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.