Brain Bites

If you have followed my work or looked at my blogs, you know that I am a big supporter of using mindfulness in the classroom. Schools from pre-K through medical school all over the country have found success with using this practice. I would like to give you an update and go over a couple of pointers in case you are thinking of trying it or having some questions about your current practice with it.

There are two reasons why meditation might be used in the classroom. One is to calm down the fight/flight/freeze reaction because we know there is a mental health crisis among everyone and that includes our students. We want to reduce the anxiety from that and also perhaps test anxiety or other forms. Another reason that you can read more about in my blogs is that it helps rest and strengthen the frontal lobes which are important for higher order thinking. Those executive functions are critical to success.

In this article, let’s focus on the anxiety that students are experiencing. A new study shows that breathing and body exercises were just as helpful in reducing anxiety as medication. That’s powerful! This study published in a major journal (JAMA Psychiatry) followed people for 8 weeks. Half of the participants participated in a mindfulness based intervention. These volunteers were matched with a group that was prescribed a common anti-anxiety medication called Lexapro. in both groups the average anxiety score after the intervention dropped from moderate to mild. This means that the mindfulness was as effective as the medication period That's powerful!

Now we are not going to tell people to get off their medication. That is between them and their medical practitioner. This is just to say that what you can do and what you can teach your students can greatly help them to reduce their anxiety.

However, let's make a caveat here. Mindfulness does not work for everyone. There are some people for whom this can increase their anxiety because it causes them to think about it or to pay attention to their body and they may stress about their anxiety reactions. This is why we tell students that obviously during the one-minute meditation they can think about whatever they want if it makes them feel uncomfortable in any way. They can let their mind to think about something else and don't worry about it. For those people meditation that involves the body and calms the brain down via the body is where they can start. That is for another blog and is the basis for a new talk I will be giving in the UK this summer and then it will be available. I will let you know that through the next newsletter through a future newsletter.

Most mindful practices, especially those we use in the classroom, are breath awareness. We do not even need to use the word meditation. We can talk about reducing our stress, focusing our attention, or getting our frontal lobes online by focusing on our breathing for one minute.

I teach the easy exercise called “breathe in, breathe out. “As they breathe in, they think the words “breathe in”. As they breathe out ,they think the words breathe out and they just try to stay focused on those words as they are breathing. However, we tell them do not worry when your mind wanders. Every time you bring your mind back to the words, it is like lifting hand weights in the gym for your frontal lobes. You are strengthening them and you are strengthening your attention mechanism in the brain.

Another exercise used in the study was a body scan which involves paying attention to what parts of your body are feeling stressed. You may be familiar with the relaxation response activity that has been around for many years and it was not called meditation. It is like that.

The third activity they used was mindful movement, in which they moved parts of their body and noticed how the movement feels. I don't think this is easily suitable for the classroom. But this does touch on what I mentioned about using the body. If you go to the Coping with Covid  on this site, you will see some movement videos at the bottom of the page. Some of these you can do in the classroom and some of these you can do for yourself. These movement activities use the body to send a message back to the brain to relax. These interventions, such as yoga and Tai Chi, are also well documented in the literature for reducing stress.

You have heard me talk about rewiring the brain in my recent presentations. A researcher at Harvard Medical School, Sara Lazar, says that practicing mindfulness can rewire the brain. Anxiety can be a habit and where our brain goes when it is in the default mode, so by consciously taking control and being mindful of something else it can help to break that habit and to rewire the brain.

Mindfulness practices also work for long term stress reduction because they reduce activity in the amygdala where fear and anger and stress are processed so we are less likely to react with a fight/flight/freeze reaction. If you do a one-minute meditation every day in your classroom, don't expect to see immediate results right away. 

I think one thing you will see right away is that students really appreciate that quiet moment, if for no other reason than to just calm down and get control and prepare for the class. It is a little oasis. Be sure to check in with your students after a couple of weeks of this and again at midterm and toward the end of the semester and ask them if it has had any effect. Then they will notice and you will discover that it has made a difference after it has been done for a period of time.

Try it and see if it works for you. Fire and wire pathways of stress reduction!

Instructors around the world are telling me that the students are not the same. They are less engaged, less focused, and more prone to behavioral issues. Educators are saying that students can’t follow directions or forget something as soon as they are told. These can be trauma responses.

Last time I talked about engagement. Now I want to look at recapturing from several angles. While this only touches the top of the iceberg in space allowed, you will find some effective strategies to address this.

Better Than Before: Recapturing Our Students’ Minds, Brains, and Hearts

How can we recapture them? My new presentation answers this question and approaches it from every angle: emotional brain, cognitive brain, mind, body, and heart – truly addressing the entire student. I can’t condense a 90-minute presentation into a brief blog, but I can give you some pointers here, choosing the ones requiring the least explanation.

Our goal is to increase engagement, enjoyment, attention, and connection. Each of these increases the other in a synergistic way. It is hard to talk about them individually without mentioning one or more of the others, but let’s try. 

Capturing the emotional brain: 

Enjoyment reduces anxiety, with anxiety going down as enjoyment goes up. This doesn’t mean goofing off. Positive Education means increasing positive emotion, including happiness information and practices, along with traditional skills. One quality that has been shown to increase positive emotion is perceived control. Note the word “perceived.” This means that the student feels that they have some control. We know that a feeling of lack of control increases stress. Students need to consciously recognize that they have some control. One way is to teach several strategies for approaching your material and then discuss with them which strategies they intend to use to take control of the material.

Another way is to reframe anxiety: “Anxiety means that you care how you do and that you have goals. If you are stressing about the test, it means you care. Now take that energy and figure out how you are going to take control of the situation. What is your study plan? What are your strategies? “

Capturing the cognitive brain: 

Attention can be top down or bottom up in the brain. Top down means the brain’s frontal lobes are working well and are focusing attention. However, we have seen that if under stress, the frontal lobes are not working well and it is hard for the student to pay attention. Bottom up means that something captures their attention, such as a loud noise. The reaction is not conscious.

If the student is experiencing enjoyment, their attention has been captured without it having to be forced. If we want to work with top down attention, that means that we are going to help them consciously engage their attention by directing their attention. Paying attention doesn’t mean taking in more; it means taking in less. It is not a floodlight but a spotlight that we want to shine on the material. Be sure to let them set an intention before reading or studying or listening to you and let them know where/when/how to focus their attention.

Capturing the mind/body: We capture them through engagement. Students who are engaged are feeling enjoyment and students who are enjoying class are engaged. One fast way to create engagement is creating a task that is the appropriate level of challenge. If the challenge is too easy, it creates boredom and too hard it creates anxiety. As the student’s skill increases, so should the challenge. However, this does not mean making it more difficult, it means making it more complex. This is a challenge for you!

Capturing the heart: Students who feel a sense of connection to the school, other students, or the instructor have higher achievement. Again, this is synergistic. If you are creating positive emotions in the classroom, you are engaging their hearts. Emotions are contagious. One interesting study showed a reciprocal emotion transmission between teachers and students. The more teacher enjoyment at the beginning of the semester, the higher the student enjoyment at midterm. The higher the student enjoyment at the beginning, the higher the teacher enjoyment. That brings us back to creating a classroom with an enjoyable environment.

Do you see how they all work together – enjoyment, engagement, attention, and connection? I hope you picked up a couple of ideas. Below you will find some questions that you can use as discussion points with colleagues. If you are interested in more science and strategies on this topic, please contact me about securing this presentation for your faculty. It is designed to uplift them and recapture them (they are exhausted from the pandemic, right?) as well as helping them recapture the students.

Here is to a brighter future!

Discussion Questions:

I suggest starting with one of the hardest to implement (as many others can be easily implemented immediately) and then proceed as time permits.

1. How can you make your content more challenging without making it more difficult?  To keep students engaged, the challenge must increase as the skill increases, but that doesn’t mean more difficult.  It means more challenging by expanding the scope.  It may connect to other material or broaden.  Explore this idea and come up with examples.

2. How can you increase enjoyment without making it “fun and games” – waste of time. Process the two specific strategies:  perceived control and value appraisal. Discuss those and other strategies with examples from your content area.

3. How have you attempted to engage their attention in the past and what will you do differently now?

4. How can you engage their hearts? What do you do to increase connection among students or between you and the students? What things create connection? Evaluate an ice-breaker if you use one to see if it helps students connect (use) or is it just play (don’t use).

Are you seeing behavior differences in your students now?  We know they were experiencing stress and probably trauma during the height of the pandemic, but now that they are back in face-to-face classes, instructors around the world are telling me that the students are not the same.  They are less engaged, focused, and prone to behavioral issues.

How can we recapture them?  My new presentation answers this question and approaches it from every angle:  emotional brain, cognitive brain, mind, body, and heart – truly addressing the entire student.  I can’t condense a 90-minute presentation into a brief blog, but I can give you some pointers here, choosing the ones requiring the least explanation.

Our goal is to increase engagement, enjoyment, attention, and connection.  Each of these increases the other in a synergistic way.  It is hard to talk about them individually without mentioning one or more of the others, but let’s try.

Capturing the emotional brain:  Enjoyment reduces anxiety, with anxiety going down as enjoyment goes up.  This doesn’t mean goofing off.  Positive Education means increasing positive emotion, including happiness information and practices,  along with traditional skills.  One quality that has been shown to increase positive emotion is perceived control.  Note the word “perceived.”  This means that the student feels that they have some control.  We know that a feeling of lack of control increases stress.  Students need to recognize that they have some control consciously.  One way is to teach several strategies for approaching your material and then discuss with them which strategies they intend to use to take control of the material.

Another way is to reframe anxiety: “Anxiety means that you care how you do and have goals. If you are stressing about the test, it means you care.  Now take that energy and figure out how you will take control of the situation.  What is your study plan? What are your strategies? “

Capturing the cognitive brain:  Attention can be top-down or bottom-up in the brain.  Top-down means the brain’s frontal lobes are working well and are focusing attention. However, we have seen that if under stress, the frontal lobes are not working well, and it is hard for the student to pay attention.  Bottom-up means that something captures their attention, such as a loud noise.  The reaction is not conscious.

If the student is experiencing enjoyment, their attention has been captured without being forced.  If we want to work with top-down attention, that means that we are going to help them consciously engage their attention by directing their attention.  Paying attention doesn’t mean taking in more; it means taking in less.  It is not a floodlight but a spotlight that we want to shine on the material.  Be sure to let them set an intention before reading or studying, or listening to you, and let them know where/when/how to focus their attention.

Capturing the mind/body: We capture them through engagement. Students who are engaged are feeling enjoyment, and students who are enjoying class are engaged.  One fast way to create engagement is by creating a task with the appropriate level of challenge.  If the challenge is too easy, it creates boredom, and if it is too hard, it creates anxiety.  As the student’s skill increases, so should the challenge.  However, this does not mean making it more difficult; it means making it more complex.  This is a challenge for you!

Capturing the heart:  Students who feel a sense of connection to the school, other students, or the instructor have higher achievement. Again, this is synergistic.  If you are creating positive emotions in the classroom, you are engaging their hearts.  Emotions are contagious.  One interesting study showed a reciprocal emotion transmission between teachers and students.  The more teacher enjoyment at the beginning of the semester, the higher the student enjoyment at midterm.  The higher the student's enjoyment at the beginning, the higher the teacher's enjoyment.  That brings us back to creating a classroom with an enjoyable environment. 

Do you see how they all work together – enjoyment, engagement, attention, and connection? I hope you picked up a couple of ideas. Below you will find some questions that you can use as discussion points with colleagues.  If you are interested in more science and strategies on this topic, please contact me about securing this presentation for your faculty. It is designed to uplift them and recapture them (they are exhausted from the pandemic, right?) as well as help them recapture the students.

Here is to a brighter future! 

These are not the same students as before the pandemic.  Are you seeing disruptive behavior, lack of focus/poor attention, or lack of effort and engagement?  This often represents the next phase of this prolonged stress and trauma from the pandemic, anxiety from school violence, trauma from natural disasters due to fire and floods, and many other stressors students have experienced.

We must recapture them.  We can do that by capturing their emotional brain, cognitive brain, mind, and hearts to create connection, increase attention, and foster engagement.  This is a new talk that has been very well-received as we try to move away from a focus on anxiety and stress alone and move toward a more positive future.

In this brief article I will share with you one goal that reduces stress and improves achievement - increasing enjoyment.  A way to increase enjoyment that also raises achievement is by increasing engagement.  I will share with you three key concepts that reduce stress and increase engagement.  I call them the Three C’s.  

·       Control:  Give students some feeling of control.  No, they aren’t in charge.  What we are going for that has been shown in research studies to increase motivation and achievement is perceived control.  If the student believes that they have some control over the learning process, they do better and they learn to take control over their own learning.  When students believe that they can learn the material, they do better.  Present students with learning strategies and ask them to experiment and choose the strategies that work best for them so that they can take control of their learning.  Talk about this issue with them. Ask “how did you take control over learning this material?”  When you put them in groups, let them take control over assigning roles and how to approach the task.

·       Choice: One way to increase a sense of control is by offering learners choices.  What if you took the test that you just wrote and added some more questions and grouped them and offered them a choice of answering 4 of these 5, for example.  Of course, there will be some questions without any choice.  Can you offer them homework options?  (See my other blog on homework menus.)

·       Challenge:  When a task offers the appropriate level of challenge, it creates engagement. In fact, appropriate level of challenge is a key factor in the experience of flow¸ considered one of the most pleasurable and engaging states of mind. That is the state in which you lose all track of time.  However, it is a challenge to create the right level of challenge!  We must walk the line between boredom and anxiety. If the task is too hard for the individual, it creates anxiety; too easy, it creates boredom.  Think about when you choose a jigsaw puzzle.  Ten pieces, boring.  1000 pieces, frustrating. As skill goes up, the challenge increases.

For more about this talk go to http://www.brainresearch.us/blog.html?entry=engaging-the-cognitive-brain-the1.  To inquire about a presentation on this or other topics, go to http://www.brainresearch.us/invite.html

While the initial phase of the pandemic that gave everyone such anxiety and even trauma, has passed, conditions as serious are setting in. Faculty are struggling.