EDU270: Lesson 4

What does it mean to be relational as a teacher? How will you interact with your students to accomplish this?

To be relational means a few things. On the one hand, to be relational means that the students have a good relationship with the teacher. On the other hand, to be relational means that the students can relate to me as a teacher of that content and subject. The opposite of both of these meanings is bad: if a student can't have a good relationship to the teacher and see the teacher as a relatable and familiar human being, then the students will resent and dread coming to class every day, making that day's lesson miserable at the very least, but, worse, their overall success will circle the drain. A student needs to be able to enjoy the person or the class to be successful for a whole school year.

My attempt at accomplishing this begins on day one with a very structured framework for the class. With a firm syllabus, I outline my expectations as a teacher from day one. I learned by teaching college that you can always be more relaxed than the syllabus, but you can never be harder than the syllabus. To that end, I start strongly and sternly. I deliberately come off as a firm, strict teacher because I want them to start the year with certain expectations about my class.

However, on this first day, I also make light of class, make light of school, and try to show them not to take themselves so seriously by modeling what that looks like in myself. I love using accents in lessons (Russian, English, French) and I love to find ways to sing along to things --it helps them to relax.

I never budge on my boundaries. I confiscate cell phones. I don't accept late work. I send kids to the office for breaking dress code. But I also greet them every day with a smile, make time for them, let them know that they're important. I use TV shows they know for references in lesson plans. I'm using the trendy Hamilton Musical in a lesson plan next year about The Federalist Papers. In fact, I'm memorizing the first rap and I'll perform that for the class in costume. I don't ask them to do anything that I'm not willing to do myself, including expectations on punctuality, time-management, responsiveness, responsibility, etc.

I start every class with "Hello, my lovelies" and during class discussions about literary themes, I let conversation wander sometimes (not too far). I want them to know that their ideas mean something. I want to know what they think and why. I want them to respect themselves and each other by granting time to explore those ideas, by challenging social norms and ideas they take for granted. Some of my kids say that sometimes they only learn one thing all day and it's in my class. 

Ultimately, I have fun. I want them to see that you can be successful and responsible without being stressed out. I expect a lot from them, but they have so much fun that they enjoy meeting those expectations.

EDU270: Lesson 3

1. Attention. Go to the Web site Changing Brains: Effects of Experience on Human Brain Development and select Watch Online. When that link opens, view the video titled Attention. After watching the video, answer the following:
1. How do you know when students have attention problems? Does it matter if they exhibit these symptoms in only one setting? Explain.
1. You know that students have problems with attention in the classroom if they appear to be looking around and not focusing on the area (teacher, assignment, white board) that they should be focusing on.
2. Of course it matters if they exhibit these symptoms in more than one setting. ADHD is a diagnosis that should only be made for a child who experiences a consistent set of these problems by having trouble focusing and paying attention at home, at school, in social settings, and in other places. Even children with ADHD don't have problems focusing on movies or video games, so this shouldn't be the only tested situation.
2. What can you, as a teacher, do to help make the most of a child’s developing attention, especially for those children who seem to have attention challenges?
1.  Teachers can be communicative about the situation at hand. The teacher should have an open dialogue with the parents to convey what is happening and what the teacher has observed at school. Additionally, the teacher should be in contact with the student to see what the teacher can do to accommodate the student better. I would assume a side benefit of this would be that the student can see that someone is paying attention to him/her and that someone truly cares about his/her performance. Lastly, a teacher should make sure that whenever a student does appear to connect with a lesson or with a kind of lesson, that the teacher makes the most of those moments, therein creating positive reinforcement for that student's learning habits.

While viewing the same Web site, click on RESOURCES on the left navigation bar. Go through each resource under Attention. Then answer the following:

3. Describe something new you learned that you did not already know. 
1. I didn't realize that impulsivity was associated with ADD or ADHD. In retrospect I can see that many of my students with diagnosed ADHD are certainly students who seem impulsive. One student in particular always has to get up to throw something away, or get up to sharpen his pencil, or if the class is silently working on writing, he'll get up to ask me a question. None of these actions are planned --not even the questions-- which speaks to that impulsivity. 
4. Indicate how this information will help you in the classroom.
1. I feel like much of this lesson is geared toward instructors with younger students. Because my students are in high school, so many of them are already aware that they have ADD or ADHD, or their parents have spoken with me about special accommodations for students with special needs (IEPs and 504s). The class I struggle the most with is my after lunch crowd, a crowd that is restless from being in a seat all day long, and restless still from playing sports through their 45 minute lunch. Being aware of the impulsivity element of this lesson, however, really allows me to plan for this group of more anxious students. I can find ways to harness that impulsivity with kinesthetic lessons, and I can also train them to recognize when they feel cabin fever, or when they're stir crazy, and they can make more conscious choices about whether they should remain seated as college classes and careers will demand of them in the future. 

1. Emotions and Learning. Go to the Web site Changing Brains: Effects of Experience on Human Brain Development and select Watch Online. When that page opens, view the video titled Emotions and Learning. After watching the video, answer the following questions:
1. Summarize the impact of chronic stress and depression on the brain.
1. Cortisol is a hormone that affects the hippocampus (named after a seahorse for its shape). When children are raised in stressful family situations, or when children are depressed, more cortisol is released which is a more toxic hormone that ends up affecting the child's ability to learn. As we learned in previous lessons with sensitive periods, children who miss developmental lessons end up getting further and further behind, thus affecting their learning, their social skills, and thus their overall holistic development. 
2. Describe the impact of parent training when parents are taught how to use positive language when interacting with their children.
1. When parents are effectively trained on the consequences of stressful environments and when they can be trained on good responses for their children, parental tone and treatment differs thus positively affecting the child's learning and comprehension. Perhaps the best outcome is that children have better memory, better reasoning, greater social skills and can perceive their lessons better, thus improving their developmental skills and their future. 
3. Explain the effect that a teacher can have on a student with a specific type of gene that predisposes them to aggression and/or depression.
1. Teachers should foster healthy learning environments. Neglect is one of the toxic behaviors that leads to cortisol release (also toxic), so a teacher should maintain healthy relationship with students, practice talking and listening with them, and an overall feeling that the teacher cares about them personally. 

While viewing the same website, click on RESOURCES on the left navigation bar. Go through each resource under Emotions. Then answer these questions:

1. Describe something new you learned that you did not already know. 
1. The National Scientific Council on the Developing Child (as well as the other links) made it seem pretty obvious that emotional development is key in early childhood and educational years. Because I teach high school, I would have expected there to be a higher focus on teenagers and emotional intelligence considering they're students that seem to guided by their hormones. I had no idea that much of the cortisol and hippocampus reactions are crucial in early childhood development.
2. Indicate how this information will help you in the classroom.
1. While this evidence would make it seem like fear and stress are more crucial factors for younger students' learning, I still see how high school students (particularly over-committing, ambitious high school students looking at Ivy League Colleges) can be affected by stress. This lesson helped to remind me that high school students are really just kids who need sometimes to act like kids, to tell stories and have someone listen, and who need to feel like someone who cares for them isn't neglecting them. 

Lesson 3 Blog Post Assignment:
After watching the videos on Attention, Emotions and Learning, describe how this information impacts you as a teacher.

This information impacts me as a teacher because I've really seen something fascinating in my classroom: while the year is wrapping up and the temperatures outside are warming up, a few students aren't hanging out in my classroom before school any more while others still do. Instead of coming into my classroom to talk to each other, I've seen them coming in to talk to me, to share stories with me, and to tell me about things that are important to them, outside of school. This last lesson has reinforced what I already suspected was important in this pattern: students need someone to care about them, someone to let them tell their stories to and to be validated in those stories, because students who are neglected don't perform well in class. Indeed, most of the students who share stories with me are students who do perform well, and I like to think that those sacrifices of chunks of time are valuable and important, that it helps those learners on a holistic level, and contributes them as people as much as students.

EDU270: Lesson 2, Part 2

For the assignment we were to review an article from EBSCO MasterFILE Premier on one topic of our choosing. I chose to study Nutrition and Learning since I've been exposed to the concept through Dr. Amen's TED Talk, and by The Winner's Brain.

The Assignment: 
Using the Information Literacy module, choose a topic from this lesson that interests you, such as wiring, dendrites, how emotions influence learning, nutrition and learning, REM sleep or how early experiences impact later learning. Conduct a search in the EBSCO MasterFILE Premier database and locate your chosen topic in a journal or magazine article. Create a mind map using Mind Meister that indicates the five most important things you learned about your chosen topic and how they relate to each other. In addition to your mind map, create a Word document (100- 250 words) describing why these are important to you, and include the complete citation information for your chosen article in APA format.

 You can view a PDF of my Mind Meister map of Nutrition and Learning here.

Essay: 
 

            In her article titled “Nutrition and Learning,” Joan Murray, RD, analyzes a number of the nutritional factors that biologically influence the brain and a student’s overall brain chemistry. Dr. Amen, a qualified expert in brain health from his work as an American psychiatrist and a brain disorder specialist, has addressed the importance of diet in his TED Talks, particularly emphasizing that everything you eat actually changes the physical chemistry of your brain. Similarly, authors Mark J. Fenske, Jeffery Brown, and Liz Neporent in their book The Winner’s Brain dedicate a whole chapter to why nutrition has an important influence on brain-based learning. If these two references provide mere asides to an overall narrative of neuroscience, what else can we learn about the effects of nutrition on learning?

            In her article, Murray has quite a bit to say about nutrition and learning. The five most fascinating factors are: amino acids, glucose, vitamin deficiencies, breakfast, and recall factors. Glucose is an important factor that ends up affecting every other biological facet of brain health, especially hormones and amino acids. Whether scientists study children, college students, or the elderly (all patients in Murray’s study), recall factors are affected by vitamin deficiencies, whether someone has a high-protein breakfast, and what the glucose levels were in either the control or the placebo experiment. Overall, students should always have breakfast so that they perform better, stay more focused, and are able to input more quality information. Murray agrees with other resources and goes even further: with good protein and glucose during times of information input, the information recall last longer and has a higher quality.

Works Cited

Murray, J. (1998). Nutrition & learning. Foodservice Director, 11(9), 108.

EDU270: Lesson 2

Lesson 2 Participation Assignments

1. Vision. Go to the Web site Changing Brains: Effects of Experience on Human Brain Development and select Watch Online. When that link opens, view the video titled Vision. After watching the video, answer the following:
Describe the warning signs of visual problems and give an overview of why early visual stimulation is important.

The video stressed the importance of getting eyes checked as early as possible. In fact, unchecked eyes for infants with cataracts can damage the brains perception of vision and patterns at a gradually worse rate after 6 weeks old. According to The Optometrist's Network (one of the provided resources on the webpage), 12 in every 100 children are affected by binocular vision disabilities. According to the video, "Sooner is better than later because the brain can adapt better in early life."

Some of the things that we as educators need to be on the lookout for include: one eye drifts or aims in a different direction (even if it's only when that student is tired); turns or tilts head to see, squinting or closing one eye, particularly while reading; headaches or eye strain; and double vision.

While viewing the same Web site, click on RESOURCES on the left navigation bar. Go through each resource under the heading titled Vision. Then answer the following:

1. Describe something new you learned that you did not already know. 

 I didn't realize that poor eyesight in young learners isn't so much about sight so much as it is about the brain losing plasticity in moments of sensitive periods. For instance, if a baby's cataracts aren't corrected within 6 weeks of birth, the baby dramatically loses a chance to get caught up neurologically. That's terrifying! It also makes an impression on me regarding the nature of getting these eyes checked as early as possible. While I teach at the high school level, brains still aren't done developing until 23 or 25 (depending on the learner) which means there can still be time to fix those eye problems.

1. Indicate how this information will help you in the classroom.

I reviewed the checklist for parents on The Optometrist's Network and this was very helpful to me. I think I may have a student who has trouble with his sight, and this checklist inspired me to get his mom involved on getting his eyes checked.

1. Hearing. Go to the Web site Changing Brains: Effects of Experience on Human Brain Development and select Watch Online. When that link opens, view the video titled Hearing. After watching the video, answer the following:
Explain what a teacher can do to stimulate hearing.

This video helped to reinforce an article I read in Neurology and Law about how many recidivist criminals come from poor socioeconomic backgrounds where these criminals as children grew up in projects or in poor living situations where they heard gunshots, shouting, and other aggressive or violent sounds. The video says loud sounds lead to poor organization of auditory processing, which effects the children in the long run and thus leads to stunted learners who become recidivist criminals. This is great information to review so I can be aware not only of children who come from poor socioeconomic backgrounds, but also more affluent students who are prone to videogame activities on a regular basis.

To stimulate hearing, it's important that teachers properly enunciate words. The video's example differentiated big and pig. An instructor's ability to speak clearly and to enunciate consonants helps with this. The other grand help is for instructors and administers to monitor hearing and correct any hearing loss. Rhyming and music a great options, especially for high schoolers.

While viewing the same Web site, click on RESOURCES on the left navigation bar. Go through each resource under Hearing. Then answer these questions:

1. Describe something new you learned that you did not already know. 

 Many of this outside resources provided on the links page actually coincide with a podcast I listed to today, coincidentally enough. The podcast was on On Being Human from WNYC, and featured a composer who as he got older lost his hearing. The podcast went into great detail about what a coclear implant sounds like to someone who gets it as an adult and why this particular composer would rather be deaf than to have an implant. This composer also got the ball rolling on being part of a clinical trial where scientists are trying a form of medication to help regrow the hair follicle cells in the inner ear that help stimulate electrical impulses from sound (in the video, these were the green brush-looking cells). At the last minute, the composer backed out of the trial, nervous. These outside resources --particularly from the Center for Disease Control and The National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders-- helped reinforce, confirm, and solidify information I heard on the podcast. What I didn't realize before today was that those small hairs in the inner ear are so crucial (or even that we had small hairs in the inner ear). It's fascinating to me that according to this clinical trial, they made chickens progressively deaf so that they could try this medication to regrow those cells, which did happen. Who knew chickens could show us so much about our own hearing?

1. Indicate how this information will help you in the classroom.

I didn't realize that noises from an airport were considered noises loud enough to interfere with "poor organization of auditory processing." What's especially disconcerting is my school is built right next to the airport. It's been funny to reference the sound of helicopters when we read something like 1984 or Fahrenheit 451, but I didn't realize it posed a threat beyond distraction.

I also think the use of repetition in literature is a great way to reinforce these concepts. For a high school English teacher, I can use repetition in lessons of poetry, especially for those American Romantic poets who force-rhyme or skip-rhyme: the student can identify that this sounds different than the other natural rhymes. This is related to the poet's intention as well because usually the forced or skipped rhyme brings attention to the word that "shouldn't" be there.

1. After reading Chapters 10 and 11 in the textbook, answer each of the following questions:
• What effect does taste have on learning?  

Perhaps the most interesting and fascinating thing to taste while learning is water. I remember being a high school student and having my teacher tell me to drink water while testing because it helped to hydrate my brain and to get me ready for learning. I didn't realize that old advice was sage, that the brain contains the highest amount of water than the rest of the human body, or that the reason water works so well is because it fuels the neurotransmitters that are crucial to learning and processing.

• What effect does smell have on learning? 

I loved learning about this because I have always had the suspicion that students in a boring, smelly room don't receive information well. Logically, no one is relaxed in a smelly room: learners are on a kind of defense mode and are so focused on the bad smell that they can't focus on their studies. Part of that same method of learning is to beware not to have a room buzzing with bad lights/electricity, not to have a room that is too sterile, etc. At the beginning of the school year, I put a couch in the back of my classroom, funny English-related posters, and painted one accent wall purple. A lamp in the corner of the room is a paper cylinder from IKEA: kids say that my room looks like a living room or a bedroom and that they feel comfortable in it. I also like to open the windows for good air circulation (when it makes sense with the weather) and I often spray Thieves Oil when the room smells bad. Not only does Thieves Oil smell good (a combination of cinnamon, clove, eucalyptus, rosemary, and lemon), but it kills germs and is basically Lysol without that overpowering, chemical odor. The kids love to come into my room and remark that it smells like chai tea, and that, "You should tell Mr. Sullins about your oil because his room is warm and smells like butt." I don't want anyone to be uncomfortable with the smell of my room, and now I know from this book that it can impact a student's learning.

EDU270: Lesson 1

1. Brain plasticity. Go to the Web site Changing Brains: Effects of Experience on Human Brain Development and select Watch Online. When the link opens, view the video titled Brain Plasticity. After watching the video, answer the following:
1. Define brain plasticity.
2. Define sensitive periods.
3. List activities that lead to building a healthy brain.
4. Describe the impact of a knock on the brain (shaken baby syndrome) to a child.
5. Describe something new you learned that you did not already know.
6. Indicate how this information will help you in the classroom.

Brain Plasticity
a. Brain plasticity is the brain's ability to grow and change, particularly with experience.
b. Sensitive periods are when the brain is most able to have plastic changes. These are prime experiences under the age of 25 (when the brain stops being as plastic) that humans (particularly students) are more sensitive to learning something and creating a firm mental foundation.
c. Playing games, walks, preschool, talking with families, and I imagine much more such as contact with tactile objects, tasks with motor skill inclusion, and reading are all contributions toward brain plasticity during sensitive periods. Skipping these activities could require fixing before moving onto other skills and other sensitive periods.
d. Impact on different areas of the brain can have different consequences. For instance, hitting the occipital lobe could make someone blind, and damage to the prefrontal cortex could radically alter someone's personality, and other areas of higher emotional intelligence such as responsibility, plan making, decision making, and time management. In this particular section, Professor Neville supported what I've heard from Dr. Amen before about how the brain has the consistency of soft butter (https://youtu.be/MLKj1puoWCg), which Amen adds can be damaged not only from impact but from the sharp ridges inside the skull. Professor Neville says that the impact of the brain to the hard skull is enough, but I imagine Dr. Amen's contribution of research regarding the sharp ridges of the skill is enough to make us even more aware of the brain's sensitivity. At least for the purpose of this video, both the occipital lobe and the prefrontal cortex were damaged in the depiction of the shaken baby syndrome.
e. I didn't realize the brain was as small as putting your two fists together.
f. For my classroom, it's particularly interesting to note the sensitive periods for optimal learning. While I teach freshmen and juniors and while the really sensitive periods of their brain plasticity are over, I have noticed the effects on some children who -as in the case of this video- is a student whose foundation was built weakly and needs to be rebuilt. This particular student was someone who grew up in an abusive home, probably experienced something similar to shaken baby syndrome not to mention other brain damage from physical abuse, and is now a student who is having trouble learning concepts that he should have learned before my class. My understanding of brain plasticity and of sensitive areas helps me to find a way to access his learning. It's a kind of brain-hack ;)

1. Imaging/development. Go to the Web site Changing Brains: Effects of Experience on Human Brain Development and select Watch Online. When that link opens, view the video titled Imaging/Development. After watching the video, answer the following:
1. Science knows a lot about the adult brain. Describe why it is important to study the brains of young children.
2. What is the role of experience in building the brain’s architecture?
3. At what age is the brain fully mature?
4. Describe something new you learned that you did not already know.
5. Indicate how this information will help you in the classroom.

a. Scientists are using MRI's and other brain scanners on children to identify which parts of the brain grow at different stages. If scientists can learn more about brain plasticity and sensitive periods at more specific ages, this grants educators more knowledge about what information should be delivered in which manners.
b. As the human brain develops and goes through sensitive periods, experience creates more connections and neurological impulses as seen through brain plasticity. Between early childhood and early adulthood, a lot of the synapses of the brain drop off after steep development. In the video the example was that a two year old child has twice as many brain connections as her mom. Experience helps to determine which parts of the brain will become a staple part of the brain's architecture, and which will not.
c. Professor Neville says that the brain is done developing at age 25. Other brain books I've read develop this idea further, that women's brains typically finish developing at age 23 and men at 25. Additionally, other resources I've come across claim that the brain develops from bottom to top, from back to front, so the last area of the brain to develop is the prefrontal cortex. This is the center that features responsibility, time management, personality, and decision making which is why those tasks are generally acknowledged as more adult-level concepts.
d. I did not realize that synapses and connections were lost between early childhood and early adulthood. Based on some of my freshmen, I'm not surprised. Just kidding ;)
e.  This information will be helpful for understanding which experiences can be reinforced to help create stronger memories of lessons learned in my classroom.


After watching the videos on brain architecture, plasticity, and understanding the impact of the environment on a child, how does this information impact you as a teacher?

Less than a year ago, I took a Neurology and Law class which really interested me regarding neuroscience and elements of learning and decision making that affect us on a regular basis --whether we realize it or not. While most of the information in this lesson wasn't new to me, it is a positive reinforcement for me as an amateur student of neurology to remember that not all of my students have had the same fortunate or healthy experiences leading them to this classroom. With a little knowledge from me about how different learners can have different neurological backgrounds and with a little self-knowledge from them on how best they learn, we all can work together to get these students of all backgrounds to learn and love my English class :)