Category: learning styles

Jane Goodall’s animal observations have helped her understand some aspects of human behavior and its place in nature. She recalls a story about a young male elephant who was the lone adolescent in the herd.  Everyday he would station himself on a path that was used by buffalo on their way to drink at a pond.  He hid in the undergrowth and then as the buffalo appeared he burst from his hiding place and charged toward then, ears out with a great trumpeting sound.  The startled buffalo would scatter in all directions.  The young elephants game of surprise was something the buffalo did not expect.  Jane Goodall was able to look into a peephole at the young elephant and witness his joy and creativity at play. 

The desire to play is intrinsic; it is a state of being that is intensely pleasurable.  It has the ability to energize and renew a natural sense of optimism, an optimism that opens us up to new possibilities.   Recently scientists have begun to view play as a profound biological process.  They are learning that play sculpts our brains; it makes us smarter and more adaptable and is central to brain development.

When children play they learn trust, empathy and social skills.   Fourth grade teacher Amy Whitcomb part educator and part comedian at the Rooftop School in San Francisco uses her love of play and fun to teach math.  she says, “my general philosophy is if it’s not fun they are not going to want to learn.”  She has learned to keep her inner child alive and uses it to engage and teach her students.

Play optimizes the learning process and increases performance.  There are patterns of play like the periodic table of the elements.  A teacher can use this table to integrate play into their lesson plans

• Attunement Play - simply means you are attuned to one another; it’s spontaneous, like laughter or a loving smile.  Get into the habit of connecting to your students daily with this infectious type of joy
• Body Play and movement – think of simple movements like skipping.  Skipping is a lesson in gravity, flexibility and rhythm.  Any movement that is done for its own sake is intrinsically playful.
• Object Play - hands playing with all types of objects help the brain develop problem solving.  The manipulation of objects creates curiosity and innovation.
• Social Play – creates bonds, fosters belonging and is a celebration.
• Imaginative and pretend play - the ability of the young child to create their own sense of their mind takes place through pretend play.  It remains the key to innovation, creativity and discovery.
• Storytelling – narrative play – is the way most children love to learn, it is play under a microscope.  A story helps make sense of the world, helps to understand others and gives children a way to expand their own consciousness.  Stories can give your own life with, drama, love and comedy.
• Transformative – integrative and creative play - uses fantasy, theatre, art and music to give enrichment.

A transformation in education is possible, if educators apply the understanding from the science of play.   Students are primed for learning through play, when they have fun at learning, they will pursue it for it’s own sake.  It is how nature assured us how to learn about the world and our places in it.  

Does artistic talent come naturally?  Are some students born with special innate talents or can talent be cultivated?

In Venezuela the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra believes talent can be cultivated.  This amazing system of education is called “El Sistema.”   This thirty-year-old program has made classical musicians out of a million and a half young Venezuelans, and transformed the lives of these underprivileged and at risk youths in the process.  Almost every major orchestra around the world has members who began in El Sistema. 

The concept for El Sistema looks at talent in a different way, it doesn’t take those from the gifted pool and gives them enrichment, enrichment is for everyone.  In this brilliantly conceived system music is literacy, it is a daily devotion that is filled with joy.   Exposure to music is not the low standard ad hoc program that most US schools currently have.  El Sistema takes everything students learn and rolls it all into one endeavor.  Music is rhythm, it’s motion, it’s coordination, it’s balance, it’s counting, it’s reading, it’s a social system and it’s a physics experiment.   The concept recognizes that talent exists in everyone, but it must be cultivated and nurtured to blossom.

If this simple philosophy were used as the standard in all schools imagine the possibility for achievement.  The children in the Venezuelan orchestra believe in their own ability to become great musicians, even given the improbable circumstances of their poverty.  If all students grew in the belief that they are capable to learn and master difficult concepts and skills schools would be challenged not with how to teach low achievers but with how to provide more enrichment.

This might sound like the ravings of some wild-eyed optimist but remember who the members of this orchestra are, they are children used to running bare-footed and dirty, they are children who come to school hungry.    Schools must increase their stock in optimists, in those who find joy in teaching and recognize children’s ability to greatness.

Anyone who has ever planted a garden knows the single most important ingredient is the soil, cultivating and enriching the soil gives many rewards.   A rich soil can withstand extremes of temperature and compensate for what’s lacking.   This same principle applies to everything.  Begin the journey in education early by enriching the mind.  Start with pre-school  give children music and art in abundance.  Continue this and  give children a chance to find joy and see their work not as boring drills and practices but a devotion to becoming better.  

Have you ever dismissed your own shortcomings by saying, “it’s just the way I am,” or “I can’t change that?”

If you have you truly are a creature of your own habits.  Question is do your habits own you or do you own your habits?   Most people are owned by their habits simply because the human brain forms synaptic pathways like an expressway and it’s difficult to exit off that path without consciously developing new ways of doing and thinking.  When you change anything you create parallel synaptic paths and new brain cells that can jump onto a new track. 

The problem is whenever you initiate change even positive changes you activate fear in the emotional brain, and if the fear is big enough your flight or fight response will go off and you will literally run away from what you’re trying to do.    That’s why extreme changes like a new diet, fitness regiment or change in career will be difficult and uncomfortable. 

Authors Dawa Markova of “The Open Door” and M.J. Ryan of “This Year I Will” have found that humans approach challenges in four primary ways: analytically, procedurally, collaboratively and innovatively.   What happens is during adolescence the brain shuts down half of that capacity and uses only those modes of thought that seemed the most valuable during the first decade of life.   The result is few use the innovative and collaborate modes of thought.  It’s these two that creates discovery, invention and excellence. 

Teachers have the perfect opportunity to help students adapt to change by creating a stretch zone in their classroom.  The stretch zone is the place in the middle that will feel awkward and unfamiliar but it’s where true change occurs.  When students stay in the stretch zone their brain is healthier because it’s constantly challenged to learn not just new things but create new pathways. 

So how do you create the stretch zone?   Look for ways to challenge students to make tiny continuous improvements. 

• Students should have their own improvement list and work to check off one item every week.  
• Teach students how to access their weak areas and grade their own progress.
• Guide students along their learning path by moving though new material like an explorer in a new place, it’s here they will go from curiosity to wonder.
• Remind students that new ideas like new habits feels awkward at first, and feeling awkward is a valuable moment one that scientists call confusion because it’s fusing the old with the new.  If the process is repeated enough the brain will begin organizing the new input with new synaptic connections.

Teach your students to become innovative thinkers, create collaborative groups where they can explore all the possible solutions to a problem. Every time students do this they will ingrain their brain with the ability to create parallel pathways.

Your classroom can be the best place for students not just to learn but also to create the ability to become a creature of new habits. 

Perception is everything.  How you see things shapes how you interpret the world.  In the classroom the teacher’s perceptions can mean the difference between success and failure.  The verbal and non-verbal communication of the teacher lets a student know if he or she is capable and smart or inadequate and challenged. 

Consciously or not you tip people off as to what your expectations are.  You exhibit thousands of cues, some as subtle as the tilting of the head, raising an eyebrow or dilation of the nostrils, but most are much more obvious.  And your students pick up on these cues.   In other words once an expectation is set, even if it isn’t accurate an individual tends to act in ways that are consistent with that expectation.  Surprisingly often, the result is that the expectation comes true.

Students who lack academic and social skills continue to struggle sometimes even when they are capable and the help and encouragement is sufficient.  Could it be because no foundation has been built to give that student confidence?

Every student needs to learn in a quality environment.  This type of classroom allows for failure.  For students the perception is mistakes are bad and embarrassing and should be avoided.  When in fact mistakes are opportunities to learn something.  The more mistakes made the more a student will learn and the greater chance they will of have of succeeding on the next try.  The key is to learn from the mistakes, not making the same mistake twice.  

Thomas Edison would never have invented the light bulb if he did not take this principle to heart.  He failed more than 10,00 times before he found the filament that would create light for a sustained period of time.  He did not view these as failures. 

How a student views their failures comes from you, the teacher.  If you can eliminate judgment and comparing, you can give every student the mental confidence to know that they can succeed.  An interesting case in point is the story about a group of American schoolteachers who were visiting schools in Japan.  In one school they watched a Japanese boy struggling at the board with a single math problem.  For forty-five minutes this boy worked on the problem making repeated mistakes.  During this time the American schoolteachers became anxious and embarrassed for the little boy.  Yet the boy did not seem to mind.  The teachers wondered why they felt worse than he did.

What they didn’t understand is that in Japanese schools practice in making mistakes is accepted as a natural part of learning.  Once the boy got the answer right his classmates cheered.  Maybe in American schools it’s forgotten that achievement is just a matter of plain hard work.  If students are worried about meeting expectations they many never get on the path to success thus ensuring themselves of the very thing they are afraid of – failure. 

Teachers can empower their students to learn by making their classroom mistake friendly.   Create room to fail with collaborative and cooperative groups.  Give students a stretch zone in which they move away from what’s comfortable and challenge themselves everyday.  Let them learn from their mistakes.

Do you hit the brakes or the accelerator when you encounter stress?  What is your stress temperament?

You probably know someone who lives in the eye of a crisis storm; their life is a series of minor dramas, which replay over and over.  You also probably know another person who weathers all kinds of storms yet seems to be happy. Scientific studies have discovered a link between personality, temperament and the ability to deal with stress.  Individual responses to life situations vary greatly.  Instead of beating yourself up for your inherent temperament become aware of how you respond to changes.   This awareness can lead you to develop new habits and promote healthy hormones and neurochemicals.

Once you become aware of the language spoken by your autonomic nervous system you will discover the power you have to create joy, abundance and health the same way you create stress, fatigue and disease. 

The implication of using this information in teaching children in school is powerful.  Every teacher creates their own classroom environment and students respond in different degrees based on their own stress temperament.   The first step in creating a healthy environment is to recognize your own stress temperament.  Ask: how do you respond to periods of high activity and inattentiveness with your students and what methods do you use to calm and discipline disrupting students?  

One way to establish a healthy classroom environment is to factor in de-stressors every day.   Educate yourself about the practice of mindfulness.  The practice of mindfulness is an effective tool to enhance academic performance while promoting emotional and social well being.   Its focuses on developing a student’s capacity for attention and awareness. 

Begin every day with three minutes of silence.  Instruct your students to close their eyes and simply notice their breathing as they focus on the space between their nose and upper lip.  As your students get into this habit they will become more aware of their emotions.  This technique is a system that allows the mind to settle down and focus.  You can develop and expand this practice during the school year by adding more mindful minutes including the practice of loving kindness (sending loving kind thoughts to another person while you are silent).   You don’t have to become an expert to create a different kind of calm for your students you only have to be willing to experiment and create this peaceful space.  

The benefit is not just to your students but also to yourself.  It allows you to be the best kind of teacher; one who is truly present in the classroom engaged with students and subject making the connections that open the mind to real learning.

The Priaha are a tiny tribe of Amazon natives that live on the banks of the Marci River in Brazil.   This tribe of 360 is in danger of extinction.  By our standards they are undeveloped and primitive.  They have no real language, members of the tribe whistle to communicate.  Although they have one of the strangest languages in the world the Priaha have mastered the essence of cooperation.  To survive this small group must cooperate with each other.  

In this tiny society there is no competition.  Anthropologists who lived with this group attempted to organize a field day, but the Piraha upset the games.  In a footrace when one fellow would get ahead of everyone else he would stop and wait until the other runners could catch up.  The idea of winning was not only novel but also unappealing.  For the Piraha it’s we cross the line together or we don’t cross it at all.  To have a great time everyone had to win.

Unselfish cooperation might be the key to our future. Schools can be the best place to promote this type of cooperation.  Cooperation that not only feels good but also is good because it fosters the best environment for learning.  Cooperative learning results show that students who are given a chance to work collaboratively learn faster and feel more positive about school.   In a cooperative group every student has a specific task, everyone must be involved in the learning project.  The success of the group depends on the successful work of everyone.

There are five elements of cooperative learning.

1. Positive Interdependence (sink or swim together)

·      Each member’s efforts are required for success

·      Each member has a unique contribution to make

2. Fact to Face Interaction (promote each other’s success)

·      Teach each other

·      Discuss concepts being learned

·      Checking for Understanding

3. Individual and Group Accountability (no loafing)

·      Keep the group small

·      Give individual test to each student

·      Observe the group

·      Students must teach what they learned

4. Interpersonal and Small Group Skills- Students learn

·      Leadership

·      Decision-making

·      Communication

·      Conflict-management skills

5. Group Processing

·      Students learn to evaluate and access themselves

Every classroom is its own tiny society with its own culture.   Creating a culture of trust and respect can be achieved with cooperative learning. The greatest purpose of school is to unlock, release, and foster this wonderful capability.