Translate the Brain Professional Development Workshops
Making learing easier and teaching more effective.
These workshops explore the core cognitive functions that make all learning possible: memory, attention, and motivation. When teachers understand how learning happens in the human mind, they can reinvision their work and reinvigorate their craft.
Teachers
Feeling overwhelmed by your students' struggles with motivation, attention and learning? Translate the Brain workshops give you research-backed strategies that actually work in real classrooms—without overhauling your curriculum or adding to your prep time. You'll learn how to protect fragile working memory, boost long-term retention, and re-engage unmotivated students using techniques grounded in cognitive science. These workshops combine conceptual frameworks and practical strategies that make earning easier and teaching more effective.
School and Academic Leaders
Transform your teachers’ effectiveness with professional development that delivers tangible results. Translate the Brain workshops tackle your most persistent challenges— weak retention, student disengagement, and post-Covid de-motivation—using research-informed cognitive science strategies. Teachers leave with both practical strategies and new perspectives: changes that foster student learning and development without requiring new curriculum or extensive preparation time. With 35+ years in education and three published books, Andrew delivers engaging, research-based professional development that goes beyond temporary enthusiasm to create lasting change in classrooms.
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Teachers can boost learning by using strategies aligned with memory phases and “desirable difficulties” to help students study less but learn more.
More Details -
To support lasting learning, teachers must manage fragile working memory by recognizing overload signs and using strategies to prevent it.
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Teachers can improve student focus by targeting the three components of attention—alertness, orienting, and executive control—rather than attention alone.
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Teachers can tackle post-Covid motivation issues using research-based strategies that enhance autonomy, relevance, competence, and mindset.
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By focusing on schema formation, teachers can better support students' growth from novices to experts with developmentally aligned strategies.
Workshops Can Be
Half-day, full-day, or multi-day
For hundreds of people or individual coaching sessions
In person or online
For teachers, students, parents, or leadership teams
Conference presentations, workshops, or keynotes
About Andrew Watson
Since starting as a high school English teacher in 1988, I've devoted my career to students, schools, and colleagues.
In 2012, I founded Translate the Brain to combine cognitive insights from science insights with practical classroom experience.
Since then, I have worked with over 100 schools — and thousands of students and teachers — to make learning easier and teaching more effective.
I’ve presented and keynoted at national and international conferences, and written a few books and blog posts along the way.
I hope you’ll reach out so we can start a conversation.
More About Andrew
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“We had Ted Sizer here once; I would equate that experience with Andrew’s talk
in magnitude of its significance and value to me. “”
More praise for Translate the Brain
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