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💬 Guest Interviews
Joyful Brains, Real Classrooms: A Conversation with Dr. Judy Willis
A neurologist-turned-teacher shares practical ways to lower stress, build executive function, and keep learning joyful.
NeuroKnow
Nov 19, 2025
Dr. Judy Willis, a board-certified neurologist, combined her 15 years as a practicing neurologist with ten subsequent years as a classroom teacher to become a leading authority in the neuroscience of learning. With her unique background as both in neuroscience and education, she has written nine books and more than 200 articles about applying neuroscience research to classroom teaching strategies.
After graduating Phi Beta Kappa as the first class of woman graduates from Williams College, Willis attended UCLA School of Medicine where she was awarded her medical degree. She remained at UCLA and completed a medical residency and neurology residency, including chief residency. She practiced neurology for 15 years before returning to university to obtain her teaching credential and Master’s of Education degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She then taught in elementary and middle school for 10 years.
Dr. Willis is on the adjunct faculty of Williams College and travels nationally and internationally giving presentations, workshops, and consulting about learning and the brain. She has been interviewed by USA Today, Euronews, The Wall Street Journal, NBC News Education Nation, ABC Australia Radio, Lateline Australia, Popular Mechanics, Neurology Today, USA Today, Education Week, Medscope Neurology, Parenting Magazine among others. She has been selected by Edutopia as one of their “Big Thinkers on Education” and featured on their website as well as being a staff expert blogger for NBC News Education Nation, Psychology Today, and The Guardian.
Q: You have been both a neurologist and a classroom teacher — a rare combination. What is one common misunderstanding you hear about “brain-based” teaching, and what do you wish students and teachers actually knew instead?
Dr. Willis: One misunderstanding I often hear is that we “only use 10% of our brain.” That’s not true. You use all of it—every neuron fires at least sometimes, or it would be pruned away. What makes the brain remarkable is neuroplasticity: the ability to keep reshaping circuits throughout life. There seems to be no limit to how much knowledge or skill the brain can build, as long as it’s practiced and applied.
This doesn’t mean you’ll remember something forever after hearing it once. Long-term memory is formed when circuits are rehearsed, reviewed, and used in different ways. Each time you recall a fact or practice a skill, that circuit strengthens: dendrites and synapses multiply, and myelin wraps around axons like insulation on a wire. That speeds signals—sometimes up to 100 times faster—and makes the memory more resistant to being lost. It’s why the old saying is true: practice makes permanent.
Another myth is that you need to “train your left brain” or “right brain.” In reality, almost everything you do involves both hemispheres working together, with constant communication between them.
The other big one that people have a misunderstanding about is that genius is limited by genes, because, again, back to neuroplasticity, we don’t see any limit in the amount of strength and knowledge that can be held in a circuit that’s practiced, activated, used, applied. So, the limitation is not what you’re born with. It’s what you do with what you’re born with.
“There seems to be no limit to how much knowledge or skill the brain can build, as long as it’s practiced and applied.”
Q: Your R.A.D. model — Reticular Activating System, Amygdala, Dopamine — has helped teachers think about attention and motivation. If you were updating R.A.D. for today’s classrooms, would you add or change anything? If so, what?
Dr. Willis: If I were updating the R.A.D. model today, I would emphasize executive functions. They’re already included in R.A.D., but I’d bring them to the forefront, because they are not skills you learn in a single class. Executive functions need to be woven through everything students do—academics, sports, music, daily routines—because they’re the brain’s tools for setting and achieving goals.
By executive functions, I mean skills like attention, working memory, organization, prioritizing, analysis/critical thinking, and cognitive flexibility/creativity. These networks are centered in the prefrontal cortex, which develops more slowly than other regions. At birth you can think of the system as a set of big “freeways”; over time, with use, the brain builds the smaller exits and side roads that make thinking efficient. During the teen years and 20s, the system goes through rapid maturation. That’s when “use it or lose it” is especially true: practice doesn’t just feel productive—it actually builds the circuitry. With repeated application, circuits add dendritic branches and synapses, and myelin strengthens axons, making signals move faster and memories more durable.
What does this look like in real life? Start early and make it concrete. Let young learners see organizing and prioritizing: how a closet is arranged, how lunch gets prepped, how a day is planned. In school, teach students to map long projects into steps, put milestones on a calendar, leave buffer time for surprises, and allocate effort by value (e.g., don’t spend hours decorating a cover that counts for only 10% of the total grade). Those habits literally become neural pathways that support lifelong learning.
Another essential piece is evaluating information. With the flood of online content (and now AI), students should practice deciding what’s valid and what’s valuable—building their own criteria by comparing examples rather than just accepting a teacher’s list. This needs to be fluid and organic as new media and tools appear.
So, while R.A.D. still stands, I would highlight executive functions as the foundation for motivation, attention, and the ability to thrive in a world full of information.
Q: In your article “The Neuroscience of Joyful Education,” you talk about joy being tied to stronger learning. As a student, I sometimes wonder what makes school feel both entertaining and challenging. What is one simple classroom move that can spark that kind of joy without lowering expectations?
Dr. Willis: It all comes back to the amygdala—the “A” in R.A.D. This structure is like an emotional filter. Every bit of information has to pass through it before it can even start building into memory. If the amygdala is in a high state of activity—like when we’re anxious, stressed, or feel threatened—it blocks learning.
So, one of the most important things students can do is recognize, “Am I stressed right now?” and then have something practiced and ready to lower that state. You can’t just wait until you’re overwhelmed. The brain has to rehearse ways to calm itself, just like you’d practice a soccer kick or a music scale. That might be mindful breathing, counting to ten, a visualization, or simply taking a short mindful break. Even setting a gentle timer during homework, pausing every ten minutes to check in—“Yes, I’m starting to stress, so now I’ll take a mindful break”—can make a huge difference.
Joy also comes from personal relevance and achievable challenges. Think about the first days of kindergarten—school feels exciting, playful, meaningful. But as students move through the years, the curriculum often shifts toward memorization without context. If learning feels like meaningless facts with little connection, the joy fades, and school itself can become a stressor.
That’s why making work feel valuable and giving students challenges that are tough but still reachable is so powerful. When you achieve something that matters to you, your brain releases dopamine, which fuels motivation and joy.
So one simple move is this: help students notice and lower stress, and connect learning to something meaningful. That’s when school stays both challenging and joyful.
Some of Dr. Judy Willis’ books
Q: You have explained that executive functions, like planning and self-monitoring, grow with practice. If you could give students one daily habit to build those “brain muscles,” what would you suggest?
Dr. Willis: One extra habit I’d throw in every day is to plan for time. I know that’s not easy with homework, after-school activities, family time, and fun time, but even five minutes at the end of the school day can make a real difference. Look over your notes from the day, check the homework that’s due now and what’s coming up, and take a few minutes to get a handle on how you will succeed at those goals.
Instead of just writing down that a project is due in two weeks and then panicking the night before, you’ve already been checking in. That short daily habit keeps the executive functions flowing and the amygdala in the low-stress zone.
Each day, review the assignments, the progress you’ve made, and make a plan: what you’ll do today, tomorrow, this weekend, and into the next week. Keep it as your personal executive calendar—that’s your own executive assistant. Writing it yourself, and seeing it visible in front of you, will lower stress and build the brain’s planning and organizing “muscles.”
Q: In your 2024 piece about capturing students’ attention, you share six strategies. Which one do you think most schools or teachers overlook the most, even though it could make a big difference?
Dr. Willis: If I had to pick one attention strategy that could make the biggest difference, it would be prediction. I’ve written about attention in many places, but this is the one I think we don’t use enough.
Prediction ties into dopamine. Dopamine is that very motivating neurotransmitter released from the nucleus accumbens. When it’s released, it promotes satisfaction and pleasure, but also memory, mood, motivation, and attention. Making a prediction and then finding out it’s right will trigger dopamine. And even when the prediction is wrong, the change in dopamine helps the brain revise the mistake with feedback, so the correct information is more likely to stick.
To capture and hold attention, give students the chance to predict. For example, a teacher could put something unusual in the classroom before students arrive—a radish on a desk, a bird in a cage, a strange sound—and then let them guess how it connects to the day’s lesson or reading. They come in curious, already engaged.
Throughout class, they can update those predictions. Maybe they write them on a whiteboard so the teacher can see, but without the risk of embarrassment if they’re off. The value is in making and revising predictions as new information comes in.
So, the opportunity to make and revise predictions is a fabulous way to get and sustain attention.
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Q: I saw that you have consulted with policymakers in California about bringing neuroscience into teacher education programs. If one science-based practice was added to teacher training tomorrow, what would you pick and how could we tell it was working?
Dr. Willis: I would go with achievable challenges—what I call the Goldilocks zone. When students act out or zone out, it’s not because they enjoy being “bad.” It’s because the amygdala is blocking information. It blocks the flow up into memory and also down from the prefrontal cortex, where executive functions like organization and emotional control sit. One of the best ways to open that pathway is through the positive emotional state triggered by dopamine.
Dopamine is released when we make predictions and when we achieve goals. So classrooms need to give all students opportunities to achieve challenges—not just the small group that happens to be on pace with the lecture. At best, one-third of a class is at the same level. Everyone else risks frustration or boredom.
That’s why instruction needs to offer multiple routes and access points. A big goal might be adding fractions, but a smaller goal on the way could be shading blocks on a graph to represent parts of a whole. Each small success gives feedback, keeps motivation alive, and builds confidence.
It’s the same principle behind video games. Players don’t have to beat all ten levels to feel successful; reaching level one already sparks dopamine, and feedback along the way sustains motivation. If school works the same way, students get the message: “I can do this.”
For that to happen, the challenge has to be both real and achievable. That means not one-size-fits-all instruction. Students might all reach the final goal—say, understanding American history at a ninth-grade level—but one may start with a fifth-grade text, another with a seventh. As long as each has a pathway, with feedback and progress at their own level, motivation holds. When the brain recognizes both challenge and achievability, dopamine rises, the amygdala opens, and attention, memory, and perseverance follow.
“When the brain recognizes both challenge and achievability, dopamine rises, the amygdala opens, and attention, memory, and perseverance follow.”
Thank you, Dr. Willis!
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for concision and clarity.
Links:
• Selective Books: Research-Based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning: Insights from Neuroscience and the Classroom, Revised and Expanded Edition. 2020. ASCD; Upgrade Your Teaching: Understanding by Design Meets Neuroscience. Jay McTighe and Judy Willis, M.D. 2019. ASCD; Unlock Teen Brainpower: 20 Keys to Boosting Attention, Memory, and Efficiency. Judy Willis, M.D. November 2019. Rowman & Littlefield Publishing: Lanham, MD. 2019.
• For a full collection of Dr. Willis’ books, articles, talks, and interviews: Here
• Website www.RADTeach.com
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