JUNK MAIL FIRST YEAR #9 PUBLISHED: 8 MAY 2023 

PARLIAMENT ANYONE?

ccording to my mother I made such a racket when I was born that the delivering doctor stated that I was destined for Parliament. Yeah, right. The closest I have got to Parliament was to visit the House of Representative several times and completing a double BA in Geography

and Political Studies. Any lingering desire I ever had of being a Parliamentarian went out the window with the Benson-Pope affair when the use of a tennis ball as a ‘gob stopper’ in his past life (as a teacher) jeopardised his Parliamentary aspirations, and those of all other teachers…

AI went through school when corporal punishment was the done thing; I can remember a Nun at our Catholic primary school swinging her rosary beads (they were the big, heavy, black wooden beads worn around the waist, not your delicate hand-held variety) around my legs to impress upon me the errors of my ways (accidentally dropping a milk bottle causing it to shatter on the ground; the milk had gone off anyway as it had sat in the sun all morning and tasted yuck!). Later on, for a crime I can’t recall (how covenient), several of us were made to kneel, for an hour or so, on rice scattered on the floor. We were then made to pick up every last grain using only our hands. At college, dropping a pen onto the floor, thereby disturbing the peaceful learning environment (40+ boys to a class in those days) attracted one stroke of the strap on the hand from the burley Brothers. Cutting across a line up of boys just after assembly in order to get to class on time (whatever… ) was worth two strokes as I recall (even after all these years… ). As was forgetting to stand bolt upright when the diminutive English teacher walked into the room for the very first time in Form 6 (cripes, how come he didn’t have to make me aware of his rules, my options and my rights way back then?!), well that was lunchtime gone, standing out on the quadrangle in single file unable to move and in full view of all the other boys. Our Latin teacher used the strap in a novel ‘educational’ way; when a student (who we would now call a slow or remedial learner) failed to differentiate between the singular and the plural of ‘cow’ in Latin (a crucial piece of information for the current knowledge wave… I still remember the answer; bovus is singular, bovum is plural) out came the leather strap (two layers of leather with a metal centre). Anyway, I digress. He asked the student to extend out his right hand and proceeded to strap him once; he then asked the boy to extend out his left hand and gave him two strokes of the strap… all in front of the whole class who were deathly silent! The boy was now in tears, but that didn’t stop the Latin teacher enquiring of the student if he could now differentiate between singular and plural. If memory serves me right, he couldn’t!

Well-behaved chaps like myself would end up with a dozen notches in our belts in any given year; tell that to today’s Y11 students and they assume that you were part of the criminal classes at school. Oh no, those really naughty students ended up with soooooo many notches in their belt that the belt disintegrated.

If they get me for anything it will have to be for giving a boy 100 lines to write out which read; ‘I must not call a girl a F****** bitch’ which he had yelled across the grounds. He seemed quite pleased to get the opportunity to write out the offending swear words and returned them to me gleefully next day for my inspection. I returned them to him (having first taken a photocopy unbeknown to him) and asked him to get the lines signed by his parents. That took the smirk off his face! But he returned next day, undeterred, with a note on a piece paper written by his parents stating that their son had informed them that he had ‘sworn’ and they had told him off. I’d loved to have been a fly on the wall when, next day, the photocopy of the lines arrived in the mail at his place with a note from me. Rumour has it he is still grounded…

While I have never caned anyone I’m not sure that a short sharp bit of corporal punishment administered according to the rules (and there were rules on administering the cane when I started

teaching!) did anyone any harm. Thankfully, you are currently unable to see my nervous twitches.

Over the past 30 years I am sure I have administered discipline in a manner that will in days to come will be seen as injurious in some way or other and not PC. Could we yet see a black list of non-Parliamentary disciplinary strategies consisting of lunchtime detentions, press ups, visits to the RTP room, Dean’s dailies, litter brigade, being sent to Mark Jones etc, etc?

For those of you with no political aspirations, carry on as per usual.

CULTURALLY SENSITIVE COMMENTS

Quite a few years ago now I wrote a particularly positive comments on an Asian student’s exercise book. This was no ‘Well done – keep it up!’ comment, but one which was thoughtful and totally personalised. It was three-liner, at least. Clearly the student appreciated the comment as her eyes lit up as she read my comments. Next day I enquired how her mother and father had reacted to my comments only to be told that neither mum nor dad could read English! Since then I often invited Maori students and foreign students to translate my comments on their work into their language where they are able to do this, and then I either write the English version, or simply write, ‘I agree!’ and sign my name. The impact this has on students is really worth the small extra effort required.

Here are some every day Maori translations of common Pakeha comments that you can use. The longer comments are whakatauki or proverb-like sayings, which can also be used to adorn Maori students’ work.

Common comments

He mahi pai! Great work!Ka mau te wehi! Way to go!Kia kaha tonu! Keep trying!Tau Ke´! Awesome!Pai rawa atu! Very good.He ataahua au mahi. Your work is beautiful.He pai au mahi. Your work is really.Tena Koe mo au mahi Rangatira. You’ve put a lot of extra effort into this.

Whakatauki

Kimihia nga maunga teitei. Try your very best.Seek the heights.

Ma mahi ka ora. Work brings you health (and prosperity).The harder you work, the more you get from your efforts.

Tama tu tama oraTama noho, tama mate. Laziness makes you sick.

He moana pukepuke e ekengia e ekengia e te waka.A choppy sea can be navigated; carry on, don’t give up.Persevere! Stick at it!

DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR TEENS? (DO YOU REALLY WANT TO?)

Evolution is alive and well. You can generally see evolution happening in your students as they negotiate their way through most of their teenage years right there in front of you as you teach your classes. As with so many other things in life, having a little knowledge is a useful but sometimes a dangerous thing. Having more knowledge, especially of the in-depth, scientific and relevant variety can be advantageous. So attached please find three interesting articles. What Makes Teens Tick comes from Time magazine published just a few years ago (you can see I’m right up to date with my reading). The original article contained a number of supporting pictures which we couldn’t print effectively but only the picture of the brain was really useful and I have managed to pull out the text associated with the picture; what you don’t get to see are the parts of the brain they refer to, although some of you may be fluent in brain geography. The second article, Inside Amy’s Brain analyses 24 hours in the life of Amy as she gets through a school day. Finally Too Big For Their Brains revisits puberty looking at how it affects the students who sit in our classes and the way we teach them.

I’m sure you will find these articles of interest as they explain some of the frustrating and inexplicable behaviours of the teenagers that populate our classes. Or you may learn something about your recent past… I’m so old and crusty I can’t remember whether we even had ‘teens’ in my day…

BUSY WORK vs ENGAGING WORK

For many beginning teachers planning lessons places major demands on their time, energy and creativity. Sadly too many beginning teachers abandon lesson planning far too early in their career and from where I sit at the back of some experienced teacher’s room, it is painfully evident that they have! A well-planned lesson, both in structure and content, is as obvious as a sore thumb! Unfamiliarity with things like the syllabus, the variety and range of the students abilities, the available

text books and other resources, an inability to precisely time the various sections of the lesson etc, etc, means that we often include ‘busy work’ in our lesson ‘plan’ which keeps the students occupied and to some extent fulfils the requirements of education. I would describe ‘busy work’ as any task that requires minimal thinking; a mechanical task assigned for no other reason than to fill in time. It is the sort of work that a student can do while talking to their friends about what they did on the weekend. Copying notes from a book, making a poster, gross colouring in, cut and paste for the hell of it, watching a video etc could easily fall into this category if there are no other directives added to the exercise. A regular diet of ‘busy work’ is not educationally healthy because it becomes mechanical and disengaging. No strain, no pain, no gain. Many students enjoy ‘busy work’; from the teacher’s point of view they are ‘busy’ and they can legitimately claim to be learning, but they aren’t. The end result is a student who has become mentally lethargic bordering on comatosed. Eventually, even lifting up a pen and taking out their exercise book becomes something of a challenge. Finally, these students simply switch off. Re-motivating such students takes a lot of effort and time.

Weaning students off ‘busy work’ is not easy especially if such work has become routine. Moving students from “copy down these three paragraphs on how the hand works” (busy work) to “pick out from these three paragraph the key elements of how the hand works” (engaging work) is a step in the right direction because some added processing of information is required. A Top Gun teacher might give the students a collection of objects like a pen to write with, a piece of paper to tear up, a length of string to make a knot out of and a musical instrument to play and then asks them to deduce what is so special about the human hand that helped homo sapiens to dominate the world. Now that would stimulate the little grey cells as Agatha Christie’s Inspector Poirot would say!

Of course, if you leap into this type of challenging and engaging work straight away in period one, day one of the year you are likely to get a class full of students doing imitations of stunned mullet. It takes time and good old scaffolding to get your class there. But challenging your students to think either in terms of problem solving or seeing things from different points of view or taking risks or being creative is part of our job and when done well results in a lesson of real quality. Yes, the pupils have to have some ‘buy in’ but once they are hooked ‘busy work’ is no longer an acceptable lesson format when alternatives exist. I have seen brilliant exemplars of this type of teaching recently.

A Social Studies teacher issued everyone with a photocopy of a newspaper picture showing a black South African lying on the pavement mortally wounded surrounded by a crowd of onlookers. Each person in the picture had been numbered off by the teacher and each student was allocated one of these numbered people and asked to write up that onlooker’s thoughts. The remaining half the lesson was spent comparing answers and discussing. Powerful stuff. In an Economics lesson the teacher had brought in five electrical jugs of varying sizes, shapes and design and the pupils had to evaluate and rank each jug from different points of view like price, aesthetics, design practicality, electrical efficiency and safety. The debate was heated, very heated. A Tourism lesson involved evaluating a variety of tourist packages to an exotic location from the viewpoint of a back packer, a family party and a newly retired couple.

Each of these lessons could have been taught in a ‘busy’ style, but they don’t become exemplars that way! Plan your lessons to actively engage your students, not each lesson, but certainly most lessons.

I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE…

I taught all three of my three children how to drive. One of the things you notice as their instructor is that in the beginning their ‘vision’ is limited to straight ahead and no further than a metre or so beyond the bonnet! Fire engines trying to pass from behind, the car coming in from the right hand side or the little kiddie about to run onto the road from the footpath on the left are not ‘seen’ by the learner driver; dad of course has both his feet firmly rooted to the floor on the passenger’s side where they are no pedals and therefore totally ineffectual in a vain hope of stopping the looming accident.

Experienced drivers develop a 3650 field of vision.

Beginning teachers are similarly limited in their ‘vision’; they often don’t see the cell phones, they miss the ‘rubbish’ being thrown across the room containing a surreptitious note or morsel of food. And watch those students who go to the toilet with their bags… or who regularly (bordering on a fetish) put rubbish in the bin in your classroom… what are they up to? And judging by one young lady I busted in class last week for using a an MP3 player (You’re the first teacher this year to catch me with this Sir! How did your know?”) some students may not have heard much of your lesson all year… Or am I getting paranoid?

But seriously, I am concerned that many of you still haven’t got ‘monitoring’ down to a fine art. Once you have set some work for the class to do, do a circuit of the room making sure all students have started the work you set. And then, and only then, should you start answering all the questions from pupils who didn’t bother to listen to your superb instruction in the first place, or who are genuinely stuck. Some time later, say half way through the time you allocated to the task (you DID allocate a set time and write it on the board, didn’t you? Of course you did!) do another sweep around the room in a random fashion paying PARTICULAR note of how much of the work IS ACTUALLY BEING DONE! Too many of you do superficial monitoring sweeps around the room without actually seeing how little work is being done. In some classes I have been to lately the number of students who are getting away with doing almost nothing is staggering. They have got you ‘sussed’; its time for a wee shock!

Toughen up, be observant and if you detect a problem here do something about it. I favour the random end-of-lesson work check especially in Periods 2 and 4. Decide to let out some of the pupils (say all the girls, or all the boys or rows one and two so as to make things manageable) on the bell and keep the others in and ONLY let them out if they can show you that they have done all the work to your satisfaction Those who haven’t done the work get to stay in and finish it. Do this a couple of times and change who goes out unchecked randomly (keeps the students on their toes) and see what impact it has on the slackers. Where teachers have started this regime (never ‘threaten this, just do it one day pd 2 or 4) to improve the work rate the results have been really spectacular. Try it!

LETTER BOX

Try this if you have an issue or issues you want the class to address. Lets say you were studying pollution in Social Studies/Science/English or you were looking at the range of investments available in Economics or the class has to evaluate different forms of contraception or foods in Health. You could get individuals to study all the options or just one and then compare other students’ responses. Or you could just dictate all the notes yourself… or you could not…

Or you could try this (using the pollution example)! Prior to the lesson find 5 (more or less) A4 envelopes or paper bags (check out the Central Resource Room). On each write down one of the ‘issues’, in our case, we might write ‘cars’ on one envelope/bag, then ‘plastics’ on another

envelope/bag, then ‘noise’, ‘rubbish’ and lastly ‘visual pollution’. In the lesson divide your class into the same number of groups as envelopes/bags. Give each group a different label/name of something easy to draw (a shape, a number, an object); it is their ‘signature’. Now get the class to sit in their groups and give each group one envelope/bag and 5 pieces of A4 paper. Tell the class that when you say “Start” they have X number of minutes to firstly draw their group’s label/name on a corner of ONE sheet of paper that is in front of them and then write down all the solutions or advantages/disadvantages etc that they can on the same sheet related to the heading on the envelope/bag. When X minutes elapses, each group places their sheet of information complete with drawing inside the envelope/bag and proceeds on your command to the next station containing another envelope/bag (or you could pass the envelope/bag around instead) where they spend the next X minutes addressing the new topic on the envelope/bag in front of them as they did before.

They are NOT allowed to look at any other group’s sheet already inside the envelope/bag. And so the process is repeated until each group has gone around all the stations.

At the end when each group has had a go at each of the issues, give out a larger piece of paper so that each group can now pull out all of the sheets from the envelope/bag in front of them and summarise the best points from the collective wisdom of the class and report back. A variation might be to rank the five best solutions in each envelope/bag and simultaneously see which group contributed the most top ranked solutions.

CLASSROOM OBSERVATIONS: THE ONES YOU GET TO DO!

The Principal recently loaned me an American magazine he subscribes to called Educational Leadership. The main theme of the edition was ‘Supporting New Educators’; it contains a wide range of articles from research based analysis to ‘true stories’ relating to beginning teachers’ experiences in the USA. The statistics maker grim reading; in some states the drop out rate after three years in the profession is over 50%! I was heartened to read about the initiatives that states like California and Georgia had taken to look after their beginning teachers because the core strategies are exactly those we try to operate here at Massey High School. Time and time again mention is made in the articles about the value for beginning teachers to go out and observe other teachers, other classes, other subjects being taught. In fact, beginning teachers rank being able to observe colleagues teaching as the most valuable part of their on-the-job training along side planning lessons with colleagues.

We’ve pushed teacher visits here at Massey for years, and your turn has now come.

I have already announced to our staff that first and second year teachers will be out and about visiting their classrooms to observe registered teachers in action in the classroom. I do the announcing bit as a courtesy, not to warn them that you are coming, just in case you were curious…

You should be able to do one visit at least a week. This also doubles as your current reflection. You already have the sheets to fill in for each visit which will add some focus to your observations. Once completed, please add these observations to your FOLDER.

It is best to arrange a suitable time in advance with the teacher you want to visit to avoid observing a test or a Reading Room period (unless that is what you want to observe). While it is predictable that you will want to see how others in your own subject area teach – and don’t let me stop you from doing just that – remember that other subjects and other teachers have skills that may not be observable in your subject. For example, if you teach a ‘safe’ subject where the students sit in nice straight rows and learn from a text book, then go visit a ‘practical’ subject where drills and lathes are whirling around at dangerous rates of revolutions, or where the classroom is the whole of the top of

the upper field, or where creativity and participation on an active level have to occur as in Drama or Music. Any of the technical subjects will show you teachers working with students who are all at different stages in their projects. And don’t forget that you can stalk you own form class or subject class in with another subject just to see how they operate with another teacher.

If you want to see a particular strategy (say group work or working with ‘difficult’ pupils or tight management etc) then see me as I should be able to recommend a suitable exponent; or you could just ask around the staff room.

I encourage you to make the most of this opportunity as beyond your two-year induction programme such opportunities become rare. Just sitting there and observing is fine, but having a bit of an on-going discussion as to why the teacher is doing things is far better; it is not always obvious at first glance what teachers are doing. There will be method in their madness and visa versa…

I THINK I CAN, I THINK I CAN, I THINK I CAN…

The Art of Learning people used to come on a yearly basis leaving behind some super up-skilled Y10 students who by participating in the ‘how we learn’ programme gained a better insight into how to manage learning, study and exams effectively. I have watch their full day presentation several times and been on hand when Lance King and his team did a condensed version after school for our beginning teachers. each time the reaction is the same; “How come we weren’t taught this at training college!” and “Why didn’t my teachers tell me about this when I was at school?”

Just one gem from Lance is worth the effort; as Lance puts it:

How many times do you hear students say ‘I can’t do it…’ (if I received a dollar for every time I have heard that expression this year I could retire comfortably!!!).

And then the teachers says ‘But of course you can, just do this and that and…’

But the student insists ‘I can’t do it!!’

‘Can’t’, says Lance, forms a mind-set, an attitude that prevents any further action. And no matter what the teacher now says the mind-set is in a locked state and receptive to nothing. ‘Can’t’ is final.

Lance’s answer to the ‘I can’t do it’ student is to have the student replace the ‘I can’t do it’ statement with a ‘I haven’t succeeded yet…’ statement. By telling the student that ‘They haven’t succeeded yet…’ you change the student’s mind-set from completely closed to agar. Not having succeeded yet is NOT final. There are opportunities and possibilities yet to be tried. Got the idea! (I hope my impersonation of Lance King is accurate as this piece of attitude manipulation is crucial for many of our students. As one of our posters states, ‘Success comes in cans, not can’ts!)

A less subtle approach is this. For some years I have carried a crisp new $50 note in my wallet (of course it’s my wife’s, on loan. The note, not the wallet.) that sees the light of day as soon as a student says “I can’t do it!” I challenge the students to do whatever they say they can’t do with the offer of a $50 note. You see their eyes light up and out comes, “OK sir, you’re on!”

A QUOTABLE QUOTE

It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.Alec Bourne

THREE WORDS TO AVOID. (NOT AN EXHAUSTIVE LIST BUT A START… )

Teachers talk their way through thousands of words a day. Some are pearls of wisdom, most are everyday patter and sometimes we say things we would rather like the option to delete what we have just said, if that option existed. Words matter! And not just for novelists. And how we say things, especially to sensitive teenagers who see things in black and white through rose coloured spectacles (how does that work??) from the viewpoint of their ‘rights’, means that extra care should be taken. If you record your lesson you will soon see where you might improve on your choice of words, or your delivery. Many a ‘situation’ in class escalates because of the language used, by either party. For now however, consider your use of these three words…

DON'TDon't think of yellow... don't think of a blue tree and don't think of ice cream... chances are that when you read those things you did think of them even though it said not to... Why?? Your brain does not recognise the word DON'T. When we have a thought we create a picture, a sound or a feeling of it in our mind... then think not to do it...

For example if you say to a child who is climbing a tree – “Don't fall!” then the child has to create a picture, the sound or the feeling of themselves falling then think not to... and what nearly always happens - they fall out of the tree!!! What should we say??? Instead of saying what you don't want, tell the child what you do want - For example “Climb carefully!” or “Check the branch is strong enough before standing on it.”

Sounds easy?? With so much of our conditioning around language it is a constant challenge to remember not to use that word... especially with so much advertising that says, “Don't Drink and Drive” and the most common... “Don't forget to...”

TRYIf I asked you to try and pick up the pen I've just dropped on the floor... and you pick it up, then you haven't tried, rather you've done it... If you left the pen on the floor then you haven't picked it up.As Yoda, the Jedi Master from Star Wars says... “Try? There is no ‘try’. Do, or do not.”

CAN'THow many of us remember saying, “I can't…” as a child to be told by our parents “There is no such word as ‘can't’." Well we know there is such a word - it's just not a useful one. When you use the words “I can't…” you simply shut your mind down to any other possibilities. Essentially you are saying to yourself “I will fail this task for sure!” without exploring your options. If we had been able to say “I can’t get beyond crawling and walk like my parents do on two legs.” When we first thought about standing up as a very young child, we would all still be rug rats!!! Another way to think about those challenging situations is “How can I?” or “I have failed to work out this mathematical quadratic equation this time round but if I give it another go I might well succeed.”

“I can't spell!” changes to “How can I learn to spell.” “I can't dance.” to “What can I do in order to dance?” “I can't afford it?” becomes “What can I do to be able to purchase this?”

Teachers need to be less critical of students who ‘fail’. We should actively and enthusiastically support students who try, oops, make the effort to succeed especially when the task is complicated and requires multiple attempts as most tasks do.

Where is the parent who, having watched their baby make its first, second, third, fourth… twenty-third, twenty-forth… eighty eighth, eighty-ninth… attempt at standing up, would have turned to their baby and said, “Son, you’re a failure and you’ll never ever walk on two legs!

HONK, HONK!

HENRY KANIUKSTAFF SUPPORTMASSEY HIGH SCHOOL

DARK TIMES FOR CLASSROOM ENTHUSIASM AND CREATIVITYIvan Snook

Recently, Massey University conferred an honorary doctorate on an 80-year-old man, Elwyn Richardson. He was honoured for his creative approach to teaching, for which he became renowned in New Zealand and overseas.

Central to his work was his profound respect for the emerging abilities of his students; he drew out the best in them and developed their latent talents.

Nearly 20 years ago, the Government transformed the whole structure of education, as well as much else beside.

The result was not just a change in structures, funding and administrative procedures. What changed was the nature of teaching, the nature of learning and, arguably, the very nature of the students. As a result:

* Bookkeeping has replaced pastoral care.

* Testing has squeezed out teaching.

* Skills training has replaced education.

* Competition has driven out co-operation, and compliance has pushed out creativity.

* Teachers face increased surveillance by means of standardised curriculums, frequent appraisals, and supervision by the Education Review Office.

* Teachers are less and less permitted to think for themselves: they are seen not as professionals but as skilled technicians.

* Where they used to help design the curriculum, now they merely "deliver" it.

* And the school's role in promoting social justice has been minimised. To raise it is to be deemed "politically correct", a term of abuse that discourages any concern for fairness.

The task of educators is to develop the minds and hearts of young people by introducing them into the traditions of human thought and feeling painfully gained over the centuries and preserved in the sciences, humanities and arts.

Yet, under the new regime, teachers are asked simply to prepare young people to be workers: their future as informed and thoughtful citizens is neglected.

Not only that. It seems that we now face a new breed of students: "children of the market". Much of the evidence for this is anecdotal, but it is starting to show up in more formal studies.

An Otago University study noted the recent emergence of a new group of young people. They exhibit high levels of materialism and consumption, have few political interests, lack any concern for a healthy diet, do not place any value on family life and focus on individual activities such as TV and video games.

These findings reinforce the growing international literature on "kiddyculture". Led by business interests, young people are seduced by video games, text messaging, music, food chains and movies to see their main function in life as consumers. And they not only consume physical things: they see education, not as the gentle nurturing of the human spirit but as a commodity to be bought, used and discarded. This makes teachers' job difficult.

In contrasting the idealism of Elwyn Richardson with the profound changes of the past few years, I am drawing attention to teachers' difficult position. They are caught between the personal and the political. Wanting to get on with the exciting task of educating students, they are subjected at every turn to distracting political demands.

And this is never-ending. If you scan the educational policies of political parties as we approach a general election, you will see that there is more to come. They just cannot leave education alone.

Education is now a major site of struggle: for political parties, for business interests, and, indeed, for every group that wants to capture the hearts of the young.

At all levels of the system, I find staff engaged in "joyless compliance", carrying out meaningless tasks to comply with some managerial dogma. The next step is cynicism. There is nothing sadder

than a cynical teacher: cynicism dries up the energy needed to confront energetic young people day after day.

A better response is the nurturing of critical faculties. Critical thought cuts through the nonsense that passes for educational wisdom and motivates us to find better answers. Critical thinking will not only help teachers to resolve their tensions: it is an attitude that will rub off on students who, themselves, may be led to resist the kiddyculture in which they are immersed.

To this end I suggest that teachers:

* Keep up professional reading so they can recognise nonsense even when it comes from principals or the Education Review Office.

* Continue to think. Take nothing for granted, especially when it comes from those bent on subverting the educational ideal.

* Work collegially with those teachers who still retain their enthusiasm despite the constant attacks on teachers.

* Form coalitions with parents, for they really care about their children. Parents and teachers are natural allies, though powerful forces work to drive them apart.

* Conform where you have to and resist where you can. In the long run, the forces of light may be more powerful than the forces of darkness.

The ability of people to participate in society depends on the quality of the education they receive. And this depends not on large bureaucracies, glossy brochures, curriculum documents or flowery mission statements but on the personal qualities of teachers.

This is an extract of a graduation address delivered last month by Ivan Snook, emeritus professor of education at Massey University.

Reprinted from the NZ HERALD June 7th 2005

WHAT MAKES TEENS TICK

flood of hormones, sure. But also a host of structural changes in the brain. Can those explain the behaviours that make adolescence so exciting—and so exasperating? A

Five young men in sneakers and jeans troop into a waiting room at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Centre in Bethesda, Md., and drape themselves all over the chairs in classic collapsed-teenager mode, trailing backpacks, a CD player and a laptop loaded with computer games. It’s midafternoon, and they are, of course, tired, but even so their presence adds a jangly, hormonal buzz to the bland, institutional setting. Fair-haired twins Corey and Skyler Mann, 16, and their burlier big brothers Anthony and Brandon, 18, who are also twins, plus eldest brother Christopher, 22, are here to have their heads examined. Literally. The five brothers from Orem, Utah, are the latest recruits to a gia nt study that’s been going on in this building since 1991. Its goal: to determine how the brain develops from childhood into adolescence and on into early adulthood.

It is the project of Dr. Jay Giedd (pronounced Geed), chief of brain imaging in the child psychiatry branch at the National Institute of Mental Health. Giedd, 43, has devoted the past 13 years to peering inside the heads of 1,800 kids and teenagers using high-powered magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). For each volunteer, he creates a unique photo album, taking MRI snapshots every two years and building a record as the brain morphs and grows. Giedd started out investigating the

developmental origins of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism (“I was going alphabetically,” he jokes) but soon discovered that so little was known about how the brain is supposed to develop that it was impossible to figure out where things might be going wrong. In a way, the vast project that has become his life’s work is nothing more than an attempt to establish a gigantic control group. “It turned out that normal brains were so interesting in themselves,” he marvels. “And the adolescent studies have been the most surprising of all.”

Before the imaging studies by Giedd and his collaborators at UCLA, Harvard, the Montreal Neurological Institute and a dozen other institutions, most scientists believed the brain was largely a finished product by the time a child reached the age of 12. Not only is it full-grown in size, Giedd explains, but “in a lot of psychological literature, traced back to [Swiss psychologist Jean] Piaget, the highest rung in the ladder of cognitive development was about age 12—formal operations.” In the past, children entered initiation rites and started learning trades at about the onset of puberty. Some theorists concluded from this that the idea of adolescence was an artificial construct, a phenomenon invented in the post—Industrial Revolution years. Giedd’s scanning studies proved what every parent of a teenager knows: not only is the brain of the adolescent far from mature, but both grey and white matter undergo extensive structural changes well past puberty. “When we started,” says Giedd, “we thought we’d follow kids until about 18 or 20. If we had to pick a number now, we’d probably go to age 25.”

Now that MRI studies have cracked open a window on the developing brain, researchers are looking at how the newly detected physiological changes might account for the adolescent behaviours so familiar to parents: emotional outbursts, reckless risk taking and rule breaking, and the impassioned pursuit of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Some experts believe the structural changes seen at adolescence may explain the timing of such major mental illnesses as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. These diseases typically begin in adolescence and contribute to the high rate of teen suicide. Increasingly, the wild conduct once blamed on “raging hormones” is being seen as the by-product of two factors: a surfeit of hormones, yes, but also a paucity of the cognitive controls needed for mature behaviour.

In recent years, Giedd has shifted his focus to twins, which is why the Manns are such exciting recruits. Although most brain development seems to follow a set plan, with changes following cues that are pre-programmed into genes, other, subtler changes in grey matter reflect experience and environment. By following twins, who start out with identical-or, in fraternal twins, similar-

programming but then diverge as life takes them on different paths, he hopes to tease apart the influences of nature and nurture. Ultimately, he hopes to find, for instance, that Anthony Mann’s plan to become a pilot and Brandon’s to study law will lead to brain differences that are detectable on future MRIs. The brain, more than any other organ, is where experience becomes flesh.

Throughout the afternoon, the Mann brothers take turns completing tests of intelligence and cognitive function. Between sessions they occasionally needle one another in the waiting room. “If the other person is in a bad mood, you’ve got to provoke it,” Anthony asserts slyly. Their mother Nancy Mann, a sunny paragon of patience who has three daughters in addition to the five boys, smiles and rolls her eyes.

Shortly before 5 p.m., the Manns head downstairs to the imaging floor to meet the magnet. Giedd, a trim, energetic man with a reddish beard, twinkly blue eyes and an impish sense of humour, greets Anthony and tells him what to expect. He asks Anthony to remove his watch, his necklace and a high school ring, labelled KEEPER. Does Anthony have any metal in his body? Any piercings? Not this clean-cut, soccer-playing Mormon. Giedd tapes a vitamin E capsule onto Anthony’s left cheek and one in each ear. He explains that the oil-filled capsules are opaque to the scanner and will define a plane on the images, as well as help researchers tell left from right. The scanning will take about 15 minutes, during which Anthony must lie completely still. Dressed in a red sweatshirt, jeans and white K-Swiss sneakers, he stretches out on the examining table and slides his head into the machine’s giant magnetic ring.

MRI, Giedd points out, “made studying healthy kids possible” because there’s no radiation involved. (Before MRI, brain development was studied mostly by using cadavers.) Each of the Mann boys will be scanned three times. The first scan is a quick survey that lasts one minute. The second lasts two minutes and looks for any damage or abnormality. The third is 10 minutes long and taken at maximum resolution. It’s the money shot. Giedd watches as Anthony’s brain appears in cross section on a computer screen. The machine scans 124 slices, each as thin as a dime. It will take 20 hours of computer time to process the images, but the analysis is done by humans, says Giedd. “The human brain is still the best at pattern recognition,” he marvels.

Some people get nervous as the MRI machine clangs noisily. Claustrophobes panic. Anthony, lying still in the soul of the machine, simply falls asleep.

CONSTRUCTION AHEADOne reason scientists have been surprised by the ferment in the teenage brain is that the brain grows very little over the course of childhood. By the time a child is 6, it is 90% to 95% of its adult size. As a matter of fact, we are born equipped with most of the neurons our brain will ever have—and that’s fewer than we have in utero. Humans achieve their maximum brain-cell density between the third and sixth month of gestation—the culmination of an explosive period of prenatal neural growth. During the final months before birth, our brains undergo a dramatic pruning in which unnecessary brain cells are eliminated. Many neuroscientists now believe that autism is the result of insufficient or abnormal prenatal pruning.

What Giedd’s long-term studies have documented is that there is a second wave of proliferation and pruning that occurs later in childhood and that the final, critical part of this second wave, affecting some of our highest mental functions, occurs in the late teens. Unlike the prenatal changes, this neural waxing and waning alters not the number of nerve cells but the number of connections, or synapses, between them. When a child is between the ages of 6 and 12, the neurons grow bushier, each making dozens of connections to other neurons and creating new pathways for nerve signals. The thickening of all this grey matter—the neurons and their branchlike dendrites—peaks when girls are about 11 and boys 12 1/2, at which point a serious round of pruning is under way. Grey matter is

thinned out at a rate of about 0.7% a year, tapering off in the early 20s. At the same time, the brain’s white matter thickens. The white matter is composed of fatty myelin sheaths that encase axons and, like insulation on a wire, make nerve-signal transmissions faster and more efficient. With each passing year (maybe even up to age 40) myelin sheaths thicken, much like tree rings. During adolescence, says Giedd, summing up the process, “you get fewer but faster connections in the brain.” The brain becomes a more efficient machine, but there is a trade-off: it is probably losing some of its raw potential for learning and its ability to recover from trauma.

Most scientists believe that the pruning is guided both by genetics and by a use-it-or-lose-it principle. Nobel prize-winning neuroscientist Gerald Edelman has described that process as “neural Darwinism”—survival of the fittest (or most used) synapses. How you spend your time may be critical. Research shows, for instance, that practicing piano quickly thickens neurons in the brain regions that control the fingers. Studies of London cab drivers, who must memorize all the city’s streets, show that they have an unusually large hippocampus, a structure involved in memory. Giedd’s research suggests that the cerebellum, an area that coordinates both physical and mental activities, is particularly responsive to experience, but he warns that it’s too soon to know just what drives the build up and pruning phases. He’s hoping his studies of twins will help answer such questions: “We’re looking at what they eat, how they spend their time—is it video games or sports? Now the fun begins,” he says.

No matter how a particular brain turns out, its development proceeds in stages, generally from back to front. Some of the brain regions that reach maturity earliest—through proliferation and pruning—are those in the back of the brain that mediate direct contact with the environment by controlling such

sensory functions as vision, hearing, touch and spatial processing. Next are areas that coordinate those functions: the part of the brain that helps you know where the light switch is in your bathroom even if you can’t see it in the middle of the night. The very last part of the brain to be pruned and shaped to its adult dimensions is the prefrontal cortex, home of the so-called executive functions—planning, setting priorities, organizing thoughts, suppressing impulses, weighing the consequences of one’s actions. In other words, the final part of the brain to grow up is the part capable of deciding, I’ll finish my homework and take out the garbage, and then I’ll IM my friends about seeing a movie.

“Scientists and the general public had attributed the bad decisions teens make to hormonal changes,” says Elizabeth Sowell, a UCLA neuroscientist who has done seminal MRI work on the developing brain. “But once we started mapping where and when the brain changes were happening, we could say, Aha, the part of the brain that makes teenagers more responsible is not finished maturing yet.”

RAGING HORMONESHormones, however, remain an important part of the teen-brain story. Right about the time the brain switches from proliferating to pruning, the body comes under the hormonal assault of puberty. (Research suggests that the two events are not closely linked because brain development proceeds on schedule even when a child experiences early or late puberty.) For years, psychologists attributed the intense, combustible emotions and unpredictable behaviour of teens to this biochemical onslaught. And new research adds fresh support. At puberty, the ovaries and testes begin to pour estrogen and testosterone into the bloodstream, spurring the development of the reproductive system, causing hair to sprout in the armpits and groin, wreaking havoc with the skin, and shaping the body to its adult contours. At the same time, testosterone-like hormones released by the adrenal glands, located near the kidneys, begin to circulate. Recent discoveries show that these adrenal sex

hormones are extremely active in the brain, attaching to receptors everywhere and exerting a direct influence on serotonin and other neurochemicals that regulate mood and excitability.

The sex hormones are especially active in the brain’s emotional centre—the limbic system. This creates a “tinderbox of emotions,” says Dr. Ronald Dahl, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh.

Not only do feelings reach a flash point more easily, but adolescents tend to seek out situations where they can allow their emotions and passions to run wild. “Adolescents are actively looking for experiences to create intense feelings,” says Dahl. “It’s a very important hint that there is some particular hormone-brain relationship contributing to the appetite for thrills, strong sensations and excitement.” This thrill seeking may have evolved to promote exploration, an eagerness to leave the nest and seek one’s own path and partner. But in a world where fast cars, illicit drugs, gangs and dangerous liaisons beckon, it also puts the teenager at risk.

That is especially so because the brain regions that put the brakes on risky, impulsive behaviour are still under construction. “The parts of the brain responsible for things like sensation seeking are getting turned on in big ways around the time of puberty,” says Temple University psychologist Laurence Steinberg. “But the parts for exercising judgment are still maturing throughout the course of adolescence. So you’ve got this time gap between when things impel kids toward taking risks early in adolescence, and when things that allow people to think before they act come online. It’s like turning on the engine of a car without a skilled driver at the wheel.”

DUMB DECISIONSIncreasingly, psychologists like Steinberg are trying to connect the familiar patterns of adolescents’ wacky behaviour to the new findings about their evolving brain structure. It’s not always easy to do. “In all likelihood, the behaviour is changing because the brain is changing,” he says. “But that is still a bit of a leap.” A critical tool in making that leap is functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). While ordinary MRI reveals brain structure, fMRI actually shows brain activity while subjects are doing assigned tasks.

At McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., Harvard neuropsychologist Deborah Yurgelun-Todd did an elegant series of FMRI experiments in which both kids and adults were asked to identity the emotions displayed in photographs of faces. “In doing these tasks,” she says, “kids and young adolescents rely heavily on the amygdala, a structure in the temporal lobes associated with emotional and gut reactions. Adults rely less on the amygdala and more on the frontal lobe, a region associated with planning and judgment.” While adults make few errors in assessing the photos, kids under 14 tend to make mistakes. In particular, they identify fearful expressions as angry, confused or sad. By following the same kids year after year, Yurgelun-Todd has been able to watch their brain-activity pattern—and their judgment—mature. Fledgling physiology, she believes, may explain why adolescents so frequently misread emotional signals, seeing anger and hostility where none exists. Teenage ranting (“That teacher hates me!”) can be better understood in this light.

At Temple University, Steinberg has been studying another kind of judgment: risk assessment. In an experiment using a driving-simulation game, he studies teens and adults as they decide whether to run a yellow light. Both sets of subjects, he found, make safe choices when playing alone. But in group play, teenagers start to take more risks in the presence of their friends, while those over age 20 don’t show much change in their behaviour. “With this manipulation,” says

Steinberg, “we’ve shown that age differences in decision making and judgment may appear under conditions that are emotionally arousing or have high social impact.” Most teen crimes, he says, are committed by kids in packs.

Other researchers are exploring how the adolescent propensity for uninhibited risk taking propels teens to experiment with drugs and alcohol. Traditionally, psychologists have attributed this

experimentation to peer pressure, teenagers’ attraction to novelty and their roaring interest in loosening sexual inhibitions. But researchers have raised the possibility that rapid changes in dopamine-rich areas of the brain may be an additional factor in making teens vulnerable to the stimulating and addictive effects of drugs and alcohol. Dopamine, the brain chemical involved in motivation and in reinforcing behaviour, is particularly abundant and active in the teen years.

Why is it so hard to get a teenager off the couch and working on that all important college essay? You might blame it on their immature nucleus accumbens, a region in the frontal cortex that directs motivation to seek rewards. James Bjork at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism has been using fMRI to study motivation in a challenging gambling game. He found that teenagers have less activity in this region than adults do. “If adolescents have a motivational deficit, it may mean that they are prone to engaging in behaviours that have either a really high excitement factor or a really low effort factor, or a combination of both.” Sound familiar? Bjork believes his work may hold valuable lessons for parents and society. “When presenting suggestions, anything parents can do to emphasize more immediate payoff will be more effective,” he says. To persuade a teen to quit drinking, for example, he suggests stressing something immediate and tangible—the danger of getting kicked off the football team, say—rather than a future on skid row.

Persuading a teenager to go to bed and get up on a reasonable schedule is another matter entirely. This kind of decision-making has less to do with the frontal lobe than with the pineal gland at the base of the brain. As night time approaches and daylight recedes, the pineal gland produces melatonin, a chemical that signals the body to begin shutting down for sleep. Studies by Mary Carskadon at Brown University have shown that it takes longer for melatonin levels to rise in teenagers than in younger kids or in adults, regardless of exposure to light or stimulating activities. “The brain’s program for starting night time is later,” she explains.

PRUNING PROBLEMSThe new discoveries about teenage brain development have prompted all sorts of questions and theories about the timing of childhood mental illness and cognitive disorders. Some scientists now believe that ADHD and Tourette’s syndrome, which typically appear by the time a child reaches age

7, may be related to the brain proliferation period. Though both disorders have genetic roots, the rapid growth of brain tissue in early childhood, especially in regions rich in dopamine, “may set the stage for the increase in motor activities and tics,” says Dr. Martin Teicher, director of developmental biopsychiatry research at McLean Hospital. “When it starts to prune in adolescence, you often see symptoms recede.”

Schizophrenia, on the other hand, makes its appearance at about the time the prefrontal cortex is getting pruned. “Many people have speculated that schizophrenia may be due to an abnormality in the pruning process,” says Teicher. “Another hypothesis is that schizophrenia has a much earlier, prenatal origin, but as the brain prunes, it gets unmasked.” MRI studies have shown that while the average teenager loses about 15% of his cortical grey matter, those who develop schizophrenia lose as much as 25%.

WHAT’S A PARENT TO DO?Brain scientists tend to be reluctant to make the leap from the laboratory to real-life, hard-core teenagers. Some feel a little burned by the way earlier neurological discoveries resulted in Baby Einstein tapes and other marketing schemes that misapplied their science. It is clear, however, that there are implications in the new research for parents, educators and lawmakers.

In light of what has been learned, it seems almost arbitrary that our society has decided that a young American is ready to drive a car at 16, to vote and serve in the Army at 18 and to drink alcohol at 21. Giedd says the best estimate for when the brain is truly mature is 25, the age at which you can rent a

car. “Avis must have some pretty sophisticated neuroscientists,” he jokes. Now that we have scientific evidence that the adolescent brain is not quite up to scratch, some legal scholars and child advocates argue that minors should never be tried as adults and should be spared the death penalty. Last year, in an official statement that summarized current research on the adolescent brain, the American Bar Association urged all state legislatures to ban the death penalty for juveniles. “For social and biological reasons,” it read, “teens have increased difficulty making mature decisions and understanding the consequences of their actions.”

Most parents, of course, know this instinctively. Still, it’s useful to learn that teenage behaviour is not just a matter of wilful pigheadedness or determination to drive you crazy—though these, too, can be factors. “There’s a debate over how much conscious control kids have,” says Giedd, who has four “teenagers in training” of his own. “You can tell them to shape up or ship out, but making mistakes is part of how the brain optimally grows.” It might be more useful to help them make up for what their brain still lacks by providing structure, organizing their time, guiding them through tough decisions (even when they resist) and applying those time-tested parental virtues: patience and love.

By Claudia WallisWith reporting by Alice Park, New YorkTIME May 10, 2004.

INSIDE AMY’S BRAIN

Chronic fatigue, emotional highs and lows, social pressures, insecurity, poor nutrition, romantic crushes, low impulse control: How does an adolescent get through the school day?

t 6:00 a.m., the radio alarm goes off. Amy opens one eye, looks at the clock and presses the snooze button. At 6:15 a.m., the radio starts to play again. In a stupor, Amy reaches over and again hits the snooze button. At 6:30 a.m. when the alarm goes off again, Amy’s mom is

standing over her. “Up young lady! This is it. You’ll be late for school if you don’t get out of that bed right now!”

AAmy stretches and pulls the covers up beneath her chin. Just as she’s about to snuggle under her blanket, her mom yanks the comforter off and folds it down to the bottom of the bed. Sleepy and chilled, Amy gets out of bed and heads to the warmth of the shower. Play practice until 9:00 the night before kept her up late studying, and then she had to catch up with her friends on the phone.

Six hours of sleep is not enough for the. According to the research, adolescent learners need 9 hours and 15 minutes of sleep each night of (Carskadon,1999). Ever since Amy’s biological clock changed with the onset of puberty, she has found it very difficult to fall asleep before midnight. Unfortunately, her school’s starting time – 7:30 am – requires that she get up at 6:00. Chronic sleep deprivation makes her cranky today.

The shower is soothing and wakes Amy up a bit. She carefully puts on her makeup, fixes her hair, chooses an outfit after some consideration, and heads toward the front door.

“Not so fast!” mom says. “You need to eat something.”

Amy’s mom is right. As the only organ in the body that cannot store energy the brain needs breakfast to jump-start (Wolfe, Burkman and Streng, 2000). But Amy looks at the food on the table and whines, “I can’t eat eggs this early in the morning.” She grabs a piece of toast with jelly, picks up her backpack and heads out the door before her mother can say another word. She barely makes it to the corner in time for the bus. Plopping down in the seat next to her friend, Samantha, she closes her eyes and tries to doze on the way to school.

Sam, however, has other plans. “Amy, the boy in the last row keeps looking up here. He’s really cute. Do you know his name?”

The words “really cute” make Amy open her eyes, sit up straight, and turn around. “That’s J.D. Smith. He just moved into our school. He is “hot!” The girls flash him smiles and chatter for the rest of the ride.

Amy’s first hour class is chemistry. This is Tuesday, so Mr. Porter is lecturing. Amy sighs with relief. She has a chance to catch up on her sleep. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday the class has lab, so she has to stay alert. But today…she is quickly off to dreamland. In fact, a glance around the classroom would reveal many students either sleeping or gazing blankly into space.

Mr. Porter doesn’t notice that his lecture is ineffective. Although he realizes his early morning class is quiet, he likes the fact that these students don’t cause any discipline problems. It’s a nice way to start his day.

Someone needs to explain to Mr. Porter that his first period students need some stimulation to wake them up. At this time of the morning, the adolescent brain is still bathed in the sleep chemical,

melatonin, and some adrenaline would help overcome its effects. Talking to each other about the content of the lecture, role playing, or creating a poster would give the students enough ‘“good stress” to keep them involved in the class.

For second period Amy goes to English class. She is more awake now and enjoys this class’s study of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The students have compared the star-crossed lovers to those in modern books and times. Viewing West Side Story helped them see how cultures affect relationships. Mr. Miller, the English teacher, knows that his adolescent students respond to emotion and novelty.

As a result of the sex hormones that are flooding their limbic system – the brains emotional centre – adolescents experience intense feelings and seek out situations in which they can express their emotions (Wallis, 2004). The frontal lobe of the brain – the part that contributes the judgment, organization, and planning that constrain our emotional impulses – is the last area to mature and is not functioning at full capacity in most adolescent learners. Adults must act as the frontal lobe for these students (Giedd, 2002) as Mr. Miller does when he allows them to engage emotionally with the content he teaches, but within the parameters he has established.

Physical education is Amy’s next stop. She notices that her agility is improving. She is refining her skills in dancing and in most of the sports. Amy doesn’t realize that the parietal lobe of her brain is maturing. Because this lobe affects movement and spatial awareness, most adolescents find that their skills in these areas are expanding (Feinstein, 2004).

This week, the class plays volleyball. Amy loves to spike the ball across the net. She is pleased when she sees Gina on the opposing team. Gina is dating Amy’s old boyfriend, and Amy hates her. She lets her limbic system and her intense emotions take over as she spikes the ball into Gina’s face. It looks like an honest mistake. Amy apologizes. Gina accepts - but both girls know that Amy was trying to get even. When Amy’s frontal lobe is better developed, she will be able to control outbursts like this one.

Physical activity is very good for Amy’s cerebellum, the structure in the back of the brain that co-ordinates movement. Recent research suggests that the cerebellum also co-ordinates cognitive thought processes and that the more physical exercise adolescents get, the better their brains will process information (Giedd, 2002). By encouraging physical activity and intramurals in P.E. class, Amy's school helps its students build important connections in their cerebellums. Academic classrooms should also include movement to activate and strengthen this important brain structure.

Amy now heads for her second year Spanish class, conducted entirely in Spanish. Amy would have founded it difficult to speak Spanish during the whole class, but now it seems easier for her to memorize the vocabulary and connect with words to objects.

As the adolescent brain develops, memory abilities increase in the frontal lobe. The temporal lobe at the sides of the head above the ears is also maturing resulting in better communication skills Feinstein, 2004). This is an excellent time in students’ development for teachers to encourage communication activities, such as debates, reader’s theatre, and oral presentations. Because some adolescents are further along in the communication process than others, educators need to take time to clarify student’s questions and concerns to ensure that all students understand expectations.Finally, it’s lunchtime! Amy is famished. During adolescence, the female brain secretes chemicals to make her hungrier in an attempt to prepare the body for childbearing (Brownless, 1999). Wide hips are desirable for this process. But wide hips are not what Amy wants. She must fight off the urge to overindulge. Her friend Tonya, who gains weight much more easily, has an even harder struggle. Tonya sits at the cafeteria table watching others consume sandwiches and pasta, while she only lets

herself munch on vegetables and salads. She is frequently hungry and finds it hard to concentrate in class.

Amy and Tonya sit at the table reserved for the “fringe” group - girls who sometimes get to hang out with the popular girls but sometimes don’t. As Amy looks over the cafeteria, she can see the cliques that compose the high school scene (Giannetti and Sagarese, 2001). The Loners sit separated from any group, rarely making eye contact. The Friendship Circles - small groups of girls who are close friends – sit in the middle of the room. They don’t seem to care that they are not popular. Amy doesn’t “get” them. The fringe group sits as close as possible to the popular group, but still not close enough.

Today Amy wants to check out the new boy, so she grabs a bag of chips and a diet soda. So far today she has eaten only carbohydrates. This may cause some afternoon problems as the chemical serotonin is released and makes her mellow. J.D. is at the other end of the cafeteria. Amy walks past him twice hoping that he will notice her, but he seemed to be entirely involved with some friends and his lunch. Amy worries that she’s not pretty or popular enough to attract boys, and she heads for the restroom to comb her hair and fix her makeup.

Social skills and emotional literacy are still developing at this time of life. Putting students in mixed-sex and mixed social groups for academic networking and projects may help them find common ground. Teachers who provide adolescents with the opportunity tom see the value in their own contributions as well as the contributions of others will be providing a lifelong and brain-changing learning experience.

During fifth period, Amy has study hall. The carbs she has consumed are triggering the release of the chemical serotonin, which makes her feel mellow and sleepy (Goldman, Katz and Berger, 1999). Instead of finishing her history homework for next period, she puts her head on her desk and drifts off. It seems like only seconds later when the bell rings signalling the end of the period. Amy’s heart pounds as she grabs her books. She starts to worry about the other students in her history class might make fun of her for not doing her homework, and tears come to her eyes. This emotional reaction is common for Amy these days.

Amy has a stroke of luck today. Miss Reed has gone home ill. The study hall teacher is taking over the class. Homework is not collected, and the substitute teacher gives the students study time instead of collecting the homework. Although still groggy, Amy is determined to finish her history homework for tomorrow. But Tonya and Samantha are in her history class, and they move next to Amy. “I’m going to have a sleep-over this weekend. Who should I invite?” Tonya asks.“I have to finish my history homework,” Amy says as she continues to write.“I think we should see if the boys can sneak over to your house after your parents are asleep!” Sam suggests.

Amy stops her work, turns to her friends, and joins them in planning the weekend. If Amy’s frontal lobes were more developed, she probably would have been able to continue with her work and reminded herself that she could talk with her friends later. Instead, she displays the poor decision making that is commonplace amongst adolescents (Wallis, 2004).

Amy’s last class of the day is math, one of her favourite subjects and she is still tired. Mrs. Meyers knows how to engage her students and keep them focused. Today she uses problem-based learning. She tells students to work in small groups and figure out what their annual income must be to afford the car of their dreams. Mrs. Meyers appeals to the adolescents with a novel assignment, allows them to work together, and gives them choices. The class quickly gets to work.

The last bell of the day surprises the busy students. Amy runs to the bus to meet Sam and Tonya. She is wide-awake for the trip home. But she knows that when she gets there, she must grab a quick

bite and then go back to school for another play practice. He is amazed how easily she learns her lines. In fact, she has memorized almost everyone’s lines. It’s so much easier than schoolwork!

Amy doesn’t realize that the movement involved in the play helps her remember. Repeating the lines along with the movement creates another cue or trigger for the memory – much like it did in her toddler days of playing pat-a-cake and repeating the rhyme that goes with the action (Sprenger, 1999). In addition, the play’s strong story line sparks the emotional responses that help adolescents focus and learn.

Home from play practice at 9.00pm again, Amy ploughs through her homework and then writes in her journal before she goes to bed. Mr. Miller and Mrs. Meyers are the coolest teachers I’ve ever had. Amy doesn’t realize that their “coolness” reflects their understanding of how to teach adolescents. I think I’m in love with J.D. Amy’s limbic system, responding to a floods of hormones, creates intense feelings of well-being, unfiltered by the more tempered judgment she might develop when she is older. Even though I am looking forward to Tonya’s sleepover this weekend, I can’t wait for school tomorrow. My homework is finished; I get to find out more about Romeo, I get to work on my math project, and I get to see J.D. But Mr. Porter isn’t lecturing, so I have to be awake for first period. I hope I can fall sleep soon.

References:

Brownless, S. (1999, Aug. 9) Inside the teen brain. U.S. News and world Report, p.44Carscadon, M. (1999). When worlds collide: Adolescent need for sleep versus societal demands. In

K. Wahlstrom (Ed), Adolescent sleep needs and school starting times. Bloomington, IN: Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation.

Feinstein, S. (2004). Secrets of a teenage brain. San Diego, CA: The Brain Store.Giannetti, C., and Sagarese, M. (2001). Cliques. New York: Broadway Books.Giedd, J. (200). Frontline: Inside the teenage brain [Videotape]. Boston: PBS.Goldman, R., Klatz, R., and Berger, L. (1999). Brain fitness. New York: DoubledaySprenger, M. (1999) Learning and memory: the brain in action. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.Wallis, C. (2004). What makes teens tick. Time, 163 (19), 56-65. #Wolfe, P., Burkman, M., and Sprenger, K. (2000) The science of nutrition. Educational Leadership, 57

(6), 54-59.

# This article is attached to your current edition of JUNK MAIL.

Inside Amy’s Brain first appeared in Educational Leadership, April 2005.

The author kindly granted Massey High School permission to reproduce the article in JUNK MAIL.