Brain Behavior Institute - Session 15

My As I continue to think of how my understanding of the brain and how it effects learning inside and outside of the classroom, I am reminded of the  quote  V.S.Ramachandran, 2003: " it never ceases to amaze me that all the richness of our mental life - all our feelings, our emotions, our thoughts, our ambitions, our love life, our religious sentiments and even what each of us regards as his own intimate private self - is simply the activity of these little specks of jelly in your head, in your brain. There is nothing else"   The idea of jelly in the head makes me think of emergence as ‘Jello’.  With powder, hot water and lots or stirring, different level flavors, shapes and consistencies can develop at different times.  

I am beginning to be more comfortable with the continual process of making connections, and emerging into who I am becoming.

Last night, I could not manage a conversation with myself. This morning as I walked from the train to campus, I ran into myself and had a delightful exchange. I've enjoyed walking the Bryn Mawr campus on the way to our sessions every day. It occurred to me today that I've been staying on the paths. I also noticed that due to the construction on campus, each day the available paths have been slightly different--there is nothing like a mad orange construction barrier to make you change your direction. Paul throws out orange barriers in the institute all of the time---he also sends out flares, as do fellow participants, that draw my attention and direction. What gets any of us off the path so to speak? In thinking about the projects we are working on, we've got agency to choose our own paths--still we are trodding worn paths--otherwise we wouldn't find any related research to link to our ideas. So, at what point in the project do we leave the path? Is it when a big orange blockade keeps us from pursuing a particular path? Is is when we meet ourselves and have a delightful conversation that shifts our perspective? What motivates some people to live their lives off the path---inventing new possiblities, approaches, realities? Is it important to return to the path? How often and for what purpose?

In the beginning of each school year I spend some time on working together. First and foremost in the lesson is that each student should do their share. That usually extends into everyone has something to offer to the group because we all have different life experiences.  I really try to push the idea home that no one person is smarter than the others and spend quite a bit of time giving “wait time” for questions. I am always amazed how often one student in the group will grasp a concept and will be right on the mark but their peers will not listen. I usually will stand with the students at that point and say, “Are you listening to your lab partners?” I never say that the partner is correct. Some students catch on fairly quickly others take a while but eventually they start to listen and are quite successful. I enjoyed this mornings ambiguous figures and decided how useful the visual aids will be for my students. I have started developing a whole new lesson plan to incorporate the ambiguous figures section into the beginning of the year. Afterwards, I also have decided to take a different image each time we do a lab or group work and displaying it as a warm up board to remind students that we all have different ways of looking that can all be correct. Hopefully the warm ups will remind them most so I have to less ;-).

FIRST-

"We help students develop skills to take apart what they see and put them back toigether. We want our students to know that they have abilities within themselves to open up new alternative ways to think about things." So we are creating tools that help students scaffold what we're teaching them.

Are students in suburban disricts more like sponges that soak up what's being thrown their way? Many of the inner city students I taught for the past three years liked science, but did not seem interested in learning science, but many did enjoy doing science. I was trying to be their "guide on the side" and they became my emergent learners. Students seemed excited about science, but not committed to staying focused on my lessons.

SECOND-

Perception is influenced by genetics and experience. I honestly think my mother gave me the ability to look at things from a warped angle. Maybe I inherited this or maybe i learned it from watching her. Either way, we both look at things from nature and make faces out of the angles. Now I am wondering- do sculptors see things like that too? Does anyone else see faces when they look at the pipes under sinks or in the designs of urinals? Is there more matter (than in other folk) in my (part of the) brain that contains images?

Yesterday, during lunch, I was engaged in an interesting discussion about why is the school year ten months.   Why is the expectation of educators and students that we cram so much information into ten months?   Would schools be better served if the school year were longer, allowing more time for open ended transactional inquiry?  What would happen if as educators’ we said “NO” to standardized testing, and validated other methodologies for assessing student achievement, learning and effective classrooms?????? 

What could happen if we perceived the purpose of education to produce lifelong searchers of the their own path, instead of young adults who are prepared to continue more years of regurgitating someone else’s information?   

Do I really care if my mechanic is able to conjugate verbs in German better than 90% of his or her peers?  No, I just want to know if they are able to accurately diagnose my car, and fix it quickly, accurately and at a price point for which I will not have to re-finance my life to continue to operate my vehicle safely. 

As I continue to become a better master of my craft: assisting special education students to be able to make relevant meaningful connections to their world and the academic world.  I am continually trying to make sense of the current pedagogy, research and intuition and to help my students do the same thing.