“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” – Benjamin Franklin.
Children are naturally hard-wired for change (and learning), and the young brain is the most malleable of all, constantly wiring and rewiring itself to various degrees with each new experience and understanding; this adaptive process is known as neuroplasticity.
From a neuroscience perspective, the key seems to lie within our brain’s dopamine circuits (the brain’s desire and reward system). Whenever children accomplish personal goals or satisfy their curiosity, the brain releases dopamine, which not only brings pleasure, but also improves memory and observation.
Research shows that children’s learning soars when they read about things they were already wondering about, or when their lessons are guided by active and spontaneous exploration. It’s the positive emotions, and the associated internal reward, that really makes a lesson stick (and makes children want to learn more). In positive, supportive environments (conducive to exploration and experimentation) children learn more – and they learn better.
When students’ curiosity is activated, teaching and learning flow naturally and are seldom a ‘chore’. As educators, our role is to tap into this natural drive and help direct it towards healthy and positive paths. The question becomes, how do we engage and harness a child’s most authentic motivation, the kind that’s self-directed and leads to deeper learning.
In our experience, most children coming to the program have only had passive, ‘superficial’ experiences of learning. This is often a matter of classroom culture. For students to freely express curiosity, they must first feel safe and invited to ask and to seek. ‘Discovery classrooms’ are very much co-created and largely depend on how much the teacher values curiosity themselves. When teachers are warm and encouraging, and show genuine interest, engagement, and curiosity, it invites and enables the same from their students. In simple terms, curiosity is contagious.
It’s critical to understand that the very things that can most distract a child (emotions, the senses, other youth) can also be harnessed to INCREASE attention. In adolescents in particular, some of the most powerful emotions are associated with identity (as according to Erikson, identity formation practically defines this stage of development). This means that some of the deepest learning (neuroplasticity) will occur around lessons where children discover new truths about themselves in the process.
At Whytecliff, we want each student to discover 3 truths in particular about themselves and their learning – that they have the power to mediate their own neuroplasticity via their ATTITUDE, ATTENTION, and INTENTION. To bring these lessons home, and to help facilitate “deep learning”, we gently weave a 3-pronged approach into our curriculum, which includes the latest science on “Growth Mindset” (attitude) and “Optimal Experience” (attention); we also encourage youth to collaboratively engage in self-reflection and goal setting (intention) through our proprietary “Viewpoint Groups”.
– Growth Mindset
Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck (2006, 2012) theorized that growth mindset is the belief that intelligence is not a given, but a quality cultivated through training. It’s opposite is a fixed mindset, which is the belief that intelligence is static – you either have it or you don’t. People who have a growth mindset see challenges as learning opportunities, or temporary obstacles to be overcome, while those with a fixed mindset see them as permanent barriers.
Whytecliff Provides ample opportunities and encouragement for students to develop a growth mindset. This is a goal on every Whytecliff student’s IEP. The image below illustrates the implications on a student’s learning from having a growth or fixed mindset.
In practice, having a growth mindset manifests itself as more positive or encouraging stories we tell ourselves (about our own abilities and our learning). The image below contrasts some of those stories with the stories that limit people with a fixed mindset.
– Optimal Experience
Educators have long known that children’s attention holds the trump card in the classroom, determining how and how much youth engage in deep learning. As William James observed, “Only those items which I notice shape my mind”. Attention itself can be likened to our “mind’s eye”; it’s the internal ‘lens’ which shapes, colors, and focuses our moment-to-moment experience. Despite its pivotal role in shaping children’s life and learning, scientific researchers have only recently begun to ask… what can be done to boost our natural attention – above its baseline levels?
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the fathers of positive psychology, studied the types of environments and experiences that seemed to buoy our natural engagement (and tapped into an especially vivid and fluid quality of attention). He coined the word ‘Flow’ (also known as optimal experience) to describe, “the psychological mental state of a person who is immersed in an activity with energized concentration, optimal enjoyment, full involvement, and intrinsic interests, and who is usually focused, motivated, positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975/2000, 1990).” These states of ‘optimal experience’ are intrinsically rewarding to the human brain. Like a tree growing towards sunlight, the neurons in our brain are drawn to – and ‘grow’ and rewire towards – the source of these optimal experiences. As a result, we feel a deeper sense of connection to the subject at hand, attention increases, and learning flows naturally.
At Whytecliff, we seek to promote such ‘optimal experiences’ for youth by encouraging them to explore, tap into, and expand their natural skills, talents and gifts, and to set personally meaningful goals that keep them feeling engaged; we recognize the latest science of positive psychology – and understand that positive emotions fuel the motivated engagement that increases deep learning (neuroplasticity). And so we intentionally tailor learning environments and experiences to be fun, engaging, interesting, and personally meaningful.
– Viewpoint Groups
We humans are blessed with the unique ability to step back, to consider, to choose, and to create who it is we want to become. With this great privilege comes great responsibility. As children are the narrators and navigators of their own lives, they hold a uniquely central position from which they might serve as their own best friend in their learning and personal development – but there’s a catch. This capacity for thoughtful self-determination arises from the brain’s pre-frontal cortex, not yet fully developed at this age. So how do we go about increasing children’s internal capacity for making wise and positive choices about where they’re headed and who they want to become?
“Viewpoint Groups” is an approach to intra-personal skill development and capacity building developed by Whytecliff. This model emphasizes the process of exploring issues and our responses to them, and contends that participants cultivate readiness for education and skills training – for “doing” – only by examining who and what they are. This process of self-reflection does not exclude education and training; rather it recognizes the crucial importance of self-understanding, values clarification, perspective taking, goal setting, and personal responsibility.
At Whytecliff, “Viewpoint Groups” personal development workshops are offered once a week, for an average of an hour, over a period of eight months. Many topics are covered including: anger, emotions, family dynamics, sexuality, resourcing skills and career development.