There is a point during each summer when schools and districts begin to accelerate preparation for the opening of a new school year. This is often geographically dependent, as schools in certain regions of the United States (and throughout the world) start at different times depending on various factors. As part of this transition back to school, leaders and their teams often set the year’s theme, focus, and professional learning priorities based on strategic plans, data, and resources that hopefully align with student learning and school experience goals. Sometimes, schools even have multiple themes in one year. Belonging has appeared in some form for many schools and districts over the past few years, as has literacy, Project-Based Learning, student-centered and experiential learning, wellbeing, educational technology (AI), and mastery learning.
As I write this piece, I have Bruce Springsteen’s version of the Jimmy Cliff song “Trapped” playing in my head (in full disclosure, I am from NJ and have a “man crush” on The Boss, having now seen him 23 times). Whatever theme your school or district has chosen for the new school year, try to “avoid being caught up in the trap again.”
Learning is complex; changing adult brains and behavior is hard. Every year needs to be the “Year of the Brain” in our classrooms, schools, and districts as we learn and share more about promising research and strategies that can inform, validate, and transform how we design the school day, assessments for learning, and homework (to name a few) and elevate formative assessments. We should also focus on how to create more opportunities for students to retrieve, reflect, ask questions, think hard and creatively about what they are learning and the world in which they live.
The Center for Transformative Teaching & Learning (CTTL) is always excited when we hear that schools or districts declare that this will be the “Year of the Brain.” We have sometimes been part of the professional learning around this focus. We also gladly recommend organizations, researchers, translators, and friends from around the world that collaborate in this important work and whose resources are part of our tiered research base.
There seems to be a seductive allure of declaring a school-year focus on the brain or neuroscience. However, this can create a tendency to overstate what research and strategies are promising enough to consider. It is why the CTTL sits in the Mind, Brain, and Education (MBE) space because of how it brings together fields of neuroscience, cognitive science, behavioral psychology, and education theory and, thus, a broader set of research and strategies that are doable, likely to have an impact, and worth the time.
But there is a consistent trap schools and districts fall into when they declare the “Year of the Brain” which aligns with why a lot of professional learning does not change how we teach and how students learn. It takes time to truly begin to know enough about the most complex organ of the body, which is also the primary organ of learning. A “one-and-done” experience, which might be a book read, workshop, or even a few touch points during a year, does not align with what we know about research in high-quality professional learning and development.
Neuroplasticity, the life-long ability of the brain to change, means that adults who teach and lead schools can change their brain, but the effort to create that change seems to get harder as we age or accrue years of teaching. Adult learners need more time, spaced repetition, and retrieval practice. They need models of implementation and their own opportunities to learn, try, share, and try again as part of their jobs teaching and leading in schools.
Each year the CTTL is privileged to work with public, private, charter, and international schools and districts. They have recognized the opportunity to begin or elevate their collective understanding of the science of teaching and learning and how it can be a lens to elevate student academic achievement and their social, emotional, and identity development. While some school leaders and teachers come to this area of focus on their own, sometimes there is a need to help them recognize the opportunity to leverage brain research and strategies to meet their school’s needs, goals, or challenges. The CTTL has created its freely available Neuroeducation Confidence Diagnostic (NECD) that generates within a few hours an individualized report for those that fully complete it (we can provide schools and districts a personalized link to also get an aggregated report). NECD results can then inform a “data-driven” decision about a school’s focus.
Across all education sectors, and after collecting more than 11,000 NECD completions, the CTTL often sees that roughly 20% of teachers and school leaders have a foundational and accurate understanding of the science of how the brain learns, works, changes, and thrives in schools. In a recent report the CTTL generated from its data, we see how knowing more about the learning brain correlates to increased teacher MBE knowledge, efficacy, translation confidence, and strategy use tied to learning objectives, not a student’s learning style (a neuromyth we address during our teacher and school collaborations and through our Neuromyth Busting Card Game).
When we delivered presentations at conferences such as ASCD, Learning Forward, and ISTE during the 2023-2024 school year, we asked participants to identify the “Top 4” challenges or opportunities their schools or district’s are facing. Only a smattering of individuals choose number nine, “Understanding how the brain learns”. We then try to show how the science of teaching and learning can help lens how to approach all the remaining options (maybe other than college affordability).
The CTTL is located at St. Andrew’s Episcopal School (MD). Between 2007 and 2010, we declared our professional learning focus as the brain and worked to train 100% of our PS-12th grade teachers and school leaders (don’t let them off the hook) in the science of teaching and learning until we found the related MBE field by working with researchers at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Giving ourselves three years immediately distanced ourselves from the one-year trap. However, by giving ourselves time to learn, try, share, and try again, we found that after three years, we could not turn away from MBE. Thus, what could have been a one-year or three-year focus has become an every-year focus. We do have other yearly priorities, but we always lens them through the best available research on how the brain learns. This is currently happening in discussions around AI, mobile device policies, a new Math curriculum, and disciplinary literacy.
Your school or district’s focus might be on the brain or something else. Whatever you choose, here is a short checklist of questions to consider:
- Does your school-year theme align with your school or district’s vision, mission, or strategic priorities?
- What does the current research say about your theme?
- What models already exist in this area of focus?
- How can this focus connect and be interleaved with prior school-year themes (and not feel like another “new thing”)?
- What is the potential impact on your teachers, staff, administration, and families?
- What makes this focus worth the time and any other associated costs?
- How will you measure progress, success, and completion?
- How will this benefit your students?
- What will year 2, 3, 4 or 10 look like in this area of focus?
By avoiding the “Year of the Brain” trap, you can reduce initiative fatigue, which many educators cite as a reason for burnout and feeling cognitively overloaded. There is also a better chance for whatever you have chosen to become more embedded in your school or teacher’s practices and culture, as Jimmy Cliff and Bruce Springsteen sing, “avoid being caught up in the trap again.”
