Culling Fears Part 4: The Power of Empowering

This is the fourth and final post of a series on  Culling Fears of Classroom Cultural Shifts.  The first blog of the series focused on why it is important to design classroom environments which promote learning and stretch young people while at the same time avoid an amygdala hijacking caused by triggers of anxiety.  This week I wanted to finish discussing the “why” by continuing to address just how the Design Specifications for Learning Environments can lower anxiety and as a result promote learning.

     As a reminder, below is a chart which summarizes the connection between the social interaction elements found in schools which could lead to threats or fears (i.e. anxiety) that undermine learning and the design specifications to consider when creating learning environments to counter these threats.

SOCIAL INTERACTION ELEMENTS THAT ACTIVATE THREATS & THE ENVIRONMENTS THAT WE CAN DESIGN TO COUNTER THE THREAT

Element	Description & Threat (Hammond, 2015, p.65)	Design Specs to Counter the Threat
Standing	One’s sense of importance relative to others.  Threat = not belonging/being expelled	-Beyond Points & Grades -Honoring Identity Through Relationships
Certainty	One’s need for clarity and predictability. Threat = embarrassment/not knowing what to do	-Nurturing Innovation
Control	One’s sense of empowerment. Threat = being told what to do, where to go, how to behave	-Honoring Identity Through Relationships
Connection	One’s sense of connection and security with others. Threat = fear of being an outsider/excluded	-Learning is Social
Equity	One’s sense of fairness and non-biased exchange with others. Threat = feeling of being disadvantaged or others being advantaged	-Process vs. Product -Honoring Identity Through Relationships

This week’s focus is on designing environments that take into account our natural concerns for control, connections, and equity when working with others.

The Power of Empowering 

     Most, but not all, educators recognize the importance of having an engaging classroom environment over one that is dependent on compliance.  However, even an engaging classroom environment can end up triggering an amygdala hijacking if a young person is being told what to do, where to go, and how to behave during an activity.  Yes, the students are engaged during the activity, but because the activity is being controlled by the teacher, the young people still bear the burden of trying to follow what the teacher wants them to do which includes the uncertaining of,“Are we doing this right?”  If the lesson/activity is designed with honoring identity through relationships in mind, then it will naturally shift the power from the teachers thinking to the thinking of the young people completing the activity and by default provide more voice, choice, and empowerment.  Activities designed with empathy and voice in mind can move an engaging activity to become an empowering activity.  

     As an example,  “cookbook” labs in science class (these require students to follow step-by-step instructions) are often engaging activities, but fall short of being empowering for young people.  A typical “engaging” cookbook lab might require students in a middle school science class to travel to each station, follow directions which include a series of steps such as “use your ruler to measure…”, “take a stopwatch…”, “measure the speed of…”, “fill in the data table”, etc. at one station.  The students then go to the next station and repeatedly follow the same directions. The lesson is engaging, as the students are up and moving around, but is not very empowering or based in science inquiry. The same lesson, when honoring identity through relationships, can go from an engaging lesson to an empowering lesson by instead presenting a question for the young people to wonder about and investigate rather than a set of directions to follow.  It might look like this “My Money is on the Monkey.”  In this format, the same objectives are being met, but the approach is one that allows young people to be in control of their thinking, more engaged, and less likely to fall victim of an amygdala hijacking.  Of course, yielding some control or empowering young people is not the only fear young people face in the classroom or out of the classroom for that matter.

     Making connections and concerns of equity are also on the minds of young people and should be on the minds of adults when designing lessons/activities for young people.  Keeping the same science cookbook activities as our example, these labs stress following directions and emphasize the teacher’s thinking. If we can instead keep the fact that learning is social in mind when designing activities and focus on the process of learning over the product we can naturally reduce the anxiety young people would feel during the activity.  As an example, young people who need time to process what they think and read about fall victim to inequity during a cookbook lab situation because they are often left behind during the lab.  Students who process thinking faster often take over the cookbook lab with the goal of getting it done (the product) over thinking about the connections to what they are learning (the process).  In this case, none of the students make the connections that the teachers hope that they make, but the appearance of understanding is presented because the lab gets done. Labs which are designed to have a “low floor and high ceiling” (like My Money is on the Monkey) allow for multiple entry points for different levels of thinkers and are designed to promote collaboration because they provide multiple ways to tackle the same problem.  These types of labs also emphasize connections between lab groups or partners because they end up being more interdependent as different ideas on how to answer the question at hand are able to be discussed. As different ideas are discussed and used, young people are able to feel ownership (empowered) and part of the group (connectedness). This will minimize the chance for an amygdala hijacking because the young person’s brain remains relatively safe (due to being connected) and happy (thanks to being empowered).  [I do feel the need to include a disclaimer here, especially when it comes to science labs. As a Biology and Chemistry teacher, I am aware that not ALL labs can be designed like this as saftey needs to be the number one priority. However, there are many opportunities for designing activites like this where appropriate. :) ]

     The Design Specifications for Learning Environments discussed in this series of blog posts provide an avenue to reduce anxiety in our schools.  They are how we can work towards creating classrooms which nurture young people to be able to be more: balanced, resilient, innovative, collaborative, empathetic, and of course better critical thinkers.  The design specs are able to nurture these competencies because they provide the conditions which lower the probability of an amygdala hijacking and as a result create better environments for learning because our young people (and their brain) feel more safe and happy.

References

Hammond, Zaretta (2015).  Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Publishing.

Culling Fears Part 3: Nurturing Innovation & Certainty

  This is the third of a series on Culling Fears of Classroom Cultural Shifts.  The first blog of the series focused on why it is important to design classroom environments which promote learning and stretch young people while at the same time avoid an amygdala hijacking caused by triggers of anxiety.  This week I wanted to follow up on the “why” by continuing to discuss just how the Design Specifications for Learning Environments can lower anxiety and as a result promote learning.

     Below is a chart which summarizes the connection between the social interaction elements found in schools which could lead to threats or fears (i.e. anxiety) that undermine learning and the design specifications to consider when creating learning environments to counter these threats.

SOCIAL INTERACTION ELEMENTS THAT ACTIVATE THREATS & THE ENVIRONMENTS THAT WE CAN DESIGN TO COUNTER THE THREAT

Element	Description & Threat (Hammond, 2015, p.65)	Design Specs to Counter the Threat
Standing	One’s sense of importance relative to others.  Threat = not belonging/being expelled	-Beyond Points & Grades -Honoring Identity Through Relationships
Certainty	One’s need for clarity and predictability. Threat = embarrassment/not knowing what to do	-Nurturing Innovation
Control	One’s sense of empowerment. Threat = being told what to do, where to go, how to behave	-Honoring Identity Through Relationships
Connection	One’s sense of connection and security with others. Threat = fear of being an outsider/excluded	-Learning is Social
Equity	One’s sense of fairness and non-biased exchange with others. Threat = feeling of being disadvantaged or others being advantaged	-Process vs. Product -Honoring Identity Through Relationships

This week’s focus is on designing environments that reduce uncertaining through routines which promote innovation.

Countering Uncertaining with Certainty

    Our brain, specifically the amygdala, does not like uncertainty and much more prefers predictability.  That is why it is easy to fall into the trap of swooping in to “save” students who start to struggle or who say, “I don’t understand” immediately after a problem or challenge is introduced.  When this happens this feels like we are teaching, and being told what to do is interpreted by students as learning, because after all they now know what to do for that situation. So in the end, everyone is happy because we all just avoided an amygdala hijacking, yet we also avoided an opportunity for the young person to learn.  Instead, if we are more intentional about routinely putting young people in situations that encourages them to think differently we can create a classroom culture that promotes learning while still avoiding the dreaded amygdala hijacking. This can be done if we keep in mind Nurturing Innovation when designing learning environments for young people.

     The brain develops according to how it's used and therefore environments should promote active reflection and productive struggle by giving young people meaningful practice in iterating through failure, even at the cost of efficiency.   The key adjectives here being productive and meaningful. Young people need to first connect to the problem in some way. This is the first challenge when designing activities. We must keep empathy on the forefront of our mind when designing lessons.  An important question to ask ourselves is, “How can we grab a young person’s attention with a “hook” or draw them in with a connection to the past?”   Once a connection to the problem is made, we have to next design the activity in such a way that it accounts for the variety of hurdles or potholes that young people will encounter along the way.  This does not mean that we remove the barriers and fill the holes for them, but instead design environments that routinely put young people in situations which allow them to remove the barrier or skirt around the hole on their own.  This can be done if we design low floor/high ceiling challenges and activities. Such activities or situations provide multiple entry points that not only promote productive struggle, but also routinely put young people in situations that help them to build a tolerance to uncertainty.  In essence, they start to become more resilient as they establish habits that will assist them in achieving goals and rethink a chosen process after reflection.  If we can design environments in which this routinely happens, young people (along with their amygdalas) will begin to think differently when confronting a challenge and will as a result start to become more desensitized to uncertainty when they meet it. They will instead develop a routine that asks,  “What is the next best step?” This routine will actually reduce the uncertainty that arises when a challenge or obstacle is met and will allow the young person to think clearly about what to do next.  By doing this, they become more innovative in their approach to thinking and will start to be able to “know what to do when they don’t know what to do.” This action alone is the hallmark of a LEARNER who is becoming more future ready.       (AURORA LEARNERS-FUTURE READY)

Thanks for Reading.  Next Week: Control, Connections, & Equity

Culling Fears Part 2: STANDING

Last week’s blog “Culling Fears of Classroom Shifts” laid out a foundation for why it is important to design classroom environments which promote learning and stretch young people while at the same time avoiding an amygdala hijacking caused by triggers of anxiety.  This week I wanted to follow up on the “why” by discussing just how the Design Specifications for Learning Environments can lower anxiety and as a result promote learning.

     Below is a chart which summarizes the connection between the social interaction elements found in schools which could lead to threats or fears (i.e. anxiety) that undermine learning and the design specifications to consider when creating learning environments to counter these threats.

SOCIAL INTERACTION ELEMENTS THAT ACTIVATE THREATS & THE ENVIRONMENTS THAT WE CAN DESIGN TO COUNTER THE THREAT

Element	Description & Threat (Hammond, 2015, p.65)	Design Specs to Counter the Threat
Standing	One’s sense of importance relative to others.  Threat = not belonging/being expelled	-Beyond Points & Grades -Honoring Identity Through Relationships
Certainty	One’s need for clarity and predictability. Threat = embarrassment/not knowing what to do	-Nurturing Innovation
Control	One’s sense of empowerment. Threat = being told what to do, where to go, how to behave	-Honoring Identity Through Relationships
Connection	One’s sense of connection and security with others. Threat = fear of being an outsider/excluded	-Learning is Social
Equity	One’s sense of fairness and non-biased exchange with others. Threat = feeling of being disadvantaged or others being advantaged	-Process vs. Product -Honoring Identity Through Relationships

I would like to propose that the design specifications are how we create environments which nurture learning and avoid the aforementioned amygdala hijacking.  

How to Counter Threats to STANDING

     Schools were originally designed to select and sort students in order to determine who goes on to college (5%  max up until the mid 20th century) and to train the remaining 95% for an ever growing industrial workforce. Grades arose from this culture of schooling in order to help authorities to select and sort.  The design specification of “Beyond Points & Grades” emphasizes that extrinsic motivation, as facilitated by grades and points, naturally diminishes the process of learning. Learning environments designed to minimize the negative side effects of grades/points instead nurture curiosity & questioning (both traits of being innovative).   These environments also encourage empathy and collaboration which help to promote independent ownership, goal-setting, and self-reflection (all  examples of intrinsic motivation) so closely associated with learning. A classroom environment that promotes intrinsic motivation such as this will actually put the amygdala at ease by minimizing the concern as to where a young person's standing falls and instead promotes a sense of belonging.  This also ties into a classroom designed to “Honor Identity Through Relationships,” which is arguably the most important specification for a nurturing classroom environment.

     Relationships need to include trust, respect, and empathy, such that all people, younger and older, value each other.  The rapport developed between young people and adults doesn’t necessarily mean you are on equal footing from a “power” standpoint, but it does mean you are on equal footing from a respect standpoint.  One of my favorite quotes, attributed to St. Francis de Sales, is “Nothing is so strong as gentleness and nothing is so gentle as real strength.” A teacher can have “power” in a classroom, yield to the ideas of young people in the classroom (an action which promotes identity) and still be responsible for the classroom.   In fact, the ability to do so is an example of real strength. I can remember being in interviews as a teacher and talking about the importance of being firm, fair, and friendly without being familiar. Certainly you can have good rapport with young people in a classroom without familiarity blurring lines of appropriateness.  In fact, such expectations not only model empathy but also promote trust and respect within the classroom.  

     It is not only important to acknowledge that young people need to feel safe and happy in order to provide the optimal environment for learning, but to also consider the best ways to go about nurturing such environments.  The Design Specs for Learning provide an avenue, the how, for nurturing such environments. Our amygdala is on a razor’s edge when it comes to our “standing in any population,” and this is especially so for teenagers. By keeping “STANDING” in mind when designing environments for learning (i.e. planning lessons/activities) we can help young people have the mindset needed to be ready to learn.  

Next Week:   Nurturing Innovation & Certainty (Aurora Learners-Future Ready)

References

Hammond, Zaretta (2015).  Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain. 

Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Publishing.

Culling Fears of Classroom Cultural Shifts

I recently saw a short video titled “Our Emerging Future” which reiterates the idea that we have reached a tipping point in education requiring a shift or pivot in how schools should operate.  (See also Reaching a Tipping Point in the Information Age).  This video along with our district’s new strategic vision, which basically emphasizes a shift in our school culture from one that is focused on curriculum delivery to a culture centered around designing environments that prepare young learners for life, has me thinking a lot about “culture” this week.  

      Culture is the total way of life of particular groups of people.  As stated by Robert Kohl, the different behaviors of a people or a culture make sense only when seen through the basic beliefs, assumptions and values of that particular group.  Keeping this in mind and the fact that our brain makes sense of the world based on the cultures in which it is immersed, it is safe to say that schools have created a culture that includes behaviors emphasizing the importance of the transfer of information from adults to young people (curriculum transfer).   It is therefore only natural to expect that a shift or change to that culture would be met with some trepidation. “There are two fundamental things that brains want: to be safe and happy” (Zull, 2002, p.49) and a shift in culture has the potential to upset each of these things which could lead to an amygdala hijacking.

     As a quick reminder, the brain is composed of three basic regions that are layered on top of each other.  The most primitive and inner-most layer is the reptilian region (brainstem & cerebellum) which is basically designed to keep us alive.  The middle layer is the limbic region or the emotional part of our brain which “helps us to learn from experience, manage our emotions, and remember” (Hammond, 2015, p. 38).  Finally, the outermost layer, or neocortex region, is where executive function takes place and is often considered the control center of the brain. It is in the limbic region, which includes the amygdala, that is basically responsible for our fight or flight response and is therefore the most sensitive to “threats” that might arise due to a change in culture.   There are five basic “social interaction elements” we might see in the classroom culture that are “programmed to trigger” the amygdala. These triggers, when activated, create fear leading to an amygdala hijacking which will disrupt the ability for the brain to learn. If we, as educators, can take into account these “triggers” when designing lessons and creating our classroom environments, we can take advantage of this evolutionary hardwiring in the brain and create environments that promote learning.   

    Below is a chart which summarizes the connection between the social interaction elements found in schools which could lead to threats or fears that undermine learning and the design specifications to consider when creating learning environments to counter these threats.

SOCIAL INTERACTION ELEMENTS THAT ACTIVATE THREATS & THE ENVIRONMENTS THAT WE CAN DESIGN TO COUNTER THE THREAT

Element	Description & Threat (Hammond, 2015, p.65)	Design Specs to Counter the Threat
Standing	One’s sense of importance relative to others.  Threat = not belonging/being expelled	-Beyond Points & Grades -Honoring Identity Through Relationships
Certainty	One’s need for clarity and predictability. Threat = embarrassment/not knowing what to do	-Nurturing Innovation
Control	One’s sense of empowerment. Threat = being told what to do, where to go, how to behave	-Honoring Identity Through Relationships
Connection	One’s sense of connection and security with others. Threat = fear of being an outsider/excluded	-Learning is Social
Equity	One’s sense of fairness and non-biased exchange with others. Threat = feeling of being disadvantaged or others being advantaged	-Process vs. Product -Honoring Identity Through Relationships

If we design learning environments using the five specifications mentioned, we will be able to capitalize on the brain’s natural way of working.  These environments will keep the brain safe and happy which will prevent the amygdala from hijacking the brain and instead lead to opportunities for learning.  These new opportunities, will lead to a different set of beliefs, assumptions and values (i.e. culture) in the classroom which will be focused on empowering young people to be learners who are prepared for life.  (Aurora Learners-Future Ready)

References

Hammond, Zaretta (2015).  Culturally Responsive Teaching & The Brain. 
Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Publishing.

Zull, James (2002).  The Art of Changing the Brain.  Sterling VA: Solution Tree
Press.Stylus Publishing.