Understanding real learning

Well I have yet to spread my intellectual wings on this blog, so here I go! I won't get too technical, but I feel compelled to share a bit about some new insights.

As the principal of a dual-language immersion, public PK-8 school, I face the daunting challenges of educating our youth in today's world on a daily basis. Despite all the barriers they, the children, and we, the educators, have to encounter (funding, appropriate materials and supplies, parental support, etc.), I still manage to find some glimmer of hope for our future. I say glimmer because the state of public education in our country is beyond dismal...it is so utterly disintegrated, that I believe we will not see significant change for at least another generation. However, a conference I attended last week offered me a bit of hope...a small sign that the field of education is not dead, but just drowning, muffled, merely hanging on for dear life before going totally under!

A group call Scientific Learning (look them up on the web) came to a meeting for principals to market their support programs for struggling learners. Their product is based on extensive brain research and actually embraces very progressive thoughts about how individuals learn. Many people in the scientific community have understood for years that learning is not static, nor is the brain a fixed entity. Yet these concepts have never truly been adopted in the educational community. Children are still labeled, told they simply do not have the intellect, and left to their own devices to basically fail in a system that provides no real support or outlet for them. Now, I'm not just speaking of special needs students or even bilingual learners, but of all students in every mainstream classroom. How many children who struggle with spelling , memorization or mathematics processing are simply given a failing grade because the methods employed to teach them simply do not meet the mark? Even strategies that target the multiple intelligences are often leaving many students behind as the real issues concerning their "learning challenges" do not get addressed. This group's presentation shows that after accepting the brain to be "elastic,"educators at the university level decided to study how certain skills are acquired by the brain...which parts or areas of the brain are functioning when spelling, computing math problems, understanding complex theories, etc? After determining this with functional MRIs, these scientists and educators then collaborated to determine when the stimulation of these cerebral areas take place in development...how significantly poor prenatal care, poor nutrition, TV , etc. play a part in the brain's development. For example, if letter recognition begins at the young age of two months, yet a child is never read to at that age or never exposed to verbal communication, that child, more likely than not, will fall behind in reading and spelling skills. Because of this, that child will be challenged at every turn in the educational setting and more than likely begin to fail...possibly be labeled "learning disabled" and simply thought of as "not as smart" as his/her peers. Well, the product this company offers asseses the processing skills of all students to help identify which areas of their brains need more stimulation...more exercise. We all know that, just like when we work out, more exercise leads to stronger muscles, and that even after a hiatus from our work-out routines, our muscles maintain memory and can quickly rebound once exercised again. Well, the brain is no different---we need to stimulate, exercise, and train those parts of the brain that are not working up to standard for these children. Perhaps they lacked the stimulation at some pivotal points of development; perhaps their genetic make up prevented a few key connections in brain development to take place, and we must learn how to optimize what connections they do have; perhaps we need to retrain educators in the idea that all learners are in fact different and need to be addressed according to their needs.

Public education has rebuked this notion because the mere idea of how to fund individualized instruction is overwhelming. They cannot possibly entertain the idea that everyone can learn--at their own pace, in their own way! Pubic education simply cannot handle this, and I not sure if it is even reasonable for it to do so. Yet we must change how we think about education. The trends and research show that increased technology has dumbed down our intellect. We have not trained or worked-out the brain appropriately, and now our children and our world are paying the price. Like I said before, this is not new to anyone who has taken the time to read up and follow scientific brain research, but education is FINALLY recognizing this information. I have invited this group to my school to train my teachers, but most of my principal colleagues brushed it off as they feel it is just another product line trying to promote their sales. I actually cannot buy the program for my school (price tag is upwards of $20, 000 for the entire school) but the company is willing to offer the training because they are dedicated to this shift in education. I applaud their efforts, and this product does offer me hope that real, meaningful learning can start to take place for children otherwise deemed as "lacking."

Well, I'll stop there because the constraints of time and energy are limiting me from diving any deeper into this issue right now, but believe me....this is a VERY deep one...perhaps bottomless! HOPE YOU LOOK INTO THIS COMPANY; HOPE YOU READ UP ON BRAIN RESEARCH, AND HOPE YOU THINK TWICE ABOUT DEVELOPMENT THE NEXT TIME YOU TURN ON THAT TV FOR YOUR LITTLE ONE!