Opening Faculty Meetings: Intro to Simulations

Embracing Diversity in Learning and Teaching

For this second day of opening faculty meetings we wanted to set the tone for what would follow, which was two sets of 45 minute workshops. Keeping in mind that just about everyone was still in a summer mindset, gradually making the transition from summer mode to a fixed schedule, with far less time for being active, and we knew what we had to do. Engagement was the name of the game!

As folks entered the auditorium they were greeted with upbeat music and a continuously looping slide show displaying some 40 people – many of them well known, including students at our school – who have learning differences. We could detect definite “I didn’t know…” comments in response to seeing some of the better known faces on the screen.

Below are our introductory remarks. I invite you to pick up a pencil and piece of paper, and join along!
———

INTRODUCTION TO THE SIMULATIONS

Good morning and Welcome back!

You will now need a piece of paper and a pencil. If you do not have one, please raise a hand.

We are going to take a moment and do a little sketching. Please turn to look at a colleague sitting next to you. You will have 30 seconds to draw each other. Begin now! [If you click the image of the person's face, you will be taken to Tim Brown's TED Talk on creativity and play, from where the drawing idea was taken.]

[30 seconds later…] Okay, pencils down! Hear that laughter? That is the sound of serotonin and dopamine being released in your brains, two of the “feel good” neurotransmitters, which are generated in your affective network and prime you to pay attention. You remember those three neural networks we talked about yesterday – the recognition or sensory network, the affective aka emotional network, and the strategic network, the all-important executive functioning area of your brain that some say is more important than IQ.

By the way, please hold on to the paper and pencil, as you will be using them again.

As a community we read Kristi’s book this summer, and it was part of our inspiration for yesterday’s and today’s activities. As Candy and I met regularly with Kristi throughout the last school year, we couldn’t help but think about the variety of learners amongst us, both the students AND the adults.

Robert Fulghum, the very author who wrote “All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”, summed it up quite nicely when he wrote the following [which comes from It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It]:

image comes from Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke of Insight TED Talk

[the brain] I have one of these things between my ears. It is made up entirely of raw meat at the moment. It is fueled by yesterday’s baloney sandwich, potato chips, and chocolate milk. And everything I am doing at the moment-everything I have ever done or will do-passes through this lump. I made it; I own it. And it is the most mysterious thing on earth. Now I can kind of understand the mechanical work of the brain – stimulating breathing, moving blood, directing protein traffic. It’s all about chemistry and electricity. A motor. I know about motors.

But this three-pound raw-meat motor also contains all the limericks I know, a recipe for how to cook a turkey, the remembered smell of my junior high locker room, all my sorrows, the ability to double clutch a pickup truck, the face of my wife when she was young, the formulas for E=MC squared, and A2 + B2 = C2, the prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the sound of the first cry of my firstborn son, the cure for hiccups, the words to the fight song of St. Olaf’s College, fifty years worth of dreams, how to tie my shoes, the taste of cod-liver oil, an image of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, and a working understanding of the Dewey Decimal System. It’s all there in the MEAT.

One cubic centimeter of brain contains ten billion bits of information and it processes five thousand bits a second. And somehow it evolved over a zillion years from a molten ball of rock, Earth. ….The Mystery of Mysteries is present and it includes us.

The single most powerful statement to come out of brain research in the last 25 years is this: We are as different from one another on the inside of our heads as we appear to be different from one another on the outside of our heads.

Look around and see the infinite variety of human heads – skin, hair, age, ethnic characteristics, size, color and shape. And know that on the inside such differences are even greater – what we know, how we learn, how we process information, what we remember and forget, our strategies for functioning and coping.

Add to that the understanding that the “world out there” is as much a projection from inside our heads as it is a perception, and pretty soon you are up against the realization that it is a miracle that we communicate at all.

It is almost unbelievable that we are dealing with the same reality. We operate on a kind of loose consensus about existence, at best.

From a practical point of view, day by day, this kind of information makes me a little more patient with the people I live with. I am less inclined to protest “Why don’t you see it the way I do?” and more inclined to say “You see it that way? Holy cow, how amazing!”

Our goal for this morning is for all of us to look deeply into the learning process for our own sake and for the sake of the people with whom we work. As learners, we are all on a continuum, intelligence is not fixed. Science has proved that intelligence is incremental and the more you learn beyond your formal schooling, the healthier your brain will be later in life. Armed with this understanding, our affective networks become willing partners in the learning process. Carol Dweck is going to expand upon this.

Each of us has strengths and struggles that are unique to ourselves. When we acknowledge that in ourselves and others, we can move forward to collaboratively help each other be the best that we can be. We are going to take a few minutes now and do some simulations to get us thinking about a few types of struggles that learners – be they kids OR adults – can have.

[stay tuned for the simulations in the upcoming posts]

Move It!

Holy BDNF Batperson! BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor) is a protein in the brain that John Medina, author of Brain Rules, likens to “miracle-gro for the brain”. It turns out that EXERCISE boosts not only BDNF, but also the neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine, all known for helping the brain to feel good and be alert, as well as assisting with neuron communication. 

This probably does not come as a surprise to many, because the benefits of exercise have been espoused in the news on and off for many years. Exercise helps alleviate stress, can be a preventative for many diseases, and can assist with weight control and body image. The surprising aspect, really, is why you can still visit schools where phys ed has been curtailed (budget issues) and businesses where office workers still spend the overwhelming portion of their day in sedentary conditions.

Rule #1 in John Medina’s Brain Rules states:

Exercise boosts brain power.

And he goes on to explain what happens inside your brain when you exercise your body. 

• Your brain needs oxygen and food. While your brain may only represent about 2 percent of your body weight, it accounts for about 20 percent of your total energy usage. 

• What exercise does is provide your body greater access to the oxygen and the food. 

• The more you exercise, the more tissues you can feed and the more toxic waste you can remove. 

• …exercise literally increases blood volume in a region of the brain called the dentate gyrus. … The dentate gyrus is a vital constituent of the hippocampus, a region deeply involved in memory formation.

• BDNF…keeps existing neurons young and healthy, rendering them much more willing to connect with one another. It also encourages neurogenesis, the formation of new cells in the brain.

I’m a swimmer and a walker and a kayaker. On average, during the school year, we walk about 15 miles a week. And during the summer I swim several miles a week. Take away my exercise and I get grumpy. With my exercise, I have more energy and think more clearly. 

You don’t have to take my experiences and writing, or John Medina’s word for it. There is a wealth of information regarding the physical and cognitive benefits of exercise. Aaron Nelson, in stating his pointers for improving memory, listed regular exercise as his first nugget of advice, followed by getting a good night’s sleep and alleviating stress, both which can be positively impacted by exercise.

• Brain Rules Exercise Reference pages, (7 1/2 pages!) 
• Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain by John Ratey (which is now sitting on my shelf awaiting reading – I bought this book after attending a presentation by Ratey at November’s Learning & the Brain conference)
• Mayo Clinic – Exercise: 7 benefits of regular physical activity 
• The Exercise and Physical Fitness Pages by Georgia State University, Department of Kinesiology and Health 
• The Franklin Institute: The Human Brain:  Renew – Exercise 
• SharpBrains: Physical Exercise and Brain Health
• SharpBrains: The brain virtues of physical exercise

 

Neurotransmitters.2

Wow, there are over 50 known neurotransmitters, and I’ve just written short bios on eight of them. Notice any similarities between their functions? Besides acting in concert with one another, many of these chemicals also serve dual functions as hormones, which get released as the body responds to external stimuli.

Acetylcholine – movement, memory, neuron communication

Dopamine – movement, memory, information flow to higher levels of the brain, “feel good”

Epinephrine aka Adrenaline – “fight or flight”

Norepinephrine – memory, neuron communication, alertness, focus

Melatonin – circadian rhythms

Serotonin – “feel good”, calming, appetite, mood, transmission of nerve impulses

Endorphin – “feel good”, pain killer, stress reliever, positive feelings

Cortisol – memory, learning, “fight or flight”

So what can you do to keep your neurons firing at their peak? Well, it’s no different then what you can do to keep your overall body performing at its peak. Stay tuned for the next post, Food for Thought.

By the way, resources for my posts on neurotransmitters include web pages, which are usually referenced in the particular post, and the books by Sprenger and Jensen listed in the column to the right.

Cortisol

Think about something you remember well. Most likely that something produced an emotional response in you. Be it positive or negative, the more intense your emotional response, the stronger your memory of that particular event. It turns out that memories encoded through emotions are the strongest of all our memories.Cortisol gets released from the adrenal glands (located above the kidneys) in response to strong stimuli, especially if the stimuli causes you some stress, again either positive or negative. Research has shown that cortisol plays a role in memory and learning, although too much of it causes the opposite effect of not thinking or remembering clearly. When the brain perceives strong stress, cortisol partners with adrenaline to deal with fight or flight. A little bit of cortisol is helpful but too much of it can be detrimental.The Human Brain and Stress page at The Franklin Institute Science Museum contains informative explanations of the effects of noise on creating stress within the brain, and the impact of stress on memory and gender. About three-quarters along on the page you will find information about the role of Cortisol.

Endorphin

I teach computer classes to middle schoolers and maintain a bulletin board chock full of computer related humor. In the center is posted the rationale for the humor: science has shown if you smile or laugh wide enough to crinkle the corners of your eyes your body will release chemicals that make you feel good. Laughter IS good for you (Check out the U of E link below for more details.) Ah, endorphin, one of the “feel good” triplets, along with serotonin and dopamine.Not only does endorphin’s release make you feel good, but it also acts as a natural pain killer.Undergrads at the University of Edinburgh have put together an information site that sets to answer the query “Does Exercise promote good health?” Of particular interest is the page How Does Exercise Affect Our Mood?, which contains lots of information on endorphins and their stress relieving, pain killing, positive feeling impact.The Molecular Expressions site, noted for “exploring the world of optics and microscopy”, has some colorful images along with explanatory text in its Endorphin Collection. Just looking at the colorful images of endorphins might cause you to smile, which should remind you of endorphin’s feel good benefits.

Serotonin

Often called the “feel good” neurotransmitter, along with dopamine and endorphin, serotonin functions as a calming agent, and also impacts appetite and mood. Too much serotonin can lead to feeling overly calm or sleepy; too little can lead to increased aggression and feelings of depression.Serotonin is also very useful and important in assisting with the transmitting of nerve impulses in the brain. If you like the thought of your brain functioning smoothly, you can start to understand why it would be beneficial to maintain a “just right” balance of serotonin levels.There are a number of ways to naturally influence serotonin levels, and all of them will sound like “no–brainers” Positive feedback is one of the most effective ways to stimulate serotonin, followed by exercise (remember that “runner’s high” when Dopamine was discussed), smiling, listening to music, and singing. So sing along with serotonin and smile, smile, smile For an interesting look at some of the neurotransmitters and how they both impact our lives and are impacted by our lives, check out Brain Chemicals and Modern Life on Teresa Gallagher’s Born to Explore site. An environmental scientist and mom, Teresa provides a slew of resources on the topic of ADD and ADHD.

Melatonin

As with many neurotransmitters, melatonin is also a hormone. And as with many neurotransmitters, melatonin seems to work in synch with other neurotransmitters, in this case serotonin, which will be discussed in my next post.Melatonin is responsible for our body rhythms, known as circadian rhythms, which boils down to our sleep and wakefulness cycles. These cycles are directly influenced by our exposure to light. As darkness sets in, melatonin is released, promoting the urge to go to sleep. Teenagers usually release melatonin at later times in the evening so they tend to fall asleep later and wake up later. There is no “early” in that description and the result is that teenager circadian rhythms are usually out of synch with school start times. The National Sleep Foundation has found that school start times should be altered to accommodate teenagers and thus promote more healthful patterns resulting in more beneficial learning environments.SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) results from exposure to too little sunlight in the fall and winter months. The Heschong Mahone Group did extensive research on the impact of daylight on performance, both in schools and in businesses. The results of their research show that natural light has a consistent and predictable positive effect on student performance. “The results of this study of student performance, when combined with the companion study showing the positive effect of skylighting on retail sales, also strongly support the thesis that these performance benefits from daylighting can be translated to other building types and human activities.”Dr John W Kimball, a former Tufts and Harvard professor, maintains an online biology text that has a simple exlanation of Melatonin and the Pineal Gland, including a link to The Circadian Clock in Mammals.

Norepinephrine

Norepinephrine is both a hormone and a neurotransmitter. When released as a hormone in response to excitement, which can include both positive and negative stimuli, norepinephrine also helps in cementing memories caused by the excitement.Norepinephrine’s role in responding to excitement may sound similar to Epinephrine, which I wrote about in my previous post. It turns out that norepinephrine is epinephrine that has reached the brain.When released as a neurotransmitter, norepinephrine helps carry messages across synapses. It also plays a role in retrieving memories, according to this Science Daily 2004 article about research at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center.Norepinephrine is also useful in telling the brain to shake, rattle, and roll in an attempt to make the brain alert and focused. However, too high levels can be a cause of aggression. Serotonin, dopamine, and endorphin, working as a trio, can help balance high levels of norepinephrine and somewhat control the aggressive behavior.You can tinker with a 3D model of norepinephrine at the 3Dchem site, which focuses on chemistry, structures and 3D molecules and is maintained by Dr Karl Harrison from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford.Folks with Parkinson’s have a decrease in production of norepinephrine. Marilee Sprenger, citing Wurtman & Suffes, 1996, notes that “Norepinephrine and dopamine, sometimes called the alertness chemicals, are produced when tyrosine reaches the brain. Tyrosine is found in protein.” That’s certainly a plug for having proteins in the diet. There will be more on what makes for a “really good brain diet” in a future post.

Epinephrine aka Adrenaline

I’ve always liked the way these two words conjure up mental images. Epinephrine brings to mind the Epi Pen, a potentially lifesaving device for people who deal with certain types of allergies. Adrenaline brings to mind the Road Runner of cartoon fame, cruising along at break neck speed.

Those images help explain epinephrine’s function, both as a hormone and neurotransmitter, to get the body revved up in response to a perceived threat or excitement. This response is known as “fight or flight” because adrenaline is released when the body perceives an event to which it needs to respond by “fight or flight”.

While not all excitement is negative, the body prepares itself just in case. Adrenaline is released in the adrenal glands (located above the kidneys and not in the brain) in reaction to a message begun in the amygdala. The amygdala does not waste time figuring out if something is a threat or not; instead it responds rapidly with the aim of protecting you if necessary. The signal goes from the amygdala to the hypothalamus to the pituitary gland (all of which are located in the brain) and then to the adrenal glands located mid-body. The adrenal glands then release adrenaline.Thus, your hands might get clammy before making a presentation or performing, and you might wish you could be invisible, but hopefully you are simply excited and not overly threatened, and you manage to go on with the show!

[9/23/08 – For a delightful look at adrenaline, please skoot on over to this post on 1000 Awesome Things: #934 Adrenaline. I came upon this post thanks to the blog cross-referencing feature of WordPress.]

Dopamine

Dopamine functions both as a neurotransmitter and a hormone. It helps control physical movement and also helps regulate information flow to the higher levels of the brain, thus having low levels of dopamine may impact working memory and ability to focus. You might know someone who takes Ritalin. Well, that is a drug which is sometimes prescribed for people who have difficulty focusing because it counters the low levels of dopamine.

When tripled up with serotonin and endorphin, dopamine balances out high levels of norepinephrine, which can cause aggression. These three neurotransmitters also release into the brain when stimulated by exercise (think of a runner’s high, for instance), listening to music you like, smelling smells you enjoy (like freshly baked cookies), and receiving positive feedback, so you can understand why dopamine, serotonin and endorphin are thought of as the “feel good” chemicals.

There is a down side, though, to having naturally produced “feel good” chemicals in the brain. External elements often influence us and how we feel, and some of these elements can have negative effects on the body, such as too much alcohol or indulgence in other types of drugs. This is where addiction comes in to the story, as you can read in this University of Texas at Austin article.

From the Surfari wiki (which I co-authored with a colleague): Did you know that your brain is about 80 percent water? To keep it alert, it is good to drink water throughout the day. Another type of food that feeds your brain is protein. Protein provides amino acids, which help produce dopamine and norepinephrine. Sources of protein include yogurt and cheese (hey, this sounds like dairy products!), animal foods (chicken, meat, fish and eggs), and for those of you who prefer vegetarian foods (beans, lentils, nuts and seeds).

In Parkinson’s’ disease there are decreased quantities of dopamine which result in physical movements that are constant and jerky. An insufficient quantity of dopamine is also associated with Schizophrenia. The pharmaceutical L-dopa can sometimes help neurons to continue producing dopamine.