Dallas School Highlights Our BrainSMART Strategies in Professional Development

Marcus’ and my professional learning strategies were featured in “The Weekly Armadillo,”  an online newsletter published by the Nathan Adams Elementary School in the Dallas Independent School District.

Quoting from one of our Edutopia blog posts, Inspiring Progress Toward Learning Goals, the excerpt drove home the point that, "By teaching students to monitor their thinking during learning by setting goals, applying strategies, reflecting, and adjusting, teachers will help them improve their learning ability."

The newsletter also drew attention to our strategies for “Goal Setting and The Brain,” which stressed the importance of setting learning coals; choosing the most effect learning strategies, reflecting on what you know and what you need to find out, adjust strategies accordingly, and learning from experience.

Living a Brain Healthy Lifestyle

Marcus Conyers, Courtney Mosser, and Beverly Engel recently presented brain health information at a community forum at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, hosted by Chet Evans. I attended and found all three speakers to be highly informative and the audience interaction at the end of the evening refreshing. 

My co-author, Marcus Conyers, kicked off the forum with an informative and highly engaging keynote. Marcus' keynote "Living a Brain Healthy Lifestyle" is taken primarily from our new book with Wiley Education, Positively Smarter: Science and Strategies for Increasing Happiness, Achievement, and Well-being. Since we are getting a number of inquiries about this book, I want to share Marcus' presentation so those who are interested can check it out on YouTube. 

Positively Smarter is a book for both educators and those individuals who enjoy reading self-help books. Rich with research and easy to read, this book provides readers with many strategies for an ever more fulfilling lifestyle! 

Thanks to the Rollins College posting, you can watch his keynote on YouTube at ...  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6wmnC7qVLw 

Let's Use All We Know to Ensure REAL Brain Development is Happening for All Children

Interesting article...

Let's Use All We Know to Ensure REAL Brain Development is Happening for ALL Children

Aspen Brain Forum: Post 2

We have heard David Van Essen from Washington University in St. Louis who spoke about the systematic exploration of human brain circuits in both wellness and disease. He spoke specifically about the Human Connectome project consortium with healthy adults. This project will include 1,200 individuals including twins and non-twin siblings. The speaker indicated that resulting data that should yield valuable information about the healthy human brain and will be made available to the neuroscience community.

BrainSMART Blogging: In Full Support of Teachers

We are proud to introduce our blog! Here is an example of the kinds of strategies that we share on this blog.

I just saw BrainSMART graduate student Diane Dahl's blog at her blog, For the Love of Teaching. Her blog post 'Reading Levels Jump 5 Months in just 2.5 Months' tells how she is using her BrainSMART studies to benefit students. Diane also shared with us that she had a record number of students qualify for gifted programming after teaching her students cognitive and metacognitive strategies.

Though our blog focuses on practical knowledge and strategies for teaching and learning, we also share research from the fields of education, mind, and brain.