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
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.
There are so many things educators control in the design of their classrooms and lessons. We set up the room, we pick the materials, we decide how to present content. But ultimately when we share power and we release some of that control to make room for the voice and choice of our students, we gain power, because we are building rapport and valuing our students' identity. If we let them help design the room, have choice in materials and ways to represent their learning, if we value their thinking over ours, and we design learning experiences which are inquiry based, we are building learning partnerships. The more we do this, the more we create a culture of learning and empowerment.
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