La’Brea Pringle: Reimagining Education Through Care, Neuroscience, and the Science of Belonging

Dr. La’Brea Pringle, recognized as a Top 50 Educator, has built her career around a powerful belief: students learn best in environments that consistently communicate their value. Her work sits at the intersection of care, neuroscience, and instructional design, reshaping what it means to create classrooms where adolescents not only achieve academically, but also feel seen, safe, and deeply supported as learners.

From her earliest memories, Pringle knew she wanted to be a teacher. What began as an instinctive sense of purpose has evolved into a highly intentional, research-driven approach to education. Her journey has taken her across a wide range of school environments—from under-resourced communities serving predominantly Black and Brown students to affluent, predominantly white schools. While the curriculum remained consistent, she quickly learned that instructional effectiveness depends on responsiveness: to culture, context, and the developmental realities of students.

Her doctoral research deepened this understanding, anchoring her work in the relationship between care, adolescent brain development, and academic achievement. Over time, her mission sharpened into a clear focus: transforming learning environments so that every student experiences instruction grounded in dignity, belonging, and how the brain actually learns.

A Defining Moment That Reframed Teaching

A pivotal moment in Pringle’s career came during a mid-year reflection process with her middle school ELA students. As part of a structured evaluation, students were asked to identify their biggest takeaway from the class. Again and again, one phrase appeared: “I am loved, needed, and important.”

The consistency of their responses prompted a profound internal shift. Pringle began to question not just what students were learning, but what they were internalizing. Was her instructional practice centered on content mastery, or on cultivating identity, confidence, and belonging?

That reflection became a turning point in her teaching praxis. It reinforced a foundational belief that now drives her work: care is not separate from learning—it is the condition that makes learning possible.

Building Systems of Care: The Common CARE Standards

Pringle has translated that belief into actionable systems through the creation of the Common CARE Standards and Domains. This framework provides educators with research-aligned guidance for designing instruction rooted in emotional safety, belonging, and adolescent development.

Grounded in neuroscience, the CARE Standards challenge traditional, compliance-based models of instruction. Instead, they support educators in aligning their practice with how adolescents actually learn—through connection, relevance, and psychological safety.

Beyond the framework itself, Pringle supports educators through coaching, school “care audits,” and professional learning experiences designed to help systems shift from the inside out. She also facilitates free workshops, book clubs, and online communities that make care-centered pedagogy more accessible and actionable for educators across contexts.

Navigating Resistance and Leading Innovation

Introducing care-centered, brain-aligned instruction into traditional educational systems has not been without resistance. Pringle notes that concepts such as emotional safety, belonging, and adolescent neuroscience can feel unfamiliar in environments still anchored to performance-driven metrics.

Yet she frames that tension as part of innovation itself. Since first publishing her work on care in Learning for Justice in 2022, she has steadily expanded her reach through conferences, educator communities, and direct coaching. Her approach is grounded in three anchors: research, community, and continuous growth.

For Pringle, trailblazing is not about certainty—it is about commitment to a vision that evolves through practice, evidence, and lived experience.

Advice for Teachers Experiencing Burnout

To educators feeling stuck or burned out, Pringle offers a grounded reminder: burnout is not a reflection of inadequacy, but a signal of sustained overload in a profession that requires deep emotional labor.

Her guidance begins with reconnection—to purpose, to students, and to the parts of teaching that once felt energizing. She encourages educators to start small: redesigning a lesson, rebuilding a student relationship, or reintroducing joy and creativity into instruction.

Renewal, she emphasizes, does not come from doing more. It comes from restoring space for meaning, curiosity, and humanity within the work.

Advocacy Rooted in Clarity and Collaboration

Pringle’s approach to advocacy is rooted in clarity: the ability to name what is needed and why it matters for both students and educators. She encourages educators to ground their advocacy in research, student voice, and lived experience.

Equally important is collective action. Change becomes more sustainable when educators build communities of practice, document impact, and work together toward shared goals. Even in resistant systems, she believes consistent clarity and collaboration can create meaningful momentum.

Reimagining Education at the System Level

If leading the U.S. Department of Education, Pringle would establish a national initiative to restore trust in public education through care-centered learning environments. This initiative would embed emotional safety, belonging, student agency, and educator well-being into federal guidelines and funding structures.

She also advocates for reimagining accountability systems to measure not only academic outcomes, but the quality of learning environments themselves. In her view, schools should be evaluated based on how well they support human development—not just test performance.

This shift, she argues, would move education from symptom management to systemic transformation.

From Content to Conditions

One of the most important changes Pringle believes education must make is a shift from content-first thinking to conditions-first thinking. Academic standards remain important, but they cannot succeed without attention to the emotional, relational, and cognitive environments in which learning occurs.

Stress, disconnection, and lack of belonging directly affect how the brain processes information. When schools intentionally design for those conditions, both student outcomes and teacher wellbeing improve. For Pringle, wellbeing is not separate from achievement—it is the foundation of it.

Extending Impact Beyond the Classroom

As a Top 50 Educator, Pringle has extended her influence far beyond her own classroom through the development of tools, frameworks, and professional learning spaces. The Common CARE Standards serve as a cornerstone of this work, alongside coaching, care audits, and educator support systems.

She has also built a growing online community that offers free workshops, book clubs, and conversations focused on the intersection of care and neuroscience. Through writing, speaking, and resource-sharing, she translates research into practical tools that educators can use immediately.

Her goal is simple but ambitious: to ensure that care-centered education is not theoretical, but operational.

A Legacy of Care and Possibility

When reflecting on legacy, Pringle returns to a central conviction: students learn best in environments that consistently affirm their worth. She hopes to leave behind frameworks that make care a daily instructional practice, not an abstract ideal.

For students, she envisions schools as spaces where they felt valued, supported, and believed in. For educators, she hopes to model what it means to lead with both rigor and humanity—grounded in research, sustained by community, and guided by purpose.

Ultimately, La’Brea Pringle’s work is defined by a singular throughline: transforming education into a system where care is not an enhancement to learning, but its foundation.