EPISODE 16: Dr. Tere Linzey, BrainMatterZ.com

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:20] KK: Hey everybody. Welcome to Risky Business. I'm Kathy Kaehler.

[00:00:23 BL: And I'm Bliss Landon.

[00:00:24] KK: Welcome to our episode. We are just, again, excited about a cool show coming up.

[00:00:31] BL: Absolutely. This is fun.

[00:00:33KK: Very fun.

[00:00:34] BL: They all seem to have something to do with the brain. Isn't that interesting?

[00:00:37] KK: Yeah. How are we getting that?

[00:00:39] BL: I don't know. Clearly, we're lacking in that department.

[00:00:41] KK: We're needing. We’re needing.

[00:00:42] BL: We’re needing some brain information.

[00:00:44] KK: Yeah. Very exciting. Isn’t that cool?

[00:00:46] KK: Yeah.

[00:00:46] BL: I mean, I like it.

[00:00:48] KK: Well, it fits into everything that we have been talking about with all of our other episodes. Hopefully, you are tuning in. Follow us on our YouTube channel because we are posting every Monday. We get a new episode that will be with an exciting guest, and it really has kind of been the thread if you think about it, right?

[00:01:10] BL: Yeah. Just about how we can do better, how we can feel better, perform better, just do everything better? What kind of healing do we need to go through or what kind of tools do we need to learn to navigate our way through this thing called life? It’s not too late to learn these things.

[00:01:34] KK: No, it's not because I'm no spring chicken.

[00:01:38] BL: Please, please.

[00:01:38] KK: However, we can always learn and we really do focus – Well, at least your background is tech, and we're talking about kids and devices. But all of this other stuff that comes around it, how we're living our lives, how we're sleeping, how we're de-stressing and eating, it's all related.

[00:02:04] BL: Well, and then we're going – We’ve done this now pivot to for kids anyway, where they're going back to school, but it's not exactly the same. I don't know that it ever will be. What does that look like, and how are things going, and what have they learned? What are they lacking, and how do we move forward? The guest that we're having today is going to give us some great tools on that exact thing on how we help our kids to navigate this new way of online learning or using their learning devices, and what that looks like, and how we can help them to perform better in this new hybrid way of learning, which is kind of new. It’s different.

[00:02:52] KK: It's very new. It’s very new to me. It's very new to me. Well, we would love to introduce our guest. We're very excited to have Dr. Tere Linzey. She's a licensed educational psychologist. She's the Founder of BrainMatterZ and author of Measuring Up. Her website is brainmatterz.come, and that's B-R-A-I-N, I’m so glad I can spell that, matters, M-A-T-T-E-R-Z.com.

[00:03:20] BL: That's important, the Z on the end.

[00:03:22] KK: Tere, welcome.

[00:03:24] TL: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:03:26] BL: Yeah. Thank you, Tere. We're so interested in how you got started in this whole industry. You have quite a history on where you started and where you are today.

[00:03:39] TL: I did. I was a basketball coach and a PE teacher.

[00:03:44] KK: Oh, my gosh. I love it. I love it. That’s my background.

[00:03:49] TL: Well, nice, nice. When I found out that brains and the body or muscles train exactly the same, I thought, “Gosh, I could do this. If I could win in basketball and I could train them to do that, the brain trains exactly the same way.” So I just went back to school and gathered all that new brain research and then developed the program around it. I went from being a head coach to a head coach.

[00:04:21] KK: That's awesome.

[00:04:21] BL: Oh, my gosh. That’s amazing.

[00:04:24] KK: Where were you coaching?

[00:04:26] TL: I was coaching at Beverly Hills High School.

[00:04:28] KK: No way.

[00:04:28] BL: My dad went there.

[00:04:29] KK: My husband went there.

[00:04:31] BL: Really?

[00:04:32] KK: Look at us.

[00:04:33] BL: Not at the same time. Your husband is not as old as my dad. That’s great.

[00:04:38] KK: Well, small world. That’s what it is.

[00:04:40] TL: It is.

[00:04:41] KK: That’s so cool. Well, tell us about BrainMatterZ.

[00:04:46] TL: At BrainMatterZ, we train the brain exactly the way an athlete would train for excellence. There's fundamental skills that you need for a sport. Let's just say tennis, right? So you have a forehand and backhand and a serve. You have to have those perfected if you're going to be good at tennis, right? Would you agree?

[00:05:05] BL: Right, absolutely.

[00:05:07] TL: There are fundamental skills in learning that have to be optimized. Visual processing speed, how you take it in through your eyes. Attention, that ability to attend to something. Auditory processing. Can you listen to what the teacher is saying and hold on to that information? If even one of those fundamental skills is not working optimally, then learning becomes hard. If it's hard, they don't want to do it. Even if they're smart, they can still have one of these areas of the brain not optimized, and learning can be difficult for them.

[00:05:45] KK: Is that something that you're you have found can be from birth or from some type of event that has taken place in in a child's life?

[00:05:57] TL: You know what? It can be nurture or nature or both. Or it could be concussions or all of these things along the way. Everything in the brain is practice, so what you practice is what you hardwire. Parents ask me all the time, “Is it okay for Jimmy to watch eight hours of video games?” I'll say, “Sure, if that's what you want to hardwire. But if you want to hardwire reading, writing, and math, you probably need to be practicing those things.”

[00:06:29] BL: Those things as well too. Yeah. Okay.

[00:06:32] KK: How does it work when you take on a client or a patient?

[00:06:39] TL: Well, the first thing we do is get a baseline, just like you would in sports, right? If you were going to have them come to tryouts, you'd want to see the baseline. Where are they, right? Then you want to find out where they want to be. Then we come up with a plan to get them there.

[00:06:55] BL: The baseline, is that a test? Or how do you figure out what the baseline is?

[00:07:00] TL: It is. It's a basic standardized IQ test. With that, you get visual processing speed, working memory, attention, verbal comprehension. All of that comes at one small, little, 45-minute test. Then I can look at that and say, “Okay, gosh. This is great here and this might be a little weak. We probably need to optimize that.” Then we take them through the program. It takes 20 hours to retrain the brain, just 20 hours. I tell the kids all the time, “If we can change your whole life in 20 hours, would you do it?” They'll like, “Yeah.”

[00:07:39] BL: How intense of a process is it like? How many hours a week do you work on it to get through to the 20 hours?

[00:07:45] TL: I need to see them at least four in the week, four hours in a week.

[00:07:49] BL: So it's pretty intense then. It’s a lot, right?

[00:07:52] TL: It is. It is. If they – But we do it in the summer. Say like at Santa Barbara, we do it at Cate School and we do it at brain lab. So we do it four hours a day for five days. Then at the end, I retest those areas, just so parents can see the progress. The students are already feeling it. Then some kids do it during the year, and they'll do two sessions during the week. Or they might do a Saturday and Sunday session because they're so busy at school during the week. It’s really a pretty short process when you think about how effective it is.

[00:08:31] BL: What percentage does it work? I mean, what's your success rate?

[00:08:37 TL: I can only think of two students in the thousands and thousands that maybe I didn't help because behavior. There was a level of behavior that I couldn't penetrate. Anytime a student comes, and they give their best effort in those 20 hours, we're going to change their brain. There's just no way around that. Just like if you went to the gym for 20 straight hours and you worked on a certain muscle group, you are going to change that muscle group, right?

[00:09:06] BL: That’s right. Right, exactly. You might be really sore afterwards, but it’s going to change.

[00:09:11] TL: Yes, yes. So we've had clinical trials. It’s proven to be effective but it's fun. When something is fun, that's when the amygdala in the brain is wide open. When it's wide, open learning becomes fast. That's what they always say, “Gosh, if teachers can make it fun in the classroom,” right?

[00:09:34] BL: Right.

[00:09:35] TL: That's why you want that to happen. PE teachers make it fun, right?

[00:09:40] KK: We did.

[00:09:42] TL: Yeah. Coaches make it fun and coaches have known this for years. If you can just coach in a classroom, that's just so helpful.

[00:09:53] BL: That's great. Now, what's the optimal age for this program to go through?

[00:09:58] TL: We don't work with anyone younger than six. The oldest I've ever worked with was actually an FBI agent that was 99, a previous FBI.

[00:10:13] KK: No way.

[00:10:14] TL: He was 99. Yeah.

[00:10:16] KK: That was a question that I was having. I sort of know we're never too old, right? But know how they say if you want to learn a language, learn it when you're young. It is more challenging and difficult as an adult. But what are you seeing as changes we can do in our mid 50s?

[00:10:35] TL: Oh, gosh. Neuroplasticity goes throughout life, and that just means the ability of the brain to change through experience.

[00:10:43] KK: Oh, God.

[00:10:45] TL: Yeah. That’s the great news. Now, we know that we can raise IQ. We know that we can impact the brain at any level. You just have to make sure that you're practicing the right thing. You see, everything in the brain is practice. If you're practicing the wrong things, you will move yourself in another direction. If you're practicing the right things, then you move yourself towards your goals. Does that make sense?

[00:11:10] KK: Absolutely.

[00:11:11] BL: Absolutely. Let’s say that I want to be a writer. I need to write, right? I mean, that's a brain function, right? Because you're writing, so you want to constantly be writing to get better at it. Or if I'm a reader, I need to constantly be reading. Or like how much time do you put into something that you're very interested in but you're not really doing it right now?

[00:11:34] TL: Okay. For writing and reading, there are underlying fundamental skills for those. Your visual processing speed and your eye-hand need to be fast, right? Because in writing, you need to get it from your brain down to the paper. You can have great ideas. But if you can't get them on paper, you can't be a writer, right?

[00:11:56] BL: Right, exactly. Yeah.

[00:11:57] TL: So there are fundamental skills that we would speed up at BrainMatterZ to make writing easier for you, and then your practice of writing becomes more enjoyable.

[00:12:11] BL: I knew you're going to say that. I just – Yeah, that's awesome.

[00:12:15] TL: Reading as well because if you can't take in visual information very quickly, especially for our students, if they can't take it in quickly, then readings aren't fun, and they don't want to do it. I’m talking to parents a lot and I'll say, “Does he hate movies with subtitles?” Mom will say, “Oh, he hates them.” Those are just clues for me that he can't take in information very quickly through his brain, through his eyes. When that when we speed that up for them, and it becomes more fun, then I would say the one thing I hear most often from parents is, “Oh, my gosh. He's reading for pleasure. She's reading for pleasure. She sat down the other day and started reading the newspaper.” Things like that. sI think and reading bleeds into everything we do in life.

[00:13:11] BL: Well, of course.

[00:13:12] TL: Right?

[00:13:12] BL: Yeah.

[00:13:12] TL: Everything. So I just think it's really important that our kids enjoy learning because we want them to be lifelong learners, right?

[00:13:23] BL: Yeah.

[00:13:23] TL: We are.

[00:13:24] BL: We are, yeah. Exactly.

[00:13:25] TL: Yeah. We want that one.  

[00:13:26] KK: Do you find with kids who are – If they're 10 right now, they've had a device in their hands most of their life. I have kids who are in their 20s. So much is information pushed to them. Is there anything beneficial on the phone and even for myself who has some of these games or Sudoku or anything like that? Do you recommend anything like that that is kind of –

[00:13:59] BL: For your brain?

[00:14:00] KK: Memory, yeah, building and good for your brain?

[00:14:04] TL: Well, so first of all, I recommend a balance of screen time and pen to paper and other things, right? Because if everything was meant to be done on a computer, Olympic athletes would train on Wii, right?

[00:14:26] BL: Yeah.

[00:14:26] KK: Right.

[00:14:29] TL: First of all, that balance is good. The problem with the screen and computer brain training has been in the past, and there may be something new in research lately, I haven't seen it, but it's that ability to transfer it to the classroom. You do it on the screen and you get better on the screen. But then you try to sit down and write or read in the classroom a regular book and those things, and it's not transferring. That's one of the things in the BrainMatterZ program that we've made sure is happening. That we're doing the things the way they're going to do it in the classroom so that when they get in the classroom, it's transferring to that.

[00:15:16] KK: Got it.

[00:15:17] TL: Are there are good things online? There's great vocabulary things and things like that. But when it comes to the brain games, they're fun but they don't always transfer to the classroom. That’s what actually what the research tells us so far.

[00:15:38] BL: Do you work with children with any learning disabilities like autism or dyslexia or any of that?

[00:15:46] TL: Tons. 

[00:15:47] BL: Really?

[00:15:47] TL: Tons. Now, it's interesting because, typically, what gravitates to the program are kids who are wanting to get in certain colleges or they’re wanting to raise their SAT and their ACTS. Or they're wanting to just – They know they're smart but they've got one little area of the brain they know that's not working up to their potential, so they're coming in. But we've had several kids come through the program that were in special ed in public schools that are not in special ed anymore.

[00:16:20] BL: Wow, that's amazing.

[00:16:22] KK: That's awesome.

[00:16:23] BL: That’s great. It's a good tool for any kid really.

[00:16:29] TL: It is. It’s a great tool for anyone to go through. I have an adult program, and they’re very fun because it's not quite as intense, right? You're trying to get something back with the adults, but they're not necessarily having to do test taking and all of those things like our kids are having to do where you have to be a little bit more intense with them. But the adult groups, we have so much fun with because people are laughing at themselves. They’re like, “Oh, my god. I think my IQ dropped 10 points.” I'm talking about that, and it's very fun.

[00:17:08] BL: That's great. What about students who say or they get good grades? Let's say they get decent grades. They're an AB student but but they have a really hard time taking a test. Haven't you heard that?

[00:17:21] TL: Yes.

[00:17:21] BL: Like, “I can do so well but I'm a terrible test taker.” I've heard that. I think I even may have said that during the time I was in school but I hear it from my son. So what is that problem or what do they need to work on to solve that?

[00:17:38] TL: Well, test taking requires working memory and visual processing speed. Here’s what I hear from kids all the time, “I studied and studied, and then I sat down to take the test, and it's just gone. It evaporated. It’s like I didn’t study at all.”

[00:17:51] BL: That was me. I couldn’t do it. I remember feeling that way, for sure.

[00:17:57] TL: It’s a combination of making sure the student is studying in the way that their brain processes. That's number one. Then the second thing is that capacity to hold on to information in the brain and not let it evaporate. That's where we'd be working on, that working memory and visual memory. We'd be making sure that they were able to hold on to it, so it doesn't evaporate in the test because if it does – Because anytime you feeling stressed, one side of the brain stops talking to the other side, right? Now, not only do we have information evaporating. Now, you've got the anxiety of, “Oh, no. Oh, no,” right? So they're feeling this double whammy on them.

We speed up their visual processing speed so that the anxiety goes away. Then we increase that capacity to hold on to information after they study. Then we make sure that they're studying it the correct way. Make sure that they know how they should be studying. With all of those things coming into play, and then mom and dad knowing, “Oh, you know what? Jimmy, you should be studying this way. Remember what Dr. Linzey said?” With all of that, then they become much better test takers and they don't dread it.

[00:19:20] KK: Can you share, like when you say speed up, what does that look like? Are you one-on-one with them? Are you – Is there something you're doing physically with them? Or are they on paper? Or is it like, “Here's a tray of stuff, memorize it, and take it away?” How do you do it? How do you do it?

[00:19:37] TL: [inaudible 00:19:37]. There are lots of ways they can work. They can work one-on-one with us or they can get them in a brain lab, which we take eight students in a brain lab, and they're at a long, long table. We have brain cards, and one of the things that kids love, it's we have brain cards. On the cards, there are numbers, shapes, colors, and letters. They’re all on each card, right? They're all different. So they have to categorize them as quickly as they can into, say, numbers first, so all the ones, all the twos, threes, the fours, fives as quickly as they can. I’m timing them, and we have their clipboards, and so we're writing down their time.

Then I say, “Pick up the cards, shuffle them, and now we're going to go to colors.” Now, you have to put them into six colors. Then they pick up the cards again, they shuffle them, and now we're going to time them. They're going to do shapes. See that cognitive flexibility, and you can hear the kids going, “Oh, wait. What are we doing? Are we on colors?” So they're doing these cards as fast as they can and they love it because it's fun for them to do it. We're timing them, and then we'll tell them and say, “Okay. Johnny, you have to beat 45. Susie, you have to beat 38.” Now, they're competing against their own brains. But they're also in that brain lab where they can see that, “Wow, Susie's putting her cards down fast. I better pick it up.” Just like an athlete.

[00:21:13] KK: Athlete, yeah.

[00:21:14] BL: Competing, yeah.

[00:21:14] TL: Yeah, right. The competition is with one’s self. However, they also have that group in there that's raising their level of play, so to speak, as we’d say in coaching, right? We wanted to raise that. Then as soon as they master it, we add another level of difficulty. Maybe this time, now we're going to add music, right? Or maybe we're going to add some type of distraction. Now, they have to beat their time with that.

[00:21:45] KK: Fascinating.

[00:21:45] TL: It's funny because they'll say, “When we get in the classroom and you're not there trying to distract us, it's like a piece of cake.”

[00:21:53] BL: That's great. It really touches on the focus. Wow.

[00:21:56] KK: I see that you've – There's labs all over the place. You got a lab in Mumbai.

[00:22:02] TL: We did. Yes. During COVID, we were there and we're at Stanford. Stanford, UCLA, typically this year, COVID, they're not allowing people on their campus in person yet but they will for 2022. But we're at Cate School. We’re here at Canyon School.

[00:22:22] BL: So Canyon. I know that school.

[00:22:24] TL: We're at any school that wants us to come for this summer. Of course, they've been calling left and right this summer. We're in New York. We're in Manhattan. We’re everywhere, trying to have as many as we can to let kids access them. We want to make sure we went to China. Once that was fun.

[00:22:48] KK: It’s incredible.

[00:22:48] BL: Is this a program that you pay for? Do the parents have to pay for this?

[00:22:52] TL: The parents do pay for it, yes.

[00:22:53] BL: How much does it cost?

[00:22:56] TL: Well, it's typically – It kind of depends whether we're scholarshiping some or whether or not. So it could be anywhere from 2,500 for the 20 hours all the way up, depending what the parents wanted. If they’re wanting mental health with it, if they're wanting fitness with it, they have all these add-ons that they can put on. Then after they have so many at a school, so let's say a school sends three students or five students or whatever, then they'll let me know. Then we'll scholarship a student of their choice, maybe a student whose parents can't afford to send them or something. Then the school will say, “Yeah. We’d like for Sally to go through the program on scholarship.”

We try to scholarship as many as we can. We don't have that nonprofit part of our program set up, which I'm hoping to do. But we try to make it feasible for most students to go through it.

[00:23:57] BL: It’s going to be in person this summer. It's not going to be online. It's definitely in person.

[00:24:02] TL: We have both.

[00:24:03] BL: You have both. Okay.

[00:24:04] TL: We have it virtually and we also have an in person. But most people are really excited about just being in person. It’s more fun. I think when we have it at Cate, we're even going to add like the climbing wall and the obstacle courses and so that kids can get some fitness as well because what fitness does for the body is a drop in the bucket compared to what it does to the brain.

[00:24:31] BL: Really? Wow.

[00:24:33] KK: Well, I was going to say, a lot of times in – I guess we’d call it preventative health and being proactive. I always like to put the phrase pay now or pay later because it's really true. There's so much when we decide not to do things to improve, to enhance, to kind of get that quality of life now. It’s going to add up later. So I love what we can do, and this is so – It’s really extraordinary to kind of see what is available and to help kids with something so small. I just think about my son who doesn't like to read. I'm figuring from you today, he's just not processing. He might love to read.

[00:25:30] TL: He might. He might. I tell kids all the time because I never want them to think that there's something wrong with them. So I tell them all the time, “You have a BMW brain. We're going to get you in for a tune up. We're going to get you back out on the road.” I tell parents all the time, “If you don't maintain your car, eventually it's going to break down,” and everything else, our bodies, all of that. The brain is no different and the brain is the epicenter for everything. So this is really something we all need to be paying attention to.

[00:26:07] KK: Well, thank you so much for sharing and just kind of bringing your whole program and your experience and just your also – The way you speak about it is so enlightening, and it just makes it like I want to do it. I want to do it.

[00:26:24] BL: I know. I mean, you have so much passion for what you're doing and that's so – You can just see it all over your face. You are so happy with what you're doing. That's just incredible. I'm sure you're really making a difference out there and I think it's wonderful. I want a ticket.

[00:26:39] KK: Agreed.

[00:26:40] KK: Let’s make it.

[00:26:41] KK: Is the website BrainMatterZ with a Z.com, is that the best place for people to get information, ask good questions?

[00:26:49] TL: It is. They can call, and I'm happy to talk to them on the phone. That's probably when parents like it best when they can just ask questions, and I can give them information.

[00:26:58] BL: Is there a list of schools where you are and a schedule for the summer out and all that? Okay.

[00:27:03] TL: It's on the website. It sure is. Thanks for making this so much fun, guys.

[00:27:08] BL: Thank you. Thanks for being on our show. We really appreciate it, and good luck to everything you're doing, and just keep doing what you're doing. It's amazing.

[00:27:16] TL: Thank you.

[00:27:17] KK: Thank you so much.

[00:27:17] BL: Thank you so much. All right, bye-bye.

[00:27:19] TL: Bye-bye.

[00:27:20] KK: Hey, that was Tere Linzey. She’s so –

[00:27:23] BL: Just so inspiring. Wow.

[00:27:25] KK: Very much so. We have a lot of brain work to do.

[00:27:29] BL: We do.

[00:27:30] KK: We have so many things to do between –

[00:27:31] BL: Yes.

[00:27:32] KK: Right?

[00:27:32] BL: Just so many things to do. I don't know. We got to get a jump on it.

[00:27:35] KK: But it makes you realize that it's really important to think about your brain in a way other than just like – I just kind of think we don't think about it. Like you think about your heart. You think about your muscles but brains.

[00:27:50] BL: I've been trying to make a point of reading more. I think I feel better when I do, and there's something about picking up a book and just diving into it. I think a lot of our kids are not doing that right now, and they may be getting further away from it, and they need to get back to that. This would be a great program for them to go through to get re-inspired to read. Books are so incredible. I mean, my son, too, does not like to read.

[00:28:17] KK: It was such an escape for me when I was a kid.

[00:28:19] BL: I know.

[00:28:20] KK: I loved getting into a book.

[00:28:21] BL: Yeah. It is an escape. I like doing it now. Yeah. It's a great escape.

[00:28:25] KK: I remember something so vivid when I was – I did The Today Show for so many years and I became very close with Katie Couric. I went over to her house one day. In her kitchen, she had this big blackboard. Every day there was a new word and there was the definition. Her kids were a little bit older than mine. But at the time, they were probably grade school or junior high. But it was a family practice that they learned a new word.

[00:28:55] BL: That they learned a new word every day. That’s cool.

[00:28:57] KK: To keep expanding your vocabulary, right?

[00:29:00] BL: That's good. I feel like I failed.

[00:29:01] KK: Let’s get –

[00:29:02] BL: I got to do more.

[00:29:03] KK: Let's do it.

[00:29:04] BL: Do you think my 26-year-old and my 24-year-old would think I was crazy if I started sending them words every day?

[00:29:09] KK: No.

[00:29:11] BL: And my 18-year-old.

[00:29:11] KK: Just blame it on me. [inaudible 00:29:13] anyway.

[00:29:14] BL: But, no, there’s -- I know. There are so many things you can do. This is exciting.

[00:29:19] KK: That’s what we’re doing. We’re inspiring.

[00:29:20] BL: That’s right.

[00:29:21] KK: We’re inspired and we hope you are getting inspired.

[00:29:23] BL: Exactly. It’s fun to have guests like that on that just you don't even know these things exist.

[00:29:30] KK: Right. So BrainMatterZ, guys. The website is B-R-A-I-Nmatterz, M-A-T-T-E-R, and then there’s a Z, so brainmatterz.com. You can get all that information, summer programs, telephone number to call for more questions if you might have for Dr. Tere Linzey. Really extraordinary. If you've got questions for us, don't hesitate. Please reach out to us. We're at riskybusiness@coveragequeens.com. Our website is coveragequeens.com. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel. We've got all of our episodes there, as well as on our website, but come subscribe. We'd love to have you.

[00:30:12] BL: Yes. Thank you so much. All right.

[00:30:13] KK: We'll see you again next time.

[00:30:15] BL: Bye-bye.

[END]