In the words of others: Reynolds & Sousa

GARR REYNOLDS
I’ve mentioned Garr Reynolds before, so many times, in fact, that he is even included in the Tag Cloud at the right. Garr writes an informative blog about presentation design at Presentation Zen, and while I initially found his writing (both his blog, and his book of the same name) enjoyable and accessible for learning about presenting and design, he often includes references to, and whole posts about the brain. So it is with his June 17, 2009 post The power of emotional contagion. Garr does a lot of traveling and presenting outside of Japan (where he lives). This current post finds him visiting Tivoli Gardens after presenting in Sweden, and he writes about mirror neurons, yet another topic that figures in my Tag Cloud.

DAVID SOUSA
A colleague who I met at the AIMS Technology Retreat twittered me an article in ASCD by David Sousa: Educational Leadership – Brain-Friendly Learning for Teachers. Sousa, who has also written an information packed book How the Brain Learns, discusses professional development that is geared towards learning for the participants. He references current brain research and provides practical suggestions designed to help make PD opportunities useful rather than onerous. Especially since I am knee deep in co-planning a full day’s worth of opening meetings for the fall, this article is a welcome “hand to the forehead” reminder of what will make the day worthwhile.

The Montessori Approach

I am reading Theories of Development – Concepts and Applications, Fourth Edition (2000) by William Crain (turns out there is a Fifth Edition (2005). My friend and colleague, who happens to be our Middle School Learning Specialist, loaned me the book knowing I would find it interesting, and so far, she was correct!

I have never taken an educational theory course, but do have twenty-seven years of teaching experience to inform my reading of this book. First up in my reading (choosing by interest and not sequence) is Maria Montessori (1870-1952). I had not realized that she hailed from the 1800s. My limited knowledge of Montessori practice was based on general conversation with other educators and occasional snippets that might have appeared in the news.

Of particular interest was listening to a Dutch friend describe her Montessori teaching experience years ago in Amsterdam. Along with another of our Dutch friends, she was responsible for starting a Montesori high school in the Netherlands, in order for the younger Montessori-taught students to have a follow-up school to attend.

The Montessori approach is hands-on and experiential, with each child progressing at their own pace and pursuing their own interests. Children are not simply small adults – they learn and think in ways quite different from adults. The process of learning includes “sensitive periods” identified by Montessori as “genetically programmed blocks of time during which the child is especially eager and able to master certain tasks.” In their order of appearance, these sensitive periods include:

• order – everything in its place and a place for everything
• details – noticing the minutia
• use of hands – tactile, kinesthetic control and exploration of the world
• walking – the learning of which Montessori likened to “a kind of second birth” which the child does for the sake of doing, and not with the intent of getting any place in particular
• language – “the child absorbs language unconsciously” and this process of acquiring language is universal, regardless of geography or culture

The teacher’s role is to simply facilitate the natural developmental rhythms of each child as they progress through their sensitive periods. Additionally, the teacher structures the leaning environment to foster a student’s free choice in deciding what to explore, with a focus on independent learning without the need of external motivators or reprimands. The materials in a Montessori environment scaffold in skills levels and include Nature as an important component.

Montessori found that young children easily plunged into deep concentration when engaged in a task that interested them, and by extension, for which they were developmentally ready. Her practical philosophy was to provide an environment to support this natural form of learning. However, the provision and encouragement of such an environment relies upon a strong set of guiding principles, the deviation from which does not seem to have been encouraged or accepted.

Next school year I intend to find a Montessori school to visit and observe. Meanwhile, this Davidson Film will suffice.

The International Montessori Index – a rich source of schools and details of the philosophy
Maria Montessori – pictures and biography
North American Montessori Teachers’ Assocation
Google Timeline for Maria Montessori –  an interesting search result (Did you know Google could provide this type of result?)

Sir Ken in his element

Being “in your element” is an idiom that UsingEnglish.com defines as feeling “happy and relaxed because you are doing something that you like doing and are good at.” In his latest book, Sir Ken Robinson describes “the Element” (which is also the name of the book) as “the place where the things we love to do and the things we are good at come together.”

An earlier post describes the book, but how much better if you can hear Sir Ken talk about it in his own words. Here is his February talk at the RSA, the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

The Creativity World Forum

Thanks to Ken from New Zealand, an insightful blogger and commentator, for highlighting John Cleese’s November 2008 talk at the Creativity World Forum, which took place in Belgium. Cleese’s talk is succinct and informative, providing a look into the processes of creativity and innovation. 

I was struck by the audience reaction to the talk; they barely made a sound! I laughed aloud multiple times. Was the audience hoping to catch every word so not wanting to interrupt? Were they simply a very serious group? Was language an issue? Was their silence a reflection of the cultural mores of their jobs or countries? 

I don’t know the answers to my questions, but did later discover that the talk is a video synopsis of a more in-depth  presentation. Perhaps the audience was more animated in the non-posted segments. Meanwhile, I hope you find John Cleese  stimulating and thought-provoking.

By the way, I found two other talks of particular interest. One is by Tom Kelley, general manager of IDEO, talking about Helping organizations to innovate through design. In a part of his talk that was not in the video synopsis, Tom asks “What does the front door of your house not currently do that you would like it to do?” The other talk is by Dan Heath, author of the book by the same name as his presentation, Made to Stick. 

John Cleese on The Importance of Creativity

You can get an additional perspective about John Cleese’s presentation in this pdf synopsis of his talk.

And of course, Happy 18th Birthday R!

It’s Elemental, my dear Robinson!

I have been anticipating the publication of Ken Robinson’s the Element since it was first announced, which seems like over a year ago. I was also hopeful that the author’s voice would mimic his presentation style, unlike the last book of his I tried to read, Out of Our Minds (which I could not get through). Happily, despite the many typos (around 12!) in the Element, Sir Ken’s humor, narrative and story telling expertise all came through.

This is a book about not only finding your passion, but also about the importance of doing so – both for yourself and for the benefit of moving society along. It is also about how the nature of education has to not only change, but actually TRANSFORM in order to better serve those who engage in the process (and perhaps open up pathways for those who drop out of the process).

One of Robinson’s points, made with co-author Lou Aronica, is that in way too many instances our educational systems discourage students from pursuing their passions, or worse yet, do not provide environments that foster finding one’s element. He shares a slew of stories about prominent people who found their elements despite their “education”, in some cases choosing to forego finishing their formal education.

A number of ideas resonated strongly with me, two in particular.

The future for education is not in standardizing but in customizing; not in promoting group think and ‘deindividuation’ but in cultivating the real depth and dynamism of human abilities of every sort.

Finding your element, especially if it is NOT your job, will probably enhance how you do your job.

Getting back to the first idea – Robinson suggests we need to

• transform curriculum, and “eliminate the…hierarchy of subjects”
  
• instead of “subjects”, curriculum should be based upon disciplines
  
• curriculum should be personalized

Agreed!

The Notes section of the book provides URLs for a number of topics and ideas referenced. Not all of the sites are pertinent to what I tend to write about, but below are those which complement this post.

Another look at the five senses – perhaps we have more than just five? Exploding the five senses by Andrew Cook

Audiblox is a worldwide company that has put together “a system of cognitive exercises, aimed at the development of foundational learning skills” and seems to focus on those who have learning difficulties. The founder of Audiblox, Jan Strydom, along with Susan Du Plessis, has authored IQ Test; Where Does It Come From and What Does It Measure?

A conversation about The Future of the SAT in The Chronicle of Higher Education 

Tony Buzan talking, in a number of short videos, about the use and benefits of Mind Mapping

The Rules of Mind Mapping 
Use both sides of the brain 
The rest of the videos are available here. 

Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Mentoring Project Who Mentored You? 

International Telementor Program – “facilitates electronic mentoring relationships between professional adults and students worldwide”

Public/Private Ventures “creating and strengthening programs that improve lives in low-income communities” 

The UP Experience – a one-day, less expensive version of TED 

Learning & the Brain – Sam Goldstein (learning & schools)

Instinctual optimism and resilient mindset. Those are the two concepts that Sam Goldstein introduced in his Learning & the Brain keynote Hardwired to Learn: Creating Schools That Nurture and Grow Developing Brains. From his site: “Sam Goldstein, Ph.D. is a doctoral level psychologist with areas of study in school psychology, child development and neuropsychology.”

Instinctual optimism is Goldstein’s reply to the question, How do kids know they can? They are intrinsically driven to learn. Furthermore, as a result of this instinctual optimism, kids know that whatever it is, they can do it, hence the resilient mindset. Think of babies and toddlers you have known – they are instinctually optimistic and resilient about learning to walk, for instance. They don’t tend to ask, and aren’t told they can’t; they just go ahead and do it, taking in stride the bumps and falling down.

Both of these concepts remind me of Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk about creativity. Kids come to school eager, wide-eyed and filled with curiosity and creativity. (And Sir Ken says the schools proceed to educate the curiosity out of the kids.)

Goldstein went on to provide a little brain and gene background. He said that genes know in exactly which organisms they reside, and the “basic brain wiring plan is encoded in the genes.” That explains the nature part, but there is also a nurture portion, for although we may be genetically preprogrammed, brain development is also experience based.

At this point he posed three questions:

1. What is and is not intelligence?
2. How is intelligence different from knowledge?
3. How is intelligence different from achievement?

Given all of the above, Goldstein then talked about children and classrooms that nurture them. He felt strongly that it is “not our job to motivate kids, but to create an environment in which kids motivate themselves.” In creating such an environment, we need to consider (and all of the following are quotes)

• potential benefits and adversities of external rewards
• reinforcement of instinctual optimism
• providing opportunities for empathy and altruism (create community)
• providing competition in the absence of winning
• providing extrinsic reinforcers for effort and progress, and not for control [Behavior modification is for control, and Goldstein is not a big fan of this.]
• fostering opportunities for intrinsic control
• maximizing external consequences to control
• finding ways to enhance self-discipline
• setting limits in autonomous ways; helping kids learn to manage themselves instead of teachers managing them

Goldstein concluded by sharing two lists, of sorts: how to focus on student well being and describing the mindset of a resilient child. And he closed with a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

The secret of education lies in respecting the student.

The Pajama Game has been put to bed.

Alas, we have opened and closed, happily to thunderous applause and standing ovations. Well, what else would you expect from an audience of family, students and friends, and a musical that has some rousing songs, active staging and two great dances (Steam Heat and Hernando’s Hideaway), and of course some good acting to boot!

My regular posts will resume this week, but I wanted to mark the wonderful time I had in this production by sharing two more photos with you. The first is a backstage shot of three factory workers (I’m the one on the right). The second is the closing moments of Hernando’s Hideaway, and I’m the one in green.

Forecast this week includes two days in the 60s. While we may yet have some cold and damp weather, spring is on its way. Olé!

p.s. Those five satin dresses were made by a Math teacher in our upper school. One of the students took a picture of the five of us and I’ll be sure to share it in a future post. Satin dresses accompanied by heels sure did a lot to set the mood for our  tango dancing!

The Pajama Game

It may get a little quiet here for the next week or so. I’m having a blast being in the student~faculty musical at my school. This is a 30+ year tradition that brings together upper schoolers (grades 9–12) and faculty in the production of musical theatre. I’ve been in The Boys From Syracuse, Fiddler On the Roof, My Fair Lady, and now The Pajama Game.

We open on Friday, February 29th, and close the next evening on Saturday, March 1st. Definitely a limited engagement. Starting tomorrow night (Thursday the 21st) we have rehearsals every evening except for this Friday and Saturday.

That’s me and a student doing a “fin de leap frog” (not sure what that is, leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you) as part of the picnic scene for “Once A Year Day”. The musical is definitely a bit corny, absolutely dated, but nonetheless lots of fun.

Oh yes, and it’s also a wonderful test of visual memory, spatial memory, and kinesthetic memory as I learn lines (all two of them ), staging, and dances. Am actually rather pumped to be one of the dancers in “Hernando’s Hideaway”. By the way, the original musical was staged on Broadway the year I was born. Now go figure out how old I am!

Motivational Reflection

A search on this blog for “dopamine” will return a post about Feedback & Motivation along with most of my posts about neurotransmitters, of which dopamine is but one. In rereading my posts, I was reminded of the role of dopamine – one of the “feel good” neurotransmitters – in motivation.To quote myself:

If you’ve been following this blog then you know that the “feel good” neurotransmitters–serotonin, dopamine and endorphin–can be released by the brain in response to external stimuli such as exercise, laughter, singing, listening to music, and, perhaps the most powerful of all, positive feedback.

Positive feedback can make most of us feel good, and receiving that feedback can be motivational. In December, 2006, I applied to the Google Teacher Academy and part of the application process was to make a movie on one of two topics. I chose “Motivation and Learning” and made a Flash animation on the topic. Dopamine plays a starring role in the animation. (For the curious, I was accepted and attended the academy in February of this year. Quite stimulating!)This past Wednesday, August 29, was the opening day faculty meeting at my school, and the debut of the professional development activity that I created back in June. (The Prof Dev Series link at the top of the page will take you to a listing of the posts about that activity.)Being asked to create the activity was in and of itself a hugely motivating force. The actual time spent on creating the activity, and writing blog entries for each portion, proved to be an enormously satisfying and creative endeavor. Each day’s efforts and results motivated me to want to return the next day to continue the process. It was the very act of creating that provided my intrinsic motivation, and if there was any extrinsic motivation involved it was purely seeing the blog post and seeing the updated digital file for the activity.My next several posts will be about the activity and the following day’s speaker. For now, I am off to enjoy the glorious sunshine of this Saturday morning!

Rebuttal to Extrinsic Motivation

What now! A school that states its purpose and objectives with the inclusion of this philosophy:

to value learning more than propriety, to trust the unadorned pleasures of learning, unassisted by point scores, prizes, rankings, and punishments.

I started teaching in 1982 at St Ann’s School in Brooklyn, New York. Begun in 1965 by Headmaster Stanley Bosworth, St Ann’s was and is an upstart in the world of independent schools. One of St Ann’s hallmarks is that students do not receive grades, only anecdotal comments.

Alfie Kohn, well-known in certain circles as another educational upstart, believes that extrinsic rewards are useless in education, in raising children, or in creating a positive work environment. He expounds on this in his book Punished by Rewards: The trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and other Bribes.

The Study Guides and Strategies site, which I have referenced in previous posts, begins the Motivating yourself ~ extrinsic values page with the line: Print this and write three reasons someone else wants you to learn this. The text then goes on to suggest that learning to satisfy someone else’s criteria is not as effective as learning to satisfy your own, and to assist with the process they provide An exercise in Motivating Yourself.

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As to which type of motivation is best, I leave it to you to determine for yourself, but am willing to bet that both types have their place. The Cornell University College of Engineering provides some suggestions for Maintaining Morale & Motivation, and concludes:

In sum, both intrinsic and extrinsic methods of motivation are important and necessary.

And the University of Connecticut page, Tips for Rewarding Students for Good Performance (Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation), begins by stating:

Recent theories suggest that intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are not two opposing constructs, but rather two ends of a motivation continuum.