Learn Smarter Podcast

Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET welcome back friend of the podcast, Dr. Jeremy Sharp. Dr. Sharp is a licensed psychologist who owns and operates The Colorado Center for Assessment & Psychology. He also hosts the Testing Psychologist podcast, which has featured Rachel and Stephanie before. They dig into assessments and when and why you should reassess your learner.  H...

Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET welcome back College Learning Disability Specialist Elizabeth Hamblet to discuss her new book 7 Steps to College Success: A Pathway for Students with Disabilities . She discusses the origin story of the book and the disconnect between what college disability services can do for learners and what learners and parents expect. She talks about...

Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET, discuss how to break down an essay prompt. This is a long overdue topic on the podcast and Rachel and Stephanie explain why essays are so hard for learners and how to guide learners through a multistep process to produce essays with greater ease and less stress and avoidance.    Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ learnsmarter...

Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET, discuss the importance of recalibration as a professional. The idea often makes people (particularly women) uncomfortable, but in this episode, Rachel and Stephanie discuss what recalibration is and why it’s critically important. They also discuss when recalibration can become necessary, why people think it can be uncomfortable, and how t...

 Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET continue the conversation from last week. In this episode they chat about several strategies that work to increase awareness of time. They dig deep into the differences between kids who feel time quickly and learners who feel time slower.   Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/learnsmarterpodcast   How to connect with us: Join o...

All people experience time differently and this could not be more true for learners with different learning profiles. In this re-air, Rachel & Steph dig into why feeling time is SO important and how feeling time differently from peers, parents, teachers and siblings can create tremendous conflict at home and at school.    Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/learnsmarterpodcast How t...

Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET are bringing back a favorite episode. Today our resident Game Guru, Steph, brings us all the games that she likes to use to strengthen executive functioning skills. This is one of those episodes that is chock-full of useful goodies and tips to make skill strengthening fun and engaging for the whole family. Support us on Patreon: https://ww...

Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET are excited to welcome back Licensed Psychologist Donna Henderson and welcome Dr. Sarah Wayland, a special needs care navigator, certified relationship development intervention consultant and parenting coach. They share their story of how they became co-authors. They share their 5 layers of understanding of autism. They also share the stre...

 Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET, discuss the very specific avoidance tactics learners use when dealing with a large multi-step project. As they discuss, learners will focus on fluff (style and format) over content because it’s the perfect way to say “I’ve started on this!” without actually doing anything meaningful. This is all the impact of executive functioning skill...

Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET, discuss test anxiety. In this episode they discuss why learners feel anxious, how and why it impacts their ability to perform on a test, and what learners can do to mitigate their test anxiety. Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/learnsmarterpodcast   How to connect with us: Join our FB Group Join our e-mail list Rachel’s Kapp...

Summer is the perfect time to start educational therapy. In this re-air of episode 56, Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET both share their summer plans and why they love starting with new clients over the summer. Also, they chat about some of the great and creative ways educational therapy can be done over the summer and why it feels so freeing for educational therapists, l...

 Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET welcome Julia Rogers, founder of En Route Consulting , which specializes in personalized gap year planning. She shares how gap years have been around a long time even if people weren’t labeling it specifically that. She shares the different types of learners who benefit from gap years (this may surprise you!) Julia talks about how college...

Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET welcome back Anxiety Expert and OCD Child Therapist Natasha Daniels to the podcast. Today they dig into how anxiety and OCD impacts learning and school. Natasha shares how OCD can be missed in school or misinterpreted as a learning disorder and shares what teachers need to know about OCD. She further discusses what teachers can look out fo...

Reading comprehension is critical–even if your student is the most fluid out loud reader…are they really understanding what they’re reading? Reading comprehension weaknesses can be sneaky because it can be difficult to identify. In last week’s episode, Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET dug in to why students can pretend they understand what they’re readin...

Reading comprehension is critical–even if your student is the most fluid out loud reader…are they really understanding what they’re reading? Reading comprehension weaknesses can be sneaky because they can be difficult to identify. In this re-air of episode 17,  Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET  dig in to why students can pretend they understand what they’re re...

 Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET, are joined again by Dr. Ellen Braaten, the author of Bright Kids Who Couldn’t Care Less. She shares the signs of an unmotivated child and discusses “hiding failures.” Dr. Braaten highlights the importance of knowing what gives us pleasure in order to help us get motivated. She discusses the impact that processing speed has on motivation...

 Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET, welcome back Dr. Ellen Braaten to discuss the origin story of her new book, Bright Kids Who Couldn’t Care Less. Dr. Braaten shares her thoughts on how motivation works and how motivation is not generated the same way each time. She shares how parents need to look at their own expectations and look at their child and reconcile the two. Sh...

Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET welcome Anxiety Expert and OCD Child Therapist Natasha Daniels to the podcast. They chat about how people misunderstand OCD and what the true definition of OCD is. Natasha digs into the different types of OCD and how they play into each other. She shares about how personification of OCD and how it can help. They dig into a conversation abo...

 Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET deep dive into note-taking in this re-air of episode 47. They chat about why it is so difficult, the various types of notes that teachers require and several of their favorite strategies. Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/learnsmarterpodcast How to connect with us: Join our FB Group Join our e-mail list Rachel’s Kapp Educatio...

Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET welcome back Nikki, who initially joined us back in 2019 when she was 15 years old. She was Steph’s client at My Ed Therapist and is now a sophomore in college. Nikki shares what it was like to listen to her 2019 episode and updates us on what’s changed and what’s the same. She talks about how her development of time has changed as she’s e...

Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET discuss why systems for time, physical space, and digital space are essential for high functioning learners. They discuss why simplicity is a virtue, how systems impact the quality of life for learners, and how systems create a roadmap for schooling success. Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/learnsmarterpodcast How to connect...

Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET welcome Rachel’s client, Marshall. He shares his story about what brought him to seek educational therapy and how his executive functioning impacted his relationships and self-esteem. He also shares how accountability, positive social pressure and systems have helped him reach toward his goals. Marshall explains how he uses his systems as...

Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET do a deep dive on motivation. Hear why they don’t believe any student is ever “lazy” and what language they use instead. Also, they talk about why motivation suddenly stops for students who struggle in school. Then they dissect the differences between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and the parallels between growth and fixed mindset tha...

Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET share their experiences about the top five reasons why learners wait for deadlines. Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/learnsmarterpodcast How to connect with us: Join our FB Group Join our e-mail list Rachel’s Kapp Educational Therapy Group website Steph’s My Ed Therapist website  @learnsmarterpodcast , @kappedtherapy , @...

Rachel Kapp, M.Ed., BCET, and Stephanie Pitts, M.Ed., BCET discuss the pressure to be productive as business owners and podcasters. They share why they’re talking about this, what led them to some realizations about productivity pressure, how it impacts their quality of life (and the quality of life of their teams) and what they do to mitigate that pressure on themselves.  Other episodes mentioned...