Teachers often feel blamed for everything from the achievement gap to a top student’s floundering in their freshman year of college. Teachers know that the world around their classroom is much bigger than they are. As an individual influence on each student, could they be expected to overcome things like poverty, hunger and pressures to […]
Education
What Students NEED to Know on the First Day of School
First day of school: There are two things students absolutely need to know! All teachers feel the pressure to get it right out of the gate. With two very simple starters the year will be off to a fabulous start. 1. Let your students know explicitly (say it out loud, write it down, act like it’s true, play […]
How Social Pain Hurts Our Learners
“I want my students to be stressed out and unhappy at school” said no teacher or administrator ever. But despite good intentions, it is the sad reality that school is sometimes more stressful and more isolating for kids than we’d like. And these non-physical sources of pain can obstruct learning just as much as the physical ones, especially […]
Using Our Brains to Beat Our Biases (Part 3)
Holding the highest of expectations for EVERY single student matters! In addition, communicating those standards of excellence directly to students is a necessary link between the expectations themselves and the students’ success. This is especially important for students whose demographics indicate that they are more likely to be on the unfavorable end of the persistent […]
Using Our Brains to Beat Our Biases (Part 2)
Imagine a “rocket scientist”, and then take a moment to see if the picture in your head corresponds to a stereotype? What if every time someone said ‘rocket scientist’ your brain had to sift through a number of possible images that would fit with that description? If it was being exhaustive, your brain would pull out each […]
Using our Brain to Beat our Biases (Part 1)
Only 16% of African-American students in California met or exceeded the math standards tested in 2015 by the new Common Core assessment test. This is in stark contrast to 69% of Asians and 49% of whites and corresponds to a well-documented and long-standing racially demarcated achievement gap. As disturbing as these results are, because the achievement gap is […]
Summer Break: A Time for Brain-Healthy Risk-Taking
Taking a break from school is something we all need, but summer can and should be a time of important personal growth. Educators and parents are in prime positions to promote summer learning mindsets that include (safe) risk-taking and getting comfortable with initial failure. Going into summer, it’s important that we provide students with the courage […]
Why Taming Fear Improves Learning
We have often been told by educators that implementing learning about emotions and how to regulate them into their classroom would be great but that there is simply no room in the school day to squeeze it in. We are going to make the case for you to do it anyway. Why? Because learning to […]
Fear Part 2: Taming the Lizard Brain
Anger, dread, frustration, anxiety… If you have been feeling any of those emotions of late you have your lizard brain to thank (or the presidential primaries). While certainly not enjoyable states of being these emotions have played a key role in your survival thus far into adulthood. Survival in our modern age, though, is very […]
Fear: A Brain-Wise Strategy
Fear is everywhere, and it’s working. Whether we are listening or not, we are constantly bombarded by information about terrifying things that could be or are happening. Agitation and dread are being poured all over the political arena like chocolate sauce over a sundae made for a five-year-old, by a five-year-old. And as certain primary […]