Courageous Learners Help Reduce Bullying

Editor’s Note: In conjunction with the 20-year anniversary of BrainSMART, we are sharing some of our educators’ stories. All of the featured educators earned their Master’s in Brain-based Teaching curricula and/or the Minor in Brain-based Leadership, co-developed by Dr. Donna Wilson and Dr. Marcus Conyers, co-founders of BrainSMART. Below is a synopsis of one of those stories.

Maureen Ryan, known as “Coach Mo” to her students, credits BrainSMART’s Thinking for Results model for helping her to reach the “courageous learners” in her class.

The Thinking for Results model emphasizes that there is not a one-size-fits-all strategy when it comes to teaching and learning. Instead, Coach Mo always reminds her students to “Never question ability, always improve strategy.”

“With a lot of my courageous learners, the challenge has been for them to learn that there’s somebody who cares and somebody who’s willing to take the time to listen and work with them and be positive and optimistic,” Coach Mo said when sharing her story with the BrainSMART publication, Effective Teaching, Successful Students. “I think too many times our courageous learners are already getting the sense of defeat before they’ve ever started something. I always want my students to know that I’m one of their biggest fans.”

Don’t Lose Sleep over Daylight Savings Time

In most of the country, Sunday marks an annual ritual: setting our clocks ahead for the start of Daylight Saving Time (DST). When we “spring forward,” many of us lose an hour of sleep. However, we shouldn’t be so quick to give up that 60 extra minutes of snooze time—on the first day of DST or on any other day.

If you don’t think that one hour of sleep deprivation is a big deal, consider this: Experts have identified the Monday after DST as a vulnerable time for traffic accidents. This tie between adequate sleep and overall alertness underscores just how important sleep is to proper functioning in general.

As we report in our book, Thinking for Results: Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement By As Much as 30 Percent, lack of sleep has a significant impact on cognitive processes. Most adults require a minimum of 7.5 hours of sleep per night, while children and teenagers need even more.

Making the Most of Our Cognitive Assets

It’s an exciting time for mind, brain, and education research, with psychologists and neuroscientists regularly making discoveries that have revolutionized our understanding about people learn.

For instance, we now know that academic achievement is greatly influenced by students’ ability to apply thought processes in a systematic way. We use the term metacognition to describe this ability, with the strategies that come into play known as cognitive assets. Cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists may use the term executive functions or skills to describe similar functions.

For example, educators, psychologists and neuroscientists may all speak of the importance of capacities such as working memory, selective attention, and metacognition with regard to learning. All three groups of professionals are talking about skills that are linked to the brain’s prefrontal region, as well as other areas of the brain depending upon the specific skill. Ongoing research continues to increase our understanding about related structures and functions.

Your Chief Executive Officer: Taking Charge of Your Brain

In the business world, the chief executive officer is the person responsible for the highest-level decision-making made at a corporate entity. Without a leader to guide them, the people in the organization might scatter in a variety of different directions and find themselves at cross-purposes instead of working productively together toward the same goals.

In our book, Thinking for Results: Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement By As Much as 30 Percent, we cite the work of neuropsychologist and cognitive neuroscientist Elkhonon Goldberg (2009), who applies the metaphor of a chief executive officer to the brain’s frontal lobes. For example, he notes that

The prefrontal cortex plays the central role in forming goals and objectives and then in devising plans of action required to obtain these goals. It selects the cognitive skills required to implement the plans, coordinates these skills, and applies them in correct order. (p. 23)

How a Postive Mood Affects Classroom Performance

Think positively! How often have you heard that when facing a potential problem in your life? Certainly thinking positively is good advice in that an upbeat attitude has been linked to better results in problem solving and learning.

As Marcus and I describe in our book, Thinking for Results: Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement By As Much as 30 Percent, people think more creatively and find novel solutions to difficult problems when they are in a positive mood. Approaching an important task with optimism gives you the motivation you need to continue when the going gets tough.

Conversely, when people are in a negative mood, they can find it more difficult to think creatively and may also be more pessimistic about their chances of success. They may not be as motivated to think through complex problems, and this can lower their ability to achieve. Thus, the pessimism is borne out without the person ever realizing that a positive attitude might have led to different results.

Spring Forward—But Get Enough Sleep!

Sunday is the start of Daylight Saving Time (DST) throughout much of the United States. But as you spring forward, do remember to get enough sleep!

Experts quoted by such mainstream media outlets as the New York Daily News and Time magazine have identified the Monday after DST as a vulnerable time for traffic accidents. Commuters are adjusting to a lost hour of sleep as well as an hour of daylight shifted from the start of their days to the evening time.

What this underscores is just how important sleep is to proper functioning in general. As we report in our book, Thinking for Results: Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement By As Much as 30 Percent, a large number of Americans are sleep deprived. Lack of sleep has a significant impact on cognitive processes. Most adults require a minimum of 7.5 hours of sleep per night, while children and teenagers need even more.

Cultivating Cognitive Assets in Students

Over the past half-century, psychologists and neuroscientists have learned a great deal about the way our brains work. These discoveries have revolutionized our understanding about how people learn. We now know that academic achievement is greatly influenced by students’ abilities to apply thought processes in a systematic way. In education, terms often used are cognitive strategies (we use the term assets) and metacognition.

Cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists may use the term executive functions or skills to describe similar functions. For example, educators, psychologists and neuroscientists may all speak of the importance of capacities such as working memory, selective attention, and metacognition with regard to learning. All three groups of professionals are talking about skills that are linked to the brain's prefrontal region, as well as other areas of the brain depending upon the specific skill. Ongoing research continues to increase our understanding about related structures and functions.

Some students arrive at school with most of their cognitive assets (or executive functions) in place. They have the capacity to benefit from standard teaching practice if they are motivated to do so. Other students do not arrive with all these assets in place. They may start school motivated, but they can quickly lose ground as their reading, writing, and computing skills fail to develop at the prescribed rate.

One response is to require them to repeat the grade, which is both financially costly and largely ineffective, In our book, Thinking for Results: Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement by As Much as 30 Percent, we cite studies that show that students who are held back do not gain the skills they need to perform at grade level and that grade retention is highly correlated to dropping out of school.

Regular Exercise Leads to Better Health for the Body and the Brain

Happy New Year! With a new year may come a resolution to get into shape. Last week, we posted about the importance of eating well. In tandem with that comes the need for regular exercise.

Exercise not only can lead to a healthier life but also can lead to a more academically accomplished life as well. In our book, Thinking for Results: Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement By As Much as 30 Percent, we cite research suggesting that movement is essential for the Body-Brain System to be in a peak state for thinking and learning.

Even just standing and walking can increase the blood supply to the thinking areas of the brain significantly. Additionally, breakthroughs in cognitive neuroscience show that various movements require extremely high levels of cognitive function.

Eat Well in the New Year

Almost everyone's holiday season has included a wide variety of food and drink, not all of it completely healthy for us. After indulging over the holidays, many of us are making ourselves and/or our loved ones a promise to eat healthier in the new year.

For people who maintain healthy eating habits, food is the pharmacy of feeling good and staying focused and energized, or relaxed and calm.

In our book Thinking for Results: Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement By As Much as 30 Percent, we explain that healthy eating is important for fueling the Body-Brain System.

Increasing Selective Attention at School and in Life

We are bombarded by so much information in the course of our daily lives that it is easy to get distracted from what we should or would like to accomplish. One of the most valuable “cognitive assets,” in our Thinking for Results approach (Wilson & Conyers, 2011) is what we call Selective Attention.

Selective Attention is defined as "the skill of identifying what is important to any situation and attending to what is necessary with appropriate focus." Effective teachers guide their students to  identify what is most important in learning situations so that they can attend to necessary tasks with appropriate focus.

While attending the Cognitive Neuroscience of Learning symposium a few years ago, Marcus and I had the opportunity to see Professor Amishi Jha from the University of Miami report on her research with "mindfulness practice" as a way to improve attentional control.

Put Time Management on Your Side in the Classroom

Learning to manage time and meet deadlines are valuable skills for workers of the future—and the students in your classroom right now!

Through explicit instruction on time management, you can guide students to understand the importance of scheduling tasks to finish school assignments and to complete big projects on time without cramming at the end and turning in half-finished, subpar work.

Time management is one of 25 cognitive assets covered in the Thinking for Results approach (Wilson & Conyers, 2011). Guiding students to learn to “think about their thinking”—to become more metacognitive—and develop their thinking and problem-solving skills is a central tenet of the graduate degree programs with a major in Brain-Based Teaching that we co-developed and are being offered through Nova Southeastern University’s Fischler School of Education.

Supporting Teachers to Implement Common Core State Standards

I am happy to see that there are a number of sessions at the Florida Virtual School conference to support educators in Florida and other states that are implementing the Common Core State Standards. Although the standards are not entirely new to many states that have had various types of standards, it is now expected that students will learn to use cognitive strategies alongside content. In many communities this is a departure from what has been expected, thus, it is important to include in professional development planning now and over time. To assist with implementation of cognitive standards in educational settings, consider doing a book study connecting local requirements for Common Core with our text, Thinking for Results, 2012 (Amazon.com).