroscienceaccessible to the public was a significant shift.
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What changes have you implemented in your approach to ensure that complex scientificconcepts are understandable and useful for a wider audience?
I'll give you a little anecdote before that.
It was the most stupid thing I could have done because I did it in the middle of, I did itin the middle of COVID thinking COVID was over.
mean, of course, COVID wasn't over at all.
(25:51):
So that killed me for a good 12 months, but that meant I wrote my book.
that was probably good.
But yeah, it was, was a bad timing issue.
But I've actually, was really, really fortunate.
I had two...
postdoctoral supervisors, one at Melbourne University and then one at MIT, who reallyemphasised to me and to everyone who was in their lab that if you're not able to
(26:17):
communicate in simple terms that somebody can understand, then you don't understand ityourself.
And it's something that I took away and I've always really focused on.
It doesn't matter who I'm talking to or when I'm, especially when I'm teaching, that I'vealways
keep it simple enough for everybody in the audience to actually understand it becauseotherwise it shows that I don't understand it and there's a lot of people, several people
(26:41):
who do podcasts to be honest, who use words that I don't think they really understandthemselves and they just do it to make themselves look smart and it doesn't make them look
smart it makes them look pretty stupid because it makes people who actually understand thecontent realize that they don't know what they're talking about.
So keeping things simple is something that I've always really focused on.
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And I've always got very good responses from all of my students at university because ofthat, because I'm not trying, I'm in there making it simple enough for everybody.
It doesn't matter where they're sitting or where they've come from to understand it and tobe able to get a good mark if they want to get a good mark.
And so that's how I've always, and I keep doing that.
(27:23):
And the first course I started doing in schools was neuroscience for kinder kids.
So that's where I started with kinder kids.
And I loved it, and they loved it.
Some of the stuff they come up with is just amazing, better than some of my PhD studentsin their ideas that they come up with.
So yeah, I love doing it, and I love enabling.
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everybody to create environments where their brains are healthier and friendlyenvironments so their brains are healthy so they can thrive.
It's so apparent to me just in the conversation so far, Mark, that from hearing about theadversity you face to these changes that you've implemented, you know, it might not appear
that way, but they are rooted in these values you've identified for me.
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Every single thing we've talked about was rooted in that mindset of collaboration.
And it's so intentional in the work you're doing that you're putting forth collaborativeefforts.
The conversation you're having right now about, you know, if you try to over -speakyourself,
you're not trying to collaborate, you're trying to impress, right?
You're not trying to work with somebody, you're trying to force their respect to youthrough your knowledge and that's not how you get your second value of respect, you get it
(28:38):
through being genuine in your collaboration with them.
Now, in your work with rethinking the brain, how do you approach the challenge ofimplementing brain health initiatives in schools, especially when dealing with entrenched
habits and the pervasive influence of technology?
(28:59):
It's tough, to be honest, because it really is, yeah, it really is entrenched.
And there seems to be this real mindset in schools that technology is essential and it'snot essential.
I mean, we've got to realize that, mean, multiple CEOs, CEO of, of Nvidia.
(29:23):
which makes the chips in most computers, has come out very recently and said coding willbe redundant within five years.
There'll be no reason to learn coding.
It'll be like learning...
an ancient language and Elon Musk has just come out and done the same thing to all theseemployees.
said those that are just coding will have to find a new job very soon because we don'tneed it anymore because of AI.
(29:48):
So you know why we're spending huge amounts of time on devices in schools when we knowthat there aren't the jobs in there and the biggest growth industry in any western country
over the last 25 -30 years has been the health industry.
And the health industry you don't need to be good on a computer.
you don't need to be able to code, you need to be good at collaborating, you need to begood at verbalizing what you need, you need to be good at actually facial expressions and
(30:15):
empathizing and collaborating and doing all those things, right?
And you learn those by interacting with people, not sitting on the computer and learninghow to code.
And also we know that the laptops are going to be gone very soon.
Apple's decreased, significantly decreased development of laptops because of voicerecognition.
So voice recognition is
(30:35):
is becoming so good now that we're going to get rid of the keyboards and people will justspeak and it'll all be speech to text.
to be teaching kids how to be doing these things that we know are going to becomeredundant within the next five to 10 years, yeah, it seems very odd to me.
think once people start thinking about that, I think they start realizing, and especiallywhen you actually see all the research showing that you actually learn better on paper
(31:03):
than you do on a device.
You don't have the stress and you don't have the anxiety and you don't have the suicidaltendencies increase, right, after three or four hours on a device and all these things.
So we need to realise that it's not improving learning, it's actually decreasing learning.
And a lot of the time, yeah, once people realise that, they want to change, but thenthey've got to put...
(31:25):
the effort into the change and that's the hard bit.
But it's great when it happens and I've seen some amazing schools that have made thetransition and it's fantastic to see what happens when the transition happens.
And if you're listening to this in the province of Alberta, where this is being recordedon my end, you are going through the year of the government's implementation of a no phone
(31:48):
policy in your school right now and unpacking that.
And I hope at this point of the time where you're listening here in December, you've seensome kind of positive difference from where it could be.
And it brings me back to two people again.
I talked about John Hattie earlier and his visible learning matrix.
know, one of his elements he looked at was one to one personal electronic devices, noteffective.
(32:09):
didn't help people grow, didn't help people learn, wasn't significant towards learning.
And Dr.
Jody Carrington says this best, you can't send a dick pic on pen and paper.
You can't bully somebody the same way you can on a phone and pen and paper.
There's a lot of social emotional sides of things that go away when you go back to the penand paper.
(32:30):
So.
game on pen and paper, all right?
You can't be gaming.
You can't be, yeah, doing all those things.
and there's those old whatever, I don't know what they were.
used to fold them up and yeah.
There you go.
Yeah.
There you go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So Mark, this is, is, this is the spark in us.
(32:50):
This is the fire, which embodies decision -making and the risks taking.
What's been one of the riskiest decisions you've made in your career, particularly whentransitioning from academic research to public education and consulting.
And what was the outcome?
Taking voluntary redundancy in the middle of COVID was probably the riskiest thing I'veever done.
(33:12):
It was probably the stupidest thing I've ever done too.
That was the riskiest thing I ever did and I did have a lot of sleepless nights.
I'm not now, but I did then.
And at that time I thought COVID was over and it wasn't.
And so...
that hit me pretty hard.
(33:32):
I just turned, I then transitioned and wrote the book that I'd wanted to write for a longtime and hadn't had the time to write.
So that was great that I had that opportunity and that's been really beneficial.
yeah, things since then, of course, have picked up enormously since then.
So it's been great, but it was hard doing that.
It was also, there was a lot of frustration.
(33:55):
I found quite a bit of frustration in...
And I'm not sure if this happens in Canada, but here in Australia, they usually have adeputy principle of health and well -being and then they have a deputy principle of
learning.
And the funding for those two things is two different baskets.
(34:19):
And when I go to a school or when a school asks me, what can we do together, da da da,they're like, well, that's both health and well -being and it's learning.
And so where does this come from and who do you talk to?
And I find and I'm like the two things mesh, right?
The two things are so interrelated that you can't have them as two separate things yet.
School's here, I don't know.
two schools here, very much see them as two different things and I don't at all and so Ihave a bit of trouble getting that across the line just because my work is on both because
(34:49):
both impact both.
Really really good students who are doing really well at school don't have emotional andhealth problems right, they don't skip school and so yeah we've got to realise the two
things are interwoven and the two things interact with each other constantly.
And we have such a range here in Canada.
It really depends on the division.
(35:11):
Some divisions will have their superintendent and then a superintendent of human resourcesand a superintendent of learning where the human resources is more for the teachers and
the learning is for the students and the parents.
But.
They're always collaborating too.
And then some of the best divisions out there just have a superintendent and two assistantsuperintendents unbranded with titles and rules for what they do.
And they just collaborate on everything that comes their way.
(35:33):
And it brings back that collaborative mindset and establishing collective efficacy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, so some places here do it extremely, extremely well.
Now sticking to this idea of risk, leaving a secure academic position to focus on publiceducation and consulting is a bold move.
What motivated this decision and how has it shaped your mission to create a brain healthyworld?
(35:59):
yeah, it was actually multiple things.
So my kids started going to school.
I had kids, children, and they started going to school.
And the primary school that they were at, the principal there heard who I was and what Iwas doing.
And he asked me to come in and do a few things there at the school with him because he wasstarting to allow devices to be used in the school.
(36:24):
And he wanted to know what the research around it was.
So I talked to him.
And then we changed a few things in relation to a whole bunch of things including gettingthe teachers to collaborate and so on so that they all weren't writing their own
curriculum and they were actually working for it.
And then because of that his director, which is the next level up, the director looksafter a whole bunch of schools.
(36:44):
So he then heard what I was doing and asked me to come and work with a bunch of hisschools, his other schools and to speak to them.
And then the director above him then asked, yeah, hey, what are doing?
Come and talk to me.
I talked to all of his directors and then a director up in Queensland asked me.
So all of this was happening while I was still at university and I saw the huge need forit.
(37:04):
And I saw that there was a need out there for neuroscience into schools.
there was, I saw a couple of things in this area that weren't based on the latest researchand that really annoyed me.
And I was like, how?
And teachers going, this neuroscience in learning doesn't work.
And I'm like, well, yeah, because you're using research that isn't.
valid research and this isn't good research and here's the actual good research and soyeah that all spurred me on to do it and at the same time I was asked to be involved with
(37:35):
what they call the LEAP program which is going out to low socio -economic areas and goingout to remote areas and working with schools out in those areas and I found that hugely
rewarding so after a couple years doing all that I sort of put all that together and went
yeah I know I want to do this and I want to do it on a bigger scale and I want to have abigger impact and I was getting a bit jaded with universities to be honest those yeah you
(38:02):
see I spent a lot of time talking to other academics and a lot of time writing researchpapers that never got written read by anyone but academics and so I wanted to make a
bigger impact than that and I figured I'd got to the point in my career where I was
I felt like I'd achieved everything I wanted to achieve in academia and I wanted to letthe next generation have a go and I wanted to go out there and make a bigger impact.
(38:30):
And Mark, I love that you bring up it wasn't good research because research is out thereand research is out there for both sides of the argument.
And it's our due diligence and responsibility to look at the work out there and make aninformed decision and a data informed decision.
And that's why.
Bringing it back to collaboration is so important because of how much research is outthere you as a singularity can only see so much you can only review so much and You need
(39:01):
that broad perspective of you know, if I'm working with a multidisciplinary team, I'masking people Can you go find things that contradict this in the research?
Can you try to find things that support it?
Can you find things that are indifferent and let's let's ubiquitously look at this andlet's unpack What does this look like?
Holistically so I can make my most informed decision.
So talking to the good research is
It's good to hear that that's something that's being preached over there too.
(39:23):
And let us know when you bring the consultation side to Canada.
We would love to see it come our way.
that would be awesome yeah I loved Canada when I was in MIT I used to go up to Montrealand those areas quite a bit and I've been to British Columbia as well a few times it's a
beautiful country beautiful country and I love to snowboard
(39:43):
there.
okay.
Well, I was just going to say, we'll make a point of not bringing you in February becauseof how cold we get, but maybe there's some snowboarding in there for you.
Yeah.
There you go.
So Mark in your neuroscience programs, how do you encourage schools and businesses to takethe necessary risks to implement the changes you advocate, especially when these changes
challenge traditional practices or beliefs?
(40:09):
I don't think most of the time I do actually challenge the traditional beliefs because alot of the time I have teachers go, that makes so much sense.
it's great to see the research that actually shows why what I do works and now I can telleveryone else.
So I do often have that.
(40:31):
So I'll either have teachers going, that makes so much sense.
I'm going to implement that today.
Or they go, I already do that, but I didn't realize that's why I was doing it.
With the good teachers, with the really good teachers.
there's a huge amount of amazing teachers who do it by gut and have tried different thingsand have come up with the right way of doing it.
(40:54):
And it turns out that the NeuroIseance shows that's the way you should do it as well,which is awesome because it makes it so much easier then to transition.
And then sometimes, yeah, there are teachers.
who don't want to transition or see it as a little bit more work.
But it's never more work, right?
Because once you actually connect with the students and once students are actuallyachieving, it's so much easier in the classroom because you don't have the behavioural
(41:22):
problems and you're not constantly having to stop to get kids to listen or get kids tofocus or get kids to do things.
So, you know, it actually is less work when you're doing it.
in a way which is optimised for the brain because then even kids with ADHD or with autism,they focus so much more when you're doing it in a way which is optimal for them.
(41:47):
Now, we're getting close to the end of the show here and I get to ask some of my favoritequestions and this one is for the audience and the listeners and the alchemists that are
trying to make a difference.
What are you hoping people listening Action In Their Lives Tomorrow from your messagemark?
A.
(42:08):
Turn off all your notifications on your device, all your devices, because that is just thecue that sets off the behavior which reinforces the addiction to the device.
turn off all your notifications so that you're not distracted by it.
And we know that people's mental health improves within two weeks after they've turned offall the notifications.
(42:28):
So please do that.
You won't.
The benefits are amazing.
The second one is spend time with people, real people.
We now know based on the Harvard study, which has been going on for 75 years, that thenumber one way to actually improve your mental health and to improve your cardiovascular
(42:52):
system, so get help physically healthier and increase your lifespan by 10 to 15 years anddecrease the likelihood of you having Alzheimer's disease is to sit down with someone you
trust on a regular basis and just talk to them.
Right?
And that we're not doing enough.
Nobody has enough friends.
We need to be spending time with people in real life, face to face, without the devicesthere and chatting to them.
(43:16):
Because we know that activates more of your brain than anything else you can do.
That actually improves your IQ.
If you're a teacher, get your students to sit down and chat to each other because thatimproves their IQ.
That's probably the best thing you can actually get them to do.
Yeah, so those would be the two things I would say, please, please, please.
Thank you so much, Mark, for putting a device in front of you, connecting with me andhaving a conversation.
(43:40):
I'm thankful for this.
And, you know...
It can be difficult for somebody like we said earlier to turn off that notification to putthat phone away for a bit.
It's an addiction and it acts as similar to you the body's response of when you're whenyou're going through an addiction or when you're going through even a nutrition change and
(44:00):
you know they talk about how when somebody tries that 30 -day routine it usually isineffective.
because it takes two to five weeks for your body to start responding to what you're doing.
So you have to be consistent.
You have to be resilient in what you're doing.
Now, what does your future look like?
Pretty amazing.
(44:21):
I'm having a ball at the moment.
I get to go to different...
I get to meet different people constantly.
I get to work with people I like working with, which is fantastic.
I get to choose who I'm working with, which is amazing.
Yeah, I tonight I've got a parent event.
It's going to be over 400 parents at the event who want to know about the devices, whichis really fantastic.
(44:46):
Earlier this year I was at a...
Aboriginal community out in middle of Australia, which is out in middle of the desert,which was amazing to spend a week in a school which is just for Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander kids.
And the communities are restricted, so we had to get permission to go on to the area,which was amazing.
(45:10):
But then I went to a conference over in Bali and presented that called Live It Up, where Iwas the keynote and did a workshop.
For real estate agents, which is you know completely different.
It's it's different every day Which I love and I'm enjoying and and and I get to also goover I have a Several people who sponsor me to work with kids who are in in gangs and so
(45:36):
on and I love doing that as well so yeah, it's so different and varied and I Have theopportunity to work with some amazing people and travel a lot.
I get sick of the airports, but other than that, it's it's really
and I get to do stuff that I hope is going to make an impact on a couple of people.
That sounds very fun, very, I'm gonna bring it back to collaborative, very collaborative,very rooted in everything you believe in and stand for.
(46:05):
And so we know that that's gonna be successful and you're gonna have fun doing it becauseit's right where you want to be.
For people listening that love the message, they wanna hear more, what's the best way forthem to connect with you?
Yeah, if you go to my website, which is just drmarquewayams .com, there's lots of stuff onthere.
You can, yeah, organize the time to catch up if you want to do that, or email me throughthere.
(46:28):
Or, yeah, check out a bunch of different things that I've done on there, and blogs and soon, if you want to read those.
And keep up with, yeah, what I'm doing.
And also, you can sign up to the newsletter as well, here where I'm gonna be.
There we go.
And alchemists from kindy kids to adults, it's important to remember that approachingthings with a collaborative mindset, two horse versus one horse, that two horse can pull
(46:52):
three times the amount versus one horse being able to pull one times.
Get collaborating, use your collective efficacy, work together.
Dr.
Mark Williams, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to join me on theElemental Educator podcast.
Well, thank you so much to all of having me.
we didn't become the alpha species on this planet Earth because we're the largest speciesor because we're the fastest species or because we're the strongest species or because we
(00:09):
have the largest brain, right?
We actually became this alpha species because we empathize and we collaborate and wecommunicate with each other really well.
(00:36):
Hello and welcome to the Elemental Educator podcast.
I'm your host Tyler and today we are joined by Dr.
Mark Williams, an internationally recognized neuroscience professor with over 25 yearsexperience conducting behavioral and brain imaging research, focusing on our social skills
and how we learn.
He has received numerous awards for teaching and research, taught the fundamentals ofneuroscience to everyone from kindy kids to adults, published more than 70 scientific
(01:01):
articles and worked at MIT, USA and multiple universities in Australia.
Mark draws on his extensive scientific background to work with organizations to developevidence -based practices using neuroscience to improve productivity, innovation, and
mental health.
Mark's new book, The Connected Species, is a number one bestseller and his work has beenhighlighted in the media, including The Guardian, UK, New York Times, Forbes, The
(01:25):
Economist, and New Scientist.
Welcome to the Elemental Educator podcast, Dr.
Williams.
It is a pleasure to have you here.
Thank you for having me, Tyler.
Really good to here.
The pleasure is all mine, Mark, and I'm so happy that I get to learn from you along withthe listeners get to learn from you and your story.
And I want to go to the big question right away, which is how did you get to where you arenow?
(01:50):
I'm in my 50s now so that could take a while.
How did I get to here?
I don't really know.
It was a very windy road but not one that I would change because it made me who I amtoday.
I grew up in a small country town in Victoria which is down the bottom of Australia.
(02:11):
It was very high unemployment in Australia, especially in country towns back then.
and my mother had a mental illness so I actually hated school when I was at school and myprincipal actually told me that I'd be dead or in prison by the time I was 25 when I was
about 15.
Yeah, so I wasn't very academic at all and it wasn't until I was like 25 that I had twofriends who had drug overdoses and it made me realise that I...
(02:37):
wanted to change something, so I went back to school.
And I had an amazing physics teacher that convinced me that I was actually bright enoughto go to university, which I'd never thought I was.
So I did.
I went to university and did science and then did a PhD in medicine and then ended upworking at MIT, which is pretty cool.
(02:57):
That's incredible.
And Mark, could...
for each little micro story you just told there, we could do entire episodes unpackingwhat that is.
I want to dive into our earth element though, which represents core values and rootingyourself in your beliefs.
How have your core values guided your journey from, you know, a small town in Victoria tobecoming an internationally recognized professor of cognitive neuroscience?
(03:22):
And how do these values influence your work today in making neuroscience accessible to thegeneral public?
Yeah, it's a great question.
When I read that I was sort of thinking about how it's really, my values have reallychanged.
I don't think I had values for the first 25 years or so.
(03:43):
It wasn't until I had the experience of that teacher and then when we went to universityand fell in love with learning that I think I really established my values.
And I think that's one of the big problems in society today is that a lot of people don'trecognize or don't have values that they actually work on.
(04:06):
And I think with everyone they change throughout your life, but I think we all need to bethinking about what our values are at this point in time.
Because I mean, we're constantly evolving and we're constantly a working practice.
And yeah, my most important value now is
is collaboration, is understanding that we've all got something to contribute and lovingthat.
(04:31):
aspect of us as humans that we can all contribute to each other and teach each otherlessons.
I was on a train the other day to the airport and a gentleman got on and he looked prettyscruffy and he had a bottle of wine in his hand and he was a native Australian Aboriginal
Torres Strait Islander and I just smiled and said hello and he was very you know happy tochat and it turns out he's he's the grandson of probably one of the most famous Aboriginal
(05:00):
people here in Australia.
who actually changed a lot of the laws here in Australia.
It was fascinating to have the opportunity to talk to him and him talking about his goodgreat grandfather and how...
what that was like growing up in that small country town when his grandfather was goingthrough all that political stuff that he went through.
(05:25):
that was just somebody on a train who probably most people wouldn't have even looked at.
Yeah, so I think that's probably my main one at the moment, which I've moved towards,which is everyone's got value and we should be chatting to them all.
Thank you so much for sharing and sharing that one of your core values is that idea ofcollaboration really makes me think back to an earlier episode I recorded, the
(05:50):
transformative principle in Canada.
His name is Jethro Drones.
He gave a very powerful quote to me, which is, while the people at the bottom are busycompeting, the people at the top are too busy collaborating.
And there's something to be said about that idea of collaboration and a collectivemindset.
just, you know, in Canada, teachers are just coming back to work, kids are just gettingready to return to school.
(06:10):
And one of the messages we just talked with our staff about was the mindset of havingcollective teacher efficacy.
And we dove into the research that John Hattie put together around what is optimalpractice and collective teacher efficacy was at the top, that idea of collaboration.
Now,
You share a very vulnerable thing, which is you didn't have values and you found them.
(06:33):
How did you go about finding what they were?
I think one of the things, when I was doing my undergraduate in science and I was majoringin psychology and physiology, neurophysiology specifically, I decided I wanted to learn
more about people.
(06:54):
And so I volunteered at a hospice.
It was an end of life hospice.
But to actually become a volunteer, you had to go through a whole training.
program and so this was people who were at the last two weeks of their life and so theywent there to actually die and so I went through this pretty intense training program and
during that we really had to get in touch with who we were and what we valued and why wewere there and yeah it was very intense.
(07:25):
It would be, yeah.
more for me than for the people that I worked with.
And so that's when I first really started getting in touch with what my core values wereand what I actually wanted to shape in me and focus more on.
Now a little off script here, but you shared collaboration as one of the values.
(07:45):
Are you willing to share a few of the other ones that are close to you?
Yeah, sure, absolutely.
Another one is respect.
I think we all need to have respect for each other.
And again, it goes back to that whole idea that we all have something to offer.
And we're all living...
our best lives at this moment and we never know what's happening in someone's personallives and especially with teachers I mean I really feel for teachers because you've got
(08:13):
what at 15, 20, 25 students coming into your classroom and you never know what's happenedto them prior to them walking in or last night or last week or whatever and so yeah having
respect for everybody that we meet and I was always told by my father and I didn't realizethat until I was much older.
(08:34):
He treated everybody the same, didn't matter who you were or what you did.
Everybody was exactly the same and treated exactly the same.
And I try to do that wherever I am and whenever I'm around people because I think that'sreally important.
And Dr.
Jody Carrington says it best.
It's not so much what's wrong with you, but what happened to you?
(08:56):
What events occurred that led to who you are now?
Now, shifting a bit, your background is described as colorful.
And at one point, your life could have taken a very different direction.
How did your core beliefs, if they were there at the time, weren't there at the time, howdid they help you navigate those challenging times and steer you toward an academic and
professional success?
(09:17):
That was through the teacher.
I mean, that's why I have so much respect for teachers.
That was through my physics teacher who I had.
I think because I was a mature aged student and most of the students there at TAFE, or youcall it Community College, I think in Canada, were much younger.
We both were right into records and into grunge was big at the time when we were both intogrunge.
(09:39):
So we used to talk a lot about that.
And he really...
convinced me that I had more to offer and that I should go to university.
And so that's really what spurred on my interest.
And then I got to university and there was all these wonderful people who had wonderfulinsights into the world, right?
And that...
(10:00):
spurred me on even more and then I started getting into psychology and intoneurophysiology and understanding our brains and understanding what had gone wrong with my
mother who had mental illness and yeah it just sort of went from there it just snowballedfrom there I really loved it.
I think because I had all the experiences before that it enabled me to connect with a lotof people at different levels and so
(10:25):
I was really lucky and I was accepted into that whole academic sphere.
That's wonderful.
And in your work with schools and businesses, what core principles do you emphasize toensure that the neuroscience concepts you teach are both accessible and impactful for your
audience?
Yeah, the big one's connection.
(10:45):
I think we've lost a lot of that connection these days.
And I think what we need to understand, I mean, we didn't become the alpha species on thisplanet Earth because we're the largest species or because we're the fastest species or
because we're the strongest species or because we have the largest brain, right?
We actually became this alpha species because we empathize and we collaborate and wecommunicate with each other really well.
(11:10):
and we learn from each other and we learn across generations with no other speciesactually does and that's what teachers do right and that's why teachers are so valuable.
So when I'm working with organisations or with schools it's always comes from that pointof view is that our brains have actually evolved for us to connect and for us to
collaborate.
And we've got to do that, we've got to connect first before we can teach, we've got toconnect first before we can collaborate.
(11:34):
And so coming from that point of view and learning the important tools to actually doingthat and connecting with either students or connecting with work colleagues so that we can
collaborate, so we feel like we actually want to actually help each other.
But we know we don't collaborate with people who we don't connect with, right?
And we don't learn from people who don't connect with.
(11:55):
Beautiful study done recently where they put...
EEG headsets on both the teacher and all the students and they showed that the studentsthat the teacher was connected with, their brains started oscillating together and when
they were actually being taught something and so they actually sync up when they'reactually connected with each other and the students who weren't connected with the teacher
(12:15):
didn't sync up but then they looked at what happened when when they were synced up andwhether or not they remembered the information and the students remembered the information
when they was in sync.
And when they're out of sync, they didn't remember the information the teacher wasteaching them.
So, you know, it's so important for us to make that connection first.
And we've got to remember that our brains are the same squishy, grey matter that they were25 ,000 years ago.
(12:41):
They haven't changed in the last 25 ,000 years.
So we were hunter -gatherers back then and we were spending lots of time together and wewere actually really connected to each other and we were learning from the more senior
people there.
so learning is something we do really easily and really quickly but it's when we'reconnected, when we feel as though we're part of that group.
So that's one of the things we work on first.
(13:02):
and you talk about collaboration, it is so important and I love that you went back to thereptilian brain because it's still in us and we talk about the idea of fight, flight or
freeze and we get to the idea that most of the time without collaboration, we're alwaysgoing to be in fight mode.
Our brain is going to not create that link to go to cognitive thinking.
We're gonna get stuck in emotional behavioral thought.
(13:23):
We're gonna have fight responses and we're not gonna go back for that second opinion.
And when you have collaboration, when you have that idea of learning together, you'recreating a space where your brain can move past the first stage of flight and come back
for second thought.
And then you can get to your cognitive learning.
And that's that in sync part you're talking about that's so effective and so powerful.
(13:45):
Now with that, Mark, sorry, go ahead.
Go ahead.
and we know that you don't learn if you're correct, right?
So if you're correct, if you get something right, you haven't learned anything because youactually knew it already.
That's why you got it correct.
You only learn when you actually get things wrong and you get corrected by the teacher.
And you're not going to actually be willing to listen to that correction unless youactually connect with the teacher, unless you're actually calm and relaxed.
(14:09):
and in a state where you trust the teacher and you trust what they're Whereas if you're inthat negative space, then you're not gonna wanna actually listen to the teacher who's
correcting you.
And so you're not gonna learn anything.
So it's so important to have that.
Yep.
And learning is, the process of going from incompetence to competence back to incompetenceagain.
And it's a vicious cycle that goes over and over again.
(14:31):
But yeah, with that mark, air symbolizes embracing and overcoming adversity.
Can you share a significant challenge you faced in your journey, particularly during yourtransition from a colorful youth to an accomplished neuroscientist and how you overcame
it?
Yeah, was again, it's through having people that I was connected with, right?
(14:54):
It was actually having people that I could go to.
was my core friends at that stage took a lot of drugs and did a lot of, you know,partying.
And I needed to get out of that.
So having family and friends that I could say, hey, can I sleep on your couch so that Ican get away from people who, you know, I shouldn't be around because, you know, it's
(15:17):
habitual, right?
A lot of this behavior is habitual.
so being able to shift from that one group to another group and having a range of groupsthat I was actually friends with really allowed me to do that.
so having, yeah, lots of different people and people who would support me and knew that Iwas trying
to do something positive in my life meant that I was able to shift to a more positivearrangement if you like or a more positive environment and therefore then study and
(15:48):
therefore do well.
And moving from a, we'll call it a challenging early life, to a career at prestigiousinstitutions like MIT and Universities in Australia, it must have involved overcoming some
significant barriers.
What specific adversities did you face there and how did you find that resilience tosucceed?
(16:11):
Yeah, I've always, mean, everybody talks about imposter syndrome and I think that's verystrong.
It was very strong in me.
It still is.
I still get very nervous, which seems ridiculous when I do so many presentations thesedays.
But yeah, it was a whole imposter syndrome and did I really deserve to be here?
(16:32):
And had I actually entered, I mean, I was at MIT with...
other colleagues who had worked their asses off all their lives, right?
They'd got credible marks all through school and so on.
And here I was a dropout who'd then gone to a community college and struggled through andthen ended up being successful.
(16:53):
So having that to compete with was really difficult and was a real struggle for a longtime.
I was lucky because once you get to university,
People only really care about what you know now, not what you've done before, which isbeautiful.
that's one thing whenever I talk to students, especially more senior students, is onething I really try and talk to them about.
(17:18):
I do a lot of work with kids in gangs and so on about the fact that they can change theirlives.
if they get into university, that's an opportunity for a complete reset.
Because once you get to university, then no one's going to look at whether you gotexpelled from a school.
got suspended or whatever.
(17:40):
yeah, having that, getting past that, getting past that idea that I really didn't deserveit because these people had worked all their lives and I'd been lucky.
And there's two mindsets there to that.
You know, I'm in my doctorate right now and the very first course I did, I was questioninggrades.
I was wondering why I got them.
And then I reflected on that and I go, these don't even matter.
(18:00):
No one's gonna look and say, how did you do on your doctorate course?
Hey, how did you do on B?
And I stopped caring about it.
And boy, did I just dive into what I wanted to do.
And it was so much more beneficial to the work that I'm trying to do out there.
It changes how you feel about imposter syndrome because you no longer look at the gradeand say, maybe I'm not supposed to be here.
(18:21):
And I think, you know, a very interesting study that I hope can be done on a global scaleat some point is the idea and the effect that empowerment has on removing imposter
syndrome.
You know, I start every year off by reminding my teachers, you are the expert.
You're the expert in your room.
We brought you here for a reason.
You have this position because you know it the best.
(18:43):
I don't know it the best and I can help you as best as I can, but you're there living it.
You see it every day.
You're the expert.
We need to trust your judgment.
And those simple conversations empower these people and they start to feel less likeimposters and more like they belong where they're supposed to be.
you know, maybe we're sparking a study here that can happen that studies the effects ofempowerment on imposter syndrome.
(19:04):
I love that, that'd be great.
Because it is pervasive, mean, imposter syndrome.
Everybody talks about it and it'd be great to look at something.
it has to do somehow with mirror neurons and seeing what's around you and trickingyourself into thinking you're not there, right?
So now in your programs focused on brain health and neuroscience, how do you helpindividuals and organizations overcome the adversities posed by modern technologies, you
(19:31):
know, such as the impact of smartphones on our brains?
Yeah, that's a great question.
mean, it's a really difficult issue at the moment.
And so most of what I talk about is just getting restrictions on the phones.
The problem with the phones is that they're constantly distracting us.
We know those beeps and buzzes and those things are constantly capturing our attention,which then wipes our working memory, which means that then we're not actually focusing on
(19:59):
what we should be focusing on.
So simply by getting rid of the phones.
for periods of time to mean that you can actually focus on one thing and actually getstuff done.
And so whether it's an organization or at school, it's just about getting rid of thephones and using them as they should be used, which is when you actually need to
communicate with someone elsewhere, all right?
(20:20):
When you're in a classroom, you don't need to communicate with someone else when you needto communicate with your teacher.
So there shouldn't be any devices in that case.
It should be one or, know.
not one on one, but you should be communicating with the people in that room and notthinking about what's happening elsewhere.
And so we need to get rid of them.
And same with organisations.
If you're in a meeting, there's no reason to have smartphones in the meeting becauseyou're in the meeting to talk to the people who are actually there.
(20:43):
And I think we need to get to a point where we realise that it's the person in front ofyou in that room that's the most important person, not somebody dinging you on your phone.
would love to see the effect of those kids that were in sync on an EEG when they haveaccess to their phone and they're on their phone.
And if it throws them out of sync and what that does, because we know that if they're insync, it benefits what they're able to learn.
(21:07):
And does the phone throw them out of sync?
That would be something that I'm wondering right now.
You know, not only that you're so right.
And the problem with it is we're so reliant and dependent on the technology and on thecell phone that taking it away is a fight and it's a problem.
And, know, I've got a two and a half year old at home and we're all guilty at, know, youneed to make supper.
(21:27):
So you put something on and, know, the days that we put something on are the days we havemore behavior.
Those are the days that, that we're fighting a lot more and fighting is not the rightword, but what, we're more challenged by each other and something needs to change.
Now.
Speaking of change, Mark, water represents the ability to implement change.
How have you driven meaningful change in the fields of education and neuroscience,particularly through your programs that bring cutting edge research to schools and
(21:54):
businesses?
Yeah, great question.
So it's a lot around actually realizing how our brains work and how our brains haveactually evolved.
And that's to actually collaborate, to actually look at someone in the eye, talk to them,collaborate with them and actually make those connections.
And so that's the thing that I really focus on because we know more of our brainsdedicated to that than anything else we do.
(22:20):
And we know that if you look at any of the top
performing companies, have a lot of restrictions on when they can use devices and whenthey can't use devices.
Google has areas where devices are allowed and areas where they're not allowed becausethey know that they need areas where they're not allowed so that people can actually
collaborate in those areas.
And if you look at top performing schools or top performing districts or top performingcountries when it comes to outcomes, they have very few devices in their actual schools
(22:49):
because they know again that by decreasing the number of devices,
and limiting them to programs where you actually need a device rather than where it's justeasier, you get much better outcomes because the students are connected to the teacher and
the students are actually working better with the teacher.
And then talking about how we connect and how we've evolved to connect and how importantit is to do that.
(23:15):
so, mirror neurons and the C fibers in our skin around touch and simply, know, simply gointo the door for a teacher, simply go into the door.
and shaking the hand of each student as they enter the room will release oxytocin andserotonin in their brain, which will make them more connected to the teacher, which means
that they're going to be more settled and they're going to learn better from the teacher.
(23:36):
I mean, it's a really simple thing to do, but it actually makes a huge difference to us ashumans because we have these C -fibres in our skin, which release those neurotransmitters
simply to make us more connected.
So yeah, there's lots of really simple ways we can improve.
learning and we can improve collaboration, can improve innovation and creativity by justthinking about how our brains have evolved and using them in those ways and then using
(24:02):
technology to do the stuff that our brains aren't very good at which unfortunately wedon't do.
mean the thing that I find crazy is I don't want artificial intelligence to be writingbooks for me or to be drawing pictures for me.
I want to be doing those things and I want to have the time to do those things and I'dlike AI to be cleaning the house and to be
(24:22):
doing the dishes and to be cooking with you know what I mean like let's let's let's designthis technology to do all the stuff that we don't want to do rather than designing it to
do the stuff we want to do so it takes our jobs I mean just seems ridiculous at the momentthat we're chasing we're yeah going down the wrong route completely
And not just for teachers, not just for principals, leaders, listen to this.
(24:46):
If you want to build a connection, if you want to see improvement, step one is think aboutyour proximity to the people you're working with.
If you are physically distancing yourself from people, it will impact your organization.
as something as simple as a handshake.
It doesn't even need to be a handshake.
Standing at a door and greeting, open door policies.
(25:08):
When somebody's coming into your office or workspace to greet you, don't be sitting atyour desk in your seat waiting for them to come greet them at the door.
That proximity is so important for just showing people you care.
Now, your decision to take voluntary redundancy and focus on making neuroscienceaccessible to the public was a significant shift.
(25:30):
What changes have you implemented in your approach to ensure that complex scientificconcepts are understandable and useful for a wider audience?
I'll give you a little anecdote before that.
It was the most stupid thing I could have done because I did it in the middle of, I did itin the middle of COVID thinking COVID was over.
mean, of course, COVID wasn't over at all.
(25:51):
So that killed me for a good 12 months, but that meant I wrote my book.
that was probably good.
But yeah, it was, was a bad timing issue.
But I've actually, was really, really fortunate.
I had two...
postdoctoral supervisors, one at Melbourne University and then one at MIT, who reallyemphasised to me and to everyone who was in their lab that if you're not able to
(26:17):
communicate in simple terms that somebody can understand, then you don't understand ityourself.
And it's something that I took away and I've always really focused on.
It doesn't matter who I'm talking to or when I'm, especially when I'm teaching, that I'vealways
keep it simple enough for everybody in the audience to actually understand it becauseotherwise it shows that I don't understand it and there's a lot of people, several people
(26:41):
who do podcasts to be honest, who use words that I don't think they really understandthemselves and they just do it to make themselves look smart and it doesn't make them look
smart it makes them look pretty stupid because it makes people who actually understand thecontent realize that they don't know what they're talking about.
So keeping things simple is something that I've always really focused on.
(27:03):
And I've always got very good responses from all of my students at university because ofthat, because I'm not trying, I'm in there making it simple enough for everybody.
It doesn't matter where they're sitting or where they've come from to understand it and tobe able to get a good mark if they want to get a good mark.
And so that's how I've always, and I keep doing that.
(27:23):
And the first course I started doing in schools was neuroscience for kinder kids.
So that's where I started with kinder kids.
And I loved it, and they loved it.
Some of the stuff they come up with is just amazing, better than some of my PhD studentsin their ideas that they come up with.
So yeah, I love doing it, and I love enabling.
(27:48):
everybody to create environments where their brains are healthier and friendlyenvironments so their brains are healthy so they can thrive.
It's so apparent to me just in the conversation so far, Mark, that from hearing about theadversity you face to these changes that you've implemented, you know, it might not appear
that way, but they are rooted in these values you've identified for me.
(28:12):
Every single thing we've talked about was rooted in that mindset of collaboration.
And it's so intentional in the work you're doing that you're putting forth collaborativeefforts.
The conversation you're having right now about, you know, if you try to over -speakyourself,
you're not trying to collaborate, you're trying to impress, right?
You're not trying to work with somebody, you're trying to force their respect to youthrough your knowledge and that's not how you get your second value of respect, you get it
(28:38):
through being genuine in your collaboration with them.
Now, in your work with rethinking the brain, how do you approach the challenge ofimplementing brain health initiatives in schools, especially when dealing with entrenched
habits and the pervasive influence of technology?
(28:59):
It's tough, to be honest, because it really is, yeah, it really is entrenched.
And there seems to be this real mindset in schools that technology is essential and it'snot essential.
I mean, we've got to realize that, mean, multiple CEOs, CEO of, of Nvidia.
(29:23):
which makes the chips in most computers, has come out very recently and said coding willbe redundant within five years.
There'll be no reason to learn coding.
It'll be like learning...
an ancient language and Elon Musk has just come out and done the same thing to all theseemployees.
said those that are just coding will have to find a new job very soon because we don'tneed it anymore because of AI.
(29:48):
So you know why we're spending huge amounts of time on devices in schools when we knowthat there aren't the jobs in there and the biggest growth industry in any western country
over the last 25 -30 years has been the health industry.
And the health industry you don't need to be good on a computer.
you don't need to be able to code, you need to be good at collaborating, you need to begood at verbalizing what you need, you need to be good at actually facial expressions and
(30:15):
empathizing and collaborating and doing all those things, right?
And you learn those by interacting with people, not sitting on the computer and learninghow to code.
And also we know that the laptops are going to be gone very soon.
Apple's decreased, significantly decreased development of laptops because of voicerecognition.
So voice recognition is
(30:35):
is becoming so good now that we're going to get rid of the keyboards and people will justspeak and it'll all be speech to text.
to be teaching kids how to be doing these things that we know are going to becomeredundant within the next five to 10 years, yeah, it seems very odd to me.
think once people start thinking about that, I think they start realizing, and especiallywhen you actually see all the research showing that you actually learn better on paper
(31:03):
than you do on a device.
You don't have the stress and you don't have the anxiety and you don't have the suicidaltendencies increase, right, after three or four hours on a device and all these things.
So we need to realise that it's not improving learning, it's actually decreasing learning.
And a lot of the time, yeah, once people realise that, they want to change, but thenthey've got to put...
(31:25):
the effort into the change and that's the hard bit.
But it's great when it happens and I've seen some amazing schools that have made thetransition and it's fantastic to see what happens when the transition happens.
And if you're listening to this in the province of Alberta, where this is being recordedon my end, you are going through the year of the government's implementation of a no phone
(31:48):
policy in your school right now and unpacking that.
And I hope at this point of the time where you're listening here in December, you've seensome kind of positive difference from where it could be.
And it brings me back to two people again.
I talked about John Hattie earlier and his visible learning matrix.
know, one of his elements he looked at was one to one personal electronic devices, noteffective.
(32:09):
didn't help people grow, didn't help people learn, wasn't significant towards learning.
And Dr.
Jody Carrington says this best, you can't send a dick pic on pen and paper.
You can't bully somebody the same way you can on a phone and pen and paper.
There's a lot of social emotional sides of things that go away when you go back to the penand paper.
(32:30):
So.
game on pen and paper, all right?
You can't be gaming.
You can't be, yeah, doing all those things.
and there's those old whatever, I don't know what they were.
used to fold them up and yeah.
There you go.
Yeah.
There you go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So Mark, this is, is, this is the spark in us.
(32:50):
This is the fire, which embodies decision -making and the risks taking.
What's been one of the riskiest decisions you've made in your career, particularly whentransitioning from academic research to public education and consulting.
And what was the outcome?
Taking voluntary redundancy in the middle of COVID was probably the riskiest thing I'veever done.
(33:12):
It was probably the stupidest thing I've ever done too.
That was the riskiest thing I ever did and I did have a lot of sleepless nights.
I'm not now, but I did then.
And at that time I thought COVID was over and it wasn't.
And so...
that hit me pretty hard.
(33:32):
I just turned, I then transitioned and wrote the book that I'd wanted to write for a longtime and hadn't had the time to write.
So that was great that I had that opportunity and that's been really beneficial.
yeah, things since then, of course, have picked up enormously since then.
So it's been great, but it was hard doing that.
It was also, there was a lot of frustration.
(33:55):
I found quite a bit of frustration in...
And I'm not sure if this happens in Canada, but here in Australia, they usually have adeputy principle of health and well -being and then they have a deputy principle of
learning.
And the funding for those two things is two different baskets.
(34:19):
And when I go to a school or when a school asks me, what can we do together, da da da,they're like, well, that's both health and well -being and it's learning.
And so where does this come from and who do you talk to?
And I find and I'm like the two things mesh, right?
The two things are so interrelated that you can't have them as two separate things yet.
School's here, I don't know.
two schools here, very much see them as two different things and I don't at all and so Ihave a bit of trouble getting that across the line just because my work is on both because
(34:49):
both impact both.
Really really good students who are doing really well at school don't have emotional andhealth problems right, they don't skip school and so yeah we've got to realise the two
things are interwoven and the two things interact with each other constantly.
And we have such a range here in Canada.
It really depends on the division.
(35:11):
Some divisions will have their superintendent and then a superintendent of human resourcesand a superintendent of learning where the human resources is more for the teachers and
the learning is for the students and the parents.
But.
They're always collaborating too.
And then some of the best divisions out there just have a superintendent and two assistantsuperintendents unbranded with titles and rules for what they do.
And they just collaborate on everything that comes their way.
(35:33):
And it brings back that collaborative mindset and establishing collective efficacy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, so some places here do it extremely, extremely well.
Now sticking to this idea of risk, leaving a secure academic position to focus on publiceducation and consulting is a bold move.
What motivated this decision and how has it shaped your mission to create a brain healthyworld?
(35:59):
yeah, it was actually multiple things.
So my kids started going to school.
I had kids, children, and they started going to school.
And the primary school that they were at, the principal there heard who I was and what Iwas doing.
And he asked me to come in and do a few things there at the school with him because he wasstarting to allow devices to be used in the school.
(36:24):
And he wanted to know what the research around it was.
So I talked to him.
And then we changed a few things in relation to a whole bunch of things including gettingthe teachers to collaborate and so on so that they all weren't writing their own
curriculum and they were actually working for it.
And then because of that his director, which is the next level up, the director looksafter a whole bunch of schools.
(36:44):
So he then heard what I was doing and asked me to come and work with a bunch of hisschools, his other schools and to speak to them.
And then the director above him then asked, yeah, hey, what are doing?
Come and talk to me.
I talked to all of his directors and then a director up in Queensland asked me.
So all of this was happening while I was still at university and I saw the huge need forit.
(37:04):
And I saw that there was a need out there for neuroscience into schools.
there was, I saw a couple of things in this area that weren't based on the latest researchand that really annoyed me.
And I was like, how?
And teachers going, this neuroscience in learning doesn't work.
And I'm like, well, yeah, because you're using research that isn't.
valid research and this isn't good research and here's the actual good research and soyeah that all spurred me on to do it and at the same time I was asked to be involved with
(37:35):
what they call the LEAP program which is going out to low socio -economic areas and goingout to remote areas and working with schools out in those areas and I found that hugely
rewarding so after a couple years doing all that I sort of put all that together and went
yeah I know I want to do this and I want to do it on a bigger scale and I want to have abigger impact and I was getting a bit jaded with universities to be honest those yeah you
(38:02):
see I spent a lot of time talking to other academics and a lot of time writing researchpapers that never got written read by anyone but academics and so I wanted to make a
bigger impact than that and I figured I'd got to the point in my career where I was
I felt like I'd achieved everything I wanted to achieve in academia and I wanted to letthe next generation have a go and I wanted to go out there and make a bigger impact.
(38:30):
And Mark, I love that you bring up it wasn't good research because research is out thereand research is out there for both sides of the argument.
And it's our due diligence and responsibility to look at the work out there and make aninformed decision and a data informed decision.
And that's why.
Bringing it back to collaboration is so important because of how much research is outthere you as a singularity can only see so much you can only review so much and You need
(39:01):
that broad perspective of you know, if I'm working with a multidisciplinary team, I'masking people Can you go find things that contradict this in the research?
Can you try to find things that support it?
Can you find things that are indifferent and let's let's ubiquitously look at this andlet's unpack What does this look like?
Holistically so I can make my most informed decision.
So talking to the good research is
It's good to hear that that's something that's being preached over there too.
(39:23):
And let us know when you bring the consultation side to Canada.
We would love to see it come our way.
that would be awesome yeah I loved Canada when I was in MIT I used to go up to Montrealand those areas quite a bit and I've been to British Columbia as well a few times it's a
beautiful country beautiful country and I love to snowboard
(39:43):
there.
okay.
Well, I was just going to say, we'll make a point of not bringing you in February becauseof how cold we get, but maybe there's some snowboarding in there for you.
Yeah.
There you go.
So Mark in your neuroscience programs, how do you encourage schools and businesses to takethe necessary risks to implement the changes you advocate, especially when these changes
challenge traditional practices or beliefs?
(40:09):
I don't think most of the time I do actually challenge the traditional beliefs because alot of the time I have teachers go, that makes so much sense.
it's great to see the research that actually shows why what I do works and now I can telleveryone else.
So I do often have that.
(40:31):
So I'll either have teachers going, that makes so much sense.
I'm going to implement that today.
Or they go, I already do that, but I didn't realize that's why I was doing it.
With the good teachers, with the really good teachers.
there's a huge amount of amazing teachers who do it by gut and have tried different thingsand have come up with the right way of doing it.
(40:54):
And it turns out that the NeuroIseance shows that's the way you should do it as well,which is awesome because it makes it so much easier then to transition.
And then sometimes, yeah, there are teachers.
who don't want to transition or see it as a little bit more work.
But it's never more work, right?
Because once you actually connect with the students and once students are actuallyachieving, it's so much easier in the classroom because you don't have the behavioural
(41:22):
problems and you're not constantly having to stop to get kids to listen or get kids tofocus or get kids to do things.
So, you know, it actually is less work when you're doing it.
in a way which is optimised for the brain because then even kids with ADHD or with autism,they focus so much more when you're doing it in a way which is optimal for them.
(41:47):
Now, we're getting close to the end of the show here and I get to ask some of my favoritequestions and this one is for the audience and the listeners and the alchemists that are
trying to make a difference.
What are you hoping people listening Action In Their Lives Tomorrow from your messagemark?
A.
(42:08):
Turn off all your notifications on your device, all your devices, because that is just thecue that sets off the behavior which reinforces the addiction to the device.
turn off all your notifications so that you're not distracted by it.
And we know that people's mental health improves within two weeks after they've turned offall the notifications.
(42:28):
So please do that.
You won't.
The benefits are amazing.
The second one is spend time with people, real people.
We now know based on the Harvard study, which has been going on for 75 years, that thenumber one way to actually improve your mental health and to improve your cardiovascular
(42:52):
system, so get help physically healthier and increase your lifespan by 10 to 15 years anddecrease the likelihood of you having Alzheimer's disease is to sit down with someone you
trust on a regular basis and just talk to them.
Right?
And that we're not doing enough.
Nobody has enough friends.
We need to be spending time with people in real life, face to face, without the devicesthere and chatting to them.
(43:16):
Because we know that activates more of your brain than anything else you can do.
That actually improves your IQ.
If you're a teacher, get your students to sit down and chat to each other because thatimproves their IQ.
That's probably the best thing you can actually get them to do.
Yeah, so those would be the two things I would say, please, please, please.
Thank you so much, Mark, for putting a device in front of you, connecting with me andhaving a conversation.
(43:40):
I'm thankful for this.
And, you know...
It can be difficult for somebody like we said earlier to turn off that notification to putthat phone away for a bit.
It's an addiction and it acts as similar to you the body's response of when you're whenyou're going through an addiction or when you're going through even a nutrition change and
(44:00):
you know they talk about how when somebody tries that 30 -day routine it usually isineffective.
because it takes two to five weeks for your body to start responding to what you're doing.
So you have to be consistent.
You have to be resilient in what you're doing.
Now, what does your future look like?
Pretty amazing.
(44:21):
I'm having a ball at the moment.
I get to go to different...
I get to meet different people constantly.
I get to work with people I like working with, which is fantastic.
I get to choose who I'm working with, which is amazing.
Yeah, I tonight I've got a parent event.
It's going to be over 400 parents at the event who want to know about the devices, whichis really fantastic.
(44:46):
Earlier this year I was at a...
Aboriginal community out in middle of Australia, which is out in middle of the desert,which was amazing to spend a week in a school which is just for Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander kids.
And the communities are restricted, so we had to get permission to go on to the area,which was amazing.
(45:10):
But then I went to a conference over in Bali and presented that called Live It Up, where Iwas the keynote and did a workshop.
For real estate agents, which is you know completely different.
It's it's different every day Which I love and I'm enjoying and and and I get to also goover I have a Several people who sponsor me to work with kids who are in in gangs and so
(45:36):
on and I love doing that as well so yeah, it's so different and varied and I Have theopportunity to work with some amazing people and travel a lot.
I get sick of the airports, but other than that, it's it's really
and I get to do stuff that I hope is going to make an impact on a couple of people.
That sounds very fun, very, I'm gonna bring it back to collaborative, very collaborative,very rooted in everything you believe in and stand for.
(46:05):
And so we know that that's gonna be successful and you're gonna have fun doing it becauseit's right where you want to be.
For people listening that love the message, they wanna hear more, what's the best way forthem to connect with you?
Yeah, if you go to my website, which is just drmarquewayams .com, there's lots of stuff onthere.
You can, yeah, organize the time to catch up if you want to do that, or email me throughthere.
(46:28):
Or, yeah, check out a bunch of different things that I've done on there, and blogs and soon, if you want to read those.
And keep up with, yeah, what I'm doing.
And also, you can sign up to the newsletter as well, here where I'm gonna be.
There we go.
And alchemists from kindy kids to adults, it's important to remember that approachingthings with a collaborative mindset, two horse versus one horse, that two horse can pull
(46:52):
three times the amount versus one horse being able to pull one times.
Get collaborating, use your collective efficacy, work together.
Dr.
Mark Williams, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to join me on theElemental Educator podcast.
Well, thank you so much to all of having me.
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