Sunday, May 2, 2010

SPARK: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and The Brain


This book launches with an amazing case study (Naperville Central High School near Chicago) where key players have significantly improved learning through systematic and strategic exercise that was appropriate for the learner. My first question is why are PE, recess and other physical exercise being reduced or dropped in so many schools? Why aren’t more schools looking at innovative ways to implement this approach or one based on the same principles?

Surprisingly, this book isn’t simply about learning in schools, but learning in general and the key exercise can play. The author, John Ratey, MD, who also wrote Driven to Distraction, explores how exercise can help everyone with learning (plus optimal emotional and physical health) by diminishing stress, anxiety, depression, attention deficit, addiction, hormonal changes, and impacts of aging. Of course, this isn’t the first book on the importance of exercise in all these areas, but the power of this book is the constant reference to brain research. Prior to the past five to ten years, there were strong correlations between exercise and diminished effects of stress, anxiety, etc. But we now have solid evidence that proves exactly how much exercise, to what level of intensity, and in which situations. Ratey is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, but also runs his own private practice. Therefore, not only does Ratey reference recent, remarkable research, but he embeds it in a human context.

Given the story of how a “fitness program helped one U.S. school district out of 19,000 rank first in the TIMMS science test, and given brain research evidence that s incontrovertible: “aerobic exercise physically transforms our brains for peak performance,” will we take the steps to give students this added benefit? Also. will we make it feasible and attractive for teachers to exercise as well?

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Learning from the Extremes

This White Paper, published by Cisco, is a report that outlines four basic strategies governments (and motivated individuals and groups) in the developing and developed world can pursue to meet learning challenges: improve, reinvent, supplement, and transform schools and learning.

Here is the visual that so perfectly captures their framework:



However, Cisco doesn’t just stop there, they analyze specific examples in both the developed and developing world. Not only is this paper a fascinating read, but more importantly, it gives hope of possibilities for truly transformative innovations in the area of learning.

I believe International Schools do fairly well in “improving schools (through better facilities, teachers, and leadership”) and “supplementing schools by working with families and communities.” (Of course given the clientele and resources, this is not a great challenge.) However, these same “highly successful schools” seem completely paralyzed in moving forward with reinventing their schools to better meet the learning needs and desires of today and tomorrow. At least in that arena, there are rumblings if not action. In the final quadrant, “transforming learning by making it available in radically new ways” is not on the radar screen. Imagine if we were able to re-conceptualize the concept of the “virtual school” for our kids so that it wasn’t viewed as just an extra load of homework, but explore “radical new ways” for students to learn.

As the conclusion of the paper states, “The 20th century was the century of the teacher and the school, the class and the exam. The 21st needs to become the century of the educational entrepreneur and of the pupil as protagonist, self-motivated and self-organized learning, at scale, wherever and whenever it is needed.”

When and where will international schools work towards disruptive innovation in learning to meet the needs of our students? Will you and I become the needed social entrepreneurs in this area or are we too main-stream and embedded?


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DRIVE: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us


For those who loved A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, you will definitely want to get your hands on DRIVE. Or if you enjoyed Alfie Kohn’s Punished By Rewards back in the 1990’s, you’ll love this! I’m only a couple of chapters into it and already highly recommend it. Here are Pink’s Twitter and cocktail summaries:

"TWITTER: Carrots & sticks are so last century. Drive says for 21st century work, we need to upgrade to autonomy, mastery & purpose.

COCKTAIL PARTY: When it comes to motivation, there’s a gap between what science knows and what business does. Our current business operating system—which is built around external, carrot-and-stick motivators—doesn’t work and often does harm. We need an upgrade. And the science shows the way. This new approach has three essential elements: (1) Autonomy—the desire to direct our own lives; (2) Mastery—the urge to get better and better at something that matters; and (3) Purpose—the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves."

Like, Kohn, Pink debunks the motivation myths grounded in behaviorialism that we still find prevalent not only in business, but throughout the world of education. There are places that have shifted to more of a “pull” approach” rather than a push, but these are few and far between. So, the question is . . . how long until this becomes the way we facilitate learning? What’s holding us back? How can we capitalize on the powerful pockets already there?

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What's the Big Idea: Teaching and Learning for Transfer

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“We teach it because they said we had to” is one of my professional pet peeves. It is my stance that, as professionals, unless we have clarity about the WHY of our learning goals, we should not be spending any time on them.

Many people know about Understanding by Design and/or Teaching for Understanding of Project Zero. Neither of these is a “program” or “template” but rather a paradigm for thinking and planning for learning that is focused on key principles of learning. Two key learning principles speak directly to this issue of being clear about the WHY of your learning goals:
1. Learning is purposeful and contextual. Therefore, students should be helped to see the purpose in what they are asked to learn. Learning should be framed by relevant questions, meaningful challenges, and authentic applications.
2. Experts organize or chunk their knowledge around transferable core concepts (“big ideas”) that guide their thinking about the domain and help them integrate new knowledge. Therefore, content instruction should be framed in terms of core ideas and transferrable processes, not as discrete facts and skills.
Copyright 2010 Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins

Ultimately if we’re not clear about the purpose or relevancy of our learning goals, we obviously can’t contextualize the learning for students. Also, if we are the facilitators responsible to guide students’ building of understanding, isn’t it therefore our responsibility to frame this learning around the key understandings (with related skills and knowledge) and clearly communicate the relevance of this learning?

Or better yet, might we be framing the big ideas, skills, and knowledge based on students’ questions and desires to explore?