Teaching, Trauma & Tech: The New Science of Human Behaviour | Dr. Cam McDonald - 959

Dr Cam McDonald is back, and we’re diving deep into what really drives behaviour... in kids, classrooms, and us grown-ups too. 

Cam breaks down how stress, environment, movement, food, and connection shape focus and behaviour. We unpack why punishment doesn’t work, why every kid (and adult) has their own 'best learning environment,' and how the right kind of AI could transform education - not by replacing teachers, but by helping them understand what each student actually needs.

We also talk trauma, physiology, and why you literally can’t heal if you’re stressed. This one’s a fascinating mash-up of neuroscience, compassion, and common sense with plenty of light-bulb moments. 

SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS

Website: testartfamilylawyers.com.au

TIFFANEE COOK

Linktree:  linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches

Website: tiffcook.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
She said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
I'm tiff. This is role with the punches and we're
turning life's hardest hits into wins. Nobody wants to go
to court, and don't. My friends are test Art Family Lawyers.
Know that they offer all forms of alternative dispute resolution.
Their team of Melbourne family lawyers have extensive experience in

(00:29):
all areas of family law to facto and same sex couples,
custody and children, family violence and intervention orders, property settlements
and financial agreements. Test Art is in your corner, so
reach out to Mark and the team at www dot
test Artfamilylawyers dot com dot au. Doctor cam McDonald, welcome

(00:55):
back to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
Wonderful to be here with you, Tiffany Chef.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
You can call me the chef chef that it's.

Speaker 3 (01:05):
More professions, more qualified than a cook. You've been doing
this a while now you deserve an upgrading status.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Oh, I like it. I like it. A little chef's hat.
I might have to get myself a little uniform.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
A little Michelin podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
St Oh, that's great. So you know you just turned
up and I gave you a very nice overview of
what I'd like you to talk about today.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Correct, you're always on the money with it. It's magic.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Yeah, everyone that listens knows that's that never ever happened.
But you did come in with a great topic and
I'm quite excited to dive into it. What's been on
your busy little mind? Well sorry that was rude. Busy
little mind, brilliant, massive mind.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Compared to the vast expanse of the universe, it's almost
inconsequential my mind. So the I am right now preparing
some content for schools because we do a lot of
work with schools, but it also applies to adults as well.
In fact, I've got an adult group that I'm going

(02:14):
to be taking through this stuff next year. Just you
communicate a little bit differently, and it's all about this
idea of our behavior and why we behave in a
particular way. And right now, in a lot of even
even in adults, things are very siloed. With schools. It's like, hey,
we need a well beeing curriculum. We've got to improve

(02:35):
student well being because we've seen that student well being
is not great. Okay, great, We're going to put well
being together, and we also need behavior management strategies because
behaviors aren't great, and even the behaviors of the educators
aren't what we would like them to be. But you
can go to any workplace and the behavior of that
workplace is not always what you would like it to be.
Because we're seeing that in their focus and their engagement.

(02:59):
There's some really interesting statistics showing that adults in a
workplace are about forty percent productive. And so why is that,
you know, why is it that our focus is so
easily taken away? Why is it that our behavior is
not aligned maybe with the intentions of the work, the
work hours, or you know, the academic outcomes because schools

(03:21):
particularly are looking for and I'm just I'm going to
be dancing between adults and children the whole way here. So,
but it's all the same stuff. When schools are looking
at their ultimate thing that allows them to sell their
wares to a prospective parent, it's going to be we
get great academic outcomes. The reason that you go to
school is for academic outcomes. And then there's some schools saying, hey,

(03:44):
we we create really well rounded individuals as well, you know,
but it's separate to this academic outcome thing. It's like, Oh,
it's also this auxiliary thing that we do is we
like to have well rounded students as well as students
that are getting great academic academ outcomes. Of course they're linked,
but they're often spoken about in silos because they're different

(04:06):
advertising points, whatever it might be. And where I'm so
fascinated obviously, because my world is in stress. How stress
influences well being, How well being and the state of
your body and the state of your mind will influence
how you interact with the world, And what are all

(04:28):
of the factors that put you into your best health,
into your best state, so that when you're in a
great state of health, you've got less distractions. You know,
a pain in your foot is a distraction. If you've
just broken your leg, you're not thinking about much else
other than this pain sucks. You're not thinking, Oh, I'm
going to learn long division, you know, even though long
division is no longer a thing at schools apparently, but

(04:49):
I learned that when I was helping my son with
year five minutes. So when we're stressed, our focus changes,
and that's a really important sentence for school. If they
are not focused, there is some sort of stress there
is some sort of misalignment. But what we do is
we just say, oh, you've got to focus better, you know,

(05:10):
and then and then the strategies come to, well, how
am I going to focus better? And obviously this exposes
itself in ADHD, in neurodivergence, all of those types of
things as well. We're going to stay away from that today,
but all of these principles actually support all of those
conditions as well, because you can have an individual with
ADHD and put a significant amount of stress on them

(05:31):
and that will make their symptoms worse. So if we
can reduce stress and improve well being, it will influence
behaviors anyway. So and that obviously ADHD is diagnosed on behaviors.
It's not diagnosed on mismatch to the environment in many cases, genetics,
in many cases hormones. It's diagnosed on behavior. Are you

(05:53):
displaying these behaviors? And so what let's interact with behaviors
a little bit more so the things that are any
any question so far? Tif otherwise, I mean I can
keep rolling and deliver my keynote for tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
Plow on, mate, plow on. At this point, I will
interrupt when I'm ready.

Speaker 3 (06:11):
Yeah, great, So the way to think about this is
our outcome is I want to focus on the thing
that I want to focus on. I want to take
my brain, I want to put my attention on the
thing that I think is important, and I want to
stay there and I want to get great outcomes. That's
essentially the end point of all of this stuff, because

(06:33):
the world is just well, our life is just full
of what's the next thing that we're interacting with, And
the more focus we can be in that interaction, the
more successful it's going to be. The more present that
we can be, the more successful the outcome is going
to be. And what is taking away our presence? So
the outcome is focused, We're not going to focus on focus, Okay,

(06:53):
We're going to focus on what is actually the downstream effects.
So behavior is of that. Behavior is another symptom, and
it's focus is a behavior. So it's all sort of
under the banner of behavior. I have a behavior of
being focused. I have a behavior of not being focused.
I have a angry disposition, I have an irritated, irritable

(07:13):
or that's my feeling, and my behavior is representative being irritated, short, short, snappy,
whatever it might be. So that's we're trying to optimize behavior,
and in order to do that, we have to bring
the body into a state of flow, into a state
of love, into a state of happiness, into a state

(07:35):
of purpose. Now I say all of those things because
they have almost an exact identical physiological pattern, and that is,
I have attention, so nora adrenaline, dopamine, I have reward.
I have serotonin and endorphins. So I am focused, but

(07:56):
I'm rewarded and I'm low stress. That is, my my
heart rate variability is higher and my cortisol levels are low.
So it's I'm focused but there's no stress. Okay, So
you can have a stressed focus. For example, you are
running after your child who's just crossed the road, doesn't

(08:17):
know how to cross the road. They're two years old,
and every bit of your body and is focusing on
in a stressful way. I've got attention, I've got focus,
but I have no reward and I have high stress.
So that kind of focus, it's very powerful. That's urgent focus.
That's not what we need in school because when you
are in that state, you only retain survival things, the

(08:41):
things that allow you to survive everything else goes to
black and white, and so as far as what you
can learn in a stressed state, it's going to be
the things that allow you to survive. And this is
why trauma. In trauma, you learn how to avoid trauma,
you learn how to manage true you don't learn about, oh,
the incredible perspectives of the interactions of that child's that

(09:04):
person's childhood and how their emotional state has all gathered
around and oh, look at the pretty flowers over there,
like that's not what's happening when you're in trama. It's
very much I'm focused on the survival of this thing.
So what we want to do is we want to
create flow based focus, which is attention, reward, and calm,
and that if you are in love or you are

(09:26):
feeling love, probably feeling love is a little bit different.
When you're feeling love, you have all of those things,
but with a bit of oxytocin. And when you are
in flow you have all of those things, but with anandermide.
When you are in happiness you have all of those things.
When you are living on purpose, you have all of
those things and maybe a little bit more dopamine or

(09:46):
whatever it might be. So it's the same physiological pack
picture of focus with low stress. Okay, that cool so
far makes sense. That is the state that we're looking for.
And if you are stressed, you won't occupy that space,
so you won't retain things that you need to recall later,

(10:09):
like the what's it called the Oh jeez, I've got
a note on it because my mind just won't blank.
Declater declarative memory is what you won't have lots of,
like fact concepts, events that'll suffer because stress is impairing
your hippo campus. And the hippo campus is the very
important sort of short term even to long term memory.

(10:31):
So does that all make sense? We've got this state
that we need to get into. Yeah, of what is
going to create this incredible fertile environment where my brain
is like ready and hungry for information. And that's when
you're in that state you want to learn because you
don't have stress that's taking you away and saying I

(10:54):
have to act like this is now I can receive
and the or even I can take really great action.
I can use my focus in a really pathway. It's
not just a matter of receiving information, but you just
your vision is far wider and you're able to gather
in far more when you're in this state. So it's

(11:14):
also similar to presence. Mindfulness also generates the exact same state,
but you may not have as much jopemine nor adrenaline
when you're in a mindful state where you're just observing,
because you're not on the road to somewhere. So okay,
so now that we know, we need to get into
this state and the whole goal. So many schools, their

(11:36):
goal is to get into passionate lifelong learning. They want
children to go I love this so much that I
want to learn forever. That is essentially a lot of
school's goals, and that is, if you come to our school,
you will want to learn forever. And that's a really
nice sentiment, isn't it. So it's because you enjoyed your

(11:57):
learning environments so much here that you want to keep going.
So we've got so and in order if they get
into that state, their academic outcomes will improve because we
know that if you because that is also the state
interestingly enough, where you heal and where you recover and
where your health is greater, your heart disease risk is lower,
your blood sugar control is better, your cancer risk is lower,

(12:19):
your mental health is improved. So the same things that
allow you to learn, that same state also creates health
in your body. It's the state of recovery, or it
is the state of flow, which is an appropriate amount
of stress with not too much strain, and then in
recovery you'll recover well. So then we get into well,

(12:45):
what's going to create stress? Because if we create too
much stress, then that becomes a distraction and that disrupts
this beautiful little zone of flow, because now we've got
high stress. And this is where people have no idea
about what's causing their stress. What normally happens. Everybody will

(13:05):
know this, and that is, Oh, my child isn't behaving
in class. Oh because it's the teacher, you know, or
because it's the school you know. So it could be
It's like there is something and that is part of
the environment that could very well be part of it.
The teacher is saying, oh, your child's behavior is not
where we'd like it to be, or your child's behavior
is good. There's just an assessment of what the behavior

(13:26):
is the top of the pile, you know, the outcome
of it all and where we need to be looking
is how aligned is the child's body with the environment
that they're in. And the same thing goes for adults.
And I'll give you a few examples. If you feel
a sense of belonging, that's a feeling of love essentially.

(13:50):
If you feel a sense of belonging, and that is
I feel accepted for who I am and people recognize
me for who I am, and that's a wonderful thing. Okay.
So if you have that sense of belonging in a relationship,
your body goes into a state of this calm like
rewarded space where you can take information in and you

(14:12):
feel safe. So safe and belonging is a very very
important element of things. If you've been in a really
crap relationship, you will know about what that does to
your systems. So you're walking on eggshells. You're not sure
of yourself, you're not sure of who they are, what
they want. You know, you're protecting yourself. There's a state
of stress. You just remember all of the bad things

(14:34):
that are going on between you. Like that's where your
focus is on the state of stress. And the same
thing happens in school. If you've got a child and
we've got some children that would. In fact, there's a
normal range of children to say, in order to feel
accepted and belonging, I have to express myself fully and
then say, oh, geez, I love your expression. Fantastic, And

(14:57):
now it's like, what else do you want to say?
You know, Whereas another child doesn't want to express themselves
at all. They just want to sit quietly with a
list and they want to be told what to do.
And if they don't have that list and they're not
given enough detail because the teacher isn't particularly detail oriented,
they're now stressed because they don't have enough detail. And
this happens so often. Teachers predominantly are very detail oriented,

(15:21):
and then they're trying to force detail, maybe onto a
child that doesn't like detail, and they want to figure
it out themselves. They say, hey, we've got to go
and run over here. What I want you to do
is put your left foot in front of your right
foot and then you'll stop. Stop. Just let me run
as fast as I can, you know what I mean.
So some children absolutely need to express themselves. Some children

(15:41):
need high details, some children need low detail. Some children
need to make sure that everybody else has the details
and the resources so that they can feel good that
their class is safe. There are some children that are
naturally programmed to be more caring and to make sure
that everybody has enough resources. So these are really interesting

(16:03):
psychological differences that we have. You'll see adults with this
as well, you know, and you'll see it in partners
a lot. And that is one partner is hyper detail
oriented and they want to go on holidays and they
map everything to the nth degree, and the other partner goes, oh,
this is just too much. I don't think I want
to do this. It all just things a bit overwhelming.

(16:24):
Can't we just sort of keep it loose, like well,
book one the first night, we'll just see what happens.
I really don't think this is the right kind of
holiday for us. I'm now in a stress because this
environment isn't a match. Okay, So what I'm sharing here
is one of the ways that we can feel stressed
is that is we don't feel like that we can
be ourselves, we feel like we belong our personality is

(16:44):
being accounted for, the needs of our learning is not
accounted for, and it's different to the other person. And
we're being forced into a place where we don't want
to be. That can create a stress, and then you
know what happens when you're in a relationship. What's the
behavior when there's stress between those two people. They're naki,
they're reserved, they're definitely not focused on how can we

(17:05):
make this the best life ever together and let's be passionate,
lifelong growers together. And the same thing for children, it's
like they're in a situation now where the teacher is
trying to give an instruction it doesn't match the child's brain.
The child goes, I really don't like this teacher, And
then what do you think is going to happen to
their sense of focus? Now they're being forced into a
space where they're feeling a little bit stressed. That's going

(17:27):
to take away from their well being because it's going
to elevate their stress. It's going to take away some
of their rewards. Now I'm not in a state to learn,
and now I'm just getting in trouble because I'm not
getting through my work, when in fact, it was the
dynamic with the teacher that caused the stress in the
first place. So that's a slightly more complex kind of
example because there's a lot of nuances in our personalities
and our learning styles. But something even more simple could

(17:50):
be what we see with movement. For example, So we
have if we think about some indivine jewels are very
very good at just sitting still and just chugging through
their work steadily, and they don't need lots of movement.
They actually feel quite good when things are steady and

(18:11):
there's no chaos, and they like the idea of sitting
conserving energy, working through things steadily, and that can be
really really good in a classroom setting in some instances. Now,
if they're provided the environment to do that, it's like, great,
this is amazing. Whereas another child they literally need to
move every ten minutes and they need fidget spinners as well,

(18:31):
and they are constantly wired to be thinking, how can
I turn this into movement? How can I do that
really intensely? How can I win? How can I speed
through this? How can I turn maths into some sort
of athletic event? Because I have to sit through and
do these equations, but my brain is telling me you

(18:52):
have to move to this, you have to do something
with it. What's the point of this? Anyway? This is
all very theoretical. God, this is boring, and you can't
even talk to your mates, and you can't even express yourself,
and you've just got to sit still. Some kids need
to move really regularly, really intensely. Other kids are very
happy to sit steady. And so what you've got the
same environment, but you've got one child being suppressed. They're

(19:14):
not able to express their energy and that creates an irritation.
And now all of a sudden, that irritation is being
expressed by oh anger and then as if they're going
to get any learning done, as if they're going to
really be able to focus on their maths because they're
feeling anger, You know, this isn't the time to do maths.
So sometimes it's just the lack of movement that creates

(19:34):
the imbalance in stress, the lack of reward. But if
you were to get them to do like a minute
flat out of star jumps and then push ups, what
they get is this explosion of energy, and then they
get the serotonin and endorphins afterwards, and their heart rate
variability and cortisole levels drop. But they've also got attention

(19:55):
because these bodies that love to move also have lots
of nore adrenaline, lots of dope meat. They've got no
problem moving and doing things, but they need a calm
space to do that, and the only way they can
get calm is by doing lots of big explosive movements,
Whereas if you put the other child who likes sitting
steadily through lots of explosive movements, it completely disrupts their

(20:16):
cortisol levels for the next couple of hours. They're now exhausted,
they're now a little bit stressed. And so you've got
a teacher that goes, I know it works with kids
high explosive movement, because that really works for me. And
then all of a sudden, you've got this stress being
placed on this child that likes steady movement and doesn't
like the chaos. And so when we're looking at the behavior,

(20:38):
we're seeing one child that doesn't get to move blowing
up into irritation and anger. And then the teacher's going,
why are you behaving this way? And it turns out
to be it's a lack of movement, or that same
child didn't get to snack enough, and it's actually a
snacking problem that they have. And what we've helped schools
do is have to have food on the table for
all of these kids, so they can eat any time.

(21:00):
It's like they can have nibbles essentially at any time
during the day, and they see a regulation of behavior
as a result of this, because snacking, for some people
is really important to their regulation of stress and very
very important to the way they use energy. So with
all of this, when you start to understand it, it

(21:21):
could be the way the teacher has communicated things, the
way your partner has communicated things. It could be the
amount of movement that you've been able to do, the
type of movement that you've been able to do. It
might be when you've eaten what you've eaten. It might
be the amount of sleep that you've had. It might
be the temperature in the room. There's so many people

(21:43):
that are highly sensitive to air conditioning, and every talk
that I am getting to put their hand up, who's
conscious recondition? No, I've spoken about this before, but it's
so important as part of behavior because what we do
right now is we say, oh, that's bad behavior. Ah,
we've got to change that behavior. No, you have to
change the environment that they're in, and that's the physical environment.

(22:04):
Maybe turn the temperature up or turn the air conditioning off.
Maybe get them to move first, Maybe validate their feelings,
and spend time helping them feel connected, because that connection
for some individuals. My son is one of these. If
you connect with him, he feels love and he gets oxytocin.
He's very sensitive to oxytosin. He needs plenty of it

(22:26):
to feel good. These are the connectors that we talk about.
And then he feels rewarded and then he feels focused
because he wants to do the thing for the teacher
who's connected with him. But if you don't have that connection,
and this is what I've seen, it seems to be
on again, off again for the teachers that he has.
He has some teachers that don't spend that time to
connect with him because he just needs more connection than

(22:48):
other kids. Some kids don't need connection at all. So
this is just the nature of children and the differences
between us. Some kids need more connection and when you
create that connection, you've got it. Now. Well, that child
is in love with the teacher and the teacher says, hey,
we're going to go over here and jump. They're like, oh,
I want to please this teacher to keep this stream
of love going. Where another student just goes, I don't

(23:11):
need this teacher's love. I just need the clear list
of stuff to do. I don't need any of that connection.
I just want to sit by myself and get through
my work. So when we talk about what I see
in schools is oh, I see a bad behavior. We've
got to change the behavior. And what we don't ask

(23:32):
is what has stimulated that behavior, what is the stress
that has created that imbalance, and how can we optimize
the environment essentially normalize their stress levels to bring them
back into that state of focus, reward and low stress,
because that needs to happen before any learning is going

(23:52):
to happen. But what we do is we've got this
child in stress because they're not in the right environment.
And then we say, we just keep upping the ante
on the punishment, and that is, if you don't do this,
you're going to get this punishment. And now all we do,
we're not creating reward at all. We're just creating an
increased amount of attention and an increased amount of stress.
So all they're going to remember is how to survive,

(24:14):
not remember the actual work that they're doing and the
facts and the recall and various things like that. As well.
So the more that we just treat behavior and expect
them to change behavior just cognitively, we've got to remember
that the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed at all
on school age children. Twenty five is when it really
seems to top out as far as the development phases go.

(24:37):
So you've got a child that can't just cognitively change
their behavior, or they can, but it takes so much
more energy and so much more resistance to do it.
So we have to change the environment. And if we
understand the makeup of this child, if you understand yourself
and what you need, then you can apply the thing
that you need from the environment that creates the calm.

(25:01):
That calm then allows you to be in that low
state of stress. It then allows you to set a goal,
which then brings your attention up and then you can
move forward into that state of great learning again. And
I just see not enough curiosity around what's driving this behavior.
But what's good is that you know with the neurodivergence,
and there's a lot more attention to, well, what is

(25:25):
the environment, the learning environment that's going to work best
for this child. And there's a big thorough analysis on
all of that, Oh, we know this child needs one
to one support and they need this kind of language
and they need these kinds of steps, whatever it might be,
and that's good. What we would like to say, though,
is that every single person is actually a little bit neurodivergent,

(25:45):
but no one is neurotypical. Because you can put a
bunch of neurotypical kids in the room and they all
behave differently. So what does that mean? And ultimately, the
word neurodivergence is pathologized, so there's something wrong with your brain,
You've got something going on like that. And then there's
a movement to say, oh, look it's normal and we

(26:06):
should be validating it completely. And I understand, I understand
and agree with that. But then, well, what if we
just knew the best environment for this individual that allowed
their brain to feel these things and then allowed them
to learn in that environment. And this goes for adults
in that you know, too often we're just trying to

(26:28):
change our behavior. We're judging ourselves based off our behavior,
when in fact, there is something underneath the surface that
is disrupting your balance of stress. It's taking you out
of that happy little zone of attention reward and low stress.
So that's probably the thesis and summary of the things

(26:49):
that I was wanting to share, And we can jump
down into more granularity if you wish tips, But what
do you think?

Speaker 2 (26:58):
It's so fascinating and it's so I just keep thinking
what a challenge it must be for you introducing this
into a classroom and attempting to roll out with school
age children and teachers inside one room, that we're adapting
this environment for these guys and these guys, so these

(27:22):
guys are going to be updoing star jumps and carrying
on while you guys are going to have all the
You know, how is that? What are the challenges in
trying to roll that out?

Speaker 3 (27:30):
It's a good question. So firstly, teachers have got it
really tough in that there's so much demand placed on
them now, Like every single parent is saying, what about
my child? You know, particularly the and so there's an
expectation that you should be accounting for my child, whatever
it might be. My child has needs, you've got to

(27:50):
meet them more so probably in private than public schools,
but even still so. And there's a lot of funding
that goes towards the higher needs as well. But this
is where firstly for educators to understand or teach us
to understand that physiology is at play. And I'll just
sort of link these three things. When you get the

(28:12):
explosive person to explosively move, it brings them back into
their best health because it brings them back into that
physiological zone that's very healthy. Whereas if you allow that
child that likes to sit still and just steadily move,
steadily chug through it, and you let them do that,
you're allowing them to stay in their best state of
health for that period of time. Of course they need
to move later, but they've got greater capacity. So this

(28:33):
is where well being, behavior and focus are all related.
When it comes to the educator and the teacher is
firstly for them to understand the principles that, okay, well,
the factors that are going to be driving the behaviors
in my class could be food, sleep, exercise, the amount
of connection that they experience with me or their friends

(28:54):
around them. It could be the temperature, the physical environment.
The person that they're sitting next to could be causing
the stress for them. It could be the way that
I've delivered the information. It could be the amount of
time that I've given them to get through the information.
It could be their sense of self. You know all

(29:15):
of these things, right, But even just understanding all of that,
it creates compassion immediately. So instead of going, oh, I'm
seeing bad behavior, I've got to fix the bad behavior.
It immediately makes you ask what is causing this for
this child, because that's a really important question to ask,
and it stops having to be the master of strategies,

(29:37):
but rather the very curious teacher. You know, that's first
and foremost. Second. Then there's things like it could even
be the time of day, like in the afternoon, I'm
going to get a very different profile of these kids
for two pm versus nine am, and very different again
at lunchtime or whatever it might be. And so understanding
it could be the time of day that's actually influencing

(29:58):
their behavior. So once you've got that, and once you
understand that all a child wants is to be in
an environment that matches them. That's all they want. They
just want to be in an aligned environment. And understanding
that I'm never going to be able to make the
perfect environment for every child in the current setting that
school is right now, So obviously as future goes through school,

(30:20):
we'll definitely see a change to this. So to your point,
how hard is it, it's difficult if you're doing it manually.
And this is where the work that we're doing we
use AI, particularly AI that's trained on all of these principles,
so that you say, hey, this is my list of
twenty five kids, this is the curriculum point that I

(30:41):
want to teach I've got fifty minutes to teach it.
I've got a rowdy bunch of these four kids that
need lots of movement. I've got these kids that look
quite tired. I've got these kids over here that are
like this. You can actually put all of that into
AI and it will feed out not only at the curriculum,
but it will give you script on for these four kids,

(31:03):
they need to do this, and you need to speak
to them this way about that, based on the language
that they need and the kind of way that they're
going to engage with it. And then for these five
kids over here, you're going to run this kind of activity.
For these six kids over here, you're going to run
that kind of activity, and it's all going to take
five minutes. Everyone's going to be nice and focused, You're
going to be bringing them into the same physiological state

(31:23):
through altering the environment for each of them, and people
can be clustered up. And even even the way that
if you were to say, okay, everybody, we're going to
jump up and do jumping jacks, you can say to
the really active kids, go as hard as you can.
To the kids that don't want to move as much
as say, just take it slowly, but just nowhere. Using
this as a transition. So you can use the same activity,

(31:46):
but if you know what it means to that physiology,
not go as hard as you can, because I believe
in hard exercise. But rather, if you go too hard
for these people, you'll tie them out, you'll stress them out,
you'll create chaos in their body, and they won't like it,
and then they're not feeling settled, they're feeling really stressed.
So even the same activity, but language the right way.
And this is you know, differentiation is something that schools

(32:08):
are always striving for. And differentiate instruction is I need
to explain it in different ways for different children because
they hear it in a different way, they interpret the
information differently. It is so difficult to apply that in
real time because of all of the varying states that
you see. But this is where literally the outputs from

(32:29):
the AI will give you an exact like one to
two sentences of this is how you explain it, this
is how you set it up, this is the context
that you give it. And so you know, when we
talk about and we might think, oh, does this make
the teachers just glorified babysitters. That's probably one of the
things that keeps coming up. You know, if we use
AI in class, then are we taking away from the

(32:49):
teacher's ability? And I would say if we could recreate
education and say we've got teachers in this classroom, what
is their actual best purpose? What is the And and
I heard a really great it was. I think it
was like Phillips AI chief, you know, and we've done

(33:10):
a bit of work with Phillips in the past from
a medical perspective, and the head of the AI was saying,
you know, what would doctors be doing if they're working
at the top of their ticket. They wouldn't be scouring
journal articles and trying to put together blood results and
graphing things over time. And what doctors are here for
is to make sure that the patient does the right

(33:34):
thing that ultimately, if doctor, if the patient does the
right thing, we're good. That's it, you know what I mean?
And there is and because they are the point of
care if they're if the information behind them is perfect
or as perfect as it can be, because it's considering
all of the factors and AI is doing that very
very well now, and that is I now know what's

(33:58):
most relevant for this individual and you using a bit
of clinical reasoning, I'm going to choose option one and
option two from what the AI have said out of
the five possible differentials. So it's like, great, I'm working
with option what option two? So this is our plan
going forward. We're going to do option one. How do
you feel about that? And then they spend time actually
motivating the person to take action, and I'm going to
refer you off here. Let's make sure you get connected

(34:19):
up with the allied help whatever it might be. That
is the doctor working at the top of their ticket.
It's making the pointy end decisions. It's not wasting time
and all of the research, but rather knowing that they're
working with a really great data set so that they
can communicate that message and make sure the patient does
the thing. The patient changes their behavior. That is the
number one job of a doctor. So when we come

(34:41):
to teaching, what is the number one job of teachers?
And if our biggest purpose is to develop lifelong passionate learners,
what are educators designed for. They are designed to create
an environment at school where they're where children can feel

(35:03):
safe and that they belong, where they can develop their
emotion intelligence and learn how to interact with each other
and also learn how to navigate problems as they arise
in their learning, so navigate blocks and essentially facilitate the
child to understand themselves better so that they can learn
how to learn. That is the goal, creating an environment

(35:24):
where children maximize their learning capacity and learn how to learn.
That is the whole purpose of school. But often we
get lost in this idea of this child must be
really really good at maths, they must get an A,
they must get bs, whatever it might be. Whereas that's
not the purpose. The purpose is, Oh, my child now
knows how to learn. They know how to look at

(35:46):
a problem, think about it in a way, They understand
how they should work in it so to match their
strengths they need. They understand the environment that's going to
be best for them so that they can make that
environment for themselves. How long does it take adults to
really figure out what's your best learning environment? And we
go into these open plan offices, were go, yeah, it's
just part of what we do. But there's no consideration

(36:07):
to oh, my best learning environment, my best working environment
is actually sitting in a dark office by myself where
I can just be totally dialed in, where somebody else
their best environment is an open plan office. Like, we
don't learn actually the environmental factors that are support our learning.
We just learn You've got to get through this, and
if you're not getting through it, I'm just going to
apply more stress until you get through it. In many cases,

(36:29):
And so I'm being I guess probably a little bit
old school. I know there's a lot more attention to
how students learn these days, but I guess I'm talking
from where the problem is being to where we can go.
And so we're at the point now where a teacher
at the top of their ticket can plug in all
of this data about what is happening physiologically for these

(36:51):
kids because the AI knows that how is that going
to affect their learning? What kind of language is going
to be best for them right now? What are the
activities that are going to be best to them right now?
That's the learning style that's going to be best for
them right now? What's the learning environment adjustments that you
would make? Like it is such a waste of time
for the teacher to have to know all of that information,
then calculate it and then put it into place for
each class just because the time of day changes, you know,

(37:14):
Whereas now you can literally put it into the AI.
It generates it in five seconds. And so now it's like, great,
I now have the foundations of I'm understanding where all
of these kids are at. I'm understanding what they need.
I'm going to use my emotional intelligence to apply that
to help them get into the best environment to engage
best with this information, to engage with each other really

(37:35):
really powerfully. But I'm going to do it understanding how
I can apply that individually to each of them. So
this is where it's such an exciting time and people
are only scratching the surface with AI in schools. Most
schools are just using it to write a lesson plan,
but they're not accounting for the individual. They're not accounting

(37:55):
for the differentiation. They're not accounting for the stresses that
appear the behavioral difference. So and because of that, it's
just the same problems. It's like, yes, i can create
a lesson plan faster, but I'm still getting disengagement in
my class.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
Yeah, it just occurred to me that we haven't had
you on for a while, and I probably haven't done
a very great introduction to what you do. So people,
I don't want any teachers listening right now and going, oh,
I'll just get onto chatters. I'll chat to YOUBT and
they'll write my lesson plan. Do you want to give
a little bit of an overview of the Shay group

(38:29):
and specifically what you guys are rolling out and what
you do, just to keep everyone that's not well informed
up to speed.

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, So a big difference, I guess. So
when we're referring to AI, it's no longer a matter
of whether AI is good or useful. It's a matter
of which one is better and sourcing the better information
more reliably with more supervision, that's going to be more relevant.

(38:58):
So it's all about the engine that it's created on.
It's the knowledge base that it's created upon, and how
it uses that information is veryver important. So what we've
been doing at the Shade Group for the last twenty
years is we've put together the most comprehensive and large
data set of what makes people different at at every
level of medicine, every level of psychology, even emotional and

(39:21):
environmental health as well. And we launched in health and
medicine about fifteen years ago and we currently have the
leading precision medicine AI that is purpose built to deliver
medical outputs. If you go to chat GPT, you'll say, hey,
you've got two people with the same height and weight
and the same bloods. You'll get the same response from
chat GPT about what should you do with these bloods

(39:45):
in our system, it will say, well, heightened weight, yes,
but look at all of these other factors that are
in their lifestyle and these other elements that are coming through.
We understand the differences between these two people. Even though
they're similar and they've got the same bloods, it actually
means quite different things because there's a whole of other
factors in play where they're living in the world, their age,
da da da da da. And to calculate the amount

(40:05):
of data that we do to build that prompt. It
makes chat Chip team melt like it can't tolerate all
of that data. There's so much in the background prompt
of our engine. Because we've done so much research, we
have millions of humans of years, millions of human years
of data that we've collated to say how do people
respond differently? And we've been able to translate that information

(40:28):
into an app for adults that says, this is what
I need to eat, This is when I need to eat,
This is my best exercise, this is my best time
of exercise. This is how my brain naturally responds to
the world. This is how my body naturally responds to
the environment. This is how I naturally respond to social engagements.
This is how I naturally find strength and skills that

(40:49):
are genius to me. So we understand that and we
put it into place. We train health professionals in applying
that through a precision medicine precision lifetile medicine scope. We
also apply that in workplaces to say, hey, when is
the best time for me to work and how can
I do that? And how can I interact with people
and language that to people in a different way. How
can I understand my work colleagues in a much deeper

(41:10):
way to understand truly what's going on for them. And
we also deal that with schools as well, where we
are now able to understand the child, understand their differences,
and then educate the educators on those differences. And then
our AI is a proprietary engine that's not available anywhere
else that is trained, purpose built to understand the differences

(41:34):
in physiology, the differences in the way that a body
will respond to the world. It's all matched with the
evidence and highly supervised, so and able to calculate much
more medical data all in one go, or focus and
engagement data, or predict behavioral data based off everything that
we collate, so it truly allows us to understand the individual.

(41:56):
And so when I'm talking about AI in this setting,
I'm talking about an AI that's trained in our stuff
that we use. I guess that that is able to
understand what are the variations in cicadia rhythms of these children,
what are the variations in movement requirements, what are the
variations in their psychosocial needs, And it's accounting for all
of that, and then it's trained on the curriculum, and

(42:18):
then it's trained on psychology and learning strategies and class
environmental elements, and it pulls all of that together to
give a very very precise answer. So you know, you
can't just go off and do this with chatchiput. It's
a purpose built AI to understand individuals, and it doesn't
have all of the noise of the other AIS. It's

(42:40):
just got stuff about humans and what makes them work.
And then it's it's able to source sort of the
general engine for general knowledge, but that doesn't interfere with
the highly supervised nature of the outputs, of the medical outputs,
which make it very exact. So yeah, there's there's AIS,
then there's AIS, And just because it gives you an

(43:01):
answer that's immediate and looks really convincing, it's fascinating to
know where that information has come from. And while chatpt
is sort of designed to not do harm, it's definitely
not designed to give medical advice because it can't take
into account all of the factors that would actually be
necessary to clinically appraise something and so only very specific
AIS like ours are built to do that.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
And how well do we understand how experiences around trauma
or upbringing or home life layer over what we're seeing
in behavior in schools, in kids, and trying to understand
that how does that get drawn into the dartucts. We've
got biology, we've got that, We've got most of the

(43:43):
nature versus nurture understanding, but I'm guessing there's also there's
a lot of behaviors. It's like we've had the chat
before and I've said, Okay, I'm an activator, but I
get an ADHD diagnosis in my forties and all of
those symptoms are answerable to one my genetic profile, to
my background in childhood trauma and the effects of that,

(44:05):
and three this new in inverted comms medical diagnosis.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
Yeah, so the conversation that we're happening before about there
is a state of calm and love and purpose and
happiness and flow. So that requires focus, reward, low stress. Now,
if you have trauma, what it can create, what it

(44:32):
often creates is a subconscious pattern of stress. So you
will have a deep seated, unconscious sort of energy source
of stress. So even and this is where sort of
sabotage can come into place to say, oh, everything's really
really calm, and then your subconscious goes, no, it's not,

(44:53):
because you've got a deep seated belief that things are
threatening generally and you might be fine that. Let's say
you have trauma and and this is this is not
my full area of expertise, but I'll just talk about
some mechanics here and then we can dive into how
the biology affects that. So if you have let's say
that you buy when you're by yourself and your single

(45:14):
and there's you're happy and you're in flow, and it
feels good, it feels safe, and then as soon as
you bring in an intimate partner, that the trauma response,
whatever it might be, the belief that if set up
in relation to the connection between you and someone that's
intimate with you, that then starts triggering off and that
then raises your stress levels and it takes you out

(45:36):
of that space of just happy thing. And then of
course you want to move out of that space, and
so it's oh, you'll find you'll create a narrative to
get rid of the relationship. You might blame them, you
might go inside and say what's wrong with me? I'm terrible,
and or you might decide to push through and just live,
you know, white knuckling it the whole way and so
what we to Obviously those things, there are very specific

(46:00):
modalities that can help you rewrite those subconscious programmings, and
there's specific things that you need to do in that space.
Having said that, what we know is that you can't
get to a state of healing unless you are in
a state of love. So you can't heal while you're

(46:23):
under stress. So if we know the biology of an
individual and we understand their profile and we want to
start delving into that subconscious stuff, we have to first
get them to a point where they aren't feeling hyper
stressed from any other source. And so it would be, Hey,
let's say that we want to work with these explosive people,

(46:46):
you know, like doing lots of exercise and they need
to snack really regularly. What we would do is, if
we were going to be working with them, we wanted
to create the biological space of peace and calm in
their system so that they could consciously interact with these
subconscious things to go back into the memory and feel
them out and rewrite the narrative and move through that process.
If they wanted to do that, we would need to

(47:08):
maybe move their body really well and then feed them well,
and that creates the calm in their physiology that would
then allow them to cognitively go there. But if they
haven't moved their body, and if they haven't snacked, then
the ability for them to calmly go in and reflect
in that way and do it from a carp state
will be really hampered. Whereas for somebody else, let's say that,

(47:28):
so that's an activator that I described in our model,
whereas for somebody else, a diplomat. What are we going
to need to bring them into a state of calm. Well,
first of all, we have to take time limits off them.
We have to make sure they don't feel rushed at all.
We have to make sure that everything is flowing on
a schedule. Hey, this is the schedule for today. This
is how we're going to be supporting you today. And
what we want you to do firstly is just go

(47:49):
out and sit in nature and do some quiet reflection
and there's no rush, and then we're just going to
have a nice meal, and then in an hour or so,
plenty of time, we're going to be just coming to
your room and making sure that we're Now you're going
to be coming in and we're going to be going
through a process with you or whatever it might be,
is like, great, there's no rush. I get to reflect,

(48:09):
and me reflecting and putting pen to paper, particularly out
in nature, creates reward because there's actually a reward state
that comes from reflection. So the same sort of thing
as Love's similar physiology. Again, fascinatingly enough, when you reflect,
you actually go into that state. So yeah, I feel
really good, I feel calm. Now It's like okay, great,

(48:29):
now I feel physiologically ready to go into something that's
going to be a little bit cognitively stressful for me,
emotionally stressful because everything else is stable. So this is
where and the same thing goes for ADHD, same thing
goes for autism is that if we can optimize the environment,
symptoms improve, interaction can improve. And one of our chief

(48:52):
medical officer right now is actually looking at the very
low frequency energy, like sort of low freakquency inputs like
Earth has a very low frequency and you can actually
drive these types of frequencies through bodies. And he's been
working with a large cohort of individuals with autism and

(49:12):
seeing dramatic results by changing the frequency that they're at,
improving their sleep and seeing some really interestant things as well.
So even the connection to nature in this sense, you know,
is mirrored in some of the work that they're doing.
But that's not all they're doing with They're doing some
very very complex sort of AI mapping of what frequency
is appropriate for this individual and how do we stimulate
the right pathways for this individual specifically based on their

(49:34):
biofeedback as well. It's very very cool. So when we
talk to trauma, trauma is it's a thing hanging out
in your body and it's a protective mechanism. As far
as your response to trauma, you will have a protective mechanism. No,
I don't want people to get close to me, or
I really need lots of connection to feel like I'm

(49:56):
safe again, whatever it might be. Different people respond in
different ways. In order for you to access that protective nature,
you have to be calm, you have to be physiologically
set to do that. So this is where the biological
lens allows us to say, well, what are the steps
that we need to take to actually access this calm

(50:16):
state for this person, because not everyone is going to
get there the same way. You know, some people are
told down and do journaling outside and not move. They're like, Oh,
I'm just so frustrated. I just want to move my body.
And then they're coming in and they're all heated up,
and then they've got to go through breathing exiles or
whatever just to actually get normalized again. Anyway, So to
do that kind of work, you've got to feel very safe,
and there is an indicator of physiological safety. You know,

(50:40):
what are the physical inputs that you can make that
really settle your biology, that signals to your brain that
this is a good environment. Okay, great, we can handle
this stress that's about to come up. Otherwise that stress
becomes very overwhelming.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
Just so fascinating, isn't it? Like I love that. I
love thinking about because as you were first talking, I
was seeing here about that. You know, we have to
address it physiologically and psychologically. We have to we have
to meet the body where it's at with it, and
then we have to meet it with compassion. I'm always saying, like,
we can't accept, we can't change what we won't accept.

(51:15):
And when I've spoken previously about my experience in the
Himalayas letting go of shame and going well, it was
in this this brief moment that came from nowhere when
I burned Shame in the fire, you know, on the mountain,
burned what we were going to let go of. And
in that this brief moment before that, I just thought

(51:36):
to myself, I just thanked Shame, like I thanked Shame
for despite not knowing what role look played. I was like, well,
we don't nothing we hold on to do we do
to do us harm. We do it to protect ourselves.
So there was a reason. And I don't need to
know what that was, So thank Shame. Catch it later
and I just sat in my mind and I was like, wow.

(51:58):
But then you know you're tak talking about also just
understanding our purely our epigenetic biology of what what our
what our body before we met trauma, before we had
experiences and learned or developed stories around them, whether those
stories are right or wrong in our minds. Our body
has environments where and experiences and ways of connecting that

(52:24):
that speaks safety to it in ways that it doesn't
to other people. Yes, what bloody complex.

Speaker 3 (52:31):
Can it is what we are And but this is
where it's a lot simpler when you understand things through
this biological lens. It is a lot simplar, and it
allows you to compartmentalize things. So you know, why is
this treatment not sticking? Why am I not resonating with
this psych You know why?

Speaker 2 (52:48):
You know?

Speaker 3 (52:48):
And it's because you know, I've literally walked in I'm hungry.
You know, it's just this person's irritating me, and you
don't realize that it's the hunger. But this gives you
a bit of a roadmap for oh I do this
is the way that your body works, you know, And
and it's amazing, Like imagine teaching our kids that. And
literally my son was having a really bad day the
other day, Mate, what the hell is wrong with you?

(53:09):
And he goes, I'm just hungry.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
Dad.

Speaker 3 (53:11):
I was like, great, fantastic, we can work with that.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
That I can fix. I think Dad that one.

Speaker 3 (53:17):
But his awareness of that was really cool. And that
only comes when you've got compassion about the feeling that
they're experiencing. They're not going to reflect like that when
they're under stress. When they're under stress as far as
and you're putting extra pressure on them to say, I
just tidy your act up whatever it might be, it's like, oh, mate,

(53:40):
so what is happening for you? Do you think, you know,
it's so different when you actually are compassionate about things
happen for a reason. You behave for a reason, Let's
understand the reason, and that that's that's what we miss
because we're too busy and because teachers are overwhelmed. You know,
sixty to seventy percent are facing some sort of mental
health crisis, mental health strain, you know, like a high moderate,

(54:02):
higher risk of depression or anxiety, or higher levels of stress.
So their capacity to see outside of their survival is low,
and so there's just too much on And this is
where AI just cuts through so much of this noise.
If it's the right informed AI, and if it's driven
with the right idea of let's understand the behavior and

(54:26):
let's get an understanding for this, let's work with compassion.
And even even the way that this AI delivers information,
it's highly compassionate to say, hey, we're never gonna I'm
seeing a child behave like this. It's never going to
say oh, that's bad behavior. It's gonna say, oh, wow,
well this child needs this normally, So they must be
experiencing a lack of this. So a few things to

(54:46):
normalize their behavior or to bring them back into balance
would be one, two three. It's not this child is
wrong or their behavior is abnormal. It's oh, they need this.
They're not getting that obviously, that's creating a stress for them,
and that is the kind of language that builds compassion.
It's like, okay, because as soon as you can see
stress in yourself, Like, it's very helpful to be able
to reflect on your on your own stress. And yes,

(55:10):
so they're the they're the the really big shifts that
we're looking for. But it really can't be achieved without
the use of AI and without the use of a
biological understanding of kids. And because it's there's just too
much to think about and teachers are already overwhelmed.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
Oh for sure. Like it's so funny. It feels like
you've circled right back to before we before we started.
I came straight off another Zoom meeting and the first
thing I said to you is, oh, like I just
sat in a whole meeting and observed and felt myself
not focused, not present, fidget and I felt fidgety this
whole I'm like, I just want to get up and

(55:50):
run and scream right now. And I know, and it's
funny that this whole conversation has been reflective of that,
because I don't know Pastiff would have looked at that
and projected something about that last meeting was whatever. But
I was like, Oh, normally I'm really engaged, and right now,

(56:11):
for a reason I cannot quite pinpoint, I am not
engaged and my behavior is off, and I've got to
figure out what exactly, Like maybe I just need to
go for a quick run around the block, had a
snack before, so it can't be that. But yeah, it's
so interesting because you're speaking to exactly what I was

(56:33):
already experiencing.

Speaker 3 (56:34):
Yes, perfect, it's just all synchronicity.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
You know, where can people find out more about you
and reach out and get this system into our education
systems globally.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
Yeah, so you can reach out Learn three sixty dot education.
Actually learn three sixty dot education. The full word education
is the direct website for the stuff we're doing in
schools for a whole lot of work in relationships and
behaviors and your own personal health journey and health professional training.
Just search for doctor cam McDonald, Shay Group, Shae Group,

(57:12):
and I'll pop up with a little website there and
all of the links are there.

Speaker 2 (57:17):
Thanks Jam, You're amazing.

Speaker 3 (57:19):
No worries today, she.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Said, it's now never I got fighting in my blood.

Speaker 3 (57:32):
It