I spent most of my teaching career thinking my job was to get information into kids' heads.

And when students couldn't focus or were fidgety or seemed emotionally dysregulated, I thought the solution was better classroom management or clearer expectations and more inclusive accommodations.

I never once thought, "Maybe their bodies are trying to tell them something."

Recently I talked with Caroline Williams, a science journalist who's spent years researching the mind-body connection, and the author of Inner Sense: How the New Science of Interoception Can Revolutionize Your Health.

​In our conversation, Caroline said something that I haven't been able to stop thinking about:

Here's what that actually means in practice:

Your body is giving you information all day long: that tightness in your chest, the tension in your shoulders, the fact that you suddenly can't focus even though you were fine ten minutes ago.

We often think of those as distractions to push through, but in reality, they're important data.

So when we teach kids to override those signals instead of using them as information, we're cutting them off from a huge source of self-awareness.

Movement isn't just about burning energy. Yes, kids need to move. But it's not JUST because they're wound up and need to blow off steam.

It's because movement actually changes the signals going from body to brain, which changes how the brain interprets what's happening. When a kid is stressed, getting them to move can reset that whole conversation between body and brain.

Movement is not a break from learning; it's part of how learning works.

Caroline also talks about how little and often beats big workouts. The research shows that reducing sedentary time matters more for brain health than adding intense exercise. So those movement breaks, the walk to the water fountain, the decision to have kids stand up and stretch between activities - all of that adds up in ways that matter for focus, memory, and emotional regulation.

She also shares how physical strength affects mental confidence. There's research showing that when teenage girls increased their physical strength by 40% over 12 weeks (without necessarily looking different on the outside), they reported feeling more capable in difficult conversations and better able to stand up for themselves. The signals from their muscles and bones were telling their brains, "You've got this" and their brains believed it.

Most importantly, Caroline reminds us, “We’re not teaching brains; we’re teaching whole humans.”

This sounds obvious when you say it out loud, but it's so drilled into us that everything mental happens from the neck up that we forget to challenge it.

When a student walks into your classroom already carrying a stressed-out emotional state from home, the fastest way to shift that might not be a pep talk. It might be helping them notice what's happening in their body, teaching them to breathe slowly, or getting them to move.

If you want to hear the full interview, it's called The brain isn't separate from the body–here's what that means for your classroom. Caroline talks about everything from why your best ideas come on walks to how synchronized movement makes kids more likely to cooperate with each other:

I hope this gives you permission to trust what you already know: that kids need to move, that their bodies are trying to tell them things, and that you're not just filling up brains with information. You're teaching whole people.

Angela

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