Dr. Lori Desautels: the Applied Educational Neuroscience Framework

Dr. Lori Desautels joins Beyond the Roles to discuss the Tier I framework she created that integrates neuroscience, our understanding of the nervous system and its states, trauma, self-regulation, connection, and co-regulation within the context of education. Applied Educational Neuroscience (AEN) is applicable and potentially life-changing for every individual in the educational system, including children, adolescents, educators, administrators, and parents.

In episode 9 we heard about the application of AEN at a TItle I elementary school in the Salt Lake City school district. Jenn Haak shared how she provided a workshop for interested teachers throughout the year after COVID. Their increased understanding of their own nervous systems and those of their students had a number of unanticipated outcomes, including a sharp decrease in suspensions, and a change in status for the school. They came out of a Comprehensive School Improvement status for the first time in 10 years. And they moved to #2 in the district for overall growth, out of 17 Title I schools. 

In this episode, Dr. Lori Desautels, an Assistant Professor in the College of Education at Butler University, a former special education teacher, a parent of three, an author of many books, and an engaging global speaker, discusses the rewards and challenges of the work she does. She explains how the AEN framework evolved, how it differs from a typical Social and Emotional Learning curriculum (SEL), and how it utilizes what we know about how our brains develop and how our nervous systems work.  

The AEN framework can be applied by adults for better understanding of themselves and their students or children, and by children themselves, with easy to implement practices that we can incorporate into our daily routines. On her website, revelationsineducation.com, Dr. Desautels offers over a hundred focused attention practices that offer ways we can tune in to sensations, which make up the language of our nervous systems, and process them in ways that can impact our feelings and behaviors.

Dr. Desautels’ book Connections over Compliance offers a new lens for discipline that "benefits all students by reaching for sustainable behavioral changes through brain state awareness rather than compliance and obedience."

The follow-up book, Intentional Neuroplasticity, provides a message of resilience and hope, explaining how we can move from nervous system states of protection to those of growth.

Both of those books and the upcoming manual, Body and Brain Brilliance, can be found at her website, revelationsineducation.com.

Throughout the episode, Dr. Desautels also references:

Dr. Bruce Perry,  (What Happened to You?)

Resmaa Menakem

Breath, by James Nestor

Polyvagal Theory by Stephen Porges