Education Commons^™

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.

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.

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.

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 …

Creating Safe, Strength-Based Classrooms, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Schools are not machines. Schools are a network of human beings who feel, think, behave, and function within a human system that is alive and never static. Inside living systems, we need to feel safe and felt. This system is wired to thrive, even through difficult times. We're here for deep learning, which is profoundly relational, and connection to one another is a prerequisite for our collective emotional, social, spiritual, and cognitive growth and development.

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.

New Class Roles: Building Environments Of Cooperation, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

We see students survive every day. We ourselves survive every day -- a class, a test, a conflict, a relationship, and a challenge. Yet surviving is very different than thriving! Many students that we see daily bring a degree of their stress into our classrooms. Thankfully, many of them also have supports in their lives that allow them to manage this stress in a productive manner.

Self-Assessment Inspires Learning, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Self-reflection is self-assessment, and one of the most significant learning tools we can model for our students. Ultimately, we want our children and adolescents to be the self-assessors of their work, dispositions, and goals. Research repeatedly reports that the difference between good teachers and superior teachers is that superior teachers self-reflect.

The Key Of Connection, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Over the past few weeks, I have learned deeply. My students were paramount teachers as I was privileged to share a part of their interior worlds, their "private logic" that is a culmination of accumulated beliefs, experiences, values, thoughts and feelings. This inner world is often kept tucked away unless an environment is created that allows for feelings of safety and an untainted sense of belonging. When any child or adult enters into a space that accepts, inspires and affirms their "ever-changing personhood," we have finally found the key that unlocks the door to extravagant learning! What is that key? …

Senioritis -- Or An Opportunity For Growth?, Lori Desautels

Scholarship and Professional Work – Education

Walking into the kitchen, she spots the community college acceptance letter on top of a stack of mail. Early in December, the Marine Corps notifies him that basic training starts in six months. She's dreamed about attending her mom's alma mater for the last few years, and admissions has responded positively. The auto shop where he's had an afterschool job since junior year has just promised full-time employment beginning two weeks after graduation.

Now what?

This question concerns me as an educator of K-12 and higher education.