Radical Teaching

Recurring Final Exam Dream - You Forgot You Were Taking the Course

Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed. — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:44:55 +0000

If you've had 'the dream' related to school, you know exactly what it is.

This is the dream where it is the day of a final exam, and you realize that you forgot you were taking the course and therefore had not attended any of the classes, did not do the reading, and you are certainly are not prepared for today's test. Other variations include your having attended some of the classes, perhaps at the beginning of the semester, and then you just forgot about the class until the day of the final. It was not intentional, but somehow just happened.

With all the commonalities and differences among us, my very informal, essentially conversational "research" suggests the dream is common to the past two to three generations in the United States and other countries with educational systems that emphasize high stakes formal written tests that determine your future academic opportunities.

Other common components shared by many, not all:
• The dreams don't start until high school and may not start until college is completed.
• The subject is one the dreamer found difficult, often math, English, or science, but the failure to attend the class was not intentional.
• Many dream the added dilemma of not being able to find the exam room or having to go to the bathroom.
• Most people wake up without ever entering the room, seeing the exam, or having any outcome, resolution, or consequence, yet with the sense is the outcome will be quite bad.
• Most people are dressed normally, but some are in pajamas or nude.

• The classroom door is closed, and frequently wood, some with wired safety glass windows on the door.

• Usually there are no other people in the hall and the dreamer has no conversations with anyone.

The neuroscience research that I study, especially related to my books about child development and brain research-based education, is accumulating about the neurochemistry and brain's electrical and metabolic states during the various phases of sleep. We know more about dream states and the measurable electrical patterns during dreams. For example, it is rare for people not to dream; even those who don't think they dream show the identifiable dream patterns.

During dreams the emotional brain trumps the higher, reflective, cognitive brain. The dominant brain activity during dreams is the REM state (rapid eye movement with low voltage fast electrical activity) and the metabolic activity is higher in the emotional, involuntary, more primitive limbic system. In addition, there is decreased metabolic activity in the prefrontal cortex involved in consciously directed thoughts, planned behavior, emotional self-control, executive function (prioritizing, risk-analysis, higher cognition, judgment, and the focused alert mindful state).

There is no research I have found that offers confirmed, objective evidence about cause, effect, or statistically validated explanations for the significance of The Dream, its frequency, or the variation in details.

I offer some of the hypotheses with an invitation for you to send in your variation of the dream. If you'd like to share your hypothesis about the meaning of The Dream, why it comes when it does, or any other associated ideas, those of us who have had the dream would love to read your ideas. The good news is that as there are no definitive research conclusions, your interpretations cannot be contested - there are no wrong answers and this is not an end of semester test, so have fun sharing and reading.

Hypotheses and Interpretations (from the literature and anecdotal):

• The dream often occurs in approximation with having forgotten or being concerned about forgetting to do something important in waking life
• The dream may reflect a sense of responsibility, duty, or choice where the dreamer knows what he/she should do, but is hesitant/reluctant to do the act
• A change involving the end of something is imminent and there is low confidence about the future
• It is a time when regrets of past actions or inactions have been in mind - a possible prompt to not "put off until tomorrow what can be done today"
• The dream, when it comes in approximation with a significant date, such as a birthday, anniversary, school reunion year, date of the death of someone significant, offers the doorway to the classroom as a metaphor to paths not taken, the recognition that a "long" time has passed without goals achieved
• The dream is a reminder not to miss an opportunity or take a more active role in one's destiny

When I spent a week doing presentations and enjoying time with the other neuroscientists and educators in Argentina this month (September '09) I learned that test stress is not one of their problems. If a students pass the individual classes in one educational level, they can proceed to the next level. There are end of term tests, but they do not have the "make or break" impact on a students' future options or the finances of a school. Again my "research" was informal and anecdotal, but among the 40 people I casually questioned between ages 16 - 66 not one had any version of The Dream.

From my perspective, as a neurologist and classroom teacher with a goal of helping educators reduce the negative impact of standardized test pressure, I also wondered if U.S test pressure was influencing the frequency or age of onset of The Dream. Unfortunately there has been evidence that such is the case as parents and teachers now report that
children as young as first grade report disturbing dreams about disappointing their parents by doing poorly in school.

Not only is test pressure draining the joy from learning, robbing children of the sustained motivation of curiosity, and reducing the U.S. high school graduation rate to the lowest of any industrialized county, but when six-year-old children suffer even in their sleep, can we allow the toxic impact of test pressure to continue yet another year?

Send in your versions of The Dream here and to my website www.RADTeach.com. Ask your children about their dreams. Let's share our stories and use them to work with policy makers and end the nightmare test legacy of The Dream.

Your Most Embarrassing Mistakes Did You the Most Good

Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed. — Mon, 25 May 2009 22:04:30 +0000

"Without mistakes, how would we know what we have to work on?" William James

Recall a time you said or did something incorrect in front of peers or authority figures. Now think of all the details you can recall associated with that experience. Where you were, who was there, any other things you wouldn't ordinarily remember about distant events such as what you wore, saw, did earlier or later that day. If you have a minute, write down some of these ancillary sensory memories.

What you recall now is the result of your dopamine-reward network and your flashbulb memory or event memory system. As the brain evolved for survival of the animal and the species, much of what we humans now do is directed by hard-wired neural networks and neurotransmitters not under conscious control. Actually only about 17% of your brain is capable of responding to your conscious will; the rest is pretty much like that of a lower mammal or newborn baby with reactions to input based on association with imminent danger, risk, or pleasure.

The Great News about Mistakes

Two things happened in your event-negativity response system when you made that embarrassing mistake. The abundance of detail you still associate with the memory relates to your primitive brain's limited ability to interpret strong negative emotion beyond "negative" and "strong". The brain learns, at the automatic, involuntary level to avoid threat to survival by storing more sensory input (like taking a photograph "flashbulb" making a sound recording) from those high threat moments as cues to prevent repeating the mistake. That means that without consciously trying to remember those other associated sights, sounds, etc. that come to mind when you recall the moment of your embarrassing mistake, these sensory details did reach the subcortical memory storage neural networks and remained.

For most things you construct in memory through active learning and practice, you need to maintain the neural networks that hold the information with periodic restimulation (review or practice - the Use it or Lose It phenomenon of neuroplasticity and pruning). However, the neural networks created by strong mistake memories and the associated sensory information you recall in association, are consciously and unconsciously relived and restimulated, and their neural tracts are particularly durable.

The good news is when you want to remember something, you can link it to other powerful emotional stimulants, and your brain will record it as a powerful flashbulb memory. For example, to remember someone's name, instead of just linking their name to something about their appearance, link it to a strong flashbulb or event memory that is already an established neural network. Big ears on person you meet can link to your embarrassing mistake of being overheard by your roommate when you said something negative about him/her to a classmate. Now link name of the new acquaintance with the big ears to something about their name you can relate to one of the details you recall about your roommate or room you shared. The new name now becomes part of one of your very durable memory tracts.

Did Your Mistake Memory Event Take Place When You Were Between 12 and 22?

How old were you when you made the mistake you recalled? I'll wager you were over age 12 and under 22. Can you even recall an embarrassing mistake you made before age ten or eleven? This is due to an age related heightened period of the way your brain responds to negative mistake feedback between the ages of about 12-22.

It is neuro-logical for survival that curiosity-motivated experimentation as a young child has low error negativity consequences. There was so much to learn about your world to promote self-preservation during your childhood, that your curiosity needed to persevere. In your young brain, positive reinforcement trumped mistake negativity so you'd keep exploring and experimenting to build your survival knowledge base.

Why Dogs Don't Keep Chasing Skunks

Dogs learn pretty quickly not to chase skunks and children rarely put their hands into fire more than once. Throughout your life, pleasurable feelings surge and negative feelings pervade related to dopamine levels in your brain. The dopamine-pleasure modulating reward center is the nucleus accumbens (NAc). Your brain learns what behavior to repeat in response to these dopamine fluctuations from the NAc.

In adolescence, when precision and accuracy in your predictions were ready for fine-tuning, things begin to change. The dopamine-pleasure modulating reward center in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) increases in mistake-reactivity starting about age 12 and it is not until about age 22 that it becomes stabilized against all but the most sudden or profound emotional shifts.

When Caution Trumps Curiosity

Between 12 and 22 when your NAc dopamine-reward center was at its highest sensitivity, it was extremely responsive in the amount of dopamine it released in response to positively (rewarding) or negatively (disappointing to devastating) perceived events during these years, resulting in strong, emotionally enhanced memories of your correct or incorrect behaviors or answers - especially your embarrassing public mistakes. Caution began to trump curiosity.
Something else takes place that increases mistake or error negativity during those teen years. At the same time the NAc is at its highest level of reactivity during the ages of 12 to 22 there is simultaneous increase reactivity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) areas of the brain responsible for conscious awareness and cognitive control.

From age 12 to 22, your prefrontal cortex was also at its highest state of reactivity to the drop in dopamine release by the NAc that occurred with mistake recognition. Your thinking brain (PFC) was more strongly activated by negative feedback and you became more restrained. You became more cautious about following your curiosity because you became aware that such actions could have negative consequences.

Your teen brain PFC had increased reactivity to even small fluctuations in dopamine levels largely due to your prefrontal cortex's incomplete maturation. Both the NAc and "conscious" brain (PFC) are among the last parts of the brain to mature (a function of neuroplasticity, pruning, and myelination). Your NAc in your teen years was most prone to high dopamine release to positive results from your actions, but also had high responsivity to negative results from your mistakes.

During these years of active change in the PFC, the dopamine-pleasure/negativity response became strongly linked to your developing PFC. There was still construction in your PFC of brain networks to remember and repeat (largely unconsciously) what you did or said that resulted in the rewarding release of dopamine. However, during these teen years, when you made the embarrassing mistake, your PFC was more responsive to the drop in dopamine release from the NAc. It responded with the construction of memory circuits to avoid making the same mistake in the future. You didn't make the mistake again because your NAc and PFC internalized the faulty prediction your brain made that resulted in the mistake. Because of your brain's heightened sensitivity and discomfort from drops in dopamine, the PFC altered the developing memory circuits so you'd make correct predictions in the future in light of the revised information revealed by your mistake.

These neural networks continue to be revised by mistakes throughout your life, but fortunately the strong emotional swings are less intense. Because of all you've experienced and learned, you have more developed neural circuitry and a larger information base. Your ability to predict and recognize the right thing to do or say is greater. Your mistakes are less outrageous, or at least less frequent (unless you are under the influence of drugs, alcohol, or intense life changes) and your mature PFC less irrational in its response to the mistakes you do make.

When you tell children that "you learn from your mistakes" and "unless your try and even fail you won't learn" you are right. And now you know why!

"Dad, Mom, MUST You Drink That Wine to Feel Good?"

Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed. — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:16:24 +0000

Several years ago, we were enjoying a family dinner out with our then 5th grade daughter spoke loudly and clearly as were ordering wine. “Why do you HAVE to have that wine? Do you need it to feel good? Can’t you be like me and enjoy your food without wine, or should I be drinking wine because if I don’t I’m not enjoying my meal?” Our daughter had just finished her DARE program in fifth grade and after that harangue we lost our appetites and left the restaurant.

So, how can you explain to children and teenagers that it is good and even healthy for you to drink wine in moderation, but not good for them? Why can you drink a glass of wine with dinner and be considered legally safe to drive, but they lose their license for driving with any alcohol in their system?

I have thought about this conundrum as a mother, neurologist, middle school teacher, and wine columnist.

Why Children and Teens Brains Can’t “Handle” Alcohol?

The human brain continues to develop into the early 20s through a process of plasticity (new neuron-connecting networks grow when learning takes place) and pruning (cutting away of neural circuits not needed so they won’t be take up brain nutrients needed by useful networks of brain cells).

The last part of the brain to mature through plasticity and pruning are the prefrontal lobes. These are the centers of “executive functions” such as judgment, delayed gratification for goal achievement, risk-assessment, critical analysis, planning, prioritizing, and prediction. Until this brain region matures, young people are not equip with the brain structure to make well-informed decisions without guidance.

Another problem with young people drinking is the brain’s dopamine-reward response. Our brains are pleasure-seeking organs, which makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint because painful things often mean danger to animals and should be avoided. Pleasurable things such as eating, drinking, finding a safe habitat and a mate are positive survival strategies for animals. Generally if the brain seeks things, activities, and locations that have been associated with memories of pleasure, the animal will have a greater chance of surviving.

Along these lines, the human brain has developed a dopamine-reward memory. When something is enjoyable, the neurotransmitter dopamine is released and that release is associated with the feeling of pleasure. The brain then seeks activities and sensory input that bring back the pleasure it experienced when dopamine was released (during an exciting bike ride or with the high of alcohol). The problem is, without the mature executive functions, the teen brain seeks pleasure without the ability to judge risk. Young people experience very strong emotions and desires before they are able to consciously use sound decision-making skills. As a result, emotions often override rational thinking—which can contribute to teens making some risky decisions.

How can we talk to our children about the dangers of alcohol while continuing to enjoy our wine? It all starts with the family relationships you’ve been building all along. If your children know you are consistent and logical about the boundaries you set, they will be consistent in respecting those boundaries when it comes to drinking. Some parents hesitate to make clear rules about alcohol because they think their children are too young or they are concerned that it is hypocritical to tell their teens not to drink at all, while they themselves enjoy wine in moderation.

However, unless you are clear about your position, children may be confused and thus be tempted to drink alcohol. Their bodies may be ready to physically metabolize alcohol in moderation, but their immature prefrontal lobes are not ready to know how much, where, when, or to predict the consequences of choosing immediate gratification without considering the consequences. Drinking even small quantities of alcohol then further reduces their ability to make the right decisions and can lead to drastic consequences. Because teenagers don’t have the brain control to always make logical, informed decisions when they think they have a choice, you help eliminate the confusion of choice by being decisive in your rules. It is reasonable to incorporate accurate information about drinking along with your rules and explain that you are making these non-negotiable rules to keep your children safe because you love them.

Ideally it is best to talk about alcohol informally before children pick up information about alcohol from TV, music, older friends, and advertisements. Many parents wait until their children are in their teens and already drinking alcohol before discussing the subject. A recent study found that most children are aware of alcohol from a very early age, have their first alcoholic drink without their parents’ knowledge between the ages of 10 and 12, and nearly one out of five 8th graders drinks regularly.

Talking with your children about what wine and spirits are, what they do, and why they are enjoyable in moderation, especially with meals, will help de-mystify alcohol and take it out of the category of rebellious behaviors teens might seek in their natural, but nevertheless frightening, development of independence and self-reliance. If you have this part of the talk before they participate in their 5th grade DARE program, your child will not be confused by what they hear in that program.

Sometimes children don’t fully understand all the information in the DARE or Positive Action program presentations. They may miss explanations about why and for whom alcohol is not “bad” and worry about you having even a glass of wine with dinner. Even worse than our daughter speaking up and embarrassing us in that restaurant is the thought that she would have shouldered the burden that we were harming ourselves and she couldn’t do anything about it.

Also, DARE and Positive Action programs curriculum do not include instruction about the health benefits of moderate wine drinking for adults. As a parent, you are in the best position to introduce your children to the pleasures and pitfalls of alcohol consumption. It is important that children have a chance to discuss accurate and balanced information about alcohol with you before they participate in the rather one-sided program of “just say no”. This will keep them from needless worry about you being an “alcoholic” because you enjoy wine with dinner.

Even better than talking the talk is walking the walk. As with all parenting issues, children are influenced by what they see at home. When your children see you and other adults drinking sensibly, they are more likely to respect and follow that behavior than if they see adults, in your home or at gatherings they attend with you, drinking too much, doing dangerous things, or acting inappropriately – especially if the antics of these inebriated adults are garnering laughs and encouragement from the other adults. These situations can be frightening and confusing to children. Even worse, teens may later emulate what the see if they are seeking “cool risks” for that dopamine high.

Demonizing alcohol is counter productive

An additional option is to consider the approach to wine that is predominant in many Western European countries where the alcohol related automobile accidents and rates of alcoholism are lower than in the United States. In these countries many teens are introduced to wine mixed with water at meals in the convivial company of family or friends. The philosophy of such an approach is that if children are allowed tastes of wine, the idea of alcohol having the allure of a forbidden fruit is removed and children grow up understanding the pleasures of drinking lightly, with meals, by example and without excess. Without wine’s “taboo” status, children won’t get the risk-taking pleasure jolt from sneaking away with friends to drink, and often drive, because they have tried wine already with supervision in a healthy atmosphere.

Even before their brains mature, you need to be the guiding influence that helps your children realize that their brains are not ready to make rational decisions when they drink alcohol. Moderation and judgment are just not hard-wired in the teen brain, and they rely on you for that judgment.

TALKING WITH (NOT TO) YOUR CHILDREN ABOUT DRINKING

By Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed.

www.RADTeach.com

Your Brain Owner's Manual

Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed. — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 02:35:04 +0000

When you know how some things work, you get more out of them, adapt them to new uses, and use them more efficiently. It's more fun to fly a plane, sail a boat, or ride a mountain bike when you use what you know about how these things work and apply that knowledge to the new options you discover through your new knowledge.

I can't promise that you'll be doing brain surgery, treating neurological diseases, or writing books about how the brain learns best after reading a brain owner's manual, but you will learn how to physically change you own brain and help your children or ageing parents do the same. Intelligence is not fixed and what you do, think, hear, read, practice, visualize, taste, and smell all change your brain.

NEUROPLASTICITY - Practice Makes Permanent
Neuroplasticity is the most exciting and motivating brain fact. Neuroplasticity refers to physical changes in your brain that result from your thoughts, environment, the emotions you feel, and the things you do. These brain changes are predominantly in the connections between your neurons. The more a network of neurons that holds a memory (information or procedural memory) is activated the stronger it becomes. When you return to a memory or repeat an action enough, new connections form such as dendrites and synapses. The existing connections (axons) that carry information from a neuron to the next even acquire more layers of myelin that act like insulation on an electric wire. This increased myelin means the electrical impulses of the memory travel faster and more efficiently because the electric charge is more protected from leaking out.

When I changed careers from a neurologist to a classroom teacher I started looking at course curriculum and was surprised in the "Decade of the Brain" that very little was taught about the workings of the brain, whether in health class, science class, or even in my own and other graduate schools of education.

Since becoming a teacher, I've been teaching my students, first in elementary and now in secondary school, about their own brains for almost a decade. They can't get enough of it. (I wish it were as easy to get them excited about adding fractions.) It is neuro-LOGICAL to want to know how your body's most powerful tool actually works and how you can change it to amp up the horsepower like Tim the Toolman, on the television show Home Improvement, or set it to a new default state so at rest it is calm and alert instead of frazzled and stressed out. It turns out to be a matter of strengthening the circuits used the most so practice makes permanent!

CHANGE YOUR INTELLIGENCE WITH NEUROPLASTICITY - Do it yourself brain surgery

Children, as well as many adults, usually think that intelligence is determined at or before birth and no amount of effort will change their academic success. Especially when students believe they are "not smart" and nothing they do can change that, the realization that they can literally change their brains through practice and review strategies is empowering. This is also true of my neurology patients who have lost function due to brain disease or trauma. Through neuroplasticity, their brains construct new neural networks in undamaged parts regions to take over the job of the brain damaged regions.

My students and patients are motivated to take action when they learn about neuroplasticity, and see brain scan evidence of brain changes, and see the results of their own actions when neurons that fire together, wire together. Stimulating a neural circuit holding information makes it stronger. It is so empowering when they learn that practice, and review of information changes their brain and makes memory stronger just like practicing an instrument makes them better players, practice shooting free throws increases their likelihood of success, and exercising muscles makes them bigger and stronger.

HOW YOUR CHILD LEARNS BEST

A Brain Owner's Manual
When I went to medical school and became a neurologist I didn't know that I'd eventually become a teacher and write about brain research-based teaching strategies. Once I started making connections between my two professions the links became clear. It wasn't until a few years later that I realized that my students could also understand how their brains learn and use that knowledge for self-empowerment.

I ask students if they can change their brains and show fMRI scans of the brains of people before and after they learn to juggle or play an instrument with the increase density of brain cell connections and activity in the places in the brain used to activate the muscles and coordination responses used when juggling.

Their results are wonderful. One ten-year-old boy said, "I didn't know that I could grow my brain. Now I know about growing dendrites when I study and get a good night sleep. Now when I think about watching TV or reviewing my notes I tell myself that I have the power to grow brain cells if I review. I'd still rather watch TV, but I do the review because I want my brain to grow smarter. It is already working and feels really good."

Let Children Make Discover What Makes Their Brains Work Best
Instead of sending home the beginning of the year letter about having a quiet place to do homework without distractions, etc., I have students experiment for themselves. I assign homework that has them make hypotheses and then experiment with different homework strategies and conditions (with and without music, text messaging, frequent snack breaks, planned exercise breaks, working in bed or at a desk, doing homework early or late, studying all at once or reviewing small sections each day). They collect their own data and compare their findings with those we collect as a class. They construct their own, personalized brain owner's manuals.

A 7th grade girl with ADHD who also suffered from test anxiety said, "I finish my homework faster because I experimented and know I focus better, finish faster, and remember more if I don't send text messages or watch TV. I know I need to schedule a syn-naps break every 20 minutes for 5 minutes to refresh my dopamine. Now I even get the hard problems right because I don't get frustrated the minute I don't understand something. It works at home and now it works on tests."

I Study Because I Can Change My Brain
"I imaging neurons making connections in my brain when I study and I feel like I'm changing my brain when I learn something, understand it, and review it."

"If I use my prefrontal cortex to mentally manipulate what I learn, my dendrites and synapses grow and I will own that learning for a long, long time. I won't have to learn fractions all over again each year."

"I CAN be smarter. If I focus, practice, and use my strengths I can grow the brain connections and cement the memory circuits to be smart. And the more I practice, the stronger my connections become, and the smarter I am. It feels so good to know I have the power to be smart. I also discovered that when I grow those dendrites and synapses, learning seems easier and I don't get lost in class."

Read more about how your (or your child's/parent's) brain learns best on my website:
RADTeach.com

Brain Toxic Classrooms

Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed. — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:36:26 +0000

Is Your Child in a Brain Toxic Classroom?

by Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed.

www.RADTeach.com

Children are naturally curious and have magnificent senses of wonder. They want to learn and explore. Often starting at age three or four, especially if they have older siblings, children look forward with great excitement to the day they can start school. The big day comes and things might go well for a few years. Then something changes and school is no longer a wondrous place. How sad that is.

The No Child Left Behind agenda has resulted in one-size-fits-all cookbook curriculum that leaves little room for teachers to make lessons engaging enough to be considered "valuable" by the brain's intake filters. All learning comes through the senses and what sensory information comes in is the unconscious decision of our primitive lower brains. Priority is given to HERE-ME-NOW input such as novelty or input that previously was associated with pleasure.

Animals need that sorting system to be alert to signs of danger or potential pleasure (the sight of potential prey or the smell of a potential mate). Through natural selection, the animals with brain intake filters most successful at alerting to novelty and change, have survived. Humans have this same primitive brain information intake system. At the unconscious, reflexive level our brains are programmed to let in input (pay attention to) novelty, change, and cues that are linked with pleasure.

Those prerequisites to paying attention are not found in classrooms where the teacher lectures and the students "memorize" facts they regurgitate on tests and soon forget. Neuroimaging PET and fMRI scans provide evidence that this type of rote learning is the most quickly forgotten because the information is never stored in long-term memory storage. As students lose interest in lecture-and-memorize classes, their attention wanders and disruptive behaviors are the natural consequence. Even for children who are able to maintain focus on rote instruction, the disruptive responses of their classmates are encroaching more and more on their teachers' instruction time as teachers spend more time trying to maintain order.

Today's brain toxic focus of fact memorization is not the fault of teachers, many of whom started teaching before NCLB invaded their classrooms. In those days, in the best classrooms, lessons were interactive and information was delivered through activities, projects, field trips, discovery, and class visits by professionals who used the math, science, or language in their cool jobs or hobbies.

The toxic NCLB pressure resulted in teach-to-the test curriculum with its drill-and-kill worksheets and memorization. The cost our children is the loss of the golden opportunity to build on their curiosity and enthusiasm. As early as kindergarten children begin to begrudge their time in school and gradually their brains construct neural circuits for self-stimulation (talking during lectures, drawing pictures instead of doing boring worksheets, fidgeting with change in their pockets or toys hidden in their desks). I'll save for another time the fact that the toxicity of the stress of boredom and frustration also causes the sustained release of too much cortisol, which kills neurons and damages the immune system. (More on this topic on George Lucas's Edutopia Website in the discussion of the webinar I did for them in early April: http://www.edutopia.org/webinar-discussion-april-2009#comment-59931

Parents' intervention is now needed to help children reach their highest potentials and find ways to help them connect to the information in mind-numbing classes. Parents can use the brain-friendly practices used in great classrooms by teachers who know how the brain learns. These strategies will breath life and increase unconscious attentiveness to the mandated, overstuffed curriculum. Without parent stimulation, children's brain pathways to the prefrontal cortex (highest thinking conscious decision making brain) are pruned away from disuse.

If we give children experiences that make the classroom lessons relevant, we are counteracting the toxic classroom experiences. When children are prepared with background knowledge that helps them personally relate to school units, new information will reach the prefrontal cortex, the reflective, thinking, conscious brain where creativity, prediction, deduction, independent judgment, memory building, and insight await the arrival of new input to process.

Many schools are cutting back on the extracurricular activities that build character and add multidimensionality to learning. Those children are feeling more disconnected from their teachers and schools, but parents can use art, music, family field trips, and meaningful discussion to increase children's connection to their school subjects.

Budgets and job security in the school system are tied to schools' abilities to mass-produce students trained to pass standardized tests that reward rote memorization skills. Instead of encouraging children's critical thinking skills, teachers are pushed to "teach to the test" and students in their classrooms are losing interest in the information force fed to them in these toxic classrooms. With home supplementary engagement of children's personal connections, background knowledge, and curiosity parents can bring life back into their learning while helping children build the critical thinking and reasoning skills that are being sacrificed with this rote memorization approach to teaching.

Learning can be a joy. Parents know their children better than any teacher ever will. Using the growing field of evidence-based neuroscience and learning research strategies now available, parents can assist their children learn what they need to know to pass the tests and much, MUCH more. Using strategies that engage and captivate your children's interests, parents can work with them at home to enhance their personal connection with and critical thinking about the dry, factual data they are served up at school.

The realities of standardized tests and increasingly structured, if not synchronized, curriculum continue to build the levels of classroom toxic stress for children. Cutting edge neuroimaging research (PET scans, fMRI scans) reveals significant disturbances in the brain's learning circuits and the brain's chemical messengers that accompany stressful learning environments. Science has provided us with information about the negative brain impact of stress and anxiety and the beneficial changes in the brain that are seen when children are motivated by and personally connected to their lessons.

In the past decade, the neuroimaging and brain-mapping research that I evaluated from my perspective as a neurologist and classroom teacher have provided objective support to the student-centered educational model where students feel they are partners in their education. This brain research demonstrates that superior learning takes place when information is presented in ways relevant to students' lives, interests, and experiences. Lessons must be stimulating and challenging, without being intimidating, for the increasing curriculum standards to be achieved without stress, anxiety, boredom, and alienation becoming the emotions children experience in their classrooms.

During the fifteen years I practiced adult and child neurology with neuroimaging and brain mapping as part of my diagnostic tool kit, I worked with patients of all ages with disorders of brain function, including learning differences. When I returned to university to obtain my teaching credential and Masters of Education degree, these neuroimaging tools that I had used as in my neurology practice had become available to researchers in the field of education.

This brain research demonstrates that superior learning takes place when classroom experiences are motivating and engaging. Positive motivation impacts brain metabolism, conduction of nerve impulses through the memory areas, and the release of neurotransmitters (brain chemicals like dopamine) that increase attention, focus, organization of thoughts, and high-level thinking called executive function. We now see the brain response when lessons are relevant to children's lives, interests, and experiences so each child feels he or she is a partner in the learning process and develops personally relevant goals that motivate attentive focus to the topics of study.

Stress in toxic classrooms can come from boredom when students are not shown why the material is significant to them in the here and now. The "real life" examples in textbooks that, for example, extol the value of learning scientific notation because archeologists use that system when the work with long numbers in carbon dating. Even if a child thinks she might want to be an archeologist, without an immediate, desirable goal to use scientific notation here and now, her brain will not care about the information at the most primitive sensory intake filter.

Without a positive emotional connection to a subject or task, the brain alerting system will not attend to the lecture. It will do just what animal brains do - seek its own sources of novelty and pleasure. That is much more likely to come from passing notes to a friend or drawing a picture than from listening to a teacher's words.

Toxic stress shuts down the pathways from the emotional limbic system (amygdala) that lead to the higher thinking frontal cortex. When the lecture or reading is too difficult, not supported by the background knowledge needed to understand the new concepts, too boring, and not explicitly related so children's personal goals, all sensory input including the lecture is shunted to the reactive, unconscious brain. Here the only unconscious, reactions are fight-flight-freeze. Once again acting out or tuning out are the involuntary student reactions.

The No Child Left Behind legislation, where school funding is determined by results of rote memory tests, will not go away for some time. Even with a president who wants to change the system, legislation is slow. As parents of children in this teach-to-the-test current educational system, it falls to us to help our children find personal relevance in school topics.

You know your children's interests, background experiences, and learning strength (visual, auditory, kinesthetic). You have friends or relatives who really do use chemistry or algebra in jobs that they love. Having these people over to dinner or having your child shadow them at their work could be the motivator that makes the school unit take on personal meaning and value.

Reminding children that their relatives came from the country they are studying at school and showing family photos or Internet clips about that country gives them personal connections to the history or geography. That can make the difference in class so their brains attend to the lessons. Lessons perceived as personally relevant, connected to children's personal goals and taught in ways best suited to children's learning strength will gat through the brain's first intake filter that only lets in sensory input that children or an animal in the wild finds curious and worth investigating because it is recognized as having had a previous relationship to pleasurable feelings. To see a related video, click the image on the left.

Hands-on science experiments and grocery store play centers at school (where kids used to learn about adding and subtracting by playing shopping and cashier games) won't be back for some time. But you have a kitchen where math is valued by children they calculate how to double the ingredients to make twice as much spaghetti or cut the pizza into equal sections for each family member to receive the same amount.

As a parent, you can find out what upcoming units of study will be and prime your children's brains to care enough to let that information in (HERE-ME-NOW response in the intake filter). You can motivate their interest before the topic comes up with Internet field trips to the planets she has to memorize or looking at sports page statistics before the lesson on probability in math.

This new brain-based learning research reinforces the need for classrooms to once again become the places where the imagination, spirit, and curiosity of children are encouraged, rather than left outside in the playground when the school bell rings. Until then, it is up to you to be the advocate for your child's brain by pumping up his interest and helping her relate personal goals to the topic before the school unit begins. That is one way you'll immunize your child against the toxic boredom, frustration, and stress of toxic classes stressing memorization of isolated facts. Lots more strategies are found on my website: http://www.RADTeach.com.

HOW YOUR CHILD LEARNS BEST

Top Ten Necessities for Education Reform

Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed. — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:53:00 +0000

www.RADTeach.com

For the first time since the institution of public education in the U.S., students currently in high school are less likely to graduate than their parents. We are the only industrialized country where that is true. Here are my recommendations to change the appalling dropout rate and prepare students for the 21st century.
1. Collaborate: Students in the U.S. need new skills for the coming century, not to be superior to students worldwide, but to be ready to collaborate with others on a global level to find creative solutions to problems now and in the future.
2. Evaluate Information Accuracy: The current curriculum focus on memorizing isolated facts to pass standardized tests is inadequate preparation for now or the future. New information is being discovered and disseminated at a logarithmic rate and the facts as students learn them today may not be fully accurate or complete in the near future. Students need to know how to find accurate information and use critical analysis to assess the veracity/bias and current/potential uses of new information. These are the executive functions students need to develop and practice in school today, or they will be unprepared to find, analyze, and use the information of tomorrow.
3. Teach Tolerance: In a global world of collaboration communication and tolerance (openness) to unfamiliar cultures and ideas will be the educational currency for the jobs and problems of the future. School needs to provide opportunities for experiences and discussions to help students learn about and feel comfortable communicating with people with other cultural norms and practices.
4. Assessing Student Knowledge: Standardized tests for federal NCLB funds test rote memory of isolated facts. Assessments need to include ways for different types of learners to demonstrate their knowledge. Once teachers do not have to teach-to-the-tests of rote memory, classrooms can become places of inquiry, student-centered discussions, and active, engaging learning.
5. Beyond Differentiation to Individualization. Children are born with brains that want to learn and with different strengths and intelligences that can best empower their success. Students grow best through their strengths. Discovering their strengths and engaging in learning through interests stimulates the strongest neural circuits so the brain is preset for engagement and knowledge building. One size does not fit all in assessment and instruction. The current testing system and the curriculum that it has spawned is unidirectional and leaves behind the majority of students who do not do their best with the linear, sequential instruction. With greater differentiation of instruction we can lower the barriers, not the bar as all children learn to their full potentials.
6. Inspiration and engagement open the brain's information filters (reticular activating system and amygdala) to accept sensory input. In the absence of these qualities at the beginning of a unit of instruction the brain, at an unconscious level, does not admit the input that is not determined valuable to survival or pleasure. To gain admission through these unconscious brain filters lessons need to be personally relevant, low in stress, and incorporate enjoyable modes of information presentation.

7. Lower Stress. React or Reflect? The amygdala is an emotion evaluating structure through which all sensory input must pass. The state of stress or well-being determines if the input is directed to the reflective, higher cognitive "conscious" decision-making brain, or to the reactive brain where the only "choices" at this unconscious level are fight, flight, or freeze. These are often misinterpreted by teachers as ADHD, acting-out, or signs of low intelligence. The students are not consciously misbehaving. Their brains are simply in the reactive state in which they have no conscious control.
8. Using Learning Beyond the Classroom. New "learning" does not become permanent memory unless there is repeated stimulation of the new memory neural pathways. This is the "practice makes permanent" aspect of neuroplasticity where neural networks most stimulated develop more dendrites, synapses, and thicker myelin for more efficient information transmission. These stronger networks are less susceptible to pruning and become long-term memory holders. Students need to use what they learn repeatedly and in different, personally meaningful ways for short-term memory to become permanent knowledge that can be retrieved and used in the future.
9. Teach students (and educators) the Brain Owner's Manual. The most important manual students and educators can read is the owner's manual to their own brain. When we understand how our brains take in and store information, we hold the keys to operating our brains most successfully. Understanding that they can change their own brains and intelligence (neuroplasticity) builds students' resilience and willingness to persevere through challenge.
10. Teaching is not brain surgery. It's Harder. When teachers receive the recognition, status, and more of the autonomy I receive as a neurologist, we will attract the best and brightest to teaching and keep professional educators longer than the current five year average.

http://www.RADTeach.com

How Your Child Learns Best

Top 10 List to Improve Your Child's Memory

Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed. — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 03:03:38 +0000

Top 10 List to Improve Your Child's Memory Or How to be Your Child's Memory Coach

Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed.

WWW.RADTeach.com

One of the most exciting areas is brain-based memory research we now have is neuroimaging and brain-mapping studies to view the working brain as it learns. These memory tips are derived from my background as a neurologist. I review the neuroimaging research. I then use my experience as a classroom teacher to make connections between the research and strategies that are NEURO-LOGICAL.

* DESTRESS: Stress causes the brain intake systems to send information into the Reactive brain (automatic-fight, flight, freeze) and prevents information flow through to the Reflective higher thinking, conscious brain (prefrontal cortex) where long-term memory is constructed. Establish enjoyable rituals (favorite songs, card games, ball toss) or surprises (a fun picture downloaded and printed from the internet) before study time to destress the study experience and open up the brain networks that lead to memory storage.

* GRAB ATTENTION: Memorable events make long-term memories. Find out what your child will study next in school and hang posters "advertising" or giving hints about that topic and encourage him to guess what it might be. Curiosity open's up the brain's sensory intake filter so when the topic comes up in class or in reading it will grab her attention.

* COLOR: The brain only lets in a small part of the billions of bits of sensory information available every second. A filter in the low (unconscious, automatic, animal-like) brain decides what gets in. Color is something that gets through this filter especially well. Have your children use colored pens color code notes or words to emphasize high importance. You can have a picture of a traffic light on the wall and he can use green, orange, and red in order of importance - like the traffic light.

* NOVELTY: If you add novelty to a study experience it will be more memorable. Use video clips from the internet, put on a funny hat, put a scarf on the dog, light a candle) right before your child begins to study. His alerting system will be more open to processing and remember information that comes in after a novel experience.

* PERSONAL MEANING: Children must care enough about information or consider it personally important, for it to go through the brain filters and be stored as memory. Use your child's interests to connect her to the material. Make stories together using the information. Stories are great ways to remember new things because you child's brain grew up hearing stories and the pattern for remembering stories is strong in her brain.

* RELATIONAL MEMORIES: The brain keeps information in short-term memory for less than a minute unless it connects with prior knowledge. Activate your child's prior knowledge by reminding him of things you've done as a family or that he's learned in other subjects that relates to the new information

* PATTERNING: The brain is a pattern-seeking organ. When your children recognize relationships between new and prior knowledge their brains can link the new information with a category of existing knowledge for long-term storage. Charts, mnemonics, listing similarities/differences, and making analogies build long-term memory patterns.

* MENTAL MANIPULATION FOR LONG-TERM MEMORY: Once the information gets to the higher thinking brain your child must do something with it to build permanent memories. Your children can write summaries of new information in their own words. To make these even more personally meaningful the summaries can be in forms that suit their learning style preferences including sketches, skits, songs, dances, comic strips, or drawings.

* PRACTICE MAKES PERMANENT: Information from each of the senses is stored in a part of the brain specific to that sense. Review material using multiple sensory activities so different neural networks store the knowledge in multiple brain regions. Your children's brains will build multiple pathways leading to the stored memory, which makes retrieval more efficient. When a memory has been recalled often, this repeated neural circuit activation makes the memory stronger - like exercising a muscle.

* SYN-NAPS: Neurotransmitters, brain transport proteins, needed for memory construction and attention are depleted after as little as ten minutes of doing the same activity. Syn-naps are brain-breaks where you help your child change the learning activity to let her brain chemicals replenish. The Syn-naps can be stretching, singing, or acting out vocabulary words. After just a few minutes, her refreshed brain will be ready for new memory storage.

HOW YOUR CHILD LEARNS BEST

Dr. Judy Willis’ RAD Teaching Connections from Neuroscience Research to the Classroom

Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed. — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:53:31 +0000

WHY WOULD A NEUROLOGIST BECOME A CLASSROOM TEACHER?

by Judy Willis, M.D., M.Ed.

www.RADTeach.com

As a neurologist who became distressed by the epidemic of referrals I was getting to evaluate children for ADD, OCD, petit mal staring spell epilepsy, oppositional-defiant syndrome, etc. I investigated the potential source of this huge jump in referrals. The kids, when I evaluated them, usually didn't have any of these conditions. The cause, as I observed was in the change in classrooms geared to homogenized, sometimes "teacher proof" teach-to-the-test and overstuffed curriculum. I went back to university, got my teaching credential and masters of education and for the past 9 years have taught elementary and middle school, college and grad school. I now teach, write books, articles, and give presentations/professional development workshops about using brain research as a bridge to neuro-logical parenting and teaching strategies.

How Your Child Learns Best

www.RADTeach.com

Teaching “to” tests has dramatically changed the resources and curriculum in our schools. The focus is on the lowest-scoring students. The pressure to bring up test scores for these struggling students limits time for the kinds of individualizing learning that challenges all students to reach their highest potential, and teachers have less opportunity to encourage creative thinking and incorporate hands-on activities.

When education is not enriched by exploration, discovery, problem solving, and creative thinking, students are not truly engaged in their own learning. Because teachers are required to emphasize uninspiring workbooks and drills, more and more students are developing negative feelings about mathematics, science, history, grammar, and writing. Opportunities to authentically learn and retain knowledge are being replaced by instruction that teaches “to the tests.”

Neuroimaging and new brain-wave technology provide evidence that rote learning is the most quickly forgotten, because the information is not stored in long-term memory. As students lose interest in lecture-and-memorize classes, their attention wanders, and disruptive behaviors are a natural consequence. Even for children who are able to maintain focus on rote teaching, the disruptive responses of their classmates are encroaching more and more on teachers’ instruction time as they try to maintain order.

WHAT COULD I DO TO FIX A BROKEN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

This is an exciting and pivotal time in brain research. Neuroimaging and brain mapping are being used outside the confines of medical and psychological study, and the resulting work has opened windows into the functions of the thinking brain. We now can view what happens in the brain as information from the senses is categorized and organized into short-and long-term memory—scans can literally show learning taking place!

I realized I could apply the growing body of research about how the brain learns best to develop sensible, scientific strategies to help improve students’ attitudes and academic success—“neuro-logical” strategies, as it were. After writing four books for professional educators I was asked by parents what they could do to help enrich their children's education in this time of mind-numbing, one-size-fits-all curriculum used to teach to the standardized tests.

www.RADTeach.com

Keep Alive Your Child’s Natural Enthusiasm To Learn

Children are naturally curious and have magnificent senses of wonder. They want to learn and explore. Often starting at age three or four, especially if they have older siblings, children look forward with great excitement to the day they start school. Once they begin, however, many no longer see it as a wondrous place. Children often begin to begrudge the time spent in school and resent having to do homework. How sad that is. It doesn’t have to be that way. Strategies that incorporate brain-based learning research can take children’s natural curiosity and enthusiasm and build upon them to enrich their minds and sustain their inherent love of learning. When you become active in your child’s education, you can supercharge classroom lessons to connect with your child’s individual needs, gifts, and challenges.

Learning can become active and include creative exchanges of ideas. You can bring life back into your child’s learning while helping her build the critical thinking, problem solving, and reasoning skills that are being sacrificed with a rote memorization approach to teaching. The school years are critical times in a child’s development of self and her relationship to the world. This is when your child gains access to a new compendium of tools she needs to understand and participate successfully in the world. After writing four books for teachers, I realized parents need their own access to valuable techniques and activities to enrich their children’s classroom experiences, keep alive their natural curiosity, and cultivate their enthusiasm for life-long learning. based

I wrote the book to provide specific suggestions for improving your child’s attention span, memory, higher-level thinking, and reasoning. You’ll also find practical information about how to evaluate the type of learner your child is, and which strategies are best suited for his learning-style preferences within each subject area. You will be able to help your child build academic skills, lower test-stress while increasing test scores, increase class participation, bolster weak spots to overcome challenges, optimize gifts, enrich talents, and, most important, reconnect with the joy of learning.

Tailoring Learning Experiences to Your Child’s Learning Strengths and Interests

If you are interested in the neurological background information upon which the strategies offered in this book are based, read Chapter 1. If you’re not as into science and prefer to move ahead, dive right in to chapter 2, The book describes the different styles of learning that children have, allowing you to identify your child’s best learning style and his particular strengths. You can then proceed to the subject-based chapters to find the strategies best suited for his learning needs and strengths. Chapters 3–12 provide ideas for tailoring learning experiences to your child’s learning strengths and offer “neuro-logical” strategies for each subject area and type of academic task, from vocabulary testing to essay writing. There are also suggestions for dealing with the more general problems of organization and motivation that are so critical, especially in view of the current classroom climate. Each chapter offers specific interventions and enrichments that you can match to your child’s individual needs and gifts to help build brainpower to its highest potential.

It is important that your child has fun and doesn’t feel that he is just doing more of the same work he just did for six hours in school. Observe his physical and verbal responses to see if an activity is right for him. Yawning, wandering attention, easy distractibility, looking at the clock, very short answers, or excessive doodling may indicate this is not the best activity for him. As you tackle activities together, look for signs that he is enjoying himself, and then watch for these in future activities. Relaxed engagement looks different in different children. Some indications can include pulling his chair closer to the table, speaking louder, making longer comments, and asking questions. After the activity, ask your child what he enjoyed. This will help you with future plans and help him recognize that he really did enjoy himself, so the dopamine-reward cycle will kick in when you do the activity again.

www.RADTeach.com

I also consult with Goldie Hawn for the Mindful Awareness curriculum developed by the Hawn Foundation for use in schools throughout the Unites States and Canada. You can learn more about the Hawn Foundation at their website.

CLICK ON IMAGE NEAR BOTTOM OF PAGE "MARSHMALLOW TEST" TO LINK TO VIDEO ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF GOALS FOR CHILDREN

SPECIAL NOTE FOR EDUCATORS

For the most part, you already know the strategies, and probably use them successfully that are most compatible with how the brain learns best. Knowing the brain science about why these work helps you find new applications for your successful strategies and differentiate them for different learners.

The RAD lesson plan is one of my core strategy plans. You'll find it described in more detail on my website www.RADTeach.com
Please share your RAD lessons with us all!

The R in RAD stands for Reticular activating system (RAS): All information enters the brain as sensory input. There are billions of bits of sensory information available every second, but only a few thousand can fit through this unconscious RAS filter. The RAS, in the lower part of the brain filters all incoming stimuli and makes the unconscious "decision" as to what sensory input is attended to or ignored. The RAS is almost identical in animals and humans. It is geared to survival and gives priority in sensory input that is novel - what has changed? First priority is to what has changed that could be a threat. Once that is assessed, the information that gets in are things that capture the attention of the RAS through novelty, physical activity, stimulation, attentive focus, color, surprise, etc.

Thus, once we create a non-threatening climate in our classrooms using a variety of stress reducing strategies, we can create activities, especially for lesson openers, that capture the focus of the RAS and have the potential to reach our students' highest, conscious, reflective brains - so learning becomes knowledge and permanent memory.

The A stands for Amygdala. This is a part of the brain's emotional limbic system that acts as a switch to send information to the reactive brain (if stressed) or the reflective higher cognitive brain. Children's emotional states determine which path information will take through the amygdala. Relaxed, alert students engaged in lessons that resonate with their interests, past positive experiences, and learning strengths promotes information flow through the amygdala to the higher cognitive reflective brain (prefrontal cortex). If students are stressed, bored, frustrated by lessons beyond their level of understanding or by lessons about things they have already mastered, the amygdala directs the input to the unconscious, involuntary, reactive brain. Here the only unconscious behaviors options are fight, flight, or freeze so no long-term memories are created. Those extra child neurology referrals I was getting for ADHD, staring spells, etc. were really the brain doing what it does with stress. These students were going into the involuntary behavior modes of fight (oppositional defiant syndrome and some ADHD), flight (ADHD), and freeze (zoning out, staring "spells").

The D stands for Dopamine. This is a chemical neurotransmitter that, when high, bathes the brain, and results in a sense of pleasure. Neuroimaging and chemical analysis reveal that when dopamine is high the person experiences pleasure and has increased attention, motivation, creativity, and perseverance. Scans reveal greater dopamine release while subjects are playing, laughing, exercising, feeling optimistic, being kind, showing gratitude, feeling proud of their achievements, and have some choice in how they will participate. Dopamine release is even increased in anticipation of a learning experience that has been found pleasurable in the past - through a dopamine-reward memory storage network. Remembering those positive experiences stimulates the same neural networks as the experiences themselves. So if you teach an engaging vocabulary lesson where you pantomime the words and the students select what you are doing from a word list - they'll love it, remember it from novelty and increased dopamine, and their brains will release dopamine when the see "vocabulary lesson" listed on the board for the day's activities!

The overall message here was that, in order for students to learn, they must be engaged in a relaxed and enjoyable way. Fear of participating and making a mistake in front of the class and boredom are two of the main reasons why students don't learn in the average classroom.

Let's share the lessons we think are RAD and I'll keep track of them for my next book about RAD lessons educators find successful. Who knows, it may become a subject for a neuroimaging study! You can blog in you lessons and the student response (perhaps why you think it was successful) and I'll send you details about its possible publication in my book, where you'll receive name credit as well as two copies of the books! Or, go to my website www.RADTeach.com and email me and I'll send you a more detailed description of how to be part of this teacher-sharing-with-teacher project.