When Teachers Get Excited About Brain Science
Welcome to Episode 6 of the Academic Coaching Podcast. This episode is with the great Sarah Ward about all things Executive Function. Enjoy this episode in one of two ways:
▶️ Watch — Prefer video? Watch the full conversation on YouTube
🎧 Listen — Perfect for your commute, workout, or whenever you're on the go:
You'll Hear Us Talk About
The "parking spaces" metaphor for working memory and cognitive overload—and how teachers began using it with students from kindergarten through 12th grade
The Science of Learning Collaborative, an opt-in professional learning model that has grown to 75 educators
Ways to "clear parking spaces," including movement breaks, brain dumps, and checks for understanding
Why every brain is different, and how processing speed and neurodiversity can affect how students experience cognitive overload
The surprising idea that a teacher's own working memory can become a bottleneck during explicit instruction
About Suzy Evans & Dr. Shane Saeed
Suzy Evans is an Instructional Coordinator for St. Vrain Valley School District, where she supports principals and teachers in data analysis, instructional decision-making, and collective efficacy; she co-facilitates the district's Science of Learning Collaborative and co-hosts the Vrain Waves podcast.
Dr. Shane Saeed is an Elementary ELA Curriculum Coordinator for St. Vrain Valley School District, specializing in structured literacy and educational equity. She holds a doctorate in executive leadership, authored Be the Flame, and is a national speaker and ASCD & ISTE-recognized leader. She also co-hosts the Vrain Waves podcast.
Links + Resources
Powerful Teaching by Pooja Agarwal & Patrice Bain
Questions This Episode Answers
Q: What's the "parking spaces" metaphor, and why did it catch on so fast? It's a way of picturing working memory: think of your brain as having a limited lot of parking spaces, and once they're full, nothing new can pull in. Teachers found it concrete enough that it turned into shared vocabulary almost overnight; within days of the training, teachers were using it with students from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade, and even with parents in IEP/504 meetings.
Q: Who came up with the parking spaces terminology? It grew out of Gretchen's cognitive overload mini-lecture, but the specific "parking spaces" language came from Susannah Cole, a member of the Anti-Boring Learning Lab community, who picked it up from someone else she can no longer trace. It's a good reminder that useful teaching metaphors tend to travel and evolve collectively rather than belong to one person.
Q: What is the Science of Learning Collaborative? It's an opt-in, year-long professional learning group in St. Vrain Valley School District (Colorado), co-led by Shane Saeed and Susie Evans. Teachers PK–12 choose to join, actually pay a small fee, and get credit; it's grown from 12 founding members in 2019 to 75 this year, meeting monthly on alternating in-person and virtual sessions.
Q: Why does an opt-in model matter so much here? Because it changes who shows up and why. Nobody is required to attend, so the room is full of teachers who want to be there, which builds a level of trust, community, and follow-through that mandatory PD rarely achieves. Shane and Susie describe teachers who join reluctantly and end up re-signing year after year once they feel the difference.
Q: How do teachers actually "clear parking spaces" in the classroom? A few concrete moves came up: movement breaks, brain dumps, and quick checks for understanding. Shane and Susie built an entire two-hour session structured around visibly modeling these moves, marking each one so teachers could see exactly what it would look like to pause, offload, move, and re-engage.
Q: Does clearing parking spaces work the same way for every student? No, and that's an important caveat raised in the episode. A movement break might free up space for one student and eat into it for another; every brain handles overload differently, especially neurodivergent students, so the strategies are a starting toolkit, not a one-size-fits-all fix.
Q: How does processing speed relate to working memory? They're tightly linked but not identical. Working memory is about how much you can hold at once; processing speed is about how fast new information is arriving relative to your capacity. Gretchen notes that Anti-Boring Learning Lab collaborators are developing an add-on to the original mini-lecture that layers in processing speed specifically.
Q: What's the "surprising" idea about teachers' own working memory? A Substack article from SOL in the Wild pointed out that during explicit instruction, the real bottleneck is often the teacher's working memory, not the students'. If a teacher hasn't planned tightly enough, their own cognitive load can throw off the pacing and clarity of the lesson. St. Vrain's collaborative plans to build next year's theme around this: making planning intentional enough that in-the-moment instruction doesn't get derailed.
Q: Where can I hear more from Shane and Susie? Their district podcast, Vrain Waves, covers science-of-learning topics and instructional shifts, often pairing an expert interview with a follow-up episode featuring teachers implementing the ideas in their own classrooms.
Q: Where can I learn more about the cognitive overload mini-lecture itself? It's covered in the free resource library at antiboringlearninglab.com/resources, which includes a model of the mini-lecture and will stay updated as new pieces (like the processing speed addition) are released.