Education Commons^™

Indiana Social-Emotional Learning Competencies, Brandie Oliver, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

No abstract provided.

Calming End-Of-Year Stress, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

For many teachers and students, nearing the end of the school year can be a time of mixed feelings, sometimes including fear and anxiety. Students who walk through our doors with what Dr. John Seita and Dr. Larry Brendtro call "family privilege" look forward to time with friends and family, summer outings, and a freer schedule. These students are entering summer break "feeling felt and accepted" within their home environments. Their secure attachment with caregivers allows for expression, mistakes, and freedom to explore their self. Family privilege is defined as an invisible package of assets and pathways that provide us …

The Adolescent Brain: Leaving Childhood Behind, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

There isn't a more profound scene in the film Inside Out than the death of Bing Bong, Riley’s imaginary friend. As the main character approaches her 12th birthday, her brain is beginning to develop in ways that leave her imagination behind. This is the time when children between the ages of 10 and 14 begin dying to their childhoods to be born into their adolescence.

Contagious Emotions And Responding To Stress, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Neuroscience research suggests that emotions are contagious. Our brains are social organs, and we are wired for relationships. When we encounter or experience intense emotions from another individual, we feel those feelings as if they were our own. Mirror neurons in our brains are responsible for empathy, happiness, and the contagious anger, sadness, or anxiety that we feel when another person is experiencing these same feelings.

Islands Of Personality And Trains Of Thought, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

In the film Inside Out, 11-year-old Riley holds several islands of personality in her brain. These islands were created from her past core memories, experiences, interests, and passions. Positive and negative core memories create these islands that make up our personality or sense of self. Riley's included Family Island, Friendship Island, Soccer Island, and Goofball Island. Our brains form islands of personality (or, for the purposes of this discussion, islands of self) because of our interests, relationships, experiences, and how others in our lives have affirmed, supported, or possibly weakened our thoughts about who we are and …

Creating Core Memories In The Classroom, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

We all create core memories. When we encounter an experience with heightened emotion, our memory systems remember the experiences because of the intense emotions associated with the event. We know that memories can become diluted or distorted with time and distance. When we remember an event from our past, our brains secrete the same chemicals from the same neurotransmitters called forth when the experience happened, creating the same feelings.

How Emotions Affect Learning, Behaviors, And Relationships, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

We need all of our emotions for thinking, problem solving, and focused attention. We are neurobiologically wired, and to learn anything, our minds must be focused and our emotions need to "feel" in balance. Emotional regulation is necessary so that we can remember, retrieve, transfer, and connect all new information to what we already know. When a continuous stream of negative emotions hijacks our frontal lobes, our brain's architecture changes, leaving us in a heightened stress-response state where fear, anger, anxiety, frustration, and sadness take over our thinking, logical brains.

Energy And Calm: Change It Up And Calm It Down!, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Unlike the sequels to movies, I hope that part two of last year's Energy and Calm post will continue to strengthen your understanding of how our brains naturally learn, think, and behave. So let's return to the calming yet energizing zone of focused attention practices and brain breaks, a place that would greatly benefit students -- and their teachers -- when revisited frequently.

Brains In Pain Cannot Learn!, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Educators want nothing more than for our students to feel successful and excited to learn, and to understand the importance of their education. We want our students' attention and respect to match our own. I believe that most if not all of our students desire the same, but walking through our classroom doors are beautifully complex youth who are neurobiologically wired to feel before thinking.

Strengthening Executive Function Development For Students With Add, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

What are the root causes of Attention Deficit Disorder in our children and youth, and how do we address these challenges? According to the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 11 percent of children in the United States age 4-17 (6.4 million) have been diagnosed with ADHD as of 2011.

Dr. Russell Barkley, clinical professor of psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina and medical expert in ADD, shares that this disorder is primarily about emotional regulation and self-control. It is not just about inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity. Emotional regulation, which is foundational to social, emotional, and …

Brain Labs: A Place To Enliven Learning, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Although emotion and cognition originate in different parts of the brain, they interact and play a powerful role in learning and memory. According to neuroscientists like Eric Jensen, priming the brain for particular states of engagement -- such as curiosity, intrigue, surprise, suspense, a bit of confusion, skepticism, and the feeling of safety -- prepares the mind to learn. Furthermore, incorporating emotion into our instruction and content supports long-term memory. This might not be news to teachers, but not enough students know how to optimize their brain for learning. That's why every child should have the opportunity to explore …

Cracking The Code Of Student Emotional Pain, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Every instructor wants to crack the code -- to determine just what children and adolescents need to transform feelings of defeat, cognitive and emotional exhaustion, and outright hostility into something positive. They want to connect with students whose stress response states are chronically activated. They want to help learners know that they are more than just their genetics or their history. They want to share with their most fragile students that the traumas of their past can strengthen rather than harden their minds and hearts. No one needs to live in constant conflict and pain.

3 Things Students Desire To Hear From Teachers, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

A year and a half ago, I decided that I needed to return to the K-12 classrooms and really experience ground-level teaching, testing, core standards, differentiating, and emotionally connecting with children and adolescents in ways I had not for many years. I have been and still am an assistant professor in the school of education at Marian University, but the environments, experiences, and my own learning have grown and changed immensely from returning to the classroom 18 months ago.

I asked the university for a course release, taking the lectures, research, and strategies into the early adolescent grades. And three …

Meta-Collaboration: Thinking With Another, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

What if we could dramatically improve our thought processes and learning strategies by tapping into the social genius of another? What if a classmate, colleague, or friend could help us recognize and claim our strengths, new habits of thought, and strategies from a perspective that we never imagined by ourselves? As human beings, our survival depends on others. Our ability to cooperate and collaborate has trumped the stress response state of competition within our species and throughout evolution. With a group affiliation to nurture these relationships, we can strengthen and reappraise our own thought processes.

Incentivizing Your Class: The Engagement-Based Classroom Management Model, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

When I think of our most struggling and distracted students, I see how social pain and rejection often hijack their ability to be academically focused and successful. Optimal school performance requires positive emotional connections with those students that we want to prosper while feeling capable and competent.

When students and teachers feel this connection, we are all responding from the higher cortical regions of the brain, and our dopamine reward centers are activated by these feelings, these positive emotions. Our interactions with students are intimately connected with our own feelings and agendas. When our efforts in the classroom meet with …

Energy And Calm: Brain Breaks And Focused-Attention Practices, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

When presented with new material, standards, and complicated topics, we need to be focused and calm as we approach our assignments. We can use brain breaks and focused-attention practices to positively impact our emotional states and learning. They refocus our neural circuitry with either stimulating or quieting practices that generate increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, where problem solving and emotional regulation occur.

Survive And Thrive During Testing Season, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Right now, students across the nation are embarking upon a series of standardized tests following intense days and weeks of test preparation accompanied by anxiety and worry from both parents and educators. Many of these test participants are English as a Second Language (ESL) learners with a wide diversity of learning potential, social and emotional challenges, strengths, cultures and interests. Among these young learners, there are many who put themselves to bed in the evening, get themselves up and ready for school, and do not have breakfast, arranged homework times or adult support to guide their school days...

Addressing Our Needs: Maslow Comes To Life For Educators And Students, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

In the mid-1950s, humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow created a theory of basic, psychological and self-fulfillment needs that motivate individuals to move consciously or subconsciously through levels or tiers based on our inner and outer satisfaction of those met or unmet needs. As a parent and educator, I find this theory eternally relevant for students and adults, especially in our classrooms. After studying it over the past couple of years, my graduate and undergraduate students have decided that every classroom should display a wall-sized diagram of the pyramid, as students and teachers alike place pins and post-its on the varying tiers …

Brain-Compatible Study Strategies, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Driving my 15-year-old daughter home from cross country, I asked her where she learned to study. She replied, "Mom, I have never been taught how to study, we just do it because teachers have way too much to teach! They assume we know, and Cornell Notes are their idea of teaching us how to study!" I thought about this conversation and began to create a template that can hopefully assist students to organize, plan and create capacity in their working memories to learn content for the long term.

Below is a brief, simply-stated template on study skills for fifth grade …

Walking The Walk: An Educator's Perspective From All Views, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

As an education professor, I recently decided it was time to walk the walk of my graduate and undergraduate students. I was ready to experience what happens when the educational neuroscience and the social and emotional disciplines meet head-on with real-life challenges and opportunities. So, while continuing with my courses at the University, I became a fifth grade co-teacher, joining an incredible group of educators from Washington Township, a large public school district in Indianapolis.

Using Brain Research To Aid Reading Comprehension, Mia Alyssa Claretto

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

"Does it matter to learning if we pay attention? ...You bet it does" (Medina, 2007, p. 74). Studies John Medina, Richard Mayer, and numerous others prove the more attention the brain gives to a certain stimulus results in better retention of the information due to the fact that the information is more elaborately encoded. The more attention grabbing something is, the more emotion that is involved, means the better that information is remembered. As a future teacher, this detail has many implications for me. If I want students who are learning, then I need to design lessons that invite the …

The Effects Of A Brief Mindfulness Intervention On Impulsivity In College Students, Myles Elgin Trapp

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

This study investigated the impact of a brief, introductory mindfulness intervention on attention, executive control, and impulsivity. I randomly assigned forty-seven undergraduate students to a treatment group (TG) receiving mindfulness training and a waiting list control group (WLG). Participants completed a battery of self-report questionnaires and standardized neuropsychological tests before and after the intervention. Participants high in trait mindfulness suffered less interference on a Stroop task, were less impulsive on the Balloon Analogue Risk Task, but also evidenced less cognitive flexibility on a dual fluency test at baseline. The TG demonstrated greater improvement than the WLG from baseline to re-test …

The Effect Of Induced Happiness Levels On Academic Performance, Laura Marie Spice

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

Past research has shown that people who have high levels of happiness show greater job performance and productivity than those who are less happy (Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, et al., 2005) and that happiness can be improved in both non-depressed and depressed people (Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009; Seligman, Steel, Park, & Peterson., 2005). However, little research has been done on the application of positivity interventions in the classroom context. In 4 academic classrooms, positivity and control interventions were applied. I then measured well-being, engagement, and classroom performance. I found that the positivity intervention resulted in higher engagement and classroom performance …

Idk Lol: Text Messaging During Class Impairs Comprehension Of Lecture Material, Amanda C. Gingerich

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

After leading a PIE at NITOP 2010 on text messaging during class, I incorporated a new demonstration into my Cognitive Processes course. In this exercise, students either text message each other during lecture or they listen to the lecture without the distraction of text messaging. Everyone then takes a quiz on the material. Results suggest that text message during lecture leads to impaired comprehension of material.

Multi-Tasking = Epic Fail: Students Who Text Message During Class Show Impaired Comprehension Of Lecture Material, Amanda C. Gingerich

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

For the unit on divided attention in my Cognitive Processes course, I created a demonstration in which half of the class is randomly assigned to text message each other while I lecture on time management strategies. The other half of the class does not text message during the lecture. Following the 10-minute lecture, all students complete a multiple-choice quiz. Results from 67 students over the past three semesters show that, in their proportion of answers correct, the Text condition performed statistically significantly worse on the quiz (M = .602, SD = .238) than did those in the No Text …

How Sweet It Is: Candy-Based Demonstrations In Introductory Psychology, Amanda C. Gingerich

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

especially those involving candy (e.g., Cherny, 2008), I created a collection of demonstrations in introductory psychology that involve the use of candy. To test their effectiveness in helping students learn concepts introductory psychology, I asked students to provide feedback about the how enjoyable some of the activities were, how useful they were in illustrating their intended topic, and whether they made the concepts more memorable. Results suggest that the “Twizzlers” exercise was the most memorable (as measured by accuracy to question #1) and that the “Jelly Bellies” exercise was the most enjoyable (as measured by responses to question #6).

When Being Sad Improves Memory Accuracy: The Role Of Affective State In Inadvertent Plagiarism, Amanda C. Gingerich

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Inadvertent plagiarism was investigated in participants who had been induced into a happy or sad mood either before encoding or before retrieval of items generated in a puzzle task. Results indicate that participants in a sad mood made fewer memory errors in which they claimed as their own an idea generated by another source than did those in a happy mood. However, this effect occurred only when mood was induced before encoding.

“Have You Seen The Notebook?” “I Don’T Remember.” Using Popular Cinema To Teach Memory And Amnesia, Amanda C. Gingerich

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The recent influx of films addressing different aspects of memory loss inspired the development of an upper-level undergraduate seminar that focuses on investigating amnesia through the lens of popular cinema. This discussion-based course included several written assignments and, at the end of one semester, a comprehensive take-home exam. Over the course of four semesters, a bank of student-authored discussion questions for each reading was collected and a list of topics and corresponding movies was honed.

The Effect Of Emotional State On Inadvertent Plagiarism Memory Errors, Amanda C. Gingerich

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

We investigated inadvertent plagiarism by inducing participants into a happy or sad mood before they generated items in a puzzle task. Compared to happy mood, participants induced into a sad mood made fewer memory errors in which they claimed a previously-generated idea to be new; confidence ratings in these errors, however, was higher.

A Training Framework And Follow-Up Observations For Multiculturally Inclusive Teaching: Is Believing That We Are Emphasizing Diversity Enough?, Joelle D. Elicker, Mindi N. Thompson, Andrea F. Snell, Allison L. O'Malley

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

The authors present a theoretically and empirically grounded training for multiculturally inclusive teaching for new instructors. After implementing this training, qualitative data were gathered from instructors to identify their experience of the training and concerns related to incorporating issues of diversity into their classrooms (Study 1). At the end of the semester immediately following the training, quantitative data were gathered from instructors and their students to examine the interaction between students’ and instructors’ perceived diversity emphasis (Study 2). When allowed to choose the extent to which they incorporated issues of diversity in their classes, the instructors differentially reported emphasizing diversity …