A few weeks ago we hosted a webinar that focused on how the latest research can improve your homeschool. You can watch the entire webinar here.
Category: The Science of Learning
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Positive Emotions Enhance Memory (Part Seven of “How They Learn”)
A few weeks ago we hosted a webinar that focused on how the latest research can improve your homeschool. You can watch the entire webinar here.
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The Science of Learning: How Brain Research Can Power Your Home School
Making time to think about the big picture in homeschooling is hard. Math lessons must be completed by lunch. A co-op class must be planned for tomorrow. But if we don’t take time to think about how we ask our kids to learn new information and why we use the teaching methods we do, we miss much of the unique opportunity homeschooling affords. We can cue our methods to each child’s cognitive development, if we just know what to look for.
And that is why I want to bring you a blog series on the latest breakthroughs in neurological brain research. Let me explain.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, neuroscience has become an exploding field. We now know much more clearly how our brain functions and processes new information. We have research-backed theories that show us concrete steps we can take to make learning easier and, more importantly, long lasting for kids. Scientists have observed countless students in the process of studying and attempting to recall information. Many of the findings are surprising and challenge what has been commonly accepted as good study habits.
With my mom’s help (Debra Bell earned her PhD in educational psychology after she finished homeschooling us) I’ve combed through the research and boiled everything down to bite-size chunks on topics most relevant to homeschool parents. If you’re fascinated by this sort of thing (as I am) I provide links to more information and even the original studies. Additionally, I close each post with concrete ways this research can make your homeschool more effective.
There’s a lot to look forward to. The next post looks at focus and the two modes our brain uses to process information. Like Debra Bell’s Facebook page or sign up for our updates below to join me, as we explore the brain research that can power your home school.
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GRIT: What Is It? Why Does It Matter?
GRIT is persevere in the face of failure; getting back up when we fall; starting over when we fail. It is a way of redefining success not simply by your talent or your intelligence, but by changing the way you think about failure and perseverance. Although not a skill that all of us are born with, grit can be learned.
“A combination of passion and perseverance,” this is how Angela Duckworth, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania defines the concept of grit. Her book is the defining text on this topic.
Bonnie Gonzalez offers some additional insight on this topic in the brief video below. She is offering a 7-week course focused on developing GRIT in students beginning in July.
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Help Your Child Develop Grit
If Grit was simply will power or self-control eventually most of us would be exhausted and there would be few of us who would be able to keep up with the work. Although these characteristics are important, for the persistence needed to be gritty we need to develop a different strategy. The strategy of consistently changing our habits.
Will power and self-control are limited resources, and setting ourselves up for success involves doing something that is automatic and doesn’t draw on these limited resources. If every morning I were to exercise only based on my will power, most mornings I would fall back into bed as a dismal failure.
Habits are aspects that we can change with a minimal amount of effort since they require only an understanding of their components. Habits exist because, according to Charles Duhigg the author of The Power of Habit, there is a cue, a routine and a reward.
For example, when you procrastinate it starts with:
- A cue – I have so much work to do.
- The routine is then that you find something else to do to delay the work
- The reward is that you feel better in the moment because you found something else to do that made you uncomfortable.
This behavior creates a “Habit loop”. You feel better in the moment, but you still have the work to do. When you change a habit the cue and the reward stay the same – although it is important that you find out what really is rewarding you with a particular habit.
What needs to change is the routine.
The cue helps you see when you are about to fall into an old habit, and then what you need to do is to find a new routine.
Looking at the same example:
- The cue is the stressful feeling you have when you have a lot of work
- The new routine could be getting started the minute you experience the cue.
- The reward is that you feel better only this time is will be for a longer period of time.
- Changing habits is difficult. Our brains are lazy and unless we deliberately create a new routine we will more than likely follow the old habit. The good news is if you work hard at creating new routines, these become as automatic as the old bad habits once were.
Here are some specific tips to building new habits:
- Make it easy to engage in a new habit and hard to engage in an old habit. In his book Before Happiness: Five Actionable Strategies to Create a Positive Path to Success, Shawn Achor writes about wanting to develop the habit of running more and watching less television. In order to change his habit he took the batteries out of his remote control and slept in his running clothes. What could you do to help achieve a habit you wanted to create? Move your phone out of the way to keep you from getting distracted, and leave your notes to study on the table beside your bed.
- Be specific and don’t try to change more than one habit at a time. When you have identified a behavior you want to change, break it down into small, manageable steps that you can handle.
- Write it down and monitor yourself. Science has shown that writing something down that we want to change is more effective than just saying it. Instead of saying I have to get my homework done, make a schedule and write it down.
- Stand Firm, No Wavering. Try to create rules for yourself and follow through as though you had no other choice. Commit ahead of time, and state your rules clearly. An example might be, I won’t talk on the phone until I am finished with my work.
- Don’t overreact when you mess up. We all fail, but don’t make the failure larger than it should be. Move on and start again. Author Judith Beck uses a great analogy to describe this: “If you fell down one step, would you fall down the rest?” Of course not! Acknowledge the lapse and get back on track.
- Anticipate challenges and plan for obstacles. Using the if/then plan we talked about in the first week of class, will help you make the decision in the moment, and not be so easily tempted.
- Reward yourself often!!!
Bonnie Gonzalez has 36 years of experience as a counselor. She has taught high school and college classes and is now offering Intro to Psychology and the Secrets of Success course series through Aim Academy.
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The Power of Parental Influence in Uncertain Times
The Power of Parental Influence in Uncertain Times
This is the second in several installments about navigating through the teenage years. In this post I would like to spend some time describing the culture our teenagers find themselves facing; and discuss how parents can both grieve the loss of our compliant naïve children and begin to rewire the brains of our confused adolescents.
It’s Really Scary Out There
In case you haven’t noticed, it’s a pretty scary world out there. And it’s not just scary for you and me as adults, but it’s especially harrowing for our teenagers. We have created a world dripping with violence, drugs, and sex, and our children are right in the middle of it. For a moment, let’s delve into this culture of madness that our teens claim “we just don’t understand.”
The temptations begin with the culture of drugs and substance abuse. For teens, drugs provide a short term antidote for the pain of crazy emotions, raging hormones, and a bleak and uncertain future. Although the effects of this antidote are often short term, the eventual use can kill your child. Unfortunately the insanity of the teenage years, and a brain looking for short term pleasure without long term reasoning sees this as a pain free alternative.
Adding to this deadly sin is the potent enticement of adolescent sexuality. Powerful hormones, combined with a need for peer acceptance, curiosity, intimacy, a female desire to please and a male desire to dominate contribute to a brain filled with desire, with little thought for consequences. Our society has also become hypersexualized and kids (even younger than teens) have no way to process this information in a healthy way. These are only a few of the many evil temptations in the world. I could go on to mention violence, negative peer influences, and internet insanity, but I think you get the picture—the world is a scary place, especially to a naïve kid who has just left the comfort of playing with Legos and dolls.
What’s the Protection or the Antidote?
In the last blog post I mentioned that the adolescent brain is in a state of re-wiring; a pruning occurs which is eventually hardwired into the brain. Research shows that parental influence of both a good and bad behaviors has an enormous effect on adolescents. How we interact with our kids gets burned into that adolescent brain telling it how to act as an adult. Thus, as Michael Bradley states, “through the rewiring process, the sins of the parents becomes the insanity of the adolescent. Likewise, the wisdom of the parents can become the salvation of the teenager.”
For the next several paragraphs let’s take a look at this potent influence, and how we can use it to our advantage in training our teens.
- First, as a parent we need to begin to grieve and leave behind the image of our sweet compliant child. Few of us are prepared for the emotional hurt which occurs when we lose the close, loving relationship that we had with our young children as they enter adolescence. Our own need for nurturing is often lost to a teen who is wrapped up in their own emotional struggles. So what is a parent to do? GRIEVE, and remember that this teenager in front of you didn’t kill your child, but IS your child, just reborn once again. Your job is to get to know this new person, and navigate the growing pains together. Keep your eyes open for the excitement of getting to know your new young adult. Focus on the good and show your child that you are in control of your own emotions. Above all exhibit some strength, and demonstrate to your child that you are there for her even when she is distant from you.
- Next take a look at some of the ways in which you shape your child. Reinforcement is the primary tool of hard-wiring behaviors into your child. Reinforcement in simple terms is anything that increases behavior. Punishment, the opposite of reinforcement, is designed to decrease behavior. Although this is fairly straight forward and simple, it can get a bit confusing when we are talking about the adolescent brain, and that is because we have to add one more component to the mix—the teenage brain’s craving for new sources of stimulation. Adolescents CRAVE excitement, new experiences, and novelty. Think back to my discussion of scary environments. The reason that drugs, sex, and other undesirable behaviors are often appealing to adolescents is because of this constant need for brain stimulation. Now couple this with the fact that the reasoning portion of the brain is not fully developed, and you have a recipe for disaster. This is why adolescents often push their parent’s “buttons” in order to get a reaction from them. Your screaming at them can become addictive and act as positive reinforcement to them. In the world of the developing brain, what we think as negative can often be positive. So what is a parent to do in the face of this crazy behavior pattern? Actually the best strategy it is to give no reinforcement to the aggressive outburst and behavior. Go into shutdown mode and reinforce only the good behavior. This is where parenting can get really personal. It requires you to control your own needs and emotions and actually “walk the walk” of an adult role model.
Future Discussion
I would like to save the final few suggestions for the next installment. As a final discussion I would like to present some research on how important modeling or copying behavior is in training the adolescent brain and finally present ways to improve your teen’s respect towards you.
Bonnie Gonzalez has 36 years of experience as a counselor. She has taught high school and college classes and is now offering Intro to Psychology and AP Psychology courses through Aim Academy.
Reference material from Michael J. Bradley’s, Yes, Your Teen Is Crazy, Loving Your Kid Without Losing Your Mind, Harbor Press: 2003.