Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

And what we found was that the more a teacher's feedback to their students involved this kind of deep developmental support, the more activity they showed when they saw their real students' assignments versus kids' assignments that they don't know the kid.

I think our traditional Western philosophies too often separate cognition and emotion.

We think that there are cognitive skills and there are emotional skills, right?

And that maybe those two things impact on each other, right?

But actually, that's the wrong way to think about it.

They're two different dimensions of the same thing.

Thinking is inherently cognitive and emotional always at the same time.

And we can look at thinking from a cognitive lens and analyze the cognitive dimensions of what's going on, and it's important to do that.

We can look at thinking from an affective lens and analyze the emotional engagement that's going on.

But actually, both of those things are simultaneously

happening in an integrated way always when people are alive, when they're moving through the world, adapting and engaging with the things around them.

Yeah, it turns out biology doesn't waste energy, right?

We don't think about things that don't matter because that would be a waste of time and energy.

So if you think about it this way, whatever you're having emotion about is what you're thinking about.

And whatever you're thinking about, you might be able to learn about.

So we need to ask ourselves as parents, as teachers, as people, what am I having emotion about?

And when the emotions of school and development are about the achievements and the outcomes and the results, that is what you have a hope of learning about.

When the emotions in school are about the physics, why the ball's rolling down the ramp, and this hidden idea that there's this force you can't see that's pulling on the ball, and it's also pulling on us, and it's making the moon make the tides, right?

When the emotion is about that powerful idea, that is when meaningful learning is about the idea.

And that's when you actually build transferable knowledge that is developmentally changing the person for having learned it.