Editorial

This is the  handout Bonnie prepared for the 23rd Annual APPi Conference; “The English Classroom Revisited” Lisboa, Portugal, May 2009

 

Learning to Learn

Bonnie Tsai, Pilgrims trainer greatly missed

Bonnie Tsai was everything we expect and respect in a Creative Pilgrims Teacher and Trainer. She inspired thousands of teachers across the world. The most rewarding way for us to keep her memory alive is to encourage other teachers to be brave and not afraid to express their creativity, to develop interests in innovative approaches to teaching, and to find ways to implement them.

 

We now know   at   the potential for the human t:irc1ir1 to   learn is unlimited.   To tap into this potential. the reseryE:!s of the mind must be engaged and brought into the conscious learning process.  These reserves are filled with the continual and consistent perceiving and processing that takes place in the multi-sensory levels of learning­ especially the visual, the auditory and the kinesthetic.

There is therefore a real need to supply learners with a multi-sensory environment where the human mind and the soul can be nurtured. This is certainly true in our schools where the split between what we have to do and what we'd like to do seems to be the root of much frustration. The soul attempts to heal and preserve its life amid the pressures of deadlines, schedules, and exam stress.

To counterbalance this we need to bring creativity, dedication, and adaptability into education. Creativity and adaptability can only come through the door with passion. Passion comes only with soul. The prize is a nourishing approach to learning in the classroom.

We know now that people learn in proportion to how fully they are able to use all their senses. We  learn through our senses-by seeing things, hearing things, feeling and  touching  things,  and even by smelling  and tasting things. Traditional education tends to use the visual and auditory parts of learning to the detriment of the other senses. These other senses, especially feelings and body movement, are as important to learning as are our eyes and ears.

Creative thinking is an important element in today's world. No one has the complete set of skills needed to work in the field of information technology. This has completely changed the balance of thinking skills and physical skills. The creative person of today is curious, experimental , and playful. People have to be able to respond flexibility and manipulate symbolic information using intellectual skills. This education needs to be based more and more on creative thinking. This involves setting up problem solving and problem finding tasks in the classroom that require students to look at a situation from different points of view.

What is also going to be more important in the future is creating a positive learning environment.  When there is a positive learning atmosphere, trust and joy in the classroom, students function better. They become hardworking, creative and willing to involve themselves wholly in the learning process. In the classroom where fear and punishment are used as tools of control, there is a shutdown on initiative and creativity. Students become immobilized and the result is poor grades.

Positive relationships among students are also important.  Positive learning should be about teamwork. Whenever students come together to collaborate, there is a real sense in which they develop group intelligence, the sum total of the talents and skills of all those involved. The key to successful group intelligence is social harmony. It is this ability to harmonize that will make one class do well-talents being equal-while another class does poorly.

lnfonnal networks are especially critical for handling unanticipated problems. The "formal organization" handles anticipated  problems, but when an unanticipated  problem crops up, it is the "informal organization" which comes to life. This informal organization is a complex web of social ties that form every time people communicate.

They solidify over time into stable networks, which are highly adaptable. An analysis of informal networks shows that they work well when there is a feeling of trust among group members. It is for this reason that we as teacher want to shrive to implement this model in our classroom through pair work and group work based on collaboration instead of competition.

Today, in an age when we are learning so much about the brain , we are beginning to find information about the human brain and how it functions.   The first thing to notice is the incredible plasticity of the human brain.  It is the largest muscle in the body  and continues  to develop until the last moment of life-provided  that  you constantly challenge it. We are also more and more aware of the uniqueness of each human brain. It is more unique than finger prints. Brains develop on a different time table from our chronological age and there may be as much as 18 to 24 month difference in brain development. They love to learn especially when it is put in a position where it has to learn, because it loves a challenge, but dislikes limitations. Imposed learning works badly. It  is  not well adapted for formal instruction. What it doesn't like is stress.   Stress  shuts the brain down and memory is reduced. To achieve high optimal brain learning, add curiosity and high challenge. The perfect memory level is a balance between personal skills and the degree of task difficulty. It is best at non-conscious learning. It thrives on survival learning.

In this way memory is constantly being created.  The more often you use it, the more it makes tracks.  It makes a memory of the memory. Impressions are recorded involving sights, emotions, feelings, sounds, smells and so on. The more stimulus that is contained in the memory, the more likely it is to stick. It is like the volunteer fire department. It doesn't exist, but it is always there when you need it. As humans our brains have three needs to thrive. They are:

• The need for communication from the time of birth. This the first trimester the fetus is aware of sound. The fetus response to sound with minuscule muscle movements. It responds to the phoneme sounds in the mother's speech with a particular muscle movement. The child has made a connection between the mother's phoneme system and its own muscular system. Language is thus learned from the body... it's in the muscular system.  Language is learned from the body. Children need to learn to coordinate all the muscles in their body through play.

Visual aspects commence once the brain has a human pattern established. At birth the child sees only light and darkness. Sight begins to be established once it sees a human face. This locks in on the mother's face (hopefully) and activates the muscle patterns in the mother's face. It starts the mechanism to learn how to see.

• Nurturing and feeding: The baby is placed next to the mother's heart just after birth. This helps develop the baby's heart system. It takes nine months to develop the heart system completely after birth.  One of the advantages of breast feeding is that it keeps the baby in constant contact the mother's heart beat.
• Play: By nine months the baby's visual development is complete. The baby is ready to touch and taste the world. At this stage the baby needs a caretaker presence to help the child explore the world. It this stage the child's greatest fear is abandonment. To be separated even for a short period of time is like death.
• However when the parent intervenes in an exploration it splits the child down the middle of two great drives; to be protected or to explore the world through touch and taste. At this stage inhibitions are set up that blocks the drive to explore. The amaglia forms around the same time and is the gateway to the emotional brain. By integrating emotions and feelings into learning, we save time and we are able to make decisions much more quickly. If you want your students to love learning you have to tap into the emotional area of the brain. Heart messages go through the amaglia. Prohibitions are set up by the amaglia. Any action which resounds with our inhibitions brings up the emotion of fear. So the baby modifies its behavior.

Many of the prohibitions are set up because parents want their children to conform to the society and culture they live in. The question that arises is what do we do about fear that keeps us from doing things. The child lives in the shadow of the parent's fear. If the parent doesn't expect the child to be hurt, he will live in this state. If we expect bad things to happen, they generally do.

When learning in this stage, the child touches an unknown object and the parent gives a name to this object. So the name of this object is associated with the sight, the sound, the taste and the smell. This word becomes a part of the structure of the language. The name activates the image in the brain. This gives us the power to imagine. It becomes the foundation of future learning. Imagination is what gives children the power to imagine other scenarios. For example violence doesn't have to be the only scenarios. There are alternative ones. At this stage story telling is vital.  It allows the young child to begin to imagine. This imagination- if positive-can have a positive effect on reality.  They begin to act out the stories-talk out their play. From there they make up new stories. Often these are metaphoric stories where one part carries over meaning into another part. Often the characters are symbolic.

Objects are anthromorphized; animals speak. The animal image goes to the Reptilian brain but when the animal speaks it goes to the limbic system. When the child imposes an inner image on the external world, s/he is using their highest form of intelligence.

There is also the evolutionary cycle of the brain.

• Old reptilian brain: Sensory, motor brain which makes sense of the world. It operates wholly on instinct and has no intellect. It drives to protect or to survive.
• Limbic, emotional brain: Can relate to the world. It can evaluate and is the key to relationship.
• Neo-cortex: the thinking brain

Because nature always goes beyond its limitations and is moving to transcend itself, it has added a fourth brain. This is the pre-frontal lobe. It develops in the first nine months after birth and is associated with play.

After the first 18 months of life the affective system is put into play and is fixed for the rest of our life. Because it is a big structure in the brain, it is too large to develop before birth.

It is the governor of the brain because it moderates and regulates behavior and it can organize and separate brain functions into one intent. It is the source of everything that makes us human-provided that it isn't damaged. It is the major source of violence. It is the source of why children kill each other and commit suicide.

Birth    Reptilian Brain          

Age 1 Limbic System—Right hemisphere   

Age 4 Left Hemisphere

Age 7 Cerebellum      

Age 11 Pre-frontal lobe

Age 19 Dream world 

Age 21 Move into their bodies and want to use them

Psychologist Piaget: Young children live in a dream world where they don't separate imagination from the real world. They act out their dreams as reality. By the age of 7 to 11 body movement becomes essential. If they stop moving, they stop learning.

The heart is not just a heart. Its use as a pump forms late. The heart can teach us to think in a new way. The brain is the servant of the heart. The head and heart is feeling and thinking in concordance. When there is conflict between the thinking and the feeling, it is like a house divided against itself. It is blocked and can do nothing. When there is concordance there is a lack of conflict and you can do anything. 60% of the heart cells are the same kind of cells that make up the brain. The brain and the heart are in constant communication and it secrets hormones that regulate behavior. The heart is aware of events that are going to happen before they happen.  It signals the brain and prepares it. While we have known about this intuitive aspect of the heart for many years, we have cut ourselves off from accepting or believing what it is telling us. What happens is that the heart  informs the pre-frontal lobe that something unpleasant is going to happen. The heart knows three-quarters of a minute before the event happens. Stress and fear take over and the Reptilian survival system takes over.

 

Three Houses

The first house has a beautiful garden with bright colored flowers all around it. The exterior is painted in soft creamy colors. Once inside you will appreciate the clean, modern lines of the design. The windows allow just the right amount of light into the room and a view of the mountains and ocean in the distance. It is clearly an exceptionally picturesque house.

This house will immediately speak to you of its unique features. The garden will call to you to come and spend some time listening to the birds singing and the distant sound of the ocean.

As you enter the front door of the house, you will tune in to harmony of your surroundings. The tone of the colors and decoration will certainly speak to you and you will hear yourself saying how much you would like to live in this house.

This house will immediately make you feel at home. You will feel the comfort and luxury that exudes from every corner of this house. You will appreciate the ease with which you will be able to care for this house. You will fall in love with its spacious interior. You will enjoy the effect this house will have on your well-being.

 

Telephone Strategy Game

This is a really fun activity that shows how the brain receives and retrieves information.  It is based on N.L.P. research and illustrates how we all have our own unique learning style.

Procedure:

1. This game involves groups of 4 people who will be A, B, C, and D.

Person A demonstrates a particular position to B.

Person B draws a picture of B's position. C and D do not watch. Person B shows her drawing to Person C.

Person C verbally describes it to person D without correcting D. Person D enacts Person C description with her body. Person D does not see the first drawing.

Person A shows her initial posture and compares it with the posture of Person D.

This is the kind of thing that happens inside a student's brain. You input some information like Person A's position. It goes through visual and auditory transformations and comes out in a form that is quite different from the original input.

It is also important that we did not allow any corrective feedback between the various stages. If we had, the finished product may have been more like the original. With feedback, you set up a self-correcting mechanism. Without feedback there is no way to get it right.

To work well a learning strategy needs feedback loops in various places. If for example we had let Person A look at Person B's drawing and give her some feedback on differences between her position and the drawing, B would have been more exact in her verbal description to C.

Often the most important factor involves adding feedback loops without changing or altering anything else. What if for example, we take away the feedback loops and tell people there is a "right way" to play the game. Then have a person representing the "internal dialogue" stand off to the side and yell at everyone all the time about how stupid they are.

In fact this exercise is a basic metaphor for a strategy and can help you build intuitions about what makes a good strategy.   If the people involved in the game represented

 

Dynamics of a Group: Magnets, Bridges and Islands

Write up the three words on the board: magnets, bridges and islands

Ask these three questions:

• What are their characteristics?
• Do you have any students who are magnets, bridges, and islands?
• How do they work together in a class?

 

Why bridges?

• Bridges are beautiful metaphors about connecting things and people
• Have a discussion with your group about bridges. This could include different kinds of bridges and
  famous bridges.
• Give each person sheet of paper and ask them to draw their own personal bridge that people can use if  they want to come to see them.
• Ask them to invent a password and instructions that are needed to cross their bridge.
• Invite everyone to stand up and mingle and explain their bridge, why they choose their password and the instructions for crossing the bridge.

 

Multiple Intelligence: Entry Points to Learning

Theory of Multiple Intelligences (Dr. Howard Gardiner)

Visit the Land of Smart

• Clouds
• Mountains Cave
• Valley Field
• Sun
• River of Babel
• Forest

 

The Book Worm Story

From a logical/mathematical beginning the teacher can continue working on the same theme through the other intelligences so that they are all stimulated. You will see that the learner who has difficulty getting it one way will quickly catch on through one or more of the other intelligences.

 

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