Empowering children: It's all in the mind
Go home and plant camote,” is the most infamous line connected to Filipino teachers in anecdotes and movies. I never got to hear that from my own teachers, but the worst I heard was when my classmate was told to buy a chicken’s brain and replace it with his own. Bottom line: Some teachers believe that some students were born as poor learners and underachievers. Some school practices also support this view by ranking students from highest to lowest, and basing the sections of students on test scores and final grades. The victim in all this is the student who, instead of getting support, ends up receiving not just a judgment but also a destiny of lowered expectations. More than the emotional scars and the pain of being branded as such, the worst thing that could happen is that the student will accept the labeling of being stupid as innate and inescapable.
Fortunately, educators have looked to other disciplines and one that has contributed a lot to rethinking educational paradigms is the field of medicine, particularly in its study of the capacity and nature of the human brain. Probably the most important finding is that human brains are indeed not equal. But the inequality is not due to genetics but due to health and experience. This implies that students must learn that the brain is highly flexible, having the potential for growth and improvement. The brain is developed by experience and it matures as it connects new information with pre-learned ideas.
International Educational Organization, Edutopia just released a teacher’s guide on Brain-Based Learning (BBL), a framework that encourages teachers to rethink and redesign classroom experiences given recent findings about the brain. Here, I would like to share and emphasize four of several strategies that Edutopia recommends as effective BBL practices:
1. The brain works well in a safe environment. In general, students prefer supportive and approachable mentors. The preference could be attributable to how the brain works. Edutopia cites author and teacher Linda Latieri: “The prefrontal cortex is the area for paying attention, calming, and focusing as well as the area for short- and long-term memory. So you need to focus in order to connect with your memory.” Once the student is assured that the classroom is a safe environment for practicing and learning from mistakes, students are then ready to face complex intellectual tasks head-on.
2. The brain needs cultivation. Teachers must constantly remind students to think of their brains as something to consciously exercise and prune through learning. Intelligence isn’t fixed at birth, says psychologist Carol Dweck, and “students who are aware of this are more willing to tackle challenges, learn from failure, and see criticism as useful feedback rather than a reason to give up.” To do this, parents and educators may constantly explain to students the value of assignments and drills as a means to stretch their “thinking muscles,” or enlighten them about the effectiveness of reviewing based on how the brain uses short- term and long-term memory.
3. The brain needs healthy bodies. The brain may be the most important organ of the body, but it is highly dependent on other systems in order for it to function effectively. Developmental molecular biologist John Medina reminds everyone that exercise boosts brainpower. “Cardio activity increases oxygen-rich blood flow to the brain and increases students’ ability to concentrate.”
Aside from exercise, it would be essential to add good nutrition also as a precondition to brain development. There is a dangerous assumption in our society that the poor are so because of ignorance and lack of intelligence. From experience, however, many poor students underachieve because of inadequate nutrition. Students who come to school without taking meals will, of course, fail to concentrate on academic tasks.
4. The brain responds to novelty. Ever wonder why a child learns a concept better in iPad then in the classroom? Although the information is the same, learning through computers and gadgets is preferred because of the constant innovation to present information. Judy Willis, MD explains, “The brain filters incoming stimuli, deciding which information to trust to autopilot and what deserves our full attention. Surprise and novelty are the attention-grabbers.”
Teachers thus have to rise up to the challenge and remind themselves of the importance of motivation and creativity in presenting a lesson so as to grab and hold the attention of their students.
It is a tragedy for a student to make excuses for not studying well because he is not as smart as his classmates. The school may have been an accomplice to this damaging self-fulfilling prophecy through its failure to teach students how the brain acquires and stores information. Teaching children how to develop their brains empowers them to recognize that success and achievement are all in the mind.
