Unlocking School Bias: Using Neuroscience to Improve Student Outcomes with Horacio Sanchez

In this enlightening episode, Andrea Samadi welcomes resiliency expert and author Horacio Sanchez to discuss his latest book, "Unlocking School Bias: Using Neuroscience to Improve Student Outcomes." Together, they delve into how educators can effectively address bias in their classrooms by exploring neuroscience-based strategies. Horacio shares the significance of understanding subconscious biases, such as confirmation bias and impact bias, and their influence on students' well-being and achievement. He emphasizes the role of educators in creating inclusive environments by being aware of their own biases and adopting practical strategies that foster positive student interactions. This episode provides invaluable insights for anyone looking to make impactful changes in educational settings.

Watch this interview on YouTube here https://youtu.be/V78873aZPBk

On today's EP365 "Unlocking School Bias" you will learn to explore your own and your students' biases and discover:

✔ The latest research from psychology, education, and neuroscience.

✔ Different types of biases, including confirmation bias and impact bias, and how they manifest themselves in everyday life.

✔Practical strategies for educators who are ready to change their and their students' actions.

✔How patterns in one’s environment create biases and affect the brain’s development

Welcome back to SEASON 14 of The Neuroscience Meets Social and Emotional Learning Podcast, where we connect the science-based evidence behind social and emotional learning and emotional intelligence training for improved well-being, achievement, productivity and results—using what I saw as the missing link (since we weren’t taught this when we were growing up in school), the application of practical neuroscience. I’m Andrea Samadi, an author, and an educator with a passion for learning and launched this podcast 7 years ago now, with the goal of bringing ALL the leading experts together (in one place) to help us to APPLY this research in our daily lives.

Welcome back! It’s always good to take some time away, for travel and family time, and it feels incredible to routine back to recording and routine. Thank you for tuning back in after our summer break where I hope you have taken some time off to refresh, before diving back into the second half of 2025.

For today’s EP 365, we meet with someone who I first heard about on our very first interview, EP #3[i], with educator, Ron Hall, from Valley Day School, Pennsylvania on “Launching Your Neuroeducational Program.” Ron Hall mentioned it was today’s guest who opened his mind to connecting the brain to his classrooms, many years ago, and he has never looked back. Today, we welcome back resiliency expert, author Horacio Sanchez to the podcast for the 4th time. We met him first on EP 74[ii] on “How to Improve Brain Science to Improve School Climate”, EP 111[iii] on “Finding Solutions to the Poverty Problem: and again on EP 177[iv] where we gathered a team of experts to dive into the most significant insights they’ve noticed over the years in neuroscience.

When we first met Horacio, we focused on his book The Education Revolution [ii]published by Corwin Press, that addresses the decline in empathy, increase in obesity, and the impact of implicit bias on minority students. Our conversation turned to focus on the problems we were seeing in the world at that moment (July 2020) highlighting the need for racial change through an understanding of race and culture. I knew that Horacio was deep into his next book, The Poverty Problem: How Education Can Promote Resilience and Counter Poverty's Impact on Brain Development that we went deep into on EP 74.

Today we meet with Horacio Sanchez to review his latest book, Unlocking School Bias: Using Neuroscience to Improve Student Outcomes[v] that was released in February of this year, through Corwin Press.

His most recent book, Unlocking School Bias ends the confusion around bias and provides educators with research and strategies that enable them to effectively address bias in the classroom and school in appropriate and productive ways. Learn to explore your own and your students' biases and discover:

The latest research from psychology, education, and neuroscience Different types of biases, including confirmation bias and impact bias, and how they manifest themselves in everyday life Practical strategies for educators who are ready to change their and their students' actions How patterns in one’s environment create biases and affect the brain’