Instead of thinking about what we are not teaching, let’s take this opportunity to focus on what is truly important in our subjects and endeavor to teach it in ways that make it durable, usable and flexible in the minds of our students.
In 2021, the challenge of returning to school from winter break feels magnified. So what insights from Mind, Brain, and Education Science can I use to help make this critical point of a unique school year go well?
Classic research on belonging suggests that telling students you have high expectations of them and that you believe in their potential to meet those expectations has a positive impact. How do you follow through on that?
Memory, like all brain functions, is not isolated to one region of the brain—and without it, learning does not happen. What follows is how we have translated research on memory to our respective disciplines, science and history.
I challenge each educator to remind students that they have the autonomy to voice whatever is on their mind because their perspective is valued and needed.
Projects are still a good way to motivate students during challenging circumstances, but we need to take care so that learning actually takes place. How can we use what we know about the science of learning to design projects that truly work?
Motivating students with carrots and sticks—through endless, demoralizing cycles of high-stakes testing and assessment—is not getting us the deep learning and love of learning we desire. Fortunately there is a science of motivation, and we need to design it into the very fiber of our virtual courses.
By releasing myself from being a “sage on the stage” to become a co-creator of educational opportunities with my students, everyone in my classroom is a better teacher and stronger learner.
The Responsive Classroom approach reaches far beyond the old perception of social and emotional curriculums producing “nice” kids in a warm and fuzzy environment. It allows us to build intelligent guidelines for school and to develop classroom practices that are informed by current neuroscience and are relevant to the children of the 21st Century.
The demands of distance learning will make your Learning Management System (LMS) more important than ever this year. Have you thought about how to align your tech with the best research on how students learn?