Brain Based Teaching & Learning: Reflection Part 1

“What did they teach you last year?” No matter what course I am teaching, I have often pondered this question, wondering how my students seemingly missed such important concepts that certainly must have been covered in their previous years of education. Similarly, I often hear my colleagues complain that their students “don’t know much” when these students arrive in their classrooms. Since I teach freshman every year, I can’t help but wonder if I was the teacher responsible for their lack of knowledge. I am left puzzling over numerous questions: What do my students take with them when they leave my classroom? Why do students so often forget simple instructions in writing? Why can’t they remember to write in third person? Why can’t they remember to write a topic sentence at the beginning of each body paragraph? In her article, “Brain Compatible Teaching,” Pat Wolfe (2003) posses a similar question: “How can students sit through an excellent lesson on Monday, and on Tuesday act as if they never heard the instruction before” (p. 10)? Though it goes against my philosophy of teaching and learning, I sometimes wonder if I need to lower my expectations. Then I might not be so bothered by these recurring situations and questions: Why do my college prep students seem more motivated than my honors students? Why are my students so unengaged in the readings? Why are they unwilling to analyze character development in Great Expectations? Why do they choose to copy a friend’s study guide rather than develop their own answers? Why are they so eager to “play the game”? Like David Sousa (2006), I wonder, “If the brain is capable of higher order thinking, why do we see so little of it in the normal course of student discussion and performance” (p. 247)? Though frustrated by these common scenarios, I do not want to simply give up and lower my expectations. Rather, I want to remember that my number one goal in the classroom is to get students to think – to think critically, analytically, logically, and out of the box – to think about life, about literature, about their beliefs, passions, and world views – to think about what they think, how they think, and why they think what they think. After processing the philosophies and strategies of Brain-Based Teaching & Learning, I am inspired to continue pursuing this goal of student thinking with a more focused vision and more specific methods. To move my students into this line of thinking, I must help them to attach meaning and emotion to their thinking, and I must help to them to retain their knowledge and thinking patterns in their long term memory. Therefore, this reflection draws out the main philosophies and strategies that I hope to employ in my classroom to create brain state changes in order to make learning meaningful and to enhance my students’ retention and long term memory.