Grey Matters: Teaching the way the brain learns

Breaking words or building words

5/8/2017

Words can break a student or build a student. What words are are you using in your classroom? Are they building words like “You’re getting better at this” or “I like your persistence” or are they breaking words like “Seriously” or “I can’t believe you don’t remember this”.

We’ve all had those moments where we mentally wonder if our students are ever going to get it. What feels like the millionth time we’ve explained a concept or helped them to sound a word out for the correct spelling; maybe it’s remembering their multiplication tables. And, without meaning to, you might say something like, “Are you kidding me?”

Now maybe you caught yourself and rephrased, in an attempt to not show just how frustrated you are.

Or maybe you didn’t even notice.

But your student did.

That singular moment for the teacher, one of a million in their average day, is now embedded in that student’s mind.

And it’ll stay there.

Nagging at them.

Feeding their insecurity.

And making them doubt their ability.

Well past their school days, they’ll most likely, recall that one moment with that one teacher, who said “Are you kidding me?”

Words are like spells. What spell are you casting in your classroom?

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The power of connection and caring

4/16/2017

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I recently read J.D.Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy (fascinating read and I highly recommend) where he credits his academic turnaround in high school to the stability he gained after he moves in with his grandmother. Throughout the latter part of the book Vance talks about the importance of role models and expectations - thinking that you can do something - and most of all, how a support network can help, even in the most challenging of family situations.

One of the things touched on in Grey Matters is the impact of stress on learning. Keep in mind, all stress is not equal. The stress of a kid not having their favorite cereal versus hoping there’s something to have for breakfast this morning. Or the stress of not finding their new jeans versus hoping there are clean clothes. It’s an omnipresent stress. If a student is stressed, they’re not focused on learning. Research has found stress physically changes the brain, shrinking the hippocampus, which plays a key role in memory.

Dr.Mariale Hardiman, author of the book, “The Brain Targeted Teaching Model for the 21st Century School,” the basis of Grey Matters, discusses stress and learning in Brain Target 1 - establishing the emotional component for learning. When a teacher prioritizes establishing a positive emotional classroom climate and striving to connect with their students, it “broadens cognitive associations and results in better performance on creative thinking measures” (Fredrickson B.L.)

So what does this look like in a classroom, when a teacher understands how severely stress impacts on learning? Jeremy Mettler, a high school teacher at Batavia High School, a rustbelt city in upstate New York, aims to eliminate the barriers to learning in his classroom. “I keep pens, pencils, snacks, and water in his classroom. It’s there. They know where it is. If they need something printed, I can do that. I want them to know that I care. Because when they know I care about them, I can get them to go so much further in my classroom.

For Vicky Krug, a developmental education professor at Westmoreland County Community College, it’s a tougher crowd. Students in her classes arrive angry, because they’ve tested, and unfairly they feel, into her class. For Krug, when she was a student, the most important thing to her was knowing that she mattered and she wants her students to know they matter. Despite feeling like they’re starting their college career off at a disadvantage.

Hardiman’s book quotes research studies that show “students who report having personal connections with adults in school have stronger academic performance (WIlson, 2004), attendance (Croninger and Lee, 2001), and school completion rates (Connell, Halpern-Felsher, Clifford, Crichlow, & Usinger, 1995; Finn & Rock, 1997). They are also less likely to engage in disruptive behavior and violence in school (Goodenow, 1993; Lonczak, Abbott, Hawkins, Kosterman, & Catalano, 2002).

If you want your students to care about learning, let them know they matter.

Show your students, you care about them.

Yours in learning and filmmaking.
Ramona

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Documentary Film Shows Connection Between Learning and Brain Sciences

2/20/2017

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For immediate release: February 21, 2017
Contact: Ramona Persaud: 315-272-5791;info at changethelensproductions dot com

Documentary Film Shows Connection Between Learning and Brain Sciences

Syracuse, N.Y.—A novel teaching method informed by the brain sciences is the subject of a documentary film, “Grey Matters: Teaching the Way the Brain Learns.” The film will be shown on Thursday, March 23, at 6:30pm at the Johns Hopkins School of Education in Baltimore.

The Brain Targeted Teaching Model, developed by Dr. Mariale Hardiman, interim dean at the Johns Hopkins School of Education, is a model of best practices, informed by research from the brain sciences. Grey Matters follows three public school teachers using the Brain Targeted Teaching Model in their classrooms.

The first step in the process of executing the model is teachers having students make an emotional connection to what they’re learning.

“The brain looks for patterns all the time,” said Hardiman, who created the Neuro-Education Initiative when she joined the School of Education in 2006. “The physical environment is an important factor in students’ attendant behavior and their engagement. I tell teachers to make their classrooms as homey as possible.”

Content standards and objectives are designed using graphics to show students the connections between the skills, content and concepts they’ll be learning.

“Try putting together a jigsaw puzzle without seeing the picture on the outside of the box. The various pieces of the puzzle wouldn’t make much sense to you, and yet that’s what we do to kids all the time,” said Hardiman. “We give them activities, but we never give them the big picture—why the activities are important or where they’re leading, or how they were built from their prior knowledge.

Once students demonstrate a mastery of content, teachers design activities that enable their students to apply the acquired knowledge in real-world settings.

“Real learning is when you apply knowledge,” said Hardiman, who is the author of The Brain-Targeted Teaching Model for 21st Century Schools, published in 2012 by Corwin. “The teachers themselves are not only taught what to do in the classroom, but why they’re doing it. And they understand why they’re doing it from the basis of how children think and learn.”

The film was produced and directed by Ramona Persaud who spent a year observing teachers using the model in classrooms across the United States.

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Breaking words or building words

The power of connection and caring

Documentary Film Shows Connection Between Learning and Brain Sciences

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