LeBrea Pringle's care-centred approach transforms classrooms through neuroscience and belonging

Top educator LeBrea Pringle advocates for care-driven teaching rooted in neuroscience and emotional safety, aiming to foster environments where students feel seen, valued, and supported amidst diverse educational settings.

LeBrea Pringle has built her teaching philosophy around a simple but demanding idea: students do best when classrooms consistently tell them they matter. Recognised as a Top 50 Educator, Pringle has centred her work on care, neuroscience and instructional design, with a focus on creating learning spaces where adolescents can achieve academically while also feeling safe, seen and supported.

That approach did not emerge all at once. Pringle says she knew from an early age that she wanted to teach, but years working in very different schools shaped how she understood the job. Across under-resourced communities serving predominantly Black and Brown students and more affluent, predominantly white schools, she saw that the same curriculum could land very differently depending on culture, context and students’ developmental needs. Her doctoral research reinforced that view, linking care, adolescent brain development and academic success.

A key turning point came during a mid-year reflection with middle school English language arts students. When asked to identify what they had taken from the class, many wrote the same message: “I am loved, needed, and important.” For Pringle, that was more than a touching response. It forced her to think carefully about whether her instruction was only transferring knowledge or also shaping identity, confidence and belonging. She now treats care not as an add-on, but as a precondition for learning.

Pringle has translated that conviction into the Common CARE Standards and Domains, a framework designed to help educators build emotionally safe, brain-aligned classrooms. The model pushes back against compliance-driven teaching and instead encourages practices rooted in connection, relevance and psychological safety. She supports that work through coaching, school care audits, professional learning sessions, free workshops, book clubs and online communities that aim to make care-centred teaching more practical for schools facing real constraints.

Her thinking also reflects a wider movement in education and related fields. Neuroscience for Education, for example, offers training that blends brain science with classroom practice, while Neural Education focuses on reducing barriers such as stress, bias and emotional reactivity through research-informed learning. The Thrive Approach likewise places safe, consistent relationships at the centre of children’s social and emotional development. In health care, the Joint Commission and the National CLAS Standards both show how institutions increasingly use standards to improve safety, quality and fairness, underscoring the broader appeal of frameworks that turn values into measurable practice. For Pringle, that same logic should apply in schools.