Dr. Cynthia Hudley is a professor in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she has also served as Associate Dean of the UCSB Graduate Division.  Dr. Hudley received her PhD in Educational Psychology from UCLA.  She previously earned a bachelor's degree in social psychology from UCSB, a standard secondary teaching credential from California State University at Los Angeles, a masters' degree in reading, and special education specialist and resource specialist credentials from Pepperdine University.  Dr. Hudley has earned a total of 5 California teaching and service credentials, including an administrative services credential and a community college instructor credential.  

Prior to her academic career Dr. Hudley spent 15 years as a professional educator, working as both a teacher and an administrator in special education programs for students with emotional disturbances at the middle school and high school levels, as well as incarcerated juvenile populations.

Dr. Hudley developed the aggression reduction curriculum, the BrainPower program, to improve peer relations in elementary school.  This program has been designated a "Promising Program" by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an agency of the U.S. department of Health and Human Services.  Her research on the development of the BrainPower program has been published in some of the leading academic journals in the country.  For a summary of that research, click here.

In addition, Dr. Hudley has been a member of several national advisory committees relevant to youth violence including an advisory committee for the investigation of Disproportionate Minority Incarceration for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

This curriculum came into being due to my enduring interest in children who have what I once thought of as inexplicably aggressive responses in their social relations with other children.  This interest emerged during my first years, if not weeks, as a teacher in a middle school referred to euphemistically as an “opportunity school”, for children who were having difficulty in the regular classroom.  Scenes of indignation or outrage were an almost daily occurrence in our small learning community, and I as a novice teacher struggled to make sense of what these children could possibly be doing to one another to arouse such heated aggression.  My more experienced colleagues tended to chalk up the intense emoting to hormones.  However, we could reliably expect any one of a relatively small, specific group of mostly boys who were known for this behavior to get into a similar and all too familiar pattern of disruptive behavior with some frequency.

In the midst of an organized activity, whether it was an intense and quiet sustained reading period or a lively and active cooperative project, one of these young people would invariably lash out at a peer.  One of the staff would dutifully pull the child aside and ask what brought on the aggressive, unhappy behavior.  Just as dutifully, the child would reply, “He (or she) was ‘looking at me funny, like they were making fun of me’”.  Or perhaps, “I saw her (or him) look over at me and then start whispering, and I know they were talking bad about me”.  Or even “Somebody bumped my desk (or book; or shoe).  And I know it must have been him (or her)”.  As the conversation progressed, I would invariably hear such things as “I just know it was them; I can tell”.  And, if the misbehavior was far enough beyond the pale to warrant some punishment like lunch detention, yard pick up duty, or some other unattractive task, the child would invariably reply, “See!!  He (or she) was trying to get me in trouble.”  No logic could convince the child that the response was not appropriate.

And the behavior did not just bother the staff; peers also found these children particularly unattractive companions, and they wound up spending most of their time with others like them.  Noticing that some children were social misfits in an “opportunity school” suggested to me that the behaviors that landed them in a social wasteland were a sign of far more that “raging hormones”.  But I was young, and there was a lot to learn in a challenging environment, and somehow we all managed to hang on and get along enough of the time to engage academically.  I considered it a success that most of my students learned well and moved back into the regular school population; the social anomalies would have to take care of themselves.

I never forgot the experience or the behaviors that I encountered working in that setting, although I traversed a professional career lasting more than a decade in a variety of roles in a variety of secondary schools.  Through it all, the memories of those unaccountably aggressive, affronted children stayed with me.  Imagine my surprise when I decided to go back to graduate school and found that my students of long ago had recently emerged in the research literature.

This fortuitous timing shaped the first decade of my academic career and resulted in a program of intervention research to address that disruptive and once baffling behavior. As much as the behavior distracted and challenged me as a novice teacher, I came to understand that it was far more debilitating for students who live in a world where almost any negative event is counted a personal insult that must be met with immediate, direct retaliation. These are the children with few friendships and many days of detention, with a firm belief that others mean them harm and little patience for any other explanation. Although I know that the world is not as safe a place as it should be for all children, some children see intentional insult where none exists and persistently refuse to distinguish between friend and foe. If the only social strategy one has is retaliation, the entire playground becomes a battle ground. I hope that my efforts can make the playground a little friendlier for these children.

To purchase Dr. Hudley's book, You Did that on Purpose, that describes the BrainPower Program in detail click here