Sean Hampton-Cole (Twitter: @SeanHCole)

BRAIN POWER

LEARNING ABOUT YOUR BRAIN GOES BEYOND THE NEUROLOGICAL. FINDING OUT ABOUT HOW WE THINK IS ONE OF THE GREATEST ON-GOING CHALLENGES OF OUR TIME.

The following are a few interesting ideas and viewpoints to do with the mind and education.

They are presented more as think-pieces in themselves and not as full length expositions.

Please feel free to reach in and take what you need.

CHILDREN NEED TO LEARN ABOUT THEIR BRAINS AND THEIR MINDS, AND MOSTLY THEY DON’T. KNOWING WHO YOU ARE, WHERE YOUR STRENGTHS AND PASSIONS LIE AND HOW TO CHALLENGE YOUR OWN PERCEPTIONS LIES IN KNOWING MORE ABOUT HOW YOU THINK. • How you think is one of the most important aspects of who you are.

• Our brains are the most sophisticated things we know of. Yet they do not come with owner’s manuals, and most of us never fully realise how miraculous and remarkable they can be.

• How about, once a month, having a ‘Brain Day’ at school?

EDUCATION IS A LONG PROCESS OF NARROWING THINKING. HOW DO WE CHANGE THIS?

Tertiary Education

Primary Education

Secondary Education

The changing need for innovation, adaptability and creativity in the work-place

CHILDREN BEGIN SCHOOL AS QUESTION MARKS AND END IT AS FULL STOPS. WHY? WHAT ARE WE REALLY PREPARING THEM FOR?

HOW YOU THINK (AND HOW WELL YOU THINK) IS INTIMATELY RELATED TO YOUR EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING.

• Stress lowers your IQ and your thinking ability. Obviously some motivation is required for performance, but it is when that motivation changes to stress that the brain shuts down.

Thinking performance

Pressure

Ability to think declines)

Peak thinking

Thinking ability within an emotionally supportive environment.

• What does this tell us about how we teach and how we assess? In particular, how can we run examinations in such a way as to prevent our students from crossing over from peak thinking to ineffectual thinking?

• ‘Adrenaline thinking’ is shallow and ineffective, ‘endorphin thinking’ is deep and rich. It is the difference between the ‘fight or flight instinct’ and genius. Which would we rather have at our schools?

ALL OF THIS RELIES ON NURTURING A SUPPORTIVE AND CARING ENVIRONMENT. IN FACT, IF WE HAVE A MORE EMOTIONALLY SUPPORTIVE ENVIRONMENT, WE OFTEN INFLATE THE AREA OF PEAK PERFORMANCE, ALLOW STUDENTS TO THRIVE EVEN IN DEEPLY STRESSFUL ENVIRONMENTS. HOW DO WE DO THIS?

• DARE TO DREAM• FAILURE CAN BE A LEARNING EXPERIENCE• LAUGH• DEAL MORE KINDLY WITH OURSELVES AND OTHERS• STRESS SELF-WORTH• HOLISTIC EDUCATION OVER CONTENT REGURGITATION• IMAGINATION IS GREATER THAN KNOWLEDGE (Did Einstein say that?)• RE-IMAGINE YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE WORLD FROM A PASSIVE ROLE INTO AN

ACTIVE PARTICIPANT.• FEED YOUR MIND AND ENJOY LEARNING NEW THINGS• YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU PUT YOUR MIND TO• TAKE A JOURNEY TO FIND YOUR DREAM• IS YOUR LIFE BRINGING YOU JOY AND ARE YOU BRINGING JOY TO OTHERS?• POSTIVITY AND NEGATIVITY ARE BOTH INFECTIOUS.

WHERE DOES CREATIVITY FIT IN?• Creativity is the ability to produce new ideas by imagining unusual connections. It is the act of

reaching into the entangled web of ideas and grabbing an unusual spider. Sometimes you get bitten, sometimes you pull out a fly – but sometimes you pull out a specimen that no-one has ever seen before.

• Creativity can only happen when you are in the ‘zone’. Both Einstein and Edison used to close their eyes and allow their minds to drift. One held a bell in his hand, the other a penny. When these dropped, they invariably had a unique idea. Musicians and athletes do the same thing – they get into the ‘zone’; they allow their conscious mind to drift down into their sub-conscious... in order to produce something spectacular.

THE ICE-BERG OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The conscious mind. (Beta brain waves / ‘RAM memory’.)

The sub-conscious mind. (Upper level = Alpha waves – 7 to 13 CPS / ‘ROM memory’)

Thecollective unconscious

AWARENESS‘THE ZONE’

WE HAVE 60 000 THOUGHTS A DAY. • Where do they all come from?• How many of these are obsessive?• How many of these really matter?• What do you do with what you think?• How many of these thoughts are short term worries that we allow to overwhelm our long term dreams?• What if we tried to steer them?• What if we tried to link them?

• What if we as teachers encouraged unusual thinking and idea generation instead of discouraging it?• What if we ourselves became examples of creative thinking?

“We like to ‘thought-craft’... I’ll think aboutsomething ordinary and familiar to me, and then slowly imagine that it is extra-ordinary and unfamiliar. This helps me to understand things better and to come up with some interesting ideas. Then I link them with what my friends have ‘thought-crafted’ and we explore the strange ideas we get from putting them together.” (Student, 2010 – Crawford College Lonehill)

Change is inevitable. But it’s not really change that scares us, because change brings about challenges and it’s these challenges that we are truly afraid of…

When we are faced with challenges we are forced to step out of our comfort zones and be bold enough to make choices… choices that will not only affect us now but in years to come.

But if we make choices today that we can live with tomorrow, then what is there to be afraid of?

Student, Crawford College Lonehill (2009)

End.