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Brain Balance Brooklyn

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Essential Resources for Educators

Tools and insights for the educators who see our kids every day. Use these resources to better understand the challenges your students face and how Brain Balance works alongside families and schools to help kids thrive.

Supporting the Whole Child, Together

You see what parents sometimes can't: the gap between a student's potential and their daily performance. The child who's clearly bright but can't get thoughts on paper. The one who melts down during transitions. The student who's trying harder than anyone else in the room but falling further behind.

Brain Balance partners with educators because you're often the first to recognize when something's getting in the way of learning—and the first to notice when something shifts. Our program addresses the underlying developmental foundations that affect attention, behavior, and learning, and when those foundations strengthen, it shows up in your classroom.

We're not here to replace what you do. We're here to support it—giving families tools that help kids arrive at school more regulated, focused, and ready to learn. When that happens, everybody wins.

Guides & Downloads

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Build Better Focus Guide

In this guide, you will learn about sustained and reward-driven attention, why it’s important to balance these two types of attention, and tips and tricks to find a balance between tech and brain-healthy activities. Lastly, you’ll learn the attention span expectations you should have for your child’s age.

Download Resource

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Behavior Chart

One behavioral technique to help keep your child on track is to document their behavior as both good, needs improvement, or neutral. Behavior charts are one of the fastest and easiest behavior modification tools available today. Most children love the immediate feedback these reward charts offer, which helps keep them motivated. Our behavioral chart includes suggested behaviors to enforce with easy-to-follow graphics that show your child's daily behavior.

Download Resource

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Organization Chart

Disorganization can lead to decreased productivity, lower grades and a feeling of being overwhelmed for some children. It is important to help your child stay organized with their daily routines when they are having trouble staying focused. Our Brain Balance organizational chart can help your child stay on-task. It includes suggested morning, after-school and evening routines. With some guided practice, these routines will eventually become automatic and will provide organizational skills that will assist your child for a lifetime!

Download Resource

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Executive Function Skills and School Success Guide

Executive functioning skills are the foundation for effective self-regulation and goal-directed behavior, making them crucial for classroom success. Students with well-developed executive functioning skills are better equipped to focus on tasks, set and achieve academic goals, and navigate the complex demands of a classroom environment. In this guide, you will gain an understanding of executive functioning skills, how they develop in the brain, and how to help your child lay the groundwork for success.

Download Resource

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Eat These Five Foods for Better Focus

Download the free guide: "Eat These Five Foods for Better Focus" to learn how specific nutrient-dense foods can improve brain health, focus, and mood. This guide, written by Kelli Berghoff, Registered Dietitian, mom of two boys, and Brain Balance Director of Nutrition provides easy, family-friendly recipes and tips on incorporating these brain-boosting foods into daily meals while avoiding foods that cause inflammation and energy crashes.

Download Resource

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Parenting Challenging Behaviors

Tips from Licensed Clinical Marriage and Family Therapist and Professor, Dr. Michelle Robertson, Ph.D., LCMFT. Download the free guide to learn how to align your parenting to support the goals you have for your child’s behavior. Whether you’re parenting a young kid or a teen (or both!), this guide will help you understand your child’s dysregulated behavior and give you actionable strategies to support your child and encourage improvements in behavior at home.

Download Resource

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Stress and the ADHD Brain

This guide provides parents with actionable steps to help improve focus and calm anxious feelings both at home and at school. In the ADHD Guide, you'll learn about what happens in the brain of a child or teen with ADHD and how stress impacts their brain. You'll also discover strategies to help your child enhance their focus and manage anxious feelings. Additionally, the guide includes a daily optimal focus checklist to help keep kids focused and calm throughout the day.

Download Resource

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Classroom Brain Breaks for Better Focus

When teachers have tried redirecting and reminders and students just can't seem to stay on task, try these tips from our Brain Balance team. Download our free Classroom Brain Breaks resource for teachers. You'll get ideas to help keep students' brains engaged throughout the school day. With these quick, three-to-five-minute brain breaks, you can help engage students' brains and reset their minds for better attention and academic retention.

Download Resource

Brain Balance Research in the Classroom

In a peer-reviewed pilot study published in the Journal for the Study of Education and Development, students aged 5–15 with pre-existing developmental and academic challenges participated in the Brain Balance program on-site at their school—three sessions per week during the school year.

The results? Improved attention and classroom behavior, as reported by teachers who saw the changes firsthand.

This study adds to a growing body of research showing that when we address underlying developmental foundations, the effects show up where it matters most: in the classroom.

Read the full study →

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Webinars On-Demand

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The Science Behind Focus & Distraction

Lack of focus impacts all areas of life, but solutions are complex. Join Dr. Rebecca Jackson and Dr. Joaquin Anguera as they discuss the latest science on focus, distraction, and three key insights for parents to help improve these challenges.

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How to Help Your Child Build Better Focus

Join Dr. Courtney Gallen as she discusses two key attention abilities for academic success. Learn how mindfulness exercises can improve focus and discover practical tips parents can use now to help kids succeed in the next school year.

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Get the Brain Ready for School Learning: Understanding Executive Functions

Parents, your child’s brain works hard to keep up in school! Executive functioning skills play a key role in success. Join Dr. Mark Goldenberg and Dr. Rebecca Jackson as they explore the importance of these skills and their impact on classroom performance.

ADHD: Beyond Medication
ADHD: Beyond Medication

Join Dr. Rebecca Jackson as she discusses how a whole-child approach can reduce ADHD symptoms beyond medication. Hear from a Brain Balance parent who shares their family’s journey toward improved well-being.

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Special education attorney Dana Jonson joins to help parents navigate IEPs, 504 Plans, and when to bring in outside support. With 20+ years of experience—and five kids with disabilities of her own—Dana brings both legal expertise and real-world perspectives.

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Parenting Challenging Behaviors

Join Dr. Rebecca Jackson and Dr. Michelle Robertson as they discuss how to align parenting strategies with your child's behavior goals. Learn effective approaches to support growth and address challenging behaviors in kids and teens.

 

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Eat These Five Foods for Better Focus

Join Dr. Rebecca Jackson and Kelli Berghoff to explore the role of nutrition in managing ADHD. Learn about five foods to avoid and five that support focus, impulsivity, emotional regulation, and attention.

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How to Help Kids Build Solid Friendships

Join Dr. Rebecca Jackson and Dr. Robyn Silverman as they discuss guiding children through the complexities of friendships. Dr. Silverman shares insights from her book, offering practical advice on teaching kids about friendship, identifying good friends, and navigating social dynamics.

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Healthy Screen Habits for Kids and Teens: Understanding Impact and Taking Action

Join digital wellness expert Nicole Rawson to discuss the impact of screens on brain development, executive function, and physical activity. Learn how screens affect children with ADHD, sensory processing issues, and anxiety, and gain insights into managing screen time effectively.

Everything Starts in the Brain

This short video from Harvard's Center on the Developing Child explains how brain architecture is built—and what happens when that foundation is uneven. It's the science behind what we see every day at Brain Balance.

Meet Sarah Weeks, Executive Director, Brain Balance of Brooklyn

Sarah Weeks has spent over 20 years in education—not just observing from the sidelines, but deeply immersed in teaching, learning, leadership and advocacy. She started as a 1:1 aide working with students on the Autism Spectrum while still in college, then moved through classroom teaching, special education, and school leadership across New York City.

After Yale and master's degrees in Educational Policy and School Administration from Stanford and Pace, Sarah became the Founding Principal of a new public high school Brooklyn and led it for four years. She then scaled up to support 27 NYC secondary schools as Deputy Network Leader. Missing the daily work with students, teachers, and families, she returned to found a successful middle school program at an inclusive Brooklyn charter school.

Ready for a change of pace, and more time with her own young children, Sarah shifted to educational consulting and began a PhD at Teachers College, Columbia, focusing on inclusive leadership and equity-driven decision making. A one-year pause in her program to serve as an Interim Head of School reminded her where her heart really is: working directly with children, adolescents and parents, especially those who aren't thriving in conventional school settings.

After two decades championing families inside the system—fighting for the students traditional schools weren't built to serve—and years searching and fighting for services for her own children, Sarah knows too many children require something different from what’s typically available. She's been the advocate in IEP meetings, the principal pushing to meet the needs of all students, the leader helping teachers see students' potential instead of deficits, and the parent calling for attention to her child’s strengths and needs. She's seen too many brilliant kids struggle not because they can't learn, but because their schools weren’t ready to support how they learn. Opening Brain Balance of Brooklyn is her next act of advocacy: offering families an evidence-based, individualized approach that meets each person where they actually are. It's about giving parents and children, as well as adult learners, the tools and support they need to thrive.

BRAIN BALANCE CENTER OF BROOKLYN

Brain Balance helps children who struggle behaviorally, socially, and academically through a holistic and integrated approach that is customized to meet the needs of each child.

Read more about the Center

Location

32 Court Street
Suite 1506
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Phone

718-489-0866

Hours

Monday to Friday: 10am - 7pm
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