Can looking Back keep us moving Forward?

When I first started teaching, I taught the way I had been taught. I was an English teacher, so I had my students read the stories, answer the questions at the end of the story, I’d grade the questions, or If I didn’t feel like grading, we’d do the good old “exchange papers and put graded by:___ at the bottom” routine. Every now and then we would take a quiz, and tests were on scantrons and were multiple choice. Yes, we had the obligatory essays that were required, but to be honest, it was a pretty easy gig.

And then something clicked.

I don’t know what it was exactly.

It could have been the consistent blank stares back at me or the “Bueller, Bueller, Bueller” general apathy that seemed to pervade the classroom, but something made me stop and evaluate what I was doing and more importantly, WHY I was doing it.

Sure – I needed and job and had to pay bills, but that wasn’t it. I had lots of jobs before and to be honest, most of them paid better, so that wasn’t it.

Looking back, I’m pretty sure I became as disillusioned as the students as to WHY we were all there and what we were doing. Was it because it was compulsory and we were required to go through this as some sort of hoop required by life to jump through before we could move on to the next stage of life, or was it something bigger than that?

Fast-forward a decade or so.

I dug deep into HOW to teach, the science behind how teenagers’ brains work, and the craft behind working with students, the planning of curriculum, and the delivery of all of it – otherwise known as instruction.

Here are the realizations I have settled on. Mind you, this is not an exhaustive list, but a summary of key ideas I feel are missing in most of our kids’ lives, especially in their public education.

One, we have a responsibility to understand how to organize a coherent curriculum that is not designed to cover content, but to grow the ability to think. In other words, the goal of curriculum is to change behavior, influence reflection about our patterns of behavior, and encourage new development within – the point is to grow the person.

Two, we have the responsibility to understand HOW students learn. For me specifically, it is the adolescent brain – the teenager. I have spent my career teaching high school aged kids. To truly understand the teenager, you have to understand the brain development taking place. For instance, the pre-frontal cortex of the brain in a teenager is beginning to develop. It is the center for logical thought process – planning, goal setting, decision making, and problem solving. The amygdala is the center for emotional response. As a teenager, the amygdala is the center for activity, while the pre-frontal cortex is essentially just coming online. 

If we don’t approach the student with emotion, and make emotional connections to the learning, they immediately revert to the blank stares and to something that is more emotionally stimulating. In addition, the curriculum must be developed with backwards design in use to consistently ensure the purpose of the instruction is to not merely cover loosely connected thematic units, but to create true connections within a developing brain that is fighting itself between its emotional tendencies and its growing need to put things in order.

The saving grace here is that with kids, it isn’t too late. In fact – they are primed for learning. There is a great thing in brain science called neuroplasticity. Basically – the brain is always changing and re-wiring itself. The older we get, the harder it is to rewire the brain – insert “old dog, new tricks” here.

The reality is that we can always learn, but it is the easiest when we are younger. The teenage brain is perfect for re-wiring the ways it has been taught previously.

For me – School is all about exposure to new ways of thinking, and then the physical work it takes to re-wire our brain to LEARN HOW TO LEARN. Students have spent K-10 typically learning how to “do school” and most of their experiences have been remarkably similar to the one I was guilty of producing in my early years of teaching. Even today, as students come to my school from districts across seven counties, their experiences are similar. Sure, we have good teachers, we have the individuals that work outside of the proverbial box to reach students and develop their craft, but more often than not, the system itself is designed to elicit nominal change, at best. 

How much more could we help students if the system itself was designed with students’ brain development in mind, and then executed through rigorous curricular alignment that focused not on content coverage, but as Ralph Tyler, director of research for the 8-year study said, on growing “more mature, more wise, more self-disciplined, more effective, and more productive” people?

Two articles for you to read –

One by Grant Wiggins on Curriculum: Everything you know about curriculum may be wrong. Really.

One by Donna Wilson and Marcus Conyers: The Teenage Brain Is Wired to Learn—So Make Sure Your Students Know It