Dr. Suzy Cox

A message to my students

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Tue, 2 Jun 2020 11:02:00 -0700

Posted for my students today:

I am a white, middle-class woman. I grew up poor, but it was never overwhelming. I've experienced sexual harassment and discrimination, but not to the point of it being a major barrier or problem (as far as I'm aware). I was raised to be kind and respectful to everyone (though I was never taught to recognize my own implicit biases). Growing up in Oregon and Southern California, I knew and was friends with many people of color. I did my student teaching in rural Mexico and felt humbled and comfortable.

But I was NEVER taught - throughout my public school education, undergraduate education, or graduate education - about systemic racism and oppression, the ignored voices in educational theory, the experiences of black and brown students in schools.

*LGBTQ folx - I see you. But now is a time to focus on Black lives.

It is only now - over 20 years after my student teaching experience and with the help of colleagues and friends - that I am even BEGINNING to understand the experiences of Black students, in particular, in American schools. It is only now that I am learning - and have seen first-hand through my extensive work in Utah public schools - the implicit fear that (particularly) white female teachers have of (particularly) black and brown (particularly) boys, resulting in significantly harsher reactions to behavior and significantly higher rates of detention, suspension, and expulsion in Utah (you can check this). And this starts in elementary school.

Students of color are consistently criticized for the way they speak, the way they dress, the way they express their identities at school. They are counseled out of STEM careers and into trades. They are put on remediation programs instead of learning HOW to program. Yet we blame them for perpetuating intergenerational poverty.

We are teachers.

We have power.

What would school be like if we knew and actively worked to overcome our biases? What would school be like if we stood against all forms of racism and oppression, if we supported and celebrated diverse identities, if we raised up diverse voices and questioned the status quo?

I am not an expert here. I admit my naivete, but I am trying. I invite each of you to learn with me. At the suggestion of Dr. Warburton, I recently listened to this podcast series: https://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/. It was transformative for me. My dear friend, Belinda Talonia (principal at Orem Junior High School), posted this reading list: https://twitter.com/btalonia/status/1267610284761333761. Both of these resources are places for us to start.

I also encourage you to create projects in the second half of the semester that would engage your students in learning about these issues. Could your UDL: Representation assignment this week focus on the history of race in American public education? Could your face-to-face, hybrid, and/or online lessons that we'll be doing in the next few weeks engage them in tracing the roots of the Black Lives Matter movement? I know many of you are also in Dr. Waite's Multicultural Education class. Perhaps there is something you could do to bring together issues of digital equity, information literacy, white privilege, implicit bias, and your future as a teacher.

I know that some of you may be feeling angry or frustrated about what I have written here, and I would be more than happy to talk with you privately about that. But know that education is inherently political, and that my passionate belief is that my role as a teacher is to serve and benefit kids - ALL kids.

For those of you who are feeling overwhelmed by the emotional weight of our current contexts, please take some time. Yes, we need to finish this course by the end of the block, but it doesn't have to be done today. Do what you need to breathe, find your compass, and move forward. I am here to support you.

Dr. C

I welcome comments on this post that are constructive, sincere, questioning, and respectful.

Being Human 2013

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 21:52:00 -0700

Having just attended Being Human 2013, a conference of anthropologists, neuroscientists, psychologists, designers, and others in San Francisco, I now sit down to summarize the sessions and my personal thoughts about them as one who works with and prepares others to work with adolescents. Warning: this is a long post!

Session 1: The Biology and Psychology of Ethical Behavior
Robert Sapolsky, Susan Fiske, Josh Greene

It's often hard for us to acknowledge just how much we have in common with our animal cousins, but it's important to recognize our evolutionary history as a step to understanding what it really means to be human. But it's also extremely important to note just how far we've moved past those commonalities in both constructive and deconstructive ways. While other animals can empathize, we do so in much more abstract ways and for a much broader range of individuals - even fictional ones! We understand not only that others think differently than we do, but that they think differently about US! We are able to delay gratification not only for now, but in some cases for a lifetime. But we can also be uniquely cruel and aggressive - using relationships and ideologies to divide and discriminate in ways that no other species does (think passive-aggression and outgroup stereotyping of people within our own race).

Being human is a unique and challenging prospect, and as we look forward it is essential that we learn to better understand and relate with others. Currently, we tend to map our relationships with others across two factors in a matrix. The factors are warmth and competence. We tend to express disgust those who are neither warm nor competent, pity those who we perceive as warm but incompetent, envy those who are not warm but competent, and have pride in those who are both warm and competent. In my field of adolescent educational psychology, I find it discouraging that the majority of individuals place teens in the first category; they are perceived as neither warm nor competent, therefore most people have contempt for them. Why is this so? Have we completely lost sight of the fact that teens are people who are training to become adults? That they are struggling to find their role in society?

The disgust we feel for people in this low warmth-low competence category can be so profound that we don't even use the same part of the brain - the medial prefrontal cortex - that we use to think about PEOPLE when we consider them and their motivations.

As educators, how can we help ourselves, those around us, and our own students to overcome this significant bias? The answer lies in how we think about others. When we think about people we don't know, we tend to focus on what we expect them to be like - essentially trying to stereotype or assimilate them into our existing perceptions. But when we think about people we know, we tend to focus on things that are different from what we expected. In other words, as we develop relationships with people, we really do get to know them and come to understand how they are different from our preconceived ideas. This is particularly true when we think about people with whom we are working toward a common goal.

These findings are consistent in the moral dimension. For most people, their gut reaction for those in their ingroup is to trust them and to be cooperative - to share resources and work toward the common good. But our gut reaction toward the outgroup is to be individualistic and "protect what's ours." And the more distant the outgroup - both physically and ideologically - the less sympathetic our reactions.

So let's consider how this information might translate to the classroom environment. First, we might have get-to-know-you activities that reveal surprising information about our students. We could ask questions like, "What is one thing that your classmates might be surprised to find out about you?" It is also extremely important to get our students into other people's heads, both real and fictional. As we learn about historical and literary characters, we can go beyond questions like, "How do you think she felt?" and ask more pointed and intriguing questions like, "Do you think she liked broccoli?" These unusual questions promote cognitive disequilibrium and higher-order thinking as students attempt to find clues to reveal unusual answers.

Second, it is important to establish our class as a community of learners from the very first day of class. When students understand that they are not competing against each other, but rather working together toward the common goal of understanding and achievement, they might more clearly see their peers as unique and important individuals.

Next, it seems obvious that the use of well-developed group work and team-based learning is essential. Teachers must carefully consider the makeup of these groups and teams, with an understanding that deliberate and systematic exposure to people of different backgrounds in ways that reveal commonalities and celebrate differences in beliefs, perceptions, ways of thinking, etc. (known as the contact hypothesis) can result in profound change. As stated at the conference, "Experience with diversity makes people more nuanced in their understanding and treatment of each other"

Additionally, the findings in moral development strongly suggest the need to integrate Noddings' theme of Caring for Strangers and the World into our curriculum in order to combat the sense of us vs. them and the tribalistic responses that it inspires. As we discuss modern issues, we can ask questions like, "What really matters?" and, perhaps more importantly, "Who really matters?"

Finally, we should take into account two important factors. First, that all of the activities and processes described above require a lot of frontal lobe involvement and the frontal lobes are very "expensive," meaning that they require a lot of energy. This means that our students must understand the importance of proper "fueling" of the brain; in other words, they must learn about and practice proper nutrition. And secondly, that knowledge is power. Telling our students that they may hold inaccurate perceptions of and biases toward one another and expressing the need for change as a theme of our classes may be a giant step toward solving this significant problem.

Session 2: Human Emotion
Richie Davidson, Paul Ekman, Esther Sternberg

"Emotion is the stuff that gives life color, it is the quality which propels us to act, it is what enables us to approach the things we love; to withdraw from the things that may be problematic. It is the key ingredient that distinguishes one human being from another." -Richie Davidson

We often hear people talk about positive and negative emotions, but these are really misnomers. What really mean are constructive and destructive emotions. Sadness isn't negative if it spurs us to compassionate action! But we have to wonder about the impact of the modern digital world on our own and, perhaps even more significantly, adolescents' emotional well-being. Modern media almost constantly reveals the suffering of others, both at home and across the world, which begs the question, "What is the result of repeated experiences of concern/empathy about observed suffering when action is not possible?" How can we possibly handle feeling consistently impotent in our ability to help others and solve the overwhelming problems that surround us?

And yet, as discussed earlier, compassion toward others really is the key to the survival of our species. While we cannot yet answer these questions, we do know that compassionate action, and even compassionate meditation!, are extremely beneficial for our emotional well-being, our interpersonal relationships, and even global interactions. And yet we are seeing a decline in compassion, particularly face-to-face emotional support and assistance. This ability seems to be inherent in the human species - it is evident in nearly all toddlers - and it feels good in our bodies and brains, so what is happening? Is it possible that entertainment (and an educational system) that celebrates competition over collaboration may be severely effecting our children's compassionate instincts? And how might we, as educators help improve our students' emotional well-being?

One idea is to more carefully consider the designs of our schools and classrooms. It is well known that stress can significantly impair the immune system and memory. Thus, our students, who are more stressed than they have ever been before, are struggling cognitively, emotionally, and physically.

Consider your classroom. How is it designed? What do students see, smell, touch, hear? Is your school/classroom a calming, beautiful place that relieves stress and promotes healing? Are there places where students can sit and have social support and compassion? Is there a meditation labyrinth for students to walk between classes? Is there good airflow and natural light? Are there opportunities to engage in meditation, yoga, service, physical activity? How might we impact our students' wellness and achievement by improving the design of our schools and classrooms?

For ourselves and our students, we have significant findings now to indicate the profound role of meditation in personal well-being.Even a little training increases prosocial responses, improves resilience, improves immune system, and speeds healing. This is particularly true of global compassion meditation, in which we cultivate a feeling of love and compassion toward everyone.

Self-control also plays a tremendous role, particularly when developed from childhood. Kids who are better at self-control are least likely to use drugs and have better health, more financial success, and fewer criminal convictions, as adults. This, to me, seems to be an irrefutable argument for explicit instruction in self-regulation in our classes. If we can help our students learn to set goals, monitor their progress, and self-evaluate, we can make a major difference in their happiness and success, and in the world at large. In short, we must help our students (and ourselves) take responsibility for the shaping of their (and our) own brains.

However, we must also realize the extraordinarily strong connections we have with everyone else on the planet. Therefore, we have to learn to focus outwardly AND inwardly in order to truly help humanity thrive. As stated so beautifully by Albert Einstein, "A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

So the challenge here, in my opinion, is to help students feel connected to the world in constructive ways. To see the struggles of others and provide them with paths toward action, through career exploration and service-learning opportunities. To learn to express their emotions in constructive ways and to regulate both their emotions and their actions in order to find lasting happiness and success.

Session 3: Human Relationships
Helen Fisher, Justin Garcia, Laurie Santos

The next session may be slightly less relevant to educators, but was certainly no less interesting. The panel focused on romantic love, sex, and relationships. According to Helen Fisher, "Love is the most important thing we do in our lives." And we, as educators, certainly understand the strong need that our students have for love and belonging.

But we also see a very strong shift in the dating culture and relationships of adolescents and young adults, moving to more of a "hookup culture" than we've ever seen before. This may be due, in part, to the earlier onset of puberty - on average at age 11 - and the later age of childbirth, resulting in, on average, nearly 15 years of reproductive ability during which the person has no desire to actually have children. So what do we expect to have happen? Particularly when we know that the frontal lobes, which consider consequences and really analyze events, are not fully developed during this time.

The thing is, what we're seeing is really a shift in how people approach committed relationships. The once-prevalent "courting" system has been replaced with physical intimacy with the hope of developing a lasting bond. The main problem arises when realize that we all think that we know what other people - especially those who are close to us - like and want, but we are generally horribly incorrect.

We tend to make two significant errors in our thinking: one is the egocentric bias and the other is the altercentric bias. The egocentric bias is pretty simple and horribly powerful. We tend to assume that others believe the same way we do and want the same things we do. This is particularly true of those with whom we have close relationships because we assume that they are "just like us." This causes problems not only in the bedroom, but throughout life, and is particularly true of adolescents who are already, from a purely developmental perspective, extremely self-absorbed.

The altercentric bias is also very prevalent in adolescents (and all of us - this conference, may I remind you, was not specific to adolescence or education). Dr. Santos defined this bias as follows: "As you read minds, sometimes you might take more into account what others might be thinking than what you know to be true." For example, you might go to a restaurant you know is terrible because it's highly rated on Yelp. In other words, we get messed up by what other people think. She went on to propose that, "If we have minds that are great at picking up what other people think, we might not have great filters for the quality of that information. As a result, we may end up conforming more than we should." In the words of Mark Twain, "In the matter of slavish imitation, man is the monkey's superior all the time. The average man is destitute of independence of opinion. He is not interested in contriving a opinion of his own, by study and reflection, but is only anxious to find out what his neighbor's opinion is and slavishly adopt it."

I don't know that I've ever heard a better explanation for the adolescent psychological landscape than this. First, they are so consumed by their own struggles that they assume that everyone is looking at them and/or believes what they believe. Once they move past that, they care so much about what others think that they often conform even when the conformation contradicts their own knowledge and beliefs. Please notice that these are not malicious behaviors, nor are they exclusive to adolescence! We all struggle with these biases, but as adults we are more capable of reasoning through them than adolescents are. We MUST empathize and engage with teens to help them develop their own identities, opinions, perspectives, and beliefs; to distinguish their identities from those of their friends while respecting differences; and to hold to their beliefs when it makes sense to do so.

Session 4: The Future of Being Human
David Eagleman, Natasha Vita-More, Jer Thorpe

The conference concluded with a discussion of the future of humanity, particularly in light of modern and future technologies. I particularly enjoyed the introduction by Being Human founder Peter Baumann, who said that, "We are all living in someone else's future. When we envision the future, we imagine people just like us, but with fancier toys. But the real question is whether they will think like we do."

Of the three presentations in this session, I found David Eagleman's the most intriguing from the perspective of trying to understand the human condition and how we can better interact with and educate others. Dr. Eagleman declared that man is equally incapable of seeing what happens in the infinitely small from which we emerged and the infinitely huge of which we are a part. Many of us now don't even understand what's really happening at our own scales. What we are able to experience is limited by our biology, and each animal has its own window on reality. This window is called an umwelt, a German word that means, "the surrounding world," or the sphere that you can pick up on. We all think our own umwelt is all that's really out there in the objective world. This idea of umwelt is particularly relevant to secondary educators. We call this idea adolescent egocentrism. We know that the vast majority of teens have a bit of tunnel vision, perceiving only what is most relevant to their own lives and their own experiences and believing that everyone else is most concerned with these factors as well.

The question for Dr. Eagleman is, "How will our technologies expand our umwelt and, therefore, our experience of being human?" He went on to demonstrate and discuss technologies that allow us to substitute and even add new senses, and proposed that we can marry our technology to our biology. The brain can figure out how to communicate with it (e.g., artificial retina, cochlear implant). The brain's umwelt is just a bunch of electrical pulses - it is, after all, just stuck up there in our skulls all day every day and doesn't actually "see" or "hear" anything - and it's really good at extracting patterns and somehow converting that into private, subjective experience. Therefore, Dr. Eagleman proposes what he calls the "MPH model of evolution" (Mr. Potato Head). The brain doesn't care what the peripherals are that we plug in - ears, eyes, 20-fingered mole noses - your particular plug-and-play devices are what determine your experience of reality. But they aren't what we have to stick with. The system is infinitely flexible and we are, or have the potential to be, something other than a "natural species."

So how is technology altering the umwelt of modern adolescents? Mr. Thorpe indicated that we all already have "email sense," in that we experience a sense of loss when we cannot access our email. I would argue that today's teens have Facebook and texting senses; that they intuit the passing of the world around them through their thumbs in ways that you and I simply cannot understand. So how much further might this go? To what extent might today's teens, or those that follow, develop unique senses and umwelts through their devices.

And with this possibility, we then have several very difficult ethical questions to ask ourselves, including "What could become of human nature?" and "Who do we want to become?" Dr. Vita-More, who, I will admit, was my least favorite presenter of the day as she struck me as more of a salesperson than an intellectual, strongly argued that parts of us have already evolved into "digitality." Thus, we must revisit the Cartesian idea of duality. Can our minds exist without our bodies, infinitely evolving and existing online? And, in fact, is the time coming in which we might be able to indefinitely upgrade our bodies to accompany that mind into the future?

This was all a bit beyond my personal comfort zone, though I certainly see her point. And the final presenter brought things back to my own realm of understanding as he discussed data as a form of existence and humanity. This may be even more true for today's adolescents than it has been for me and my peers. Data ownership is a giant issue going forward. We get requests for others to use our data, but we never get to use it ourselves.

According to Mr. Thorpe, we should have a personal relationship with our data. We should have access to it, know what it is, and know what it means. We should be able to visualize it and use it to create new understandings of and even new vocabularies around our own existence. Additionally, data is now a major factor in the preservation of culture. Mr. Thorpe posits that the most important cultural artifacts of the 21st century will be databases and asks, "What would it be like to have these databases played back to you?" Not linearly, but in an interactive and connected way. What would it be like to truly experience the past through the integration of ideas and data points? Whoa.

In closing, we often romanticize the past and talk about how simple things were and how lovely life was and how human everyone was. But, in looking backward, Eagleman states that, "It's not clear that things ever were the way they always were." We romanticize the past and, in turn, we fantasize the future. Peter Baumann reminded us, however, that we are living now, with the people who surround us right now. And while it is valuable to envision and plan for the future, we must also recognize the significance and importance of living in this time with these people and learn to exercise understanding, compassion, self-control, mindfulness, humanity, to find peace and beauty in our lives.

Again, this is so true of today's adolescents. They feel stuck in a time of chaos and unpredictability and dream of the idyllic future in which they can do what they want and they'll be who they want to be. What they often don't realize is that now is the perfect time for them to develop brain patterns, personality traits, habits, and characteristics that will make them most successful in the future.

Finally, while all of the sessions were really thought-provoking and even life-affirming, the most powerful pieces for me were the "brain breaks" that were provided in the forms of the extraordinary animator (dancer) Marquese Scott and the unique musician ELEW. These performances, above all else that day, reminded me of what it really means to be human. Our brains are so unique, so special, in their composition and function. No other species in the world creates music and dance the way these men did just because it's beautiful to do so. I encourage you to go online and watch them, as well as any of the other sessions that I might have convinced you would be interesting, at http://www.beinghuman2013.org.

This was a truly altering experience and I think it will take a significant amount of time for me to fully process and integrate it, but it also has the potential to change a great many things about my life, most importantly pertaining to my personal relationships and my interactions with and perceptions of others throughout the world, including the millions of teens who need our support and guidance.

L&B NYC: Ben Bernstein

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 13:07:00 -0700

L&B 2013 NYC Ben Bernstein - Performance Anxiety and How to Reduce It Books: Test Success! How to Be Calm, Confident & Focused on Any Test and Teen Success! How to Be Calm, Confident & Focused The importance of context is so vital in terms of positive outcome. Viola Spolin: Improvisation for the Theater. The first 40 pages should be a stand-alone text for all teachers. The Yerkes-Dodson Curve of performance vs. stress Everyone needs to know about this curve. Perhaps especially teachers and coaches. What is performance? preparation + spontaneity = presence Presence is something we need to teach in schools. The ability to access what you have learned (preparation) and then use it in novel ways (spontaneity) For example, cooking, sports, and sex all require this combination What is stress? Stress is a function of disconnection Rather than pointing fingers, we need to look inside to see our reactions to stressors. How do we respond to them? "Separation is an optical delusion" Einstein Dalai Lama: http://books.google.com/books?id=tNVoySbR0DcC&pg=PA120&lpg=PA120&dq=dalai+lama+%22indefinite+series+of+interrelated+causes+and+conditions%22&source=bl&ots=E-y5Suevog&sig=mG6PEzQh6kh6Qv9tKIJCn7Qu-MM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KLxlUaWxAoPV0gGA-oCoDg&ved=0CEwQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=dalai%20lama%20%22indefinite%20series%20of%20interrelated%20causes%20and%20conditions%22&f=false When we experience stress, we are disconnecting from the whole in some way. We are like a three-legged stool. The three legs are Spirit, Body, and Mond. All legs need to be balanced and functioning or we will be destabilized. Spirit: Focused Body: Calm Mind: Confident Awareness and tools. You must be able to be aware of when you are out of balance and use tools to come back into balance Personalizing Download the Performance Inventory from his site. Fill it out for a stressful performance situation. Total scores and fill in your "stool" at the bottom Tools Staying Focused What is focus? Having a goal and taking actions that get you to the goal What is your goal? What are your distractions? Visualize the goal. Take action toward your goal. Visualize the distraction. Stop the distraction. Ask, "Is this taking me to my goal?" Listen to the voice that's going to give you specific direction to get you back on track. Fulfill the direction of the voice. To reduce stress: 1. Cultivate your awareness of disconnection. 2. Use the following core tools to reconnect. Focus Stop and ask, "Is this distraction taking me to my goal? Listen to your inner voice for the next step. Fulfill your purpose. Get yourself back on track. If the spirit is not engaged, you are starting off on the wrong footing. If you see distraction in yourself and others, find out why. The goals have to be our own. For our students, we have to find a way to connect what we need them to do with what they want to do. Confidence Confide in your confidant. Let go of the negativity. Reflect back something accurate and positive. Envision taking small, manageable steps. This relates to all of those negative thoughts that creep in. They make us feel disconnected because we feel like we're "the only one" that's bad at something. We must confide in someone - a friend, a parent, a teacher, or even the imagined "best version" of ourselves - who can then encourage us. Calm Breathe deeply down to your belly. Ground yourself. Feel the floor. Release tension. Sense your surroundings through your five senses. Disconnected from our bodies and our environment. Must re-establish that connection through mindfulness. We need to do all of this, too. We need to be more "with" our students.

L&B NYC: Paul Tough

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 11:49:00 -0700

L&B 2013 NYC Paul Tough - Beyond Smart: How Grit, Curiosity, and Character Help Students Succeed and Thrive The cognitive hypothesis - the idea we're all working around with that IQ is really what matters for success. But new research shows that things like grit, conscientiousness, self-control, etc. matter at least as much. Non-cognitive functions. Nadine Burke Harris - stress (http://nadineburke.com/) What was really making her young patients sick was the stress, violence, noise and chaos that surrounded them every day. She often felt like a battlefield surgeon rather than a family physician. Adults who experienced significant amounts of trauma have cancer, emphysema, suicide, etc., rates that are twice as high as their counterparts. The stress response system is, in some ways, like a muscle. It needs regular use to develop properly, but this use should be mild and occasional. But if you experience severe and/or lasting trauma, it disables that response and causes severe and lasting problems. There is an antidote to toxic stress: parents. Children who form secure attachment with their parents have a kind of insulation against toxic stress. Seriously significant in study of rats who engage in "licking and grooming" behavior - smarter, braver, etc. Human equivalent holding and singing and talking and soothing. There is a strong connection between infant brain chemistry and adult cognition and behavior. If we want to intervene in character development, there are two key periods: infancy and adolescence. Adolescence because they are able to engage in metacognition for the first time. Try to take advantage of that natural tendency to help them change their thinking and their behavior and their character. Study of KIPP schools and Riverdale school - polar opposites. Both groups of students were doing great on paper, achieving, but seemed to lack that deep inner grit and resilience that we need to succeed and thrive. Worked with psychologists from UPenn and came up with a list of seven key characteristics: Optimism Zest Curiosity Self-control Gratitude Social Intelligence Grit - perseverance in pursuit of a passion. There's a 12-question grit test on her website (http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/). This test is highly predictive of future success. Character report card (http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/KIPP%20NYC%20Character%20Report%20Card%20and%20Supporting%20Materials.pdf) used for teachers to evaluate these characteristics in their students. The message of the report card is that the students can improve and change - use it as a tool to create a growth mindset. Not at all punitive. Not waiting to change and improve character because a student has done something bad. It's all about creating a positive climate and creating great future citizens. But calling it a "report card" may be problematic. It's really a point of discussion. Students are often unable to work on these things because they are protected from everything. Character strengths like grit and self-control are born out of failure, and in today's society no one really fails at anything. We often confuse stress with challenge. Students may be working unbelievably hard (stress) but are not particularly challenged, interested, motivated and therefore are not developing great characteristics. Failure is not a guarantee of resilience. In many cases it just wears them down. There's an adversity gap in this country. Some kids have too much and actually need some protection. Others, particularly affluent students, have almost none. In trying to protect our kids too much we may be doing more harm than good. In a study correlating experiences with adversity with mental health and happiness, those who had experienced no adversity (or very little) were no happier than the ones who had experienced a ton. Those who had experienced SOME (3 or 4 items on their checklist out of 12) were happiest and healthiest. Must help students learn to manage failure. When you play chess, you lose a lot and you make a lot of mistakes. Faced with this in middle school, there are two temptations: 1. chess is stupid anyway haha, 2. wallow in your failure. By focusing on metacognition, you can guide students between these temptations. Help them figure out what they did wrong, why they did it, build the knowledge and confidence needed to improve. For infants, we must provide "licking and grooming," but at some point we must transition, pull back, and let children solve their own problems, stand on their own, and learn how to fail. We don't need to manufacture adversity for our kids; they face it all the time in school, sports, with siblings, and in social situations. What really makes a difference is how we react to it, how we talk about it, and how we model failure. For kids in high-poverty areas, the answer is not to let them fail more. We've been letting them fail too much for too long. It's hard to believe that kids who have been exposed to toxic stress and have altered brain chemistry because of it could ever succeed, but some do. Seems rare and random. But for the first time we're starting to understand the science behind it - how the environment can cause such massive biological and social problems and how interventions can lead to success. In all of these stories, there is help - someone who reaches out and supports and helps, family member, teacher, coach, neighbor, friend. And this help focuses on development of character, not IQ. We can do it individually and we can do it systematically by appealing to administration and building it into our school and social structures. Tail-end of Dennis Charney, M.D. - Resilience: The Science of Mastering life's Greatest Challenges Resilience is about as genetic as anxiety and depression! But it's not destiny, just a vulnerability. His model of resilience:

L&B NYC: Robert Brooks

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:25:00 -0700

L&B 2013 NYC Robert Brooks - The Power of Mindsets: Nurturing Motivation and Resilience in Students Gah! This guy is hilarious! :) Sam Goldstein at UofU worked with him on a lot of research! http://www.drrobertbrooks.com Over 100 articles posted there, lots of materials from presentations, etc. Mindset goes back a long way - locus of control, attribution theory, learned helplessness/optimism, self-efficacy The power of mindsets Mindsets: The assumptions and expectations we have for ourselves and others that guide our behavior We all have words and images that we use to describe ourselves. Those dramatically impact how we behave and perform. Name two or three of your greatest success. Name two or three of your worst experiences. What did you learn from both? These are mindset questions. Every child you work with knows how you feel about yourself and how you feel about your kids. And that will directly impact their mindsets and what they will accomplish. If you want to touch the hearts and minds of children and change their mindsets, you must identify their strengths (their islands of competence) and have those as your primary mindset. ARTICLE ON HIS WEBSITE: You get what you expect What is the mindset of educators and other professionals who touch both the hearts and minds of students, nurturing motivation, learning, and resilience? Do we identify and discuss this mindset at staff meetings? Every school has a mindset Ask kids, "What do you like about your school? What do you wish you could change?" Tests scare and confuse kids. Even the disruption of the schedule can be a major problem. Features of a positive mindset The heart and soul of this work: - To believe in the capacity of students to become more hopeful and resilient. To believe we can serve as a "charismatic adult." Why is it that some children can grow up in horrendous situations and yet as adults be optimistic and dignified? Why can some grow up in horribly abusive situations and end up healthy and happy? "School is a place where my deficits rather than my strengths are highlighted." "Going to school is like climbing Mt. Everest every day without equipment or training. Then I do it again every night: it's called homework." In every study of resilience, there was a person who helped and guided and supported The ones who make it have during their childhood or adolescence a charismatic adult - someone from whom the child or adolescent gathers strength. Often a teacher. (http://www.drrobertbrooks.com/writings/articles/0009.html) Ask yourself at the end of each day: Are the children in my classes stronger today because of what I've done, or less strong? Charismatic adults believe no child should ever be written off, because you never know how they're going to end up as adults. (YouTube: Think Different: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4oAB83Z1ydE) Obsessive Compulsive writing on chalkboard cartoon - gotta use this to teach behaviorism! We are the authors of our own lives. We have far more control than we give ourselves credit for. But we don't have control over everything. But that is not an excuse to not try. Features of a positive mindset (cont.) - To be knowledgeable about the material we are teaching and excited about our role as an educator - To believe that all children from birth want to learn and be successful There are some words that must be banned from our schools: lazy, unmotivated, doesn't care. Whenever you say these words you've written off a child. Robert White: one of the major motivations in life is the drive to be effective and successful (competence motivation), and it's there from birth. When we say that kids aren't motivated at school, we actually mean that they aren't motivated to do what we're trying to get them to do. - To believe that all students are motivated, but unfortunately, some are dominated by "avoidance motivation" as a way of protecting themselves from situations that they believe will lead to failure and humiliation. We must ask how to lessen avoidance and teach students in the ways in which they learn best and avoid a "prescription for failure." Too often, the work we give and the way we teach in schools is a prescription for failure. How do we lessen avoidance motivation? Ask the kids why they feel this way! Ask them what should be changed! We must stop punishing suffering kids! - To believe that if the strategies we are using with students are not effective then we must ask, "What is it that we can do differently to help the situation?" rather than continue to wait for the student to change first. This should not be seen as blaming but rather as empowering ourselves. People who are resilient, when faced with a challenge, look for things they can do differently. "If the horse is dead, get off!" In education, we seem to have a hard time getting off the horse. (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1517723/posts) AMAZING results from getting kids involved rather than punishing them. Latino kids asked to tutor younger kids in reading (We need your help). Drop-out rate went from 45% to 3%. YouTube: Stuck on the escalator (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oRBchZLkQR0) Read Daniel Pink's "Drive" (quotes Edward Deci (self-determination theory) a lot - http://www.selfdeterminationtheory.org/) Features of a positive mindset (cont.) - To create "motivating environments" that nurture intrinsic motivation, learning, and a "resilient mindset": Deci's focus on basic needs that apply to administrators, staff, and students 1. Relatedness: The need to belong and feel connection (and let's add the word welcome). When any member of the school environment feels alienated, learning and achievement will be compromised and anger and resentment will become dominant features. Ask your kids: What can teachers/administrators do to make you feel welcome? Greet by name, smile. 2. Autonomy: The need for self-determination and autonomy, which are significant features of a sense of intrinsic motivation, ownership, and resilience. a. What kind of choices and decisions do we provide staff and students? Do we encourage their feedback and participation? Kids who are given a choice do more homework, better work, and feel their teachers care more. Lots of articles on his website. b. Do our disciplinary practices promote self-discipline and self-control as well as nurturing a safe environment? Start the year by saying that there are two or three non-negotiable rules, then ask what rules we need in the classroom for everyone to feel safe, learn, etc. Student council should form school rules. 3. Competence. The need to feel competent. To identify, reinforce, and display each youngster's "islands of competence" -- we must adopt a strength-based model if we are to nurture motivation and a "resilient mindset." Every teacher should write down each student's islands of competence and focus on those (seating chart, TeacherKit app, etc. so they're always in front of us) a. Do we provide students with an opportunity to contribute to and make a positive difference in their environment? SOS - Serving Our School, buttons for students to wear, if they're wearing the button (they sign up for times) they help with odd jobs around the school. Bullying reduced, attendance and achievement up. b. Do we foster the attitude that mistakes are experiences from which to learn? Some kids would rather be violent than look stupid. Would rather act out than look stupid. The best way to get rid of a raging elephant in a school is to talk about it. Ask the first day: Who in this class thinks they'll make a mistake this year? Your hand should be the first to go up. Talk about a time a teacher embarrassed you and how it made you feel. Then brainstorm together ways to remove the fear of humiliation in the classroom so they can take appropriate risks and learn. "Don't Argue with Children" http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/03/May/jonah.html

L&B NYC - Heidi Grant Halvorson

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 08:18:00 -0700

L&B 2013 NYC Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD How the Science of Mindsets and Motivation Provides the Key to Unlocking Our Children's Fullest Potential Books: Focus, Succeed Mindsets Students sitting in a classroom are not all having the same experience if they have different mindsets Determine what you pay attention to and what you remember/encode Impact the interpretation and meaning of your experiences Influence how you feel about setbacks, and whether those feelings fuel (growth) or dampen (fixed) your motivation Influence what motivates you Determine in large part which strategies work best for you What happens when I get "the carrot?" Do I advance or stay safe? Promotion & Prevention Mindsets How do YOU think about your goals? - preventing negative events - imagining how things could go wrong - seizing opportunities - imagine good things you hope will happen A goal can be an opporunity to... Gain Avoid Loss Achievements, Rewards, Advancement Danger, Punishments, Mistakes What you ideally want to do What you feel you should do Going from 0 to +1 (Not) Going from 0 to -1 Promotion Focs = Seeking Gain Love, adventure, fun, going for the win Prevention Focus = Avoiding Loss Costs, Safety & Health, Security, Accuracy We all have both of these and often switch between depending on situation (best to say "When you are promotion/prevention focused...", both we also have a dominant one. Dominant one may be different for different contexts (e.g., promotion-focused at work, prevention-focused as a parent) We beat ourselves up for not being able to do it all, but hopefully this will help us understand. Our motivational systems have strengths and weaknesses. Finding a cure for cancer and making sure the taxes get filed are very different motivationally. Strengths Promotion - creativity, innovation, speed, confidence, seizing opportunities Prevention - planning, maintenance, accuracy, cautiousness, reliability Weaknesses Promotion - Ignoring pitfalls, no plan b (best case scenario planners), mistakes/sloppier work, poor maintainers Prevention - Missed opportunities, conservative/status quo (the devil you know...), slower, inflexible Where do these come from? - Childhood experience - Good things: presence of positives, absence of negatives - Bad things: presence of negatives, absence of positives - Temperament - negative affectivity (tuned in to the presence/absence of negatives) - prevention focus - positive affectivity (tuned in to the presence/absence of positives) - promotion focus - Parenting Styles Promotion Prevention Child behaves Bolstering Calmness, peacefulness Child misbehaves Love withdrawal Punishing Giving and taking away of pos Giving and taking away of neg - Age - Younger people are generally more promotion-focused (advancement, insensitive to risk, less to lose) - As we age, we often become more prevention-focused (hanging on to gains, concerned with safety/security/health) - Culture - Independent (America) v. Interdependent (East Asia, South America) self - When goals are individual = more promotion focus (Western countries, US in particular) - When goals benefit group = more prevention focused (Eastern Asian, South American, also rigid rule-based societies like Germany and Japan) Creating Motivational Fit When our experiences, the way we work, and/or the feedback we receive sustain our motivation How they work best (what feels right?) Promotion: motivation=eagerness, optimism, praise, embrace risk, say "Yes!", not dwelling on past mistakes, "gut" decisions, relying on instincts Prevention: motivation=vigilance, realism (even pessimism, defensive pessimism - things might go wrong and I have to do everything I can to make sure they won't, not the same as fear of failure), constructive criticism/self-sacrifice, Avoid risk, say "no!", learning from past mistakes, decisions based on reason and evidence Other ways to create fit Promotion Prevention Think about what you do In WHY terms In HOW terms Think in the Abstract Concrete (There was more, but she was running out of time. They're in the book) You want them to do X Promotion: the benefits of doing X, approach gain Prevention: the costs of not doing X, avoid loss Take a step back and look at the person you're working with. What is that person's focus? Don't do what feels right to you, do what feels right to them. Very subtle changes in language make a huge difference. If you're addressing a group, make sure that your message contains phrasing toward both. People will zero in on the part of your message that matches their focus. Changing Focus (Neither is better or worse, but you might want to evoke the strengths of one or the other) Again, tailor your language to the focus you want to develop - reasons why they should do it, get them thinking about considerations for the future, reflect on the past, use positive reinforcement (promotion) or threat of removal punishment (prevention) - to activate that focus How does all this help educators? - Focus is easy to identify - Offers guidance about what is motivating, which strategies work best, where problems may lie - Feedback should be tailored to fit focus, so it's more motivating and persuasive - Focus can be changed to restore balance, to suit the task and to help get the job done, when necessary Take the test! http://yourfocusdiagnostic.com

L&B NYC - Sean L. Beilock

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 06:45:00 -0700

Learning and Performance in School: Mindset, Attitudes and Anxiety L&B New York Sian Beilock Math anxiety begins to develop as early as first grade More math anxiety = poorer performance in math Just a correlation, don't have a direction of causality Students who are the highest in executive functioning show a higher correlation. In other words, those who are usually at the top of their class perform the worst on math tasks when their anxiety is high. The worries may rob them of the brain power needed to complete the tasks Higher achievement may equal higher susceptibility Not just people who are bad at math are showing anxiety. Where does the math anxiety come from (it's higher than for other subjects) Elementary Education majors have the highest levels of math anxiety of all college majors Elementary teachers in US are 97% female. May be having a particularly strong impact on the girls in their classrooms via modeling For girls, the higher the teacher's math anxiety, the lower the girls' math achievement No correlation for boys Girls in math-anxious-teacher classrooms confirmed academic stereotypes (books for girls, math for boys) more strongly at the end of the school year, even though they didn't at the beginning of the year. Girls who DON'T confirm the stereotype have much better math ability, same as boys. Girls who confirm it perform significantly lower than boys, other girls. We MUST equip the teachers so they are not anxious! Parents play a role too. Teacher and mom are the worst for a girl. But non-anxious parents can help counteract teacher effect and vice versa. The anxiety robs people of the ability to show what they know Pain centers activate when math anxious people are told they have to do math Her research shows that pressure/anxiety reduce performance/accuracy on tasks that require a heavier working memory load (requiring executive function, involvement of frontal cortex. not true of easy tasks) Treatment Write about your worries before you go in to a high stress situation - reduces ruminations, takes that load off of working memory, downloads them so they won't "pop up" during performance. Expressive Writing by James Penebaker (http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/write-yourself-well/201208/expressive-writing) Boost score on high stakes final by 6% just by doing this writing - boosted to same level as low-anxiety students Many students are able to re-evaluate their feelings and find insight by the end of the writing - like writing a really angry email you're never going to send Whole toolbox of techniques in her book Choke Testing helps people learn! Get them ready through practice tests. People need experience with the types of situations that make them anxious "Success is more than simply what you know. Attitudes, motivation and anxieties are critical."

R. Keith Sawyer - Creative Teaching for the 21st Century

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:42:00 -0800

Creative Teaching for the 21st Century
Learning & the Brain Conference February 2013
R. Keith Sawyer, PhD
Washington University, St. Louis / Atari

Newsweek: Creativity in America
BusinessWeek: The Innovation Economy

The Challenge: There's some concern that we're not creating the creative graduates that we need

Tapping America's Potential: The Education for Innovation Initiative (report from the Business Round Table) July 2005
Innovate America (report from Council on Competitiveness)
Rising Above the Gathering Storm

According to these reports, we need:
- Better K-12 education
- Increased Higher Education quality and funding
- Increased R&D funding
- Intellectual property protection and tax credits
The focus of all of these reports is on improved education
Missing: an understanding of how innovation works, how people learn for creativity, and how to redesign schools

*

Broadly accepted view that creativity is the lone genius having the lightbulb flash of insight
But in reality, there's always a story of collaboration behind innovation - Group Genius (his book)

A lot of books talking about how the Internet is bringing us into a new era of collective intelligence (e.g., Infotopia, Democratizing Innovation, Wikinomics, The Wisdom of Crowds)
Model of producers and consumers as separate entities is no longer accurate. Web 2.0 is blurring the boundaries.
Most creativity studies have focused on what's going on in an individual's mind. But examining collaborative creativity allows us to explore how the sum of the parts can be more than the whole. (e.g., improv jazz or theater troupes)

The Creative Classroom (book Structure and Improvisation in Creative Teaching)
- The core is collaborative conversation,
- where the classroom flow is improvisational:
- Teacher and students build knowledge together, and
- unexpected insights emerge.
*I have really been trying to do this this semester, and my classes have come to some extraordinary insights that I have never thought of before, but I also worry that I'm not channeling and guiding them sufficiently to prepare them in the curriculum as well as I need to.

What we shouldn't do: Instructionism (Seymour Papert)
- Knowledge is a collection of static facts and procedures
- The goal of schooling is to get these facts and procedures into students' heads
- Teachers know these facts and procedures; their job is to transmit them (transmission and aquisition model)
- Curriculum: Simple facts and procedures should be learned first
- Assessment: To evaluate learning, assess how many facts and procedures have been acquired
Where's the creative learning? Problems with Instructionism:
- The knowledge acquired is relatively superficial
- Retention is low
- Transfer to new situations is weak
- Ability to integrate knowledge is weak
- Ability to work adaptively with knowledge is weak

Creative learning
- Knowledge: Deeper conceptual understanding
- The goal of schooling: Prepare students to build new knowledge
- Teachers: Scaffold and facilitate collaborative knowledge building
- Curriculum: Integrated and contextualized knowledge
- Assessment: Formative and authentic
Sawyer, 2006, Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences

Fundamentally opposed to Instructionism Active Learning - Students work with, and use, facts/skills/concepts as they solve complex real-world problems (learning facts and procedures in context) - Students work in collaborative teams because the tasks are demanding (authentic need for collaboration, not just for the hell of it) - The professor guides and supports students as they work on their projects and problems This is the kind of learning environment you need if you want creative output/learning The Key Components - Start with a problem or design challenge - Students explore the problem through inquiry and discussion - Students work to find solutions - The process must be guided by the instructor - Students create tangible products that address the problem (there is more and more lit proving that externalizing learning through the creation of products (design thinking) improves learning and retention - Prototypes and sub-tasks are required elements Four Challenges for Instructors 1. Identifying a good problem or design challenge (within ZPD, closely connected to core) 2. Helping students learn actively 3. Fostering effective collaboration 4. Supporting the creation of shared artifacts and effective critiques The Vision is Taking Shape InvenTeams (Lemelson-MIT) (Excite, Empower, Encourage) http://web.mit.edu/Inventeams/ Camp Invention http://www.campinvention.org/ Wireless Handhelds - he showed a really cool software in which teacher can track which students are working with whom and what they're working on, but didn't mention the name Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory, UC Boulder http://itll.colorado.edu No lecture halls, just spaces for kids to get together and work collaboratively How do we get there? Myth: The flash of insight, Reality: Emergence over time Myth: Straight path to success, Reality: Multiple dead ends Myth: The lone genius, Reality: Small ideas from many people Tapping the Creativity of Teachers In innovative organizations, professionals: - Continually learn - Work collaboratively - Engage in 'mutual tinkering' where small sparks add up to big ideas - Change teams, assignments, and organizations frequently (not as much in education, but...) The Take-Home Message -Creativity is more important to our students and our society than at any time in history. - Recent research shows... Bah! He went fast and then blanked the screen! No silver bullet that's going to change the face of schooling. It's what we have to do collaboratively to create the creative schools of the future.

Charles K. Fadel - Creativity and innovation

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 15:24:00 -0800

Creativity and Innovation: From Man vs. Machine, to Man and Machine Learning & the Brain February 2013 Charles K. Fadel, MBA 21st Century Skills Our new world: VUCA - volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous Race up the value chain, with low skilled jobs that can be done by machines at the bottom and creativity at the top "I'm calling on our nation...to develop standards and assessments that don't simply.." Obama video: Google's Ass-Kicking Self-driving car http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t9Fxp3HK6DI video: Hatsune Miku "Vocaloid" - virtual pop star Production planning model solved using linear programming would have taken 82 years in 1988, only 1 minute in 2003. Not just processor speed. Imagine Google Goggles with Translate! "We tend to overestimate the effect of tech in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run." Roy Amara Hype cycle for emerging technologies Cloud computing = "synthetic neocortex" We are on the road to ExoBrain - computing power equivalent, not the cognitive ability, within the next 7 years "The future is already here - it's just not very evenly distributed." William Gibson World of AI and instant search. So what do we teach for? Wisdom Ethics Fluidity with tech Adaptability Resilience Curiosity Asking the right questions Synthesizing/integrating Creating! Japanese proverb: "Hammer the nail that protrudes" We do this far too often in education. Individuality v. Conformity "The Geography of Thought" Which pencil? Same color or different? Americans like different, Korean's like same. Radical vs. Incremental Creativity. "The Dot" - fell asleep with his pen on the paper, woke and reflected, wrote a book. Vs. Fadel's and others' incremental patents toward video conferencing. schmidhuber low-complexity art "Computers will write more than 90 percent of news in 15 years, and will win a Pulitzer Prize within 5 years." Kristian Hammond, CTO and cofounder of Narrative Science, a company that trains computers to write news stories Robert Plotkin, "The Genie in the Machine" about the automation of invention Evolution done algorithmically Humans control the "fitness criteria" The fallacy of automatophobia is that the automation is complete. This is never true. Humans always have a role to play. This always requires new skills. We must constantly upscale. "The race between technology and education" It is up to us to minimize the mismatch between technology and education systems. When education is behind, we experience social pain. When education is ahead of the curve, we prosper. "The best pathway involves teaching children to 'learn how to learn'" Vernor Vinge "The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn" Alvin Toffler www.curriculumredesign.org Center for Curriculum Redesign

Milton Chen - The Creativity Edge in Education

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 14:31:00 -0800

The Creativity Edge in Education: Arts, Technology & Passion Learning & the Brain Conference February 2013 Milton Chen, Ph.D., Senior Fellow George Lucas Educational Foundation (Edutopia) Neuroscience Supports Creative, Collaborative, Passionate Learning! Hands-on, Project-based, in nature, the arts Creative Learning = Authentic Learning School Life = Real Life "The great waste comes from [the child]s inability to utilize the experiences he gets outside the school...within the school...on the other hand, he is unable to apply in daily life what he is learning at school." (Dewey) On edutopia: Multiple Intelligences Leave No Child Behind Great books: Dewey's lectures to parents George Leonard Education and Ecstasy Sir Ken Robinson: "We are born creative. The problem is that we are educated out of our creativity." "We have taken to educating kids from the neck up." "Average students learn subject matter in a third or less of present time, pleasurably rather than painfully." George Leonard Don't forget social and emotional learning CASEL.org This is the platform on which we must build academic learning 14 points on test scores on average on edutopia: The Heart-Brain Connection: The Neuroscience of Social, Emotional, and Academic Learning. Dr. Richard Davidson. (book) "The Emotional Life of the Brain" Entire presentation on slideshare.net Lecture: a method for getting information from a professor's notes to a student's notes without it passing through either of their brains. Clay Shirky TED talk: How social media can make history - we are living in an age of extraordinary potential We can liberate students. We have liberated content - it's available 24/7/365. Learning any time, any place, any path, any pace. Start from a student's passion. Let them progress at their own pace. On edutopia: Music and Dance Drive Academic Achievement edutopia is using Google Translator to subtitle all of their movies Chen's book: "Education Nation" A nation is only as good as its educational system Creativity & Innovation: Key to an education nation. This is a must do, not a nice to do Every 30 seconds, 24 Hours of New YouTube Video K-1 Attack hybrid vehicle designed by inner-city Philly kids Why don't we have more curriculum about their own bodies? They're so curious about their bodies and how they work, as well as things in their everyday lives. Why isn't this the focus of education? "Objects of curiosity, of learning, are hidden in plain sight." Carol Dweck's Mindset "Kids are carrying this change in their pockets." Every medium we've ever created to express creativity is right next to every other medium on our smart phones storyofmovies.org curriculum http://www.googleartproject.com the elements by theodore gray http://www.periodictable.com/index.html gooru - educational search engine (http://www.goorulearning.org/gooru/index.g#!/home) WolframAlpha http://novemberlearning.com/ http://www.achievement.org/ - people telling their own stories about how they have learned and achieved, directed toward kids What's your definition of a great school? Make this definition short and measurable Einstein: "Not everything that counts can be counted. And not everything that can be counted counts." Do the students run in at the same rate they run out? Assess passion for learning!

Howard Gardner L&B Keynote

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Thu, 1 Dec 2011 12:03:00 -0800

Howard Gardner
The Five Minds for the Future: What they are; How to nurture them

Disclaimer:
Five Minds do not = 8, 8 ½, or 9 intelligences
The ‘hat’ of the psychologist is not the same as the ‘hat’ of the policy maker

Minds of the future is a speculation on the capacities that may be important in/for the future. There’s nothing sacrosanct about the list – people could put forth other ideas about what minds are important

The Future of Learning: Four Mega-trends
- Globalization
- The Biological Revolution
- The Digital Revolution
- Lifelong Learning
We need to be thinking about the implications of those mega-trends for education

Globalization: We are no longer a bunch of disparate countries and islands. We are connected through the Internet, brands, financial transactions. Finances are global, and reverberations are felt worldwide.

The Biological Revolution: I’m not sure any educator should do anything radically different today based on what we know about the brain and genetics. But tomorrow, we will be doing things differently. We need to be able to separate out the claims that have scientific warrant and those that are just somebody spinning wheels. But we do need to be aware of what’s going on and monitor it carefully.

The Digital Revolution: Tech is ubiquitous and often perplexing. Virtual reality, multi-user games, social networking. It’s not just information sources at your fingertips, it’s knowing how to evaluate them – this is serious. Twitter: I’m not sure that you can say anything of value in 140 characters, but we do need to be aware of technologies and how kids are using them.

“There are two kinds of people in the world: those who belong to Facebook, and liars.” Ditto for Wikipedia.

Lifelong Learning: The whole notion that education is K-12 or K-16 is completely anachronistic. Any professional must continue to learn throughout their active lives. The traditions of the past – following parents into careers, keeping the same career for your whole life – is over.

The Disciplined Mind
- Working steadily and improving
- Becoming an expert in a profession, craft, art, or end up unemployed or working for someone who is an expert (the task of work)
- Learning major ways of thinking: historical, artistic, scientific, mathematical (the task of school)

Nowadays, if you want to have a job (especially one that doesn’t require you taking orders from someone) you have to become an expert in something.

The Disciplines of School
- Science (correlation not same as causation; matters of evidence vs. faith, opinion)
- History (role of human agency, no experiments possible, avoid presentism, each generation rewrites)
- Mathematics (beyond formulas, engage in discovery)
- Beyond high school – economics, psychology, etc.
- And, of course, professions are disciplines, too
- Each discipline features its own METHODS – at a time of an information glut, methods become essential.
For example, Science and History approach information very differently and ask very different questions. You can look up stuff and subject matter on your smart phone, but learning how to think like a disciplinarian takes a long time and I don’t think it can be learned online (although maybe parts of it can). You can’t look these up on your smart phone.

If we’re just conveying stuff, we can just use a device. But if we’re conveying the methods of a discipline, that’s a real gift.

Reflection:
- What’s your discipline? What’s its method? How do you convey it to someone else?

The Synthesizing Mind
- Scads of information, especially on the web
- Largely undigested and unevaluated
- The synthesizing imperative
- Good, bad, and “so-so” syntheses
- Psychology (my discipline) has dropped the ball
Charles Darwin is an example of an outstanding synthesizer. Spent years traveling the world and taking notes, then 20 years trying to figure out those notes. The result was the explanation of the origin of life.

With “scads” of info, undigested and unevaluated, we have a synthesizing imperative. If you don’t have criteria and you can’t put the material together in a way that makes sense to you, how can you teach? Your students will not be able to learn anything of complexity.

Towards Synthesis
- Goal – what will the final synthesis be like?
- Starting point (includes earlier synthesis)
- Gathering the relevant information, not too judgmentally
- Method, strategy (e.g., narratives, taxonomies, equations, maps, metaphors, images, systems, systems of systems, embodiments)
- First rough draft
- Feedback of various sorts
- Your best synthesis, pro tem – just in time
- Repeat, with variation, till it has become routine.
As educators, we do a great disservice if we tell our students one way to synthesize. We need to offer a menu of synthesizing options and allow students to choose one – or even create one – that works for them. And you should get the synthesis done in time to run it by other people! We need to be more reflective about synthesis than we have to this point. This may be the most important mind for the future.

Reflection: How do you synthesize? Could you help someone else (or yourself) become a better synthesizer?

The Creating Mind (examples Einstein, Virginia Wolfe)
- Mastering a more discipline-10 years?
- Synthesizing what is known (the box itself)
- Going beyond the known – thinking outside the box, an imperative in the computer (algorithmic, ‘app’) age
- Good questions, new questions
- Robust, iconoclastic temperament
- The ultimate judgment of ‘the field’
You can’t think outside the box without the box! And the box is discipline and synthesizing. Without knowing what came before, your chances of making something new are very small.

Creativity is as much about temperament as it is about cognition. Creativity is open to everybody, but there are never going to be steps. Willingness to take a chance, fail, and pick yourself up and try again or try something else. And as soon is something is discovered anywhere, it circulates the globe. And people who are younger and gustier are going to be competing against those who are “older and wiser”

Reflection: Should American schools cultivate creativity? If so, how? Or are there sufficient lessons about creativity ‘on the streets’, in Hollywood, Silicon Valley and (alas) Wall Street?

Do we provide a place and resources? The problem in America is not a lack of creativity – it’s all over. So should students get out there?

There’s too much of a belief in error-free learning in some cultures.

The Mini-Elevator Mini-Speech (The tweet about the first three minds)
- Depth (Disciplined)
- Breadth (Synthesis of multiple sources)
- Stretch (Creative – go beyond)

The Respectful Mind
Easy to describe, but anything-but-easy to achieve. To understand others’ perspectives, motivation, etc.
- Diversity as a fact of life, at home and abroad
- Beyond mere tolerance
- Need to understand others – perspectives, motivation – emotional and interpersonal intelligence – “empathy schools”
- Inappropriateness of ‘corporate, top-down model’ for schools and perhaps even for corporations!
I go to schools all over the world and can tell very quickly if there is an air of respect in the school. How are disturbances handled? In a world with 7 billion people, if we don’t evince respect, that’s going to be extremely difficult. Even people who loath Barack Obama do see him as a person who is respectful.

You don’t get credit for respect if you
- Kiss up, kick down (scrape to your superiors and abuse your subordinates)
- Laugh at bad jokes (scapegoating and stereotyping)
- Mere tolerance (diversity calls us beyond mere tolerance to a need to understand others)
- Respect with too many conditions
Respect is evident in casual interactions. Do individuals strive for conciliation?

There are some encouraging models in the world of groups who have fought but found some success in coming to a reconciliation
- Commissions on Peace and Reconciliation (more than two dozen countries)
- Barenboim-Said Middle Eastern Orchestra
- Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project (intercultural penetration, transmission, syncretism)
- Rx-establish respectful institutional culture – especially important if messages at home, on the street, in the media, are contrary. You can’t just say, “We have no room for disrespect here.”

Reflection: What determines an atmosphere of respect or disrespect in a school? How can it be maintained and improved?

The Ethical Mind
- Higher level of abstraction than respectful mind
- Conceptualizing oneself as a (good) worker
- Conceptualizing oneself as a (good) citizen
- Acting appropriately in both roles
- How this plays out in an educational community
We determine who we are by the roles that we play. Teacher, writer, researcher, citizen. We are all citizens of the world now. If I drive a car that burns a lot of fuel, I am contributing to global warming. That is not being a good citizen. The ethical mind doesn’t talk about you and how you deal with your family and neighbors, it’s about you as a worker and a citizen (multiple levels of this). It begins with thinking about yourself, but in the end it’s about how you act, and the ethical person acts responsibly and with the highest aspirations.

Three Es of Good Work
- Excellent, expert, high quality
- Ethical, socially responsible, moral
- Engaging – meaningful, intrinsically motivated
ENA – three strands intertwined of Excellence, Ethics, and Engaging (see crummy photo) It takes all three for work to be “good”

Imagine: you are a history teacher who has just been given a new curriculum and you do not agree with it. Not motivating, not important, not a good use of time. This is an ethical dilemma.

A Study of Good Work in Youth
With disturbing results…
Compromised Work in American Youth
- Students/young workers know the “right thing to do”
- Some do it
- But too many deceive others and themselves – why should I be more ethical than my peers seem to be?
- Is it enough to intend to use proper means in the future?
Can’t be ethical and compete. We’ll be ethical when we reach the top. The ends justify the means.

‘Giving Away’ Good Work – Our effort to encourage ethics in the US
- Traveling curriculum in journalism
- Toolkit being used in American secondary schools and colleges (liked by teachers as well as students) goodworktoolkit.org e.g. newspaper, engineering, theater
- Courses at graduate level (“Good work in the global context” “Good work in Education”
- Reflection sessions at Colby, Amherst, Harvard Colleges – baggage, messages, first paragraph
- “Beyond fear and greed” to trust and inspiration
Unless you live as a hermit, you are depending on others to be good workers. And if you aren’t being one, you’re a freeloader.

Occupy movement at least suggests young people are beginning to think about important ideas

Is WikiLeaks a good thing because it reveals government secrets? Or is it a bad thing because it makes private things public and compromises security?

Educator’s “Solution”
Creation of a ‘commons’ where students, teachers, staff can reflect on dilemmas and how they could best be solved and lessons learned – old and young cooperate
We need to have spaces – face-to-face and online – where people can talk about the ethical dilemmas they are facing or have faced and ask opinions about solutions. Not anonymously, but with your own name. No rumor, no anonymity – you don’t know what’s true and what’s not! If you believe at all in reason, sometimes you can come up with better solutions if you put your heads together than you can by yourself.

Reflection: Could you set up a ‘commons’ in your school, college, organization? How would you do/accomplish this? What are the benefits, pitfalls, etc.?

Five Minds in a Digital Age
- Discipline – depth could lose out to breadth – can one learn metho online or is offline apprenticeship essential?
- Synthesis – can one organize the deluge of information? What kinds of aids to synthesis will be developed? Will they be Procrustean or liberating?
- Creativity – web 2.0 and 3.0 are promising, but many young people are risk averse and careerist
- Respectful/Ethical – perhaps to inner circle but not necessarily to the wider community, how to become a ‘cyber citizen’ mastering the ethics of roles. “Good Play” initiative. Nobody can know for sure what will happen to your online information, and that raises issues of respect and ethics that we have never had before.

The Figure-Ground Struggle Going on Today
Painting – girl in front, background behind.
In Education going forward, what will be the figure? Test scores and country rankings or The kind of individuals we nurture and the kind of society we create. The figure should be good workers and good citizens. Almost all of the trouble the US has gotten into – and its been self-inflicted – has come from the best and the brightest. If you believe that education is more than test scores or country rankings than we will follow MLK and RWE:

“Intelligence plus character…” MLK, Jr.
“Character is more important than intellect.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Judy Willis L&B Presentation

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 10:50:00 -0800

Using Brain Research to Help Students Develop Their Highest Cognitive Potentials
Judy Willis, MD, M.Ed.

http://www.RadTeach.com
PDF of today's powerpoint will be on there within a week, or email her at jwillisneuro@aol.com

Teaching strategy: Syn-Naps (Three-Minute Pause)
- Meet in groups of 3-5 to summarize key points, add your own thoughts, pose clarifying questions, predict meaning, your emotional reaction, your cognitive interpretation
- Use a One-minute timer to finish them up (she has a visual one) and a cue

Prefrontal cortex maturation
Educators are possibly the most important caretakers of the most important brain development in a person's life.
Networks of PFC develop with age, last part of the brain to mature, doing so while students are in school, most active maturation between 8-18 (5 to 25 on the bell curve).
Maturation: pruning & myelination, based on use

What can we do about it?
To even get to the PFC is 2/3 of an educator's job. Reticular activating system, amygdala, and dopamine must be engaged first (RAD Teaching)

Multiple functions of the PFC
Emotional Management
Long-term Conceptual Memory
Executive Function
We can impact how strong these networks are, strengthening one has benefits to the other two

Executive Function
Today's students must be prepared to
- evaluate new information and modify understanding as information increases and "facts" change (e.g., Pluto vs. "planet-ness")
- use new technology as it becomes available
- to find solutions for problems we have yet to recognize

We are using a factory model in a digital world - learn these factoids and when you "get out there" you'll be told what to do with them

There's way too much information to even be an expert in one field! In schools, we keep making the books bigger and shoving more facts in. The new testing hasn't done anything to limit the standards. We can't just teach concepts and do projects, we have to deal with the realities of the constraints of the current system.

The PFC holds an executive function system that, when exercised and developed, can become the brain's successful CEO

3% of a cat's brain, 10% of a dog's brain, 20% of a human's brain (by volume)

Executive functions are the skill sets for 21st century success
- Analysis
- Prioritizing
- Considered decision making
- Delay of immediate gratification
- Goal planning
- Risk assessment
- Judgment
- Adaptability

Syn-Naps - summarize what you have learned so far

Executive function use correlates with PFC activity:
- abstraction, reasoning, deduction, critical analysis, considered decision making, goal planning, prioritizing, judgment, & consideration of alternative perspectives

Neural networks of executive function can be developed to:
- evaluate new information
- modify understanding as information increases and "facts" change
- use new technology as it becomes available

Neuroplasticity: The physical changes of building, revising, or extending neuronal networks in response to activation (use).

Each time a brain circuit is activated it becomes stronger and more permanent
- electricity is the stimulant that promotes more dendrites, more synapses (more neurotransmitters), and more myelin (faster)
- comparing it to a muscle: physical exercise leads to larger bulk and greater motor strength, activation and neuroplasticity leads to a larger circuit which results in greater mental strength
- myelin thickening increases with activation; thicker myelin = faster processing; faster retrieval of information; protects it against the pruning (AHA!!!); Mastery in class doesn't mean you've done anything with your myelin - you have to reactivate the circuits over and over again. Faster PFC processing correlates with intellectual performance. Practice makes permanent.

PFC Proper Care and Feeding
- Opportunities to practice accurate and logical interpretation of new information; interaction with the information; lots of predictions; examples; other perspectives, including historical (interesting misconceptions). Interacting with content and learning necessary skills at the same time.
- Develop habits of mind (critical analysis, creative problem solving)

Training Critical Analysis of Data
- Know the difference between theory and research
- Read actual research
- Learn the scientific method & use it to critique scientific research (look who's funding it, how many people in control/variable groups, placebo, double-blind, etc.) Use this as a template for other disciplines.

Practice Executive Functions
- Defend a personal opinion with facts, but also...
- Predict what an opposing viewpoint would be and how to refute it
- Practice solving real world, student-relevant problems with no single "right" answer
- Activities: supreme court justice opinions, best restaurant in a city, evaluate website validity, identify ethical/unethical tv commercials and write a business letter, student participation in conflict resolution, photo analysis - which headline?, more on website

Summary: Teachers are the caretakers of the highest brain development
- PFC is last part of brain to mature
- PFC network processing speed correlates with intelligence
- Myelination promotes increased speed and is increased when networks are used
- Use of executive functions promotes their greater development

Argument has been made that this should happen in college, but is it? Or is college a place for remediating facts that weren't learned in K-12 or cramming in more facts?

Syn-Naps: What strategies and activities that you've used are likely to have promoted the activation and neuroplastic growth of the networks of executive function.

21st Century Success
Concept learning is critical for students to respond in the future with innovative solutions to new problems

Conceptual Long-Term Memory
Answers Why?

Ma and Pa Kettle Math Clip

Of students who got 100% basic pythagorean theorem questions right, only 30% could transfer to a slightly more complex problem. Rote learning and practice does not lead to concept development. Isolated facts repeated and practiced in certain ways result in orphan networks, no matter how strong they are. Have to do things for transfer.

The brain seeks patterns and pleasure

Short-term (working) Memory is a matter of pattern matching
- Amygdala and Hippocampi. Info that gets through amygdala (not stressed), goes into hippocampus for processing. The brain interprets new information based on existing patterns (schema - literally a physical template in the hippocampus). If there is no patter waiting (or activated within a minute), new input is misinterpreted or disappears. When there is a successful pattern match the hippocampus encodes sensory input into working-term memory. Fun pattern brain games on her slides! I got them ALL WRONG!!! :) The strongest pattern that has had the most activation is strongest and fastest retrieved. The fastest go-to pattern is not always right.
- Patterning is the basis for literacy & numeracy and for connecting short-term memories, the system by which we turn memories into bigger concepts. Patterns are passageways for memories to follow. Patterning is the brain's process for linking new learning to existing knowledge. Activate prior knowledge! Without that activation, lack of development of executive function will result in spotty patterning (DO NOT assume students will do it). If we do activate it, the hippocampus encodes sensory input into working memory that can then go to the PFC and, with practice, become long-term memory.
- Activities - bulletin boards that preview, personal/cultural connections, pre-unit assessments, show videos or images that remind students of prior knowledge, remind students about previous exposures (cross-curricular, spiraled curriculum), ***predict/KWL***, similarities/differences, graphic organizers (organization, personalization)

Summary:
- New information must link (encode) with existing memory to become working memory.
- Frequently activated patterns promote automatic responses
- Start early, have children sort and verbalize patterns
- Patterning strength promotes automaticity for literacy and numeracy
- Prior knowledge activation and graphic organizers increase pattern matching for memory encoding

Syn-Naps: How will you activate your students' prior knowledge and help them create patterns with the information from your class (and other classes)?

Long-term memory
- Hippocampus encodes
- PFC for construction of long-term memory
- Plasticity from mental manipulation
- Long-term memory is the result of physical changes
- Practice makes it durable
- Mental manipulation - things that are most likely to take things from hippocampus and make them long-term memory: similarities/differences, categorize, analogies, graphic organizers, narratives, teaching someone, personalized and humorous mental manipulations are more memorable (actual change in the RNA when there's a positive emotion - happy makes stronger memories), concise summaries (twitter, text messaging, one-minute summary).

Long-term CONCEPT memory
- Transfer
- Pattern extension, connection of separate patterns
- Transfer activities - new applications of learning, incorporation of isolated fact memories into extended concept knowledge
- Recognize key elements (big picture, big ideas, & essential questions, desired goals), understand key elements (mental manipulation (personalize, perspective), meaning-making (interpret), reconstruct the knowledge (summarize, synthesize)), transfer to new application

Big Picture: Teaching disconnected bits of information is like asking them to solve a puzzle without giving them the picture to look at.

Differentiation - give them more or fewer transfer cues, scaffolding

Learning in a variety of ways creates connection between various areas of the brain. When we explicitly require students to use them together to retrieve and practice, we are making those connections stronger. Related subsequent input has more patterns to connect with. Concept networks are now available for transfer to future tasks. Prepared for 21st Century - new questions, new data, have pathways to solve new problems and innovate.

Experience your neurons' neuroplasticity - try to draw clockwise circles with your right foot and the number 6 in the air with your right hand. What happened? Demonstrates how strong pathways can be!

Edward Hallowell L&B Keynote

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 08:30:00 -0800

Shine: Using Brain Science to Get Imagination and the Best from Your Students
Edward M. Hallowell, MD

http://www.drhallowell.com/crazy-busy/

He has dyslexia and ADHD.

How can we help students do more than they know they are capable of?

Read "A Walk in the Rain with a Brain." I have it, if you're interested in reading it.

The gist of the book is that there is no such thing as "smart." No brain is the same, no brain is the best.

How do we help children find their own brain's special way?

[Hallowell: There are two times in the world of ADD. Now, and not now. There's a test next wednesday - not now! Those with attention surplus disorder are busily blocking out their study time. :)]

Support is the difference between the prison population and the Nobel Prize winners.

Schools and teachers saved his life. Psychotic father, alcoholic mother, learning disability, adhd, etc. You save lives as dramatically as surgeons do.

The pyramid model
- Rests on the assumption that the children who will do best in life are the ones who do best every step along the way
- This is a terrible tyranny that has gripped the imagination of parents and warped childhood

Shine

1. Connect
- at its most distilled, we call it love. Love drives growth better than anything else. The best gift we can give our children is a childhood rich with positive interpersonal connections. It's free and infinite in supply! It's really sad that people trivialize this. Love is a tough sell.
- at the moment you become a parent you physiologically change, you enter into a permanent state of psychosis, you go crazy with love. This love leads you to do crazy things - give up time, money, dignity. We live in this state of madness the rest of our lives. That bond is the spinal column of a happy child. It is your greatest ally, trust it!
- connection within the family. Connection and conflict go hand-in-hand. The opposite of connection is indifference. By all means have conflict, just try to work it out and minimize bloodshed. Have family dinners, read together, have fun together. It's good for our brains! Make time for them.
- connection with friends. Pick and choose carefully. Talk to kids about friendship.
- connection to school. How do you feel when you walk in the door? Do you feel safe? Do you feel welcome? Is there someone there and something you're looking forward to?
- connection to nature. Go out and play, get outdoors, make up your games, get out there and come back for dinner. Get a pet.
- connection to the past. Not just history books. All kids ought to do a grandparent project.
- connection to clubs, groups, organizations.
- a spiritual connection. Beyond dogma to what you cannot see, cannot prove. Intuition. Reserve a forum for kids to speculate and wonder in a context of joy, not fear and guilt. Wonder together.
- connection with self.
- notice how rich all of this sounds? This is the stuff life is made of, and it's all free.

2. Play
- the connected child necessarily moves to step 2.
- not just recess. Any activity in which your imagination lights up. The more you play, the more your brain grows.
- great teachers light up the imagination. Ask questions. How? Why? Anything that you pose as a question instantly engages the imagination. Question, question.
- More prestige and pay than a doctor for teachers in Finland. All engaging the imagination, teaching problem-solving all the time. The teachers are so good that they end up leading the world.
- flow
- if you want to help your students find their brain's special way, engage the imagination
- great teachers balance structure and novelty. Too much structure and it's boring, too much novelty and it's chaos.

3. Work, Practice
- best way to get kids to do this is to spend lots of time on connect and play!
- great teachers sweeten the process, so that kids are working hard in spite of themselves.

4. Make Progress, Gain Mastery
- making progress in something that is difficult and matters to you develops confidence, self-esteem, motivation
- teachers MUST intervene with kids who aren't making progress. This is where great teaching changes lives.
- Real disabilities are shame, fear, thinking ur stupid and giving up

5. Receive Recognition
- doesn't necessarily mean you win a prize, just means someone who matters to you notices your progress
- moral education is not about drumming into kids the 10 commandments, its a matter of having some reason to do what's right. The "reason" is to have some ownership in the group - if you feel ownership, you uphold rules, help out, etc. It's really an issue of connection.

This cycle generally predicts success. It's what you come out of childhood FEELING that matters. Who are you? What's your attitude? That's what matters. Confidence, self-esteem, enthusiasm, resilience, growth mindset. Those are absolutely correlated with leading the kind of life we want our kids to live. Not limited to a certain IQ or income. No exclusionary criteria. Every child and adult can enter into the cycle and develop these attitudes. This is how you find out what your brain is good at.

If you tell a kid to dream big and then don't help, he becomes a cynic. If you tell a kid to dream big and then provide the support to fulfill the dream, he's thriving.

Why spend your life sucking up for a prize that's not worth it, when you could live a life that's worth living? This is the message that you all have the power to impart. Alas, it is not the message most parents and kids are getting. They're getting pressure-packed, fear-filled childhood.

This was an outstanding presentation! Makes me wish I could start parenting all over again, start teaching all over again!

Shelley Carson L&B Keynote

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 07:21:00 -0800

Creative Brains: Maximizing Imagination and Innovation in Yourself and in Your Students
Shelley H. Carson, PhD

Imagination - the ability to conceptualize that which does not currently exist or that which is not currently experienced
Innovation - the production of a new process, product, or idea that leads to substantial positive change
Creativity - the ability to take bits of information and synthesize them into novel original ideas or products that are in some way useful or adaptive (internally generated bits and externally sensed bits). Each of us has a unique repository of knowledge. This definition encompasses both imagination and innovation - thinking about it and making it happen.

Why is creativity so important?
- Survival - ancestors weren't fast enough to run away from or fight off predators; survived through ingenuity
- Communication - across religions, time, space, etc. through poetry, art, literature, etc.
- Enrichment and Comfort - medical and scientific advancements, poetry, art, and music, as well as our own creative endeavors including gardening, cooking, and interior decorating
- Sexual Attractiveness - creativity is sexy! A way for us to advertise our fitness to desired mates. Undergraduates would prefer to have a mate who is creative over one who is wealthy. :) Kindness, sociability, creativity most desirable characteristics. Why else would anyone find Mick Jagger attractive?
- Mood regulation - "Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort." - FDR, First Inaugural Address. Art, music, drama therapy.

Why is nurturing creativity in students (and ourselves!) so important in the 21st Century?
- The rules of all of the games are changing - business, dating, parenting, teaching
- We do not know what the future is going to look like in a few years, much less in a century
- Best thing we can teach our students is to creatively adapt to the rapidly changing environment

Creativity on Three Levels
- You become more creative as a person
- You become more creative as a teacher
- You help students become more creative

Aren't some people just naturally creative?
- There are genetic contributions to creativity, but genetics influence behavior, they don't dictate it
- Each of us has the hardware we need to be creative - the marvelous creative brain! We can hijack what is there for survival and use it for creative purposes.
- Just introducing yourself to someone for the first time is a creative act! Imagine your new friend with chartreuse hair with purple streaks. You just imagined something that doesn't exist! Way to go!!!

Can you learn to be more creative?
- There is a difference between talent and creativity. Talent is technical proficiency in a given area - may be the result of motivation and drive to practice to perfect a skill. When we think of creative geniuses, most of them have a combination of talent and creativity. Many who have great talent have never made a significant creative contribution.
- Brain imaging studies indicate that highly creative people activate certain neural patterns when engaged in creative work and that they flexibly change these activation patterns during the creative process.
- By mimicking the brain activation patterns of highly creative individuals we can enhance our innate creative abilities.
- Research indicates that we can achieve certain brain activation states through training and practice. She has seen this in her work with Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans. We can re-generate connections between neurons. Connections between neurons is a major part of creativity.

The Creative Process
1. Preparation ("Chance favors the prepared mind." -Louis Pasteur)
- Gathering knowledge - gathering broad knowledge (she takes issue with speakers who say we need to tailor curriculum - we have no idea what knowledge students will combine and use to come up with creative solutions) and specific knowledge within a given field
- Problem-finding - the search for and definition of a problem that needs to be solved, not going out trying to find problems, but exploring new ways for things to be done
2. Creative Solution
- Trial and Error - the deliberative pathway to creativity, sequential logical thought, Thomas Edison, failure is an important part of the process
- Incubation and Insight (Aha!) - the spontaneous pathway to creativity, tends to be tougher to evaluate because people have the conviction that they are right because it came to them, Nikola Tesla, Mozart
3. Evaluation
4. Elaboration
5. Implementation

Brain Activation Patters (Brainsets) Associated with Creativity
C - Connect
R - Reason
E - Envision
A - Absorb
T - Transform
E - Evaluate
S - Stream
Brain activation patterns change thinking, memories, and the ways we solve problems

Reason and Evaluate
- Very important for Preparation phase, trial and error, evaluation, elaboration, and step-by-step plan to implement
- Characterized by focused attention, high activation of the executive centers of the brain, esp. dorsal-lateral prefrontal cortex (particularly left), sequential reasoning, consciously-directed thought, judgment
- Focused on specific aspects of your goal
- Skills include planning (goal-setting), step-by-step problem solving, analysis, detail examination, critical thinking, convergent thinking (using memory to come to a solution) - all skills associated with the pre-frontal cortex, need to teach our students to use them)

Absorb Brainset
- Help with problem-finding, incubation & insight
- Suspended judgment, response to novelty, cognitive disinhibition
- Turning down the filter on what is being allowed into the conscious brain - we tend to inhibit more as we get older, which is contrary to this brainset. De-emphasize the influence of the prefrontal cortex, slight emphasis on the right hemisphere (did you know that the corpus collosum facilitates communication between hemispheres, but also inhibits right hemisphere?) and the reward centers of the brain - reward yourself for paying attention to novelty!
- Skills include mindfulness, intellectual curiosity (reward your students for curiosity to breed more curiosity - operant conditioning for something awesome!), openness to experience (helps to try to see things from another perspective), state of receptiveness
- This state is the precursor to the moment of insight (Aha!)
- Best times - just before sleep, within two hours after physical activity!

Importance of Seeing What Others Don't See
- See the novel aspects of everyday life
- Make a list of everything that annoys you. Can you look at them non-judgmentally and come up with creative solutions?

Envision Brainset
- Associated with mental imagery, "What-if?" thinking, cognitive disinhibition
- Uses parts of the brain associated with episodic memory
- Skills include imagination, fantasy play, visualization (help students practice this skill)
- Whatever your subject matter, you can include What-if and imaginative thinking

Connect Brainset
- Activation of associational networks, goal-directed motivation, positive affect
- Creative thinking is "the forming of associative elements into new combinations...The more mutually remote the elements of the new combination, the more creative the process or solution." -Mednick (1962)
- Game: Degrees of separation. Two words from dictionary, environment, lesson, etc. See if you can come up with words to connect them in 3, 2, then 1 degrees.
- Skills include divergent thinking (using the content of memory to come up with new ideas)

The importance of flexibly moving among brainsets
- Must learn to move fluidly between convergent and divergent thinking
- Brainstorm followed by evaluation, crossword puzzle followed by story-writing using first two words they solved back-and-forth, add "What-if?" exercises to daily lessons

How can I help my students to think more creatively about my content? How can I be more creative?

Charles Fadel L&B Keynote

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 05:57:00 -0800

21st Century Skills: The Imperative for Teaching Creativity and Innovation in Schools
Charles Fadel

Key Messages
Challenges require comprehensive rethinking - RELEVANCE
- Applicable Knowledge
- Skills not just Knowledge
- Character not just Skills & Knowledge

What will the world be like 20 years from now?
- Volatile
- Uncertain
- Complex
- Ambiguous

This is what happens in a multipolar world (several centers of political and economic strength)

The New World We Live In
Learning leads to economic competitiveness and Lifelong personal prosperity and social & environmental wellbeing
Globalization requires productivity, which requires education, so it puts a focus on our profession
Impact of absolute population size - In 2025, there will be 300M skilled workers in China and India, which is a world challenge

Does the world have the absorptive capacity?
- Long-term, perhaps
- Short-term, major dislocations
25% of US jobs are potentially off-shoreable" Blinder at Harvard

What do Egypt, Japan, and Sweden have in common?
- High Youth Unemployment (40% in Egypt!)

Accelerating change demands different skills
- Non-routine analytic/interactive are on the rise (consultants and engineers)
- Route cognitive and manual are decreasing (assembly work, paper work)
- Non-routine manual are toast (construction)

Personally-delivered vs. Impersonally delivered
Impersonal services are off-shoreable, personal services are not

Skill vs. Delivery
Even very skilled jobs are off-shoreable if they are impersonal
But even personal jobs are becoming off-shoreable due to technology (fly to a surgeon, telesurgery, for example)
"Computers found more accurate than doctors in breast-cancer diagnosis" Science Magazine, Nov 10, 2011
We have passed a new threshold in artificial intelligence, but the replacement of human labor by technology is not new.
We have to be aware of the rapidity of technological development - with human genome, we can now do in 5 minutes what it would have taken a year to do.
iPhone: $400 price point - 40Tb in 2015, 40Eb 2025 (you could video your whole life)!
Exobrain by 2030
This is already possible in the cloud
Distributed computing - Folding@Home project

We are preparing students for jobs that do not exist and things we haven't even thought of!

Think about 3D printing - what would you do if you had a micro-factory in your office?

"The future is already here - it's just not very evenly distributed." - William Gibson

When the digital revolution exceeds education, we experience social pain; when education is ahead, we experience prosperity

So what do we teach for in an era of ubiquitous search and AI that help us with answers?
- Fluidity with technology
- Adaptability
- Resilience
- Asking the right questions
- Synthesizing/integrating
- Creating!

Creative work differentiates more developed countries from less developed countries and work done by machines

Schooling vs. Real-World
"...school learning is abstract, theoretical and organized by disciplines while work is concrete, specific to the task, and organized by problems and projects." - OECD, "Learning for Jobs" 2009

We must re-think what is taught with a lens of relevance - what do we remove? what else do we need to teach? what else matters?

Partnership for 21st Century Skills - Framework of 21st Century Student Outcomes and Support Systems

Utah is NOT one of the states that has adopted this framework.

Heidi Hayes Jacobs L&B Keynote

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:01:00 -0800

Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World
Heidi Hayes Jacobs, EdD

curriculum21.com

Paper is over.

Prezi is an example of the deliberate use of new genre for specific purposes - great for attention and rapid eye movement, not great for sustained work.

In your schools, as we are looking at curriculum and instruction, choose your century.

Can't think of a better time to be an educator (She has been an educator for 40 years)

Essential Questions:
- How can we prepare our learners for their future?
- Who owns the learning?

Technologies are tools that go with teaching and learning. The tools do make a difference. The point isn't the tools, it's how we engage them. The tools we use impact learning. New tools and new literacies. They do, on some levels, support each other.

10% of the 21st Century is over.

If you look at your curriculum as an artifact, if you look at your schedule as an artifact, how you're grouped, etc., what year are you preparing your students for?

[To be honest, I think our School of Education is "good" in traditional terms, but not preparing the educators that we NEED for today's students. We are not training our students in collaborative, problem-based, authentic models using modern tools and resources, so why would they teach this way?]

The tools we use impact communication.

[This woman is HILARIOUS! A great presenter! Check out her stuff, people. She's got a great perspective and outstanding ideas.]

The way we share curriculum has changed, because the portals are open.

I don't want students going online and playing with kids all over the world, and then coming into our dated classrooms.

The use of these tools should not be extraneous to curriculum - they should be supporting the central points of curriculum.

Skype and a National Geographic documentary or a diorama in a shoe box?

These tools get kids to search again. They get YOU to search again. An engaging instructional tool isn't an enrichment, it's essential.

When it makes curriculum and instructional sense, students should be collaborating with people all over the world and engaging in authentic tasks.

It's not just about what we do with the kids, it's about what WE are doing.

The curriculum in this country is roughly 1985. Not just talking about the tools we use, but about what we study.

Curriculum is not just tools and skills and technology - it's choice-making! We choose, you see, and what we choose is either engaging or an imposition.

What do we cut? What do we keep? What do we create?

The US has the shortest school year, the shortest school day, and the least amount of contact with each other.

Our school system was created in 1896, based on the agrarian calendar. The schedule is 6 hours with 8 subjects based on the factory schedule.

Are children and youth processing information differently?

Social Production (e.g., Wikipedia (now as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica) - Learning to do, knowledge creation
Social Networks - Learning to be, defining our identities, how we connect with each other determines how learning occurs (relationships, not technologies) - How many of you are members of professional social networks? Do you know what a live binder is?
Semantic Web - Learning to know, organization, interpretation, connections & distribution of information
Media Grids - Learning to be and do, gaming embeds Gardner's Five Minds for the Future, Content not confined to linear structure
Non-linear Learning - Disciplines are interconnected

A new kind of learner needs
- A new kind of teacher
- A new pedagogy
- Upgraded curriculum
- A new kind of classroom
- New roles

Three literacies worth exploring
- Digital literacies - use and selection of the right Web 2.0 technologies
- Media literacy - ability to be a critical responder to media, know how to make QUALITY media to express themselves. We haven't been trained on it, and many of our kids don't know how to create quality products
- Global literacy - recognize the relationship between place and people
Leading with teaching and learning....or is it that the technologies are stretching the possibilities for teaching and learning????

Can you imagine going to a doctor who says, "I know about technology! I've heard of X-rays!"

How do we begin to transition out of our 19th century structures for 21st century learning?

Versioning - 4 key school structures
- Schedules (short-term (daily, yearly) and long-term (graduation))
- Student grouping patterns (by age? why?)
- Teacher configurations (too much isolation)
- Space

What are the basic elements in designing curriculum that need upgrading?
- Content - what is essential given the time I have? Science teachers have the same amount of time to teach science as they did in 1896!!! Think about that!!!
- Skills - multiple literacies
- Assessments - change your assignments! Kids are great at notetaking - think text messaging! Mock FB pages for historical figures - what would status updates, friends, etc. look like? Zooburst - 3D pop-up books. MuseumBox. Share and Self-publish! The Grandmother Project. Video Trailers for units - use them for review, use last year's as teasers. Create a podcast channel. CAD blueprints. Etc., etc., etc.

But where do we start? There's so much out there! Clearinghouse on curriculum21.com. Visual Thesaurus. Gapminder. Google Art Project (using this tool, 9th graders created a virtual tour, chose 5 paintings that they felt best represented transition period in art, made a podcast about them). Tag Galaxy (teacher had kids compare and contrast iconography in images from different world religions to compare the religions). WolframAlpha (try searching on Boston!). Oh, holy cow!

At the end of every curriculum objective, we need to add the adverb "independently." We want our students to be able to do these things without us!

Video: Technology at PS 101. In that school, every student has a teacher who is willing to learn something. Special Ed was the first to get iPads.

Teachers aren't reluctant, they just don't know where to start and they want to do it right.

Curriculum is not antithetical to the new genre.

NOTICE new forms of assessment and experiences.

She did a TED talk. Look it up! But she challenges us to do TED talks ourselves at our own school. What are you playing with and exploring? What is on your mind in your field right now?

Every child in America should create an App before they graduate.

Follow Med Kharbach. He posts at least one new tool every day.

Start with one thing. We don't want to overwhelm - just whelm, for now.

You know what Piaget said - people are only learning if they are experiencing disequilibrium. The goal of this conference is for you to leave emotionally discouraged. :)

Check out the backchannel on Twitter at #LB30

Helen Neville L&B Keynote

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 12:55:00 -0800

Training Brains: Improving Behavior, Cognition and Neural Mechanisms of Attention in Lower SES Children
Helen J. Neville, PhD

Dr. Neville summarized her research on the cognitive impacts of socioeconomic status and her work to change that impact. SES plays a major role in student achievement, attention, stress, etc. But Dr. Neville has found success with intervention programs for the children (particularly training them to focus their attention) and their parents (creating a more stable home environment). She has received a grant to start working with latino families - the highest at-risk population.

changingbrains.org - new, non-technical DVD for parents and educators to help them understand the impact of SES and ways to change brains, proceeds used to translate it to Spanish

Tony Wagner L&B Keynote

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 10:44:00 -0800

The New Educational Challenges

New skills for work, continuous learning, & citizenship in a "knowledge society" for all students. These skills are not effectively taught.

The "Net Generation" is differently motivated to learn

The Seven Survival Skills for Careers, College, and Citizenship
Students must be on their way to mastery of these skills through school
1. Critical thinking and problem-solving
2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence - must be able to understand and appreciate differences
3. Agility and adaptability - contrast that with the regularities of school
4. Initiative and entrepreneurialism - setting "stretch" goals and achieving most of them is better than setting basic goals and achieving all of them, "fail early and fail often," yet we penalize children when they fail in school
5. Effective oral and written communication - writing with voice, passion, and perspective
6. Accessing and analyzing information
7. Curiosity and imagination - only one curriculum being taught, and that is test prep. AYP or AP. There is an enormous gap between what we teach and the skills students need. 50% of students who begin college never complete a degree, many because they didn't have the skills (especially writing) to succeed.

What motivates the "net" generation?
- Accustomed to instant gratification and "always-on" connection
- Use the web for 1) extending friendships, 2) interest-driven, self-directed learning, and 3) as a tool for self-expression
- Constantly connected, creating, and multitasking in a multimedia world - everywhere except in school (Technology is a double-edged sword - we need to use the powerful technologies to engage students and extend the classroom, but we also need to understand that this generation doesn't know how to NOT multitask, so they need to learn to "develop the muscles of concentration")
- Less fear and respect for authority - accustomed to learning from peers, want coaching, but only from adults who don't "talk down" to them
- Want to make a difference and do interesting/worthwhile work - want to make a difference more than they want to make money

The Culture of Schooling versus The Culture of Innovation
The teachers who make big differences are outliers. They create a culture in their classroom that is different from that at their institution.
- Individual achievement versus collaboration
- Specialization versus multi-disciplinary learning
- Risk avoidance versus trial and error (We don't talk about failure here, we talk about iteration)
- Consuming versus creating
- Extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation
- Evolution from play to passion to purpose

Implications for "Reinvention"

We have to move away from what has always been an information-based learning system (focus on "timeless learning" (academic content that has persisted over time)) to a transformation-based system (focus on what you can do with what you know; focus on using content to master the competencies for "just-in-time learning"). We have to think carefully about what content is truly important and consider how it might be used to teach skills.

Watch The Finland Phenomenon

Redefining Rigor: 5 "Habits of Mind" - Learning to ask the right questions
- Weighing Evidence
- Awareness of Varying Viewpoints
- Seeing Connections/Cause & Effect
- Speculating on Possibilities/Conjecture
- Assessing Value - both socially and personally

Questions to consider
- What skills are you teaching, and how are you assessing them?
- What is the school doing to systematically improve instruction, and how do you know it's working? Are you a better teacher than 2 years ago - if so, in what ways and how do you know?
- How well are your students prepared for college, careers, and citizenships, and how do you know?
- Is your school "adding value?"

Redefining Educational Excellence
Accountability
- Track cohort graduation rate and how well students do once they are in college (National Student Clearing House (www.studentclearinghouse.org)
- Use the college and work readiness assessment to assess analytic reasoning, critical thinking, problem-solving, and writing (www.cae.org)
- Video-tape focus groups with recent grads (data for the heart)

Academics
- Doing the new work: teaching & assessing the skills that matter most
- Develop strategies for teaching & assessing the 3Cs: Critical & Creative thinking, communication, and collaboration
- Pilot interdisciplinary courses around essential questions and capstone projects at multiple levels
Require all students to have digital portfolios (track progress, real audience, means for teacher accountability), work internships, and service-learning projects

Doing the New Work in New Ways
- Collaboration & Transparency
- Isolation is the enemy of innovation and improvement
- Every student has an adult advocate
- Every teacher on teams for collaborative inquiry - looking at student & teacher work
- Videotape teaching & supervision (lesson study vs. evaluation)
- Peer-reviewed digital portfolios for teachers and leaders

Adam J. Cox Executive Function Workshop

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 08:30:00 -0800

Building the Eight Pillars of Capable Young Minds
Adam J. Cox, PhD

DrAdamCox.com

The purpose of this 3-hour workshop was to describe the Executive Function capabilities of children - particularly those in junior high - and to prescribe strategies that educators can use to help develop those capabilities.

Dr. Cox began his presentation by describing educators as the "architects of young minds, rather than the conveyors of content." His basic premise that our role as educators is to teach children how to think, using our content as a vehicle for that thinking.

He also stated that children are desperate to be taken seriously and implied that much misbehavior is the result of adults not taking children seriously - not listening to their desires and opinions or thinking about what they have to say. On the other hand, we also often have unrealistically high expectations for children - particularly in social domains (e.g., high levels of communication, interpretation, motivation, and interaction).

The most crucial event in the evolution of the human species is the ability to wait.” Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man

A species that takes longer to develop is capable of greater cognitive complexity. The delay in development of today’s adolescents may be a function of the increasing complexity of today’s society and culture.

Electronica leads to limited auditory attention, heightened impatience and irritability, and social withdrawal.

Extinction of boredom and the demise of civility. Losing the ability to wait.

The stimulation we provide makes all the difference.

Boys: compliance feels submissive; boredom is stressful; high proportion of kinesthetic processors; respond well to kinematics; tendency to overlook detail

Girls: Typically know how to circumvent the “crisis” of boredom; More likely to enjoy auditory-based instruction; highly engaged by concepts with social relevance; May lose momentum in the vortex of perfectionism. (Study: estrogen linked to working memory)

Universal Fulcrum of Immediate Improvement
- Define and illustrate desired outcomes
- Continuous, explicit verbal feedback
- Positive feedback has greater impact on younger kids, negative feedback (critical) has a greater impact on later adolescents
- Make the process personal and emotional
- Assess consolidation daily
- One of the most important things they learn in the 5th and 6th grades is the ability to pick out the most important things and retain those

We are competing with a lifetime of electronica.

Teaching the “Trophy Generation”
- Need for constant fun and stimulation
- High level of self-absorption
- Persistent need for affirmation
- Insistence that “anything is possible”
- Conflation of electronic and real experience

Pillar I: Initiation
Likely Challenges
- Trouble getting started
- Confusion about priorities; doesn’t put first things first
- Inability to delay gratification
Possible Solutions
- Collaboratively build and reinforce classroom and study routines
- Explain how to determine priorities (could supply a rubric for decision-making)
- Parcel large or complex tasks into smaller steps
- “Chunk” time; use timers as necessary
"I want to be not just a good teacher, but your teacher"

Pillar II: Attention
Likely Challenges
- Trouble inhibiting distraction; a wandering mind
- Selective attention
- Insufficient Energy
Possible Solutions
- Narrow the field of attention (selective seating, strategic study center, deny visual and auditory stimulation; offer exercise or quiet relaxation (15 min on, then break, then 15 min on – will finish work better and faster)
- Encourage self-monitoring (use on-task charts to build two-tier thinking, make interval check-ins routine (personal buzzer/timer), Invite kids to be a part of school planning – today’s kids are generally not reliable self-monitors/evaluators – we need to teach and encourage this)
- Change learning channel frequently (sustained auditory attention is a major challenge for many 21st century children)
- Consider administering school-wide learning style assessments (theory that guides the instruction in your school); invite students to participate in school planning (taking them seriously, ideas incorporated into the plan, get better results faster)
Tone + Tempo = Synchrony of a Well “orchestrated” classroom
Making strategic use of
Vocal tone, rate and rhythm of speech, vocabulary, relevance, physical proximity, projected energy, facial expressions, gestures – attention emerges from the spaces between us rather than from within us

Classroom clouds
- Facts and knowledge
- Subjectivity of students (Personal)
- Co-regulated learning relationship – essence of application of executive function in the classroom

Pillar III: Cognitive Flexibility
Likely Challenges
- Problems changing tempo
- Reluctance to shift focus
- Colliding time-frames
Possible Solutions
- Activate two-tier thinking (ask for predictions about what steps will be required and how long they will take; provide immediate, non-judgmental feedback)
- Announce transitions well in advance, and allow ample time for organization (Don’t teach up to the bell – leaves people in chaos and they don’t have time to synthesize)
- Support synchronized tempo by animating instruction
- Provide an optimal example (sit student next to another s/he admires with better flexibility)
- Always reinforce effort more than ability or accomplishment (Carol Dweck, Mindset) because...
- effort is the foundation of a positive work ethic
- easier to take ownership of effort than talent
- potential for praise is infinite compared with attainment of a specific goal (effort is recyclable)
Many kids understand but never seem to "know" course content due to lack of repetition and rehearsal (the only way to consolidate memory). But this does not have to be boring and rote - think multimodal. Kids just need more experience with the content. Going off on tangents is a valuable instructional technique, but not a good learning technique. When we teach, we need to approach the topic from 360 degrees – present the idea in a lot of different ways, don’t get off topic. Repetition and rehearsal are irreplaceable pathways to better connected brains (neural networks of retention)

Pillar IV: Working Memory
Likely Challenges
- Forgets what s/he knows
- Difficulty multitasking
- Tests below ability level
Executive Function helps produce knowledge through the following 4 steps:
- Stimulation-Focused Thought (micro)
- Overlearning (this is a key "tipping point" in the era of distraction and where we nurture the neural architecture of intelligence)
- Reflection and Insight (macro)
- Consolidation
Capable minds learn to toggle between micro and macro cognitive frames
Possible Solutions
- Emphasize overlearning strategies
- Students should write or type notes immediately
- Ask for immediate, articulated recall of information
- Work toward assessing consolidation daily
Maximizing memory:
- Chunk new information
- Repetition and rehearsal (over-learning)
- Short, frequent quizzes
- Make & organize index cards
- Study right before going to sleep
- Review first thing in the morning

Collaborative tracking boosts productivity and academic esteem. Public tracking done artfully and sensitively – we don’t want to harm kids, we want to build community and motivate

Pillar V: Organization
Likely Challenges
- Pervasive clutter and chaos
- Unconstructive multitasking
- Constantly forgets to bring things home
Possible Solutions
- Support learning and retention by making time and space for organization
- Review and sign-off on student agendas daily
- Ask for an explanation of unconventional organization systems (you never know - they may think of something better!)
- Teach how to use an "end-of-day" checklist
- Provide peer tutor or professional coach if needed
Teach study skills! Note-taking, note cards, setting up a study space, etc.

Pillar VI: Planning
Likely Challenges
- Poor time awareness
- Trouble with sequencing
- Doesn’t visualize relevant outcomes
Possible Solutions
- Help articulate goals and sequencing strategies
- Explain how to think and work backward from a goal
- Identify the key elements of a plan (time needed, materials, equipment, resources)
- Provide daily contact with measured progress in a context of caring (MUST improve my feedback time!!!)

Pillar VII: Self-monitoring (Social)
Likely Challenges
- Self-absorption gets mistaken for self-centeredness
- Awkward interpersonal skills
- Problems with code-switching
Theory of Mind – each child has unique experience that is different from others’ experiences, we are developing more sophisticated levels of Theory of Mind as we develop. The better we get at that, the better we get at EQ.

To help students have more "conversational courage" we can:
- Focus on topics of interest and/or confidence
- Maintain a matter-of-fact tone (don't get emotional)
- Limit eye contact (often more willing to talk to us if we're not looking at them)
- Make conversation a background to an activity (e.g., toss a ball)
- Adopt the persona of a coach

Students need to learn both social rules (e.g., conversational distance, turn-taking, eye contact) and social cognitive skills (use of conventions such as greetings, voice modulation/emotion detection, giving compliments, goal-directed transitions/code-switching)

Possible Solutions
- Integrate social conventions into casual conversations and classroom instructions (state: "make sure to spend equal time listening to one another and signal if you like your partner's ideas")
- Privately suggest alternative behaviors
- Employ non-verbal signals to avoid embarrassment
- Begin with an explanation, but end with rehearsal (let them practice social skills!)

We must understand what identity kids want to identify with if we want them to ascend with us. Once we unlock what they want to feel about themselves, everything else becomes logical.

Kids are masters of decoding your voice. Your voice indicates whether you are a coach or a boss. They respond better to coaches.

We tend to focus on intellectual skills and achievement at school and are neglecting executive function, cognitive skills, and personality.

Pillar VIII: Emotional Control
Likely Challenges
- Spontaneous, strong emotion - with little provocation
- Personalizes the non-personal (takes it personally)
- Chronic irritability, moodiness
Possible Solutions
- Project empathy before attempting to correct emotional problem (attentive listening)
- Minimize direct eye contact, use a matter-of-fact tone
- Explain acceptable ways for expressing dissatisfaction
- Work toward converting disruptive students into classroom school leaders

Bottom line: I need to focus my instruction and allow for repetition and rehearsal - perhaps not as much elaboration and "going off on tangents." I also need to integrate explicit use of executive function on a daily basis - stop and review, end-of-day checklist, frequent smaller assessment, talk openly about time management and content organization. I MUST be better about getting quick and specific feedback to my students so that they can accurately reflect on their progress and improve over time.

Ken Kosik at UVU Arts in Education Conference

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 08:16:00 -0700

The arts ask the really big questions. Cognitive neuroscience asks big questions. Molecular neuroscience asks small questions.

Somewhere in our evolutionary history, the human need to make art has emerged. Around 50,000 years ago, our ancestors started to paint on the walls of caves. No other species had ever done this. And the paintings would not have been seen by very many people. So there is an urge to create this art that extends beyond the desire for others to see it. Musical instruments begin to emerge at about the same time, as did burying the dead with things - the emergence of abstraction.

Human genomes are almost identical to each other (only 1% different from one person to another). Neanderthals are also remarkably similar to us. But there are small differences, which may contribute to the human drive to create art. All of our closest relatives have gone extinct. Even the closest living ones (i.e. chimps, etc.) are threatened. Chimp genes are 97% like ours. But they wouldn't spontaneously help each other like we do. This is called the "social brain."

Reading: Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Attributes of the Social Brain:
- Ability to recognize people's faces (there is a part of the brain devoted specifically to this function; test yourself at faceblind.org)
- Watching the eye movements of people you're talking to
- Language - (there is a musicality to the Italian language, and they use the "musical" parts of their brain to attempt to extract meaning from nonsense words)
- Memories - beyond declarative ("Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinion, their life a mimicry, their passion a quotation." Oscar Wilde; "Let us, then, say that this is the gift of Memory, the mother of the Muses, and that whenever we wish to remember anything we see or hear or think of in our own minds, we hold this wax under the perceptions and thoughts and imprint them upon it, just as we make impressions from seal rings; and whatever is imprinted we remember and know as long as its image lasts..." Socrates) The Greeks linked memory (Mnemosyne is the goddess of memory) and the arts (the Muses are her daughters)

Memory is not about the past. It is about the future. Memory is mental time travel. (Yadin Dudai quote on the role of memory)

We do not recall things perfectly. Rather, our memories help to inform our thoughts. When memory goes away, we lose our future. When you ask an Alzheimer's patient what they would like to do this summer, they have a difficult time providing detail about their desires.

Daydreaming vs. Task-oriented Behavior

The brain shifts when you are not trying to achieve a goal. It continues to use a lot of energy, but it activates the parietal lobes - the "dark energy" of the brain, when you are at rest, but active.

What does the brain do?
It tells us our own story - creates autobiography
1. Places us in the lead role of own story (agency, maps our position in space)
2. Creates a continuity of consciousness upon a fragmented field of memories
3. Deludes us about our past by conflating memory with imagination
4. Puts emotional valence on our experience so we can learn to survive

The brain tells our story. We have to explain what we don't understand. Confabulation is when we form false memories of events by confusing imagination and memories. But we also engage in storytelling through the arts - stories, painting, music, etc. As we chip away at a scientific understanding of things, we often don't get to the really big questions that the arts address.

In our day-to-day life stories, our brains respond profoundly to visual stimuli. But the mind can put a different kind of look to the same scene. The actual visual input is far more important than all of the meaning that we put on that information. This is true of all stimuli - it is the meaning we make that is most important.

Raising Nerds

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Tue, 5 Jul 2011 19:21:00 -0700

The article linked below is a great reminder that we need to be raising a nation of nerds. In other words, we need to value education as much as (if not more than) athletic prowess and make it a key focus of our government, culture, society, and families. I couldn't agree more.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/06/28/granderson.raising.nerd/index.html?iref=obinsite

Compulsive Liars

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Wed, 11 May 2011 09:10:00 -0700

So compulsive liars aren't crazy, they're crazy smart! Fascinating findings:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87922568

Genetics and Autism

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 09:13:00 -0700

I had the outstanding opportunity to attend a presentation by Dr. Valerie Hu, a leading autism researcher. Dr. Hu is a biochemist, so she looks at autism from a biological stand point. She has made some amazing inroads into understanding the genetic correlations with autism and I wanted to share some notes here for my friends with autistic children and my former and current students who have or will have the opportunity to work with students with autism.

Intro to Dr. Hu's work: http://www.modelmekids.com/autism-research.html

First, Dr. Hu realized that the current method of trying to analyze the biology of autism was completely ineffectual. Researchers were throwing all types of autism into the same pot and then trying to determine what made those with autism different from those without. Of course, they couldn't figure it out. There was so much variance in the data that they couldn't draw any conclusions from it. So Dr. Hu and her grad students began to categorize people based on the behavioral inventories that are currently in use. They were able to tease out four distinct forms of autism based on those inventories - severe language-impaired, intermediate, mild (including Asperger's), and savant.

Once these distinctions were made, they were able to start comparing the genetic data to determine if these behavioral categories were also evident biologically. They are. Dr. Hu has been able to determine definite biological/genetic markers for each of the four types of autism. The markers are particularly significant for those with severe language-impaired autism.

Parents of children with autism will not be surprised to hear what some of those genetic markers are. Dr. Hu discovered differences in the genes linked with circadian rhythms (which regulate sleep-wake cycles, among other things), digestion, head size, sensitivity to stimuli, etc. She states that this new form of analysis is 98% accurate for each type of autism and 94% accurate overall, meaning that a blood test for autism is on the horizon.

Additionally, it appears that many of these genetic anomalies are not related to flawed or damaged genes, but rather are caused by markers on the genes that turn them up or down. For example, one of the genes that is related to circadian rhythms regulates the amount of melatonin in the body. It is turned down in kids with severe autism. So, we may be able to supplement kids' melatonin to give them some relief and help them to sleep better.

Another fascinating finding here is that one of the genes that seems to be most profoundly impacted in children with autism is closely linked with the amount of testosterone in the body. If this gene is turned off, the amount of testosterone goes up, which reduces an enzyme in the body that helps to regulate sleep-wake cycles, neural inflammation, etc. So, boys already have more testosterone than girls. Autistic boys produce more testosterone because this gene is turned off, which reduces the production of the enzyme, which results in more testosterone production, etc. It is a terribly vicious cycle that both explains why more boys than girls have autism and explores a possible cause of some of the symptoms of autism. This research tells us that hormone therapy (giving estrogen), may help to alleviate some of the symptoms of autism.

Link to more info: http://www.livescience.com/12920-autism-common-males-testosterone-affects-gene.html

Basically, the idea here is that we are near a blood test for autism AND, perhaps even more interestingly, the genetic testing is leading to customized treatments for each autistic child as we discover which genes are impacted and then target therapies (genetic, hormonal, etc.) to their specific genetic deficiencies.

Super-exciting stuff that I think gives everyone a lot of hope for the future of children with autism.

Engaging the Digital Mind

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 15:42:00 -0700

Here is the slideshow from my presentation at SoTE 2011:

John Ratey

dr.suzycox@gmail.com (Dr. Suzy Cox) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:05:00 -0800

Presentation on exercise and the brain.