 Hi, my name is Tracy Takahama Espinosa, and this is a video on self-regulated learners. As many of you know as great teachers, getting kids to have that self-control, behave well in class, and live up to kind of social expectations is a really huge part of education. As many of you also might be aware, self-regulation is really related to executive functions, and there's a whole lot of benefits in life, not just academically, to having good self-control, self-regulation. These range from things that go from mental health, as well as to physical health and longevity, to things that you wouldn't expect, like happy marriages and stuff like that. So being able to have that level of self-control is something that is part of our general curriculum, even though it's not a subject area, it is something that really is woven through all of the different subjects that we teach. So basically to have good self-regulation, good self-control, we really, as kids and adults, we sort of have to know what the target is, what are the standards, what is expected of us, and that means being able to judge our own behavior and relationship to others and what's going on in the rest of the world, right? It also means being able to be motivated and to do that, even once you know what's expected of you, why should I even do it? What are the payoffs and the benefits of being able to do that? And how do you actually monitor where you're at with that? And that means that you're able to react appropriately to what you've done in the past and think about what to do in the future. So predicting your future self, what will I do better the next time? And that's a rehearsed process that really is learned sort of over habituated behavior over and throughout your entire lifespan, especially in childhood. When you're faced with challenging situations, how do you now move beyond that? And then, well, maybe you're going to fail this time, and then, you know, how do I put my nose to the grindstone and just now be a bit more in control of the situation? What do I do better the next time? So that's another way to think about this. And finally, you know, having the willpower, understanding the target, understanding what you got to do, and then actually doing it are all different things, right? So how do we get to that point of being able to monitor our own behavior and be able to do this for our own benefit and for the benefit of others? So as teachers, I'm sure that we're all always very concerned about how do we instill these kind of skill sets in our students? And when this doesn't work out, we see kids who seem to be behaving, you know, inappropriately in our classroom. And who, in some cases, we might not be reading perfectly correctly, right? Their outward behavior might be telling us they're trying to be, you know, defiant against us, when really what they do is they have other issues going on that have to do with self-control. And so what we'd like to do in the workshop is talk through some of those ways to read kids' behaviors, sort of use this as a guideline of how we're going to be able to identify, then help kids monitor, and then self-regulate in their own process. So the overall goals is that kids need to know what's expected. So what is it that teachers can do to help them do that? They also need to want, they need to be motivated to have that kind of level of control or self-control, right? And they need to know what tools are available to help them monitor their own behavior. And they have to have the willpower. They have to be able to resist that temptation. We have to develop those kind of marshmallow kids who are able to put off that instant gratification of the moment to be able to self-regulate and look for the longer term goals that are going to pay off. And so the main goal of our workshop is to think about ways that teachers contribute to each of these different elements of self-regulation. And so I'd like to pose a question to you right now that I'd like you to think about before we meet in the workshop. And if you have the opportunity to send in your questions beforehand, we'll use them as the foundation for the presentation. But think about the relationships between executive functions, which happen to be three basic executive functions, inhibitory control, that's really the self-regulation part, working memory and cognitive flexibility. If you have those basic executive functions, then you can get to these higher-level executive functions, like being able to reason and problem-solve and plan. These are all those things that are necessary for school success and life success, right? But if you don't have those fundamental core abilities under our belt in executive functions, inhibitory control, you know, self-regulation at the heart of it, then we're not able to get to those higher-order executive functions and really be successful in school and in life. And I want you to think about the relationship of executive functions then to perseverance, to this idea of grit, the ability to stick with something. What does that have to do with self-regulation? Is that just the end product of self-regulation or are they somehow related at another level? Then also think about the relationship of executive functions, perseverance, to resilience. What does it mean to have a resilient personality? You know, are you just resilient? You know, physically you can resist, you know, giving up too easily when the soccer coach pushes you too far. Or do you also have this level of emotional resiliency? Can you keep it together during times of COVID, for example, and just hang in there? Are you resilient to that level? But also spiritual resiliency, mental resiliency. We're going to look at all of these different levels of resilience and how they are related to self-regulation as well. Then we want to add this last piece here, which is more of a classic. Social-emotional learning really goes back to the heart of just core emotional intelligence, which hasn't changed much at its roots since the 70s, but this idea of becoming self-aware. Do I know what I'm feeling emotionally? Do I know why and can I control that? And then can I see that in other people and then help them manage that? So all of these pieces are woven together, and we're going to be using that as sort of the foundation to look at the different types of activities we can do in classes that would facilitate better self-regulation of students. So during the workshop, we're going to be developing all of these ideas. We're going to be digging deeper into each of those. But I would love to receive any questions from you beforehand. If you'd like to meet a focus on any area in the age group, for example. Please, let's talk about that as well. I would also hope to integrate not only what we can do for kids, helping kids have better self-regulation. But what does this mean at the level of adults of ourselves? What are things we can do for ourselves? And also the challenges that might exist within school cultures. For example, we know that having consequences to actions really has a great benefit in shaping habituated behavior, right? You know, if you know that if you stick gum to the chair, you'll have to stay after school and clean all the furniture. Well, that's a really clear signal. And many, many people think that just having clear cause and effect or direct relationships between behavior and punishments, for example, is a good way to go about doing things. That's one way to think about things. But there's also this other kind of invisible level that we want to explore together, which has to do with behavioral motivations. Why do people do what they do? And sometimes it's not so obvious. So these kind of hidden motivators of why some kids appear to be not so self-regulated or they don't do the things that we ask them to do. Is it really because they're missing self-regulation skills or is it really because they've made a choice in the wrong direction? So we'll be talking about those points as well. So looking forward to seeing you, please send in any questions you might have beforehand so that we can make sure that we put them at the top of the agenda when we're together. Thanks.