Brain-based research provides teachers with a lot of helpful do’s and don’ts to bring back to the classroom.  “We do one thing in one way and hope for the best, but for many of our students, it will not be enough” (Tomlinson & Kalbfleisch, 1998).  Even if we teach using the brain-based approach, there is still the problem of all of the different levels of learners in one classroom.  These complicated organs called brains all develop at different rates, and there are some students that are far more ready for complicated tasks than others.  With all of the different levels, we do need to make sure they’re all enriching their brain as mentioned above, but what can we do in our classrooms?  We differentiate!

“What we call differentiation is not a recipe for teaching…It is not what a teacher does when he or she has time.  It is a way of thinking about teaching and learning.  It is a philosophy” (Tomlinson, 2000).

Differentiation is one of those complex ideas that cannot just be copied off of the internet and pasted into a classroom.  Differentiation is something that teachers need to believe in.  All students are different, and therefore need to see school and learning differently.

Lori Tukey (2002), a sixth-grade teacher, gave a great analogy comparing golf to learning.  We all understand the concept, but our skill levels vary greatly.  Any golfer on the course has similar goals, but how those goals are met varies greatly.  No two golfers will have the same game.  Neither will any two learners have the same experience in a classroom. The following are some ways to help reach all students’ brains, regardless of their current level.

Prepare the Students

Differentiation can only begin if each student feels safe to learn in the classroom environment.  “When a child feels intimidated, rejected, or at risk, an overproduction of noradrenalin causes that child to focus attention on self-protection rather than on learning” (Tomlinson & Kalbfleish, 1998).  This again brings us back to the problems that stress causes the adolescent brain.  Another quote from Sabbagh (2007) states, “when adolescents are in situations with few competing demands, they do indeed behave like adults.”  We need to make sure, as teachers, that all baggage and other competing demands stay outside of the classroom and that all students feel like they are welcome to take chances and learn.

One suggestion from Eric Jensen (1998) was using a “dumping box” near the entrance where students can physically or just symbolically drop any problems off at the door so that all students can start on a clean slate.   Another way is to again maintain consistency with rules and expectations.  When students are confronted immediately after making a bad decision that effects the positive classroom environment, they will quickly learn how to act appropriately, and create an environment where the teens can feel more able to make adult-like decisions.  Once all students feel welcome and ready to learn, we then need to find ways to reach all students.

One way to start each unit off on the right track is to simply explain what you’re going to be teaching.  Tomlinson (2000) spoke of one teacher, “At the outset of each chapter, the teacher delineated for students the specific skills, concepts, and understandings that they needed to master for that segment of the curriculum.”  By explaining the requirements at the beginning, students’ brains are already processing what is to come and will be more prepared to take on the work.  They can also begin making connections right away, and won’t be surprised when the new ideas are brought up.  As mentioned in Part 1, it’s important to help students work on organizational skills, because many of their brains are not yet prepared to do it on their own.  By giving them visuals to look at and see what they need to know and do, students are better able to prepare themselves for what they need to accomplish.  Schedules on the board is something I have used in the past, and I know that it helps, not only the students, but also the teacher’s aids and myself.  They keep us on track and remind us what needs to be accomplished and when.

Give students ownership

Lori Tukey (2002) is a sixth-grade teacher that is seeing the rewards of differentiating her writing curriculum.  She starts by preparing helper sheets for her students.  These sheets document goal-setting, conferences, and record-keeping.  But before they are given to the class, she gives students the opportunity to critique the sheets and change them.  Inevitably, what they come back with is always “simple and user friendly,” she said.

Once she began the writing process, students had already been given the choice of how their helper sheets were going to look, and they also chose what their writing goals were going to be.  This definitely differentiated the writing process for each student.  There were similar requirements, but each student had a specific goal for improvement in mind.

“When students can actually see their own growth through many drafts, they are motivated to do even more.  Even the poor writers felt success and took pride in what they were able to produce” (Tukey, 2002, p. 64).  By differentiating her writing curriculum, students are seeing the relevance of each writing assignment, because they had created their own personal goals for each writing assignment.  This again correlates with the brain-based learning; she was including their emotions by giving them the chance to feel success in something that they found important and relevant.

Students are also getting constant feedback from her and other students.  They’re seeing the learning as meaningful, because it applied more specifically to their individual needs. Though I can’t see myself creating this miraculous writing process in my classroom this year, I think students can feel ownership if they set their own goals, and in the end, have a part of their grade which documents whether or not they achieved their goal.  I am also a strong believer of self- and peer-assessment, where students can see what needs to be improved and make those corrections before moving on and getting their final grade.

Create Open-Ended Activities

If we want all students to be able to understand, enjoy, and contribute to the group, we need to make our instruction open-ended, with many different answers to the question.  Hileman (2006) said, “Real-world problem solving allows the brain to do what the brain does best, make decisions that promote creative, meaningful and productive judgment.  Modeling and organizing projects and activities that require higher-level thinking should be your main instructional goal when developing thinking skills in students.”  By creating activities where all students get a question that is relevant to the curriculum, but are allowed to create their own answers, their brains will be enriched at the appropriate level.  As stated before, students don’t need to come up with a right answer for students’ brains to make connections; as long as they’re challenged, and continue to problem solve possible solutions, we are helping their brains learn so much more than by giving them a fill-in-the-blank worksheet.

One example of an open-ended activity is a Socratic Seminar.  To create a Socratic Seminar, students should be given a text and then have to create a viewpoint or answer to a question, using the text as proof of their answer.  Students should create their “answer” individually, and then as a group, get together in a circle.  Students will then all get a chance to explain their viewpoints.  Not all students will agree, and discussion will be created.  “The teacher’s open-ended questions in the Socratic seminar differentiate process, allowing each student to deliberate and respond at his or her own level using a variety of reasoning strategies” (Schneider, 2000).

The great thing about Socratic Seminars is that all students come to the circle at their level of learning, with their comprehension of the text on paper, but through discussion, ALL students will see different ways to look at the text, regardless of their learning level.  All students come from different backgrounds, and will be able to share different ideas with the group.  This gives students a chance to make many different connections at one time, and makes the information very meaningful.  Socratic seminars are a different way to teach, leaving the discussion up to the students, instead of having the teacher ask questions in front of the room and students raise their hand if they’re daring enough to share an answer.

Though I have never used this process yet in my classroom, I have been a part of some through St. Mary’s, and I’ve seen how well they can work.  All students are given the chance to speak, and some new ideas that I would never have thought of were brought to my attention.  This gives more students a chance to lead the conversation, since all need to take part, and provides a simple way to formatively assess the students’ comprehension of an idea.

Another idea that incorporates more creative thinking is the sketch to stretch.  Students fold their paper into four sections, and get two minutes to sketch a picture in each of the segments according to what they felt was most important in the portion of text given.  This allows students to use their creativity, but again, at the depth that they are comfortable with.  When the eight minutes are up, students join in a round-robin circle and share what they drew.  Schneider (2000) explains, “When participants share their representations of the chapter in a round-robin, the struggling and advanced learners witness each other’s process.”

This process gives the necessary repetition for some brains to understand the text, but it keeps it interesting, since no two students will create the exact same representation of the text.  Again, this is another great way to assess learning of ALL students, without them even feeling like they’re taking a test.

One last idea for differentiated activities would be a literature circle.  Schneider (2000) explains the four roles that she begins with.  The “literary luminary” finds quotable lines to discuss with the group.  The illustrator makes an illustration to show the important idea from the text.  The “vocabulary enricher” finds words that need to be defined or words that really stood out in the text.  The connector makes connections between the writing and real life, explaining how the text relates or could relate to a real-life situation.

Schneider’s way of differentiating this activity is to allow students to choose the role that they play.  Students that may not be as comfortable with the text may choose to illustrate or be the vocabulary enricher.  However, all roles can be given to students of any level; since it is a group activity, all students will be able to evaluate and reflect on all students’ work before sharing it with a group.  Schneider continued by saying that roles can be switched, or changed, if another may be more fitting.  Some other example roles could be that of a discussion director or summarizer, or any number of other roles that students or the teacher create.  Students each get a chance to be leader, since all of their roles are different.  Students are working together to accomplish the problem-solving instead of getting direct instruction from the teacher as well.

Summing It Up

Is it a challenge to enrich the brain of every student that we encounter throughout the year?  Of course!  One of the most reassuring and helpful quotes that I came across was one from Lori Tukey (2002), who summarized Wehrmann by saying that she, “…argues that the most important thing about bringing differentiation into the classroom is to take small steps instead of leaping into it at full speed.  A teacher should add differentiation gradually, so the students and teacher don’t become stressed and overwhelmed.”  I know that I’m the sort of person that, without the idea that differentiation should be a gradual process, would jump in head-first and attempt to completely recreate my entire curriculum.  However, we’re worthless to our students if we throw brain-based differentiation at our students all at once at the beginning, and then burn out before the year is half over.  By starting with one subject, or with one unit, we can use bits and pieces of the brain-based differentiation and find out what works for us and our students.

While brain-based differentiation may take time and effort, I can only see the process to be worthwhile to our students.  Eric Jensen (1998) sums it up best by saying, “Humans have survived for thousands of years by trying out new things, not by always getting the “right,” tried-and-true answer.  That’s not healthy for growing a smart, adaptive brain.”  Not only should this be an inspirational quote for our students, but it should be something for us to bring to our classrooms.  Brain-based teaching may not come smoothly at first, but it is our nature as humans to continue to try until we do find the best answer.

Some of us may already be using differentiation throughout the day, while others may be strictly by-the-book and have a lot of work to do.  But, like we need to differentiate with our students, the idea of differentiation will be different for all teachers.  Though there is no “right answer” to differentiation, it is obvious to me that brain-based differentiation should exist in all classrooms.  By understanding our students’ brains, and teaching in a way that continually challenges and energizes them, they will learn so much more than they could in a more traditional atmosphere.  As I will be challenging myself throughout the rest of my career to create a differentiated, brain-based classroom, I challenge you to take the leap and do what you can to stretch and enrich the brains of every student you encounter, and look at all attempts, as small as they may seem, as the next step to success.

Related posts:

1. The Teen Brain Pt 2: Feedback
2. Motivating students using brain-based teaching strategies.
3. The Teen Brain Pt 5: Making Learning Meaningful

Eric Jensen (1998) explains that memories are stored in different places throughout the brain, but also throughout the body.  There’s a different spot for memories of sound, reading, names, and learned motor skills, just to name a few.  So in order to help our students best remember things, we need to help them store ideas in more than one place.  According to Judy Willis (2007), “The more regions of the brain that store data about a subject, the more interconnection there is.  This redundancy means students will have more opportunities to pull up all of those related bits of data from their multiple storage areas in response to a single cue.”

If we continually give students sheets full of vocabulary and tell them to memorize them, they will only be putting that information into one area of the brain.  But if we give students a vocabulary word, have them look up the definition, write it, create a picture of the word, and then share that picture and definition with another student, there are many more connections that have been made, and there’s a much better chance that that word will stick with the student outside of the classroom.

Hileman (2007) said, “…the more an idea or skill is used the faster and more accurate we become at the particular knowing or doing.  On the other hand, too much of the same thing can be boring”.  By simply giving students multiple ways to practice one skill, such as vocabulary words, they’re using the same skill repeatedly, but won’t get bored, because of the variety that they’re being given.  This variety not only keeps them from being bored, but it helps them make multiple connections with that one idea, which helps the brain remember that idea better.

Let’s also not forget about the fact that our brains are programmed to determine what’s important and what’s not.  Though I know that even I fall victim to giving vocabulary lists and asking students to memorize them (rote memory), this is definitely not the best instructional practice.  “Rote memory tasks are, unfortunately, the most commonly required ones for students.  Students ‘memorize,’ and soon forget, facts that are often of little primary interest or emotional value, such as a list of vocabulary words” (Willis, 2007).

This idea of memory really connects with all of the other categories that have been mentioned previously.  Learning has to be meaningful to be remembered, and rote tasks do not convince students of their necessity.  When giving things such as vocabulary lists, there’s very little chance that students will make connections with other past experiences, and standard memorization provides little or no feedback.  There’s no movement involved, and students are only working independently to memorize the words that they’ve been told to memorize.  They are learning in only one way, which stops the brain from making many connections, and it generates boredom which is not the kind of emotion that motivates the student to want to learn.

I, like many teachers, have done this exact thing and seen the results.  Students roll their eyes, talk to friends, and suffer their way through vocabulary lists.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a student get excited when another 10 new words gets thrown in his/her lap.  If vocabulary is not used in a unique way, students just work on it to get it done, and really don’t ever seem to use or remember the words that were on their list.  Instead of asking for rote memorization, have students act out their vocabulary words for a group, or draw them.  By making it a competition, students will also do their best to be accurate, to help their team succeed.

Be sure to check out the rest of this series, which starts here.

Related posts:

1. The Teen Brain Pt 3: Relevance and Experience
2. The Teen Brain Pt 5: Making Learning Meaningful
3. Teaching the Teen Brain.

“The brain immediately begins a filtering process to determine which data are relevant and need our conscious attention and which are irrelevant and need to be discarded.”

This quote from Westwater and Wolfe (2007) really speaks to the importance of brain-based learning to me.  Our students’ brains do not take in all that they are given each day, and their brains immediately decide what they need to know and what can be thrown out.  If we don’t make our curriculum meaningful, they’re going to remember very little, if any, of what we’re trying to teach them.

One way to make the learning stand out more for our students’ brains is teaching with their emotions in mind.  “Creating learning activities that purposely evoke the emotions of risk, excitement, urgency and pleasure are effective brain-based strategies” (Hileman, 2006).

Now purposely just throwing in a statement that will upset students will have little benefit in the classroom.  If emotions are used as part of a lesson, students will have a more activated and chemically stimulated brain.  If you think about it, emotions drive what we do on a daily basis.  We choose to teach because we have a passion for it; we clean the house because we get so irritated with it looking messy.  If we use these sorts of emotions to encourage students to learn what we’re teaching, they are going to get much more meaning out of it then by simply telling them, “work on this because I said so.”  Eric Jensen (1998) said that emotions help us recall things better, and the more intense the emotion, the stronger the imprint will be for that student.  Just a few of the suggestions Jensen provided were positive role modeling, giving small celebrations by high-fiving or sharing work with others, debating over a controversial topic, and allowing students to be introspective through journaling, discussion, reflection, etc.

Another way to make learning more enriched and meaningful is through problem solving.  Jensen (1998) said, “The single best way to grow a better brain is through challenging problem solving.  This creates new dendritic connections that allow us to make even more connections.”  The statement that really blew me away was what he said a little later,

“Surprisingly, it doesn’t matter to the brain whether it ever comes up with an answer.  The neural growth happens because of the process, not the solution.”

It doesn’t matter if they ever get the right answer!?!  Let’s make sure the students don’t find that out!  But the idea here is that students’ brains work very hard and make incredible connections by simply brainstorming and trying to come up with an answer to a challenging problem.  So instead of asking students to continually fill in the blanks on a worksheet, they will find a lot more meaning and brain growth if they’re given a problem that requires many steps to solve, or a project that has to be created.

One activity that I’ve done in the past is to ask students what’s wrong with our country, and then have them, as groups, try to solve their problems.  Though many answers are very impossible to implement, the students spend many days discussing ideas with their partners, and coming up with the pros and cons of different possibilities.  Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was making their brains work very hard, though many of them did not come up with a reasonable solution.  It’s great to realize that it didn’t matter that they didn’t actually solve the problem; it was the process that mattered!

Have you checked out the previous parts of this series?  If not, the beginning is a great place to start.  Or, stick around for part 6: Memory.

Related posts:

1. The Teen Brain Pt 2: Feedback
2. The Teen Brain Pt 3: Relevance and Experience
3. The Teen Brain Pt 6: Memory

Welcome to Part 4 of this series on The Teen Brain.  If you haven’t already, be sure to check out a very informative overview presented in Part 1, as well as practical information you can use today in your classrooms presented in parts 2 and 3 on feedback and relevance and experience.

Part 4 is all about movement.

Though it seems simple, and many people think that it’s something that should be left for recess and physical education, movement can automatically make students’ brains work better. According to Hileman (2006), “…movement is a reliable way to increase blood flow, hence oxygenating the brain…simply standing can raise heart rate by as much as 5 to 8 percent in just seconds.”

Our brains need oxygen, and there is a growing concern that students aren’t getting enough movement to keep the oxygen flowing to the brains.  If students seem to lose interest or are getting antsy, a simple 30-second stretch break may work miracles!  Debra Prigge (2002), agrees with Hileman, but then takes it one step further by saying, “Integrating movement into learning activities increases circulation and oxygen flow to the brain, which in turn can increase student attention.

Plan your class activities so that movement is built in.”  How hard is it for students to stand up and find a partner instead of just choosing the person next to them?  Or instead of handing back papers, have students come to the front to get them from you.  Though I didn’t realize this before, movement doesn’t have to be something that takes away from learning time; students can simply stand to discuss an idea with a partner instead of sitting at their desks.  Students love going outside; by having them do a “walk and talk” lap around the school, they’re getting a chance to have some fresh air, as well as get their bodies moving while they’re discussing a classroom-related topic.  As long as we give students a chance to be up and moving throughout a long class period, we are assisting their brains and helping them stay attentive.

Stay tuned for Part five tomorrow: Making Learning Meaningful.

Related posts:

1. The Teen Brain Pt 2: Feedback
2. The Teen Brain Pt 5: Making Learning Meaningful
3. The Teen Brain Pt 6: Memory

In Part 2 of this series, I explained a bit about how important timely feedback is to a learning teenage brain, as well as some feedback management tips that will allow you to supply it without losing your mind.  Today, in Part 3, I’ll discuss how to use experience–both prior and present–to help our students make concrete connections.

Relevance: Making Connections

According to Anne Westwater and Pat Wolfe (2000), “If the brain can retrieve stored information that is similar to new information, it is more likely to make sense of the new information.  This leads to increased understanding and retention.”

So by showing students how new information can be linked to what they already know, their brain can more easily make sense of the new information coming in.  If the information has to do with something they already know and like, the students will be more interested in what we have to say.  By using mind maps or graphic organizers, students can make and visualize the connections to things they already know.

Creating Experience, Creating Learning

However, since we can’t always make connections to prior knowledge, the next best way to help the brain out, is to create a new experience.  When we create new experiences, “The activities are more meaningful to the students than such traditional activities as reading a chapter and answering questions or solving textbook problems that have little relevance to the students’ own lives” (Westwater & Wolfe, 2007).

Adolescent brains are struggling to make connections so that they can understand the environment around them.  When we simply throw new information at them without making it seem relevant, the information loses its meaning.  When we give kids real-world problems, such as a problem being faced in their community, they see the purpose in trying to solve it and make so many more connections to the curriculum.  By making more connections, the brain will better understand and retain the information.  So it is very important to remember that when teaching our disciplines, we need to point out its relevancy.

As I have stated before, adults can easily make connections that teens may not see without assistance.  So regardless of what we teach, we need to show our students how it applies to their lives and why they need to know and remember it.  One thing I’ve done, is to simply ask the students, “Why are we learning this?  Why did I ask you to do this?” and am usually impressed with the answers they come up with – some are far more advanced than my own!

By asking students “why,” many are coming up with connections that they wouldn’t have if they hadn’t been asked to think about it.

The point here is that, while the adult brain is more able to deal with abstractions and build connections on its own, the teen brain often needs to help in doing that.  Helping teens to find relevance and building experiences that incorperate your content will help them to learn.

Are you finding this brain stuff interesting?  Stick around for Part 4, in which I’ll be discussing the importance of movement.  It turns out that the brain and body are connected–perhaps in ways you’ve never considered.

Related posts:

1. The Teen Brain Pt 5: Making Learning Meaningful
2. The Teen Brain Pt 2: Feedback
3. Teaching the Teen Brain.

In Part 1 of this series, I told you that students’ brains can’t take in a lot of new information, that they’re prone to conflict, and that their brains aren’t yet ready to function at an adult level.  Does this mean that we should just give up and let them fend for themselves in our classrooms?  Though there is much more to learn about our brains, there is still a lot of information out there that can help teachers understand better ways to teach to their students’ brains.  So while researchers are learning why adolescent brains work the way they do, others are researching how to best approach the beast of the adolescent brain.

Feedback

Feedback is one of those things that most of us know we should give regularly, but it is so much easier to get papers graded if we simply put “good job” on the A papers and “you’re almost there!” on C or lower papers.  However, specific, helpful feedback is a needed part of brain enrichment.  “Because feedback reduces uncertainty, it increases coping abilities while lowering the pituitary-adrenal stress responses” (Jensen, 1998).

Lowering stress responses?  Sound familiar?  As stated before, it is one of our jobs, as teachers, to keep teen brains as low-stress as possible so that they are still able to function properly and be able to organize the information given to them.  The teen brain doesn’t always understand why it  got an A on one paper, but then get a C on the next.  This is stressful.  By explaining what was done well, or what needed to be improved on, teens are more able to take that information in and will have an easier time knowing what to do in the future.

By providing feedback, learners feel more capable and confident in their abilities.  The one key idea to remember, though, is this: “If it [feedback] is hard to get at, or the performance cannot be altered once feedback is received, the brain doesn’t learn quickly” (Jensen, 1998).  So while feedback is a very useful tool, it has to be provided before the final grade is written in stone.

Though I first saw this statement as an obstacle I couldn’t overcome due to time constraints, it’s important to remember that feedback doesn’t always have to come from the teacher, and it can be given throughout the process, instead of just at the end.  Feedback can come from the student that created the work, or by any number of peers.  By providing students with checklists, rubrics, and partners as vehicles of feedback, students’ brains will be able to better understand the work required, give the students more confidence in their work, and because of those qualities, students will be able to create a better final product.

When students know how they’re being assessed, they are much more able to accomplish the task.  The simple idea of feedback will enhance the classroom environment, making students more comfortable with each other, and giving them more perspectives on their work, instead of just theirs and that of the teacher’s.  Feedback gives students a chance to see where their work can be improved before a grade is given.  This gives a chance to practice self- and peer-assessment, which helps them think critically and understand the assessment process.

Feedback is something that I have not consistently given students, and when I have, I have given them their feedback with their grade, giving them little chance to learn from the feedback.  I feel that my recent research has been very helpful in explaining the need for feedback during the learning process, instead of at the end.

And that takes us to the end of Part 2 in this series.  Stay tuned for Part 3, in which I discuss the roles that relevance and experience play in the outcome of good teaching and learning.

Related posts:

1. The Teen Brain Pt. 4: Movement
2. The Teen Brain Pt 3: Relevance and Experience
3. Teaching the Teen Brain.

By Bobbie Dunn

Teenagers! How do you teach them? How do they learn best? How much can I teach at one time? What do you do when they seem so lazy that they won’t work for any amount of time? These are all questions that I asked over and over again in my first year of teaching.  I had accepted a job as a 7th grade language arts teacher, and I was ecstatic to have a job where I could share my love for reading.  However, I had no idea how to best teach these early adolescents who everyone seemed to be scared of.  I had heard so many horror stories of lazy, mean, impossible-to-work-with teenagers that I knew I’d have to do things in a far different way than any lesson I had yet taught to elementary students.  I survived my first year, and ended up really enjoying my days with these teenage students.  Not only were they brutally honest quite often, but many of them even seemed to still want to learn, though they would NEVER admit that out loud.

After I knew that middle school was truly where I belonged, I realized that I still had a lot to learn.  I had many students that made great breakthroughs throughout their first year, and non-readers that all of a sudden brought books with them on a daily basis and actually read them!  Many of them, however, seemed to make little progress, and there were others that seemed to just go through the motions to complete my class at a high enough level to pass, but made no attempts to really explore and get any real meaning out of the class.

I did what I could throughout my first couple of years, but I knew that I was doing what many teachers fall into the habit of doing.  I was teaching to about half of the kids who fall somewhere in the middle of the learning curve, leaving the higher-level kids with nothing new to learn, while keeping the lower and “average” students doing enough to get by, though there wasn’t much learning happening.  There were quite a few students scoring double their improvement goals on the MAPS test at the end of the year, but others were scoring lower than their original score from the beginning of the year.  After my second year of experiencing this, I knew I couldn’t settle with the idea that helping some students was “good enough.”  Because of this, I knew I had to figure out the best way to teach ALL of my middle school learners.  But how???

The adolescent brain…

The good news is that brain research is becoming so established that it is now full of information to help middle school teachers learn about the adolescents they call students.  There are reasons that explain why teens act the way they do, and because we can better understand their brains, there are strategies that we can use to help our teenage learners learn better.

According to Brownlee, Hotinski, Pailthorp, Ragan, and Wong (1999), the authors of “Inside the Teen Brain,” the adolescent brain is still creating “the connections between neurons that affect not only emotional skills but also physical and mental abilities.”  Kelly Graham and Elsbeth Prigmore (2009), authors of “Order in the Classroom,” elaborated on that idea by saying, “Adolescents are supposed to test limits as an age-appropriate response to their environment. Conflict is an essential part of growing up.”  These statements are reassuring and help me see that these kids aren’t choosing to be difficult; it’s natural for their brains to work on finding the limits of their environments.

Since it’s natural for students to experience conflict, does this make it ok for students to goof around, not follow rules, and pick fights?  Of course not!  But it does mean that it’s natural for them to create, and be a part of, conflict.  It is something we should expect, and develop ways to best handle the different types of conflict.

Because of this, I know that my classroom environment needs to start each year with clear guidelines, and I need to stick to them throughout the entire school year, which is the hardest part for me.  Graham and Prigmore (2009) make the connection that giving students expectations on the first day of school and then expecting them to remember and follow those rules throughout the entire year is like teaching them the operation of long division once and expecting them to remember it forever without ever re-teaching it or covering it again.  This is unfair to the students, and makes the whole year a little harder for them.  By frequently addressing classroom rules and confronting those that break them on the first offense, students will know the boundaries of their classroom environment and will behave more accordingly.

Adolescents are very capable of learning and behaving, as long as we keep our expectations clear and enforce them consistently.  This consistent enforcement will teach their brains what they can and can’t get away with.  Consequently, if we choose to ignore their behavior, thinking that they will stop if they don’t receive attention, their brains take this information in, and realize that in this environment, they can continue with this behavior without receiving punishment.  One example that occurs in my classroom is when kids talk when they should be working independently.  I will usually let it go at least once or twice before saying something; however, by doing this, I’m showing those students that it is ok for them to chat a little bit, even when I say that it is “silent time.”  By confronting the problem immediately, every time, students will learn that going against the rules won’t be tolerated, and they will behave much more often like I ask them to.  Confrontations do not have to be aggressive, forceful events – one method that I have used and plan on altering to suit this idea is a participation grade.  If someone is misbehaving, I will tap that student on the shoulder, say that their behavior cost them an X, and I hope they can keep the rest of their Xs.  At the end of the week, each X represents a point lost for their participation for the week.  By knowing that they did not get away with their behavior, students will see that it pays to stay on task and not misbehave.

Adolescent brains are still growing and maturing at an incredible rate, and have not yet developed enough to always allow teens to function like the young adults we expect them to act like. Brownlee et al. (1999), explain the adolescent brain by first approaching the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that controls other parts of the brain, including “the ability to handle ambiguous information and make decisions…his prefrontal cortex…is practically asleep at the wheel. At the same time, his limbic system, where raw emotions such as anger are generated, is entering a stage of development in which it goes into hyperdrive.”

They continue to explain that while adult brains can use many different parts of their brain efficiently to tackle a problem, adolescents struggle with using just one part of their brain in a much more inefficient way to tackle that same problem.  This makes many decisions that we see so simply to be quite complex for teenagers.  One example that I know we all see too often is the problem of prioritizing.  When many teens get home after a long day, they have homework, dinner, possibly chores, friends to call or text, and their favorite show to watch.  While adults realize the order that those tasks should be done in, teenagers’ brains can’t seem to do so as effectively.

I remember specifically one day that that happened to me in school – I was so upset when I realized that I had forgotten to do the work, but it had honestly slipped my mind with all of the other things that I had to do the night before.  However, if we help students learn how to organize their priorities, we are helping them “exercise their brains” (Brownlee et. al, 1999).  By helping students exercise their brains, Brownlee et al. (1999) say, “many higher mental skills will become automatic, just the way playing tennis and driving do.”

Brownlee et al. (1999) continue by saying, “An unfinished prefrontal cortex also means that young teenagers may also have trouble organizing several tasks, deciding, for example, which to do first: call a friend, wash the dishes, or read the book for a report that’s due in the morning.”

Sound familiar?  Most teens struggle with this problem, and we just continue to push and expect them to find a way to get their work done.  So while we’re trying to cram their brains full of new information, their brains are still working on growing and developing, and many can’t handle and organize the plethora of information that they receive each day.  Because of all of this information, it is very important to work WITH adolescent brains, instead of continually expecting them to succeed with worksheets, vocabulary lists, and long-term assignments with no short-term goals, which can tend to work AGAINST their brains, overwhelming them and causing them to struggle with prioritizing.

One strategy that I currently use is a daily schedule written on the board.  I tell students each little step that they will need to participate in before getting to the end of the hour.  Instead of giving them a long-term assignment with no deadlines or smaller steps, it is most helpful to give students more short-term expectations during instruction, so that they see what needs to be done at the time, and what does not have to be done before the next class.

It is important for me to point out that some people disagree with these ideas of teen brains working differently than adult brains.  Leslie Sabbagh (2007), Robert Epstein, a psychologist and founder of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies, believes that the idea of a “teen brain” is a hoax.  From his research, he has found that many cultures “do not even have a word for adolescence and that most teens spend much of their time with adults, not segregated with only their peers.”

Though Epstein argues that there is no such thing as a teen brain, he believes that the environment we put teens in –with one adult and up to 25 other adolescents – creates “a recipe for trouble,” because they have few adults to learn from, and are instead learning behaviors from each other.  Though this is a very valid argument, I feel that this only strengthens the fact that though other countries may not see the troublesome, conflict-ridden teens that we do, our teens are what we have to work with.

Since our culture won’t be creating environments where teens are constantly working with adults instead of other teens, our American teenagers have developed this kind of brain that has been described in the above paragraphs.  This is what we have to work with, and though the adolescent brain may be different in other parts of the world, there is still a lot of research that shows that American teenage brains are working at this different level when compared to American adults.

When I’m in my classroom, I see the students that explode out of anger, but when I ask them why they do it, they honestly don’t know.  I see the teens that have such high spirits in the classroom, but can’t seem to ever remember to bring all of their work home.  Though some, such as Epstein, may blame these problems on laziness or American society, I think it’s reassuring that some people are finding parts of the teen brain that can show that these kids will grow out of these problems as their brain develops (hopefully).

So how do I teach students that have brains programmed for conflict, high raw emotions, and little control of organization? After reading “The Teen Brain, Hard at Work,” I found that one of the keys to helping teens learn is to keep their stress level more controlled. “The brain is a vulnerable system and that in an environment with many stresses it is more difficult for adolescents to show self-control as compared with adults…yet when adolescents are in situations with few competing demands, they do indeed behave like adults” (Sabbagh, 2007).

So if we give students the information they need during instruction, then also help them organize it and make connections, they will be able to behave appropriately and work more in the way that we expect.  By simply giving enough time to accomplish tasks, providing a visual of the schedule, and giving them a chance to document any upcoming due dates or homework assignments, their brains will better be able to process what is needed of them and will better be able to accomplish our expectations.

While one group of researchers are learning why adolescent brains work the way they do, others are exploring ways that we teachers can use this new information to enhance teaching and learning.

In Parts 2-6 of this series,  we’ll explore five practical pathways we can all use in our classrooms to better engage the teenage brains in our charge.

• Feedback
• Relevance and Experience
• Movement
• Making Learning Meaningful
• Memory

Related posts:

1. The Teen Brain Pt 2: Feedback
2. Inside the teen brain.
3. The Teen Brain Pt 3: Relevance and Experience

A teacher affects eternity; no one can tell where his influence stops. –Henry Adams

“It’s not what you said, it’s how you said it!” –my wife (more times than I can count)

Guys, let me tell you, I’ve been married for fourteen years now, and the moment you hear that, it’s pretty much over. Sure, you can debate semantics and linguistics all you want, and logically, on paper, I’m sure you’re on the money. Still, I hate to break it to you—you’ve got no shot. It doesn’t matter how airtight your logic. Your best option is to run up the white flag and surrender. Apologize as sincerely as possible and try to change the subject. Drop it and move on. This is fourteen years of marriage speaking. Trust me.

There is no way to win this fight, because what you said doesn’t mean a thing. The only thing that matters is what she heard. And what she understood about your meaning has a lot more to do with your tone of voice, facial expression, posture, and proximity than the words that came out of your mouth. Forget that you were in the process of pulling a bee’s stinger from your eyeball. It doesn’t matter.

I’ve noticed this to be true in the classroom as well. Regardless of how I feel on any given day, if I make a conscious effort to bring energy to my craft, the kids always seem more upbeat too.

It doesn’t matter what I say. If I say it with a smile, if my tone is upbeat, if I’m standing straight with my head up high, if I’m moving around the classroom, making eye contact—the kids are more engaged.

And thus, more learning takes place.

The opposite is also true. If I’m blah, to a certain extent, so is the rest of the classroom environment.

But this is all common sense stuff, right? Much like the stand-up comic, as teachers, we all know that our “delivery” matters . . .right? This isn’t rocket science.

Turns out, however—it is brain science.

How Feelings Are Contagious

According to research done at Harvard and the University of California at San Diego by Dr. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, who have been mining data collected from nearly 5,000 people over a period of twenty years, “Happiness spreads through social networks like an emotional contagion.” So if you bring positive energy to your lessons, that energy is going to rub off on your students.

But why is this? Here is where it gets truly fascinating. They’re called, mirror neurons, and their job in the brain is to literally mirror observed emotions so that a person actually feels the pain and joy of others.

This truly astounding neural WiFi was discovered by neuroscientists in monkeys in 1992; but they have since also confirmed the presence of mirror neurons in the human brain through a series of experiments so sensitive it boggles the mind. It turns out we now have electrodes so laser-thin that they can be implanted within a single brain cell. Not only are they small, but these electrodes are so sensitive that they can measure the firing of a single neuron.

In his book, Social Intelligence: The Revolutionary New Science of Human Relationships, Dan Goldman reports of a remarkable study. After implanting and monitoring an electrode in a fully conscious person, scientists found that the same specific neuron will fire when a person anticipates pain (of a pinprick) as well as when watching someone else receive a pinprick. As Goldman puts it, the lighting up of that electrode is the equivalent of taking a “neural snapshot of primal empathy in action.”

But that isn’t even the most powerful discovery. To understand that, we have to revisit what Christakis and Fowler discovered about happiness. As it turns out, the energy you bring to the classroom doesn’t merely stay there for the benefit of only that class with only that lesson. It ripples outward and affects people you don’t know, have never met, and in places you may have never been.

According to Christakis and Fowler, if you project positive energy, you increase the chance of feeling good in those near you by 25%, but it doesn’t stop there. When your students leave the classroom, people close to them (friends, family, neighbors, etc . . .) enjoy a 10% chance of experiencing positive energy. Likewise, a person close to that person has a 5.6% chance of getting a positive charge.

Ever wonder what happiness looks like? Each node in the diagram represents one person (circles are female, squares are male). The lines indicate relationships (black = siblings; red = friends, spouces). Color represents degree of happiness, with blue indicating “the blues,” and yellow indicating sheer joy. Green is somewhere in between. Images by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, courtesy of BMJ

The Impact of One Teacher

What does this mean? Let’s just say, for the sake of simplicity, that you come in contact with 50 students a day, and each of those students then interacts with just five other people. That’s 250 additional people that you can affect–bringing your total to 300. But it doesn’t stop there. Remember, you still have a 5.6% chance to affect all those who connect with those additional 250. If we keep it simple and give those 250 each five contacts, that increases your potential outreach by 1,250–bringing your grand total to 1,550 people each day.

And that’s just based on the students in your classes! (Yes, yes I know you teach more than that, but, “Dammit Jim! I’m a Language teacher not a mathwiz!”) Now calculate, if you like (and you are a math wiz), the rest of your contacts in a day, and you’ll truly begin to understand the scope of your influence.

You should feel good about that. Still, guys, it would NOT be wise to bring that up during your next communication snafu with your wives or girlfriends. It won’t help. Trust me on this one. Sometimes it is what you say.

Image credit

Front page image credit

Technorati Profile

Related posts:

1. Inspiring active learning: a handbook for teachers. Harmin, M.
2. Emotional intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ. Goldman, D.
3. The Teen Brain Pt 5: Making Learning Meaningful