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The Smithsonian Folkways is an organization that is part of the Smithsonian museum in Washington D.C. and its website is a collection of music of all genres across the globe. The focus of the website is on education and creating convenient access to music of different cultures.Also providing many lesson plans that tie into specific genres or cultures of music. It is a gateway into non-western music that is mostly only used in the classroom.

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Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution, the national museum of the United States. We are dedicated to supporting cultural diversity and increased understanding among peoples through the documentation, preservation, and dissemination of sound.

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This online platform will be used by both my future students and myself. It is a great study tool for students, and a great way to quiz students with the ongoing information we will be learning.

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Quizizz | Free Online Quizzes, Lessons, Activities and Homework

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Motivate every student to mastery with easy-to-customize content plus tools for inclusive assessment, instruction, and practice. Engage students with Quizizz today!

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The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST. The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.

UDL Rising to Equity

Because the UDL Guidelines are meant to be informed by feedback from the field as well as new research, they have been updated several times in the past. We are in the process of updating the Guidelines once again in our UDL Rising to Equity initiative.

This update will focus specifically on addressing systemic barriers that result in inequitable learning opportunities and outcomes. CAST aims to develop a transparent, inclusive, and community-driven process. If you are interested in collaborating and staying updated on our progress, we invite you to complete a brief survey. Do you use social media? Join the conversation happening now in the #UDLrising hashtag.
Meet the UDL Rising to Equity Advisory Board Meet the UDL Rising to Equity Stakeholder Council

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The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST.

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An article on how biology can affect our culture and learning in classrooms.

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When an American thinks about whether he is honest, his brain activity looks very different than when he thinks about whether another person is honest, even a close relative. That's not true for Chinese people. When a Chinese man evaluates whether he is honest, his brain activity looks almost identical to when he is thinking about whether his mother is honest.

That finding - that American and Chinese brains function differently when considering traits of themselves versus traits of others ( Neuroimage, Vol. 34, No. 3) - supports behavioral studies that have found that people from collectivist cultures, such as China, think of themselves as deeply connected to other people in their lives, while Americans adhere to a strong sense of individuality.

The study also shows the power of cultural neuroscience, the growing field that uses brain-imaging technology to deepen the understanding of how environment and beliefs can shape mental function. Barely heard of just five years ago, the field has become a vibrant area of research, and the University of Michigan, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Emory University have created cultural neuroscience centers. In addition, in April a cultural neuroscience meeting at the University of Michigan attracted such psychology luminaries as Hazel Markus, PhD, Michael Posner, PhD, Steve Suomi, PhD, and Claude Steele, PhD, to discuss their work in the context of cultural neuroscience.

The field has made headlines that include, "Chinese, English speakers do math differently," from MSNBC about a study by Yiyuan Tang of Dalian University of Technology in Dalian, China, which found that Chinese natives make use of different parts of the brain than Americans do to process numbers. Another headline article in USA Today, "Eastern 'collectivist' culture may buffer against depression" found that people from East Asian cultures are more likely to have a gene that buffers them from depression than people from Western cultures, as discovered by Northwestern University psychologist Joan Chiao, PhD.

Findings like these demonstrate that neuroscience can measure cultural differences. But such results also corroborate the behavioral work of cultural psychology. As the field matures, it may even change the way we think about brain development.

"Cultural neuroscience gives us a window into how much the brain can be changed by the environment," says University of Texas at Dallas psychologist Denise C. Park, PhD, who has conducted several cultural neuroscience studies. "It will deepen our understanding of how environment and beliefs can shape cognitive function."

Culture shapes biology

Tufts University psychologist Nalini Ambady, PhD, is one of the field's pioneers. Her work has found that even as people perceive the same stimulus, their brains may activate differently.

For example, in a study headed by her graduate student Jonathan Freeman and published last year in Neuroimage (Vol. 47, No. 1), the researchers used fMRI to measure brain activity in American and Japanese study participants when they viewed silhouettes of bodies in postures considered "dominant" - standing tall, arms crossed, for example - and "submissive" - head and arms hanging down, for instance.

Ambady's group based the study on historical data showing that East-Asian cultures value submissiveness, while Western cultures value dominance. In fact, they found, they could see this cultural distinction in the way the brain responds to visual input. When Americans viewed dominant silhouettes, but not submissive ones, reward circuitry fired in the brain's limbic system. The opposite happened among Japanese participants; their reward circuitry fired in response to submissive, but not dominant, silhouettes.

In addition, the magnitude of the brain's response to the images correlated precisely with self-reports of how much participants valued dominance and submissiveness, says Ambady. The more a participant supported sentences stating that it's good to be in control, the stronger the reward circuitry fired when he or she viewed a dominant posture.

"We see that what the brain finds rewarding reflects the values of the dominant culture," says Ambady. "People can see the same stimulus but have completely different neural responses."

Park and her colleagues find that cultures may actually see the world differently and that scientists can pick up this difference with brain imaging. In a 2010 study published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neurosc ience, they used fMRI to examine brain activity while American and native Chinese participants processed a series of visual scenes. The scenes consisted of a central object superimposed onto either a congruent - giraffe on a savanna - or incongruent - giraffe on a football field - background.

Using an analysis of the imaging data they developed in those earlier studies, the researchers showed that Chinese participants' perceptual areas of the brain responded more to objects superimposed on incongruent scenes than objects matching their surroundings. This was not the case for Americans, who didn't appear to be affected by the background at all.

These findings support the idea that native Chinese, as opposed to Americans, are more sensitive to the context in which an object is embedded, and so focus greater attention on that object when it's in an inconsistent context, says Park. Most recently, a study by Park's group, in press in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience demonstrated that Westerners process human faces more actively than East Asians, consistent with the Western focus on individuality.

In effect, she adds, East Asians and Americans literally see things differently - and that finding could have major implications for models of cross-cultural communication.

Seeing things differently may also affect how easily different cultures perform cognitive tasks, even when they use the same brain circuitry. Such research may someday shed light on why some cultures appear more skilled at certain real-life cognitive problems than others, but right now researchers are looking at very simple tasks. For example, behavioral work by University of Michigan psychologist Shinobu Kitayama, PhD, and his colleagues showed that people from Japan are far better at judging the length of a line relative to the size of a box in which it's drawn, while Americans are far better at judging the absolute length of the same line. They attribute this difference to findings from other studies showing that Americans pay more attention to details and Asians pay more attention to context.

Last year, Stanford University postdoc Trey Hedden, PhD, and his colleagues used fMRI to re-examine these findings. Like Kitayama, they used the framed-line task: Participants see a square with a line drawn partway down the middle. They then see a larger box and either have to draw a line the same absolute length as the first line or a line the same relative length compared with the bigger size of the new box.

Again, Americans did better on the absolute test and Japanese did better on the relative test, but this time the researchers could see what was happening in their brains. It turns out that both Americans and Japanese use the same brain areas for both tests, but when they're doing the test that is more difficult for them, they also engage an area of the brain associated with increased attention.

"This finding shows that the brain compensates for tasks that we're not typically exposed to through our culture by turning on an attention circuit to help us," says Kitayama. In contrast, tasks that are commonplace become automatic and don't require extra concentration.

Biology shapes culture

While cultural neuroscience has mostly shown how culture shapes biology, researchers are also beginning to examine how biology shapes culture.

Northwestern University's Joan Chiao, PhD, for example, has found that people who live in collectivist cultures are more likely than those in individualistic cultures to have a form of the serotonin transporter gene - the S-allele - that correlates with higher rates of negative affect, anxiety and depression.

In contrast to what you might expect from the genes alone, she also found that people from collectivist societies are less likely to be depressed. This suggests that collectivism, which tends to produce lower levels of negative affect, may have co-evolved with the S-allele, says Chiao, who published her findings in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Biological Science (Vol. 277, No. 1,681). In other words, she explains, societies of people with the S-allele developed a collectivist culture that reduced stress and, therefore, risk of depression by emphasizing social harmony and social support.

"Culture may make us rethink the role of this serotonin transporter physiology," says University of Michigan neuroscientist Israel Liberzon, MD. "If it's very common in East Asian groups, but the prevalence of depression is not higher, it somehow interacts with their lives differently."

Developing standards

While such neuroscience findings are great headline fodder, the field must move forward with rigor and caution, says Stanford University's Markus, who is a pioneer of cultural psychology. It's not enough, she says, simply to scan the brains of people from different "cultures" - defined by language, nationality or ethnicity - and make assumptions about cognitive or perceptual differences. By themselves, these are meaningless categories, she adds.

"To make progress in our understanding of how cultures shape brains and brains shape culture," she says, "we need to know what psychological and behavioral tendencies are associated with these social categories and how these tendencies are linked to brain function."

Chiao learned this lesson while conducting an fMRI study, published last year in Human Brain Mapping (Vol. 30, No. 9). The study looked at activity in the brain's medial prefrontal cortex - an area associated with a sense of self - while people from Japan and the United States assessed whether self-descriptive phrases applied to them. The researchers sought to find a biological explanation for past research showing that people from collectivist cultures relate more strongly to contextual self-descriptions, such as "When I'm with my mother, I'm honest." People from already defined individualistic cultures relate more strongly to general self-descriptions such as "I'm honest."

When Chiao and her colleagues compared participants along ethnic lines, they saw no difference in brain activity. Differences appeared only after they grouped people based on how strongly they valued collectivism or individualism: Regardless of ethnicity, the medial prefrontal cortex was most active when individualists read general self-descriptions and when collectivists read contextual self-descriptions.

This work demonstrates how variable cultural values can be, even within cultural groups, as people filter information from their environment and form their own self-concepts, says Chiao.

That's why University of California, Los Angeles, graduate student Elizabeth Losin and colleagues include the need to carefully define culture among eight guidelines for cultural neuroscience research they lay out in a paper published this year in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (Vol. 5, No. 2-3). They also suggest guidelines on the need to match study participants on how long they've been immersed in the culture under study; to ensure that study materials are culturally appropriate; and to consider potential genetic variation within a cultural group that might account for differences in brain development.

In the end, cultural neuroscience could usher in an era of greater understanding between people from different cultures.

"My greatest hope is that it has implications for negotiations between countries; that people on both sides understand that they might not be talking about the same thing even if they're looking at the same thing," says Park.
Beth Azar is a writer in Portland, Ore.

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culture's influence on brain development

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When an American thinks about whether he is honest, his brain activity looks very different than when he thinks about whether another person is honest, even a close relative. That's not true for Chinese people. When a Chinese man evaluates whether he is honest, his brain activity looks almost identical to when he is thinking about whether his mother is honest.

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A resource that gives more context about a child's brain development is affected by trauma.  It is a very big part of educational psychology and a resource to refer back to when assessing how to approach trauma in a classroom while teaching.

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How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime | Nadine Burke Harris | TED

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An article that talks about how different studies have shown that brain activity in subjects vary in cultures and shows that performing the same tasks can be different from person to person.

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An interactive learning website that can be used during online class sessions or in-person classrooms settings!

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Pear Deck is on a mission to help teachers create powerful learning moments for every student, every day - using the tools you already know and love.

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Easy and fun way for a discussion post and responses for class!

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Flip is a video discussion and sharing app, free from Microsoft.

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Flip (formerly Flipgrid) is a video discussion and video sharing app, free from Microsoft, built for classrooms and beyond. Learn more.

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This resource is used for effective students' practice sessions, useful practice tools, and effortless communication between instructor and student for assignments and recordings.

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Power Your Potential with MakeMusic Cloud - MakeMusic

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Our music education software frees up teachers to focus more on their student’s progress. Packed with an ever-growing music catalog, dynamic practice tools, and vetted resources to help you and your students thrive. Discover how MakeMusic Cloud can transform your music education experience.

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Reflective teaching is valuable in any classroom and helps teachers not only improve as professionals, but also in their relationships with students. It is something to implement regularly into everyday teaching.

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Reflective teaching involves using reflection techniques to convey, analyse, and deliver information, in the goal of generating feedback. The reflection process is a part of a cycle that should be continuous if you strive to achieve positive results. Learn more about reflective teaching on our site in this article.

What are the benefits of reflective teaching? Reflective teaching has benefits for teachers and students alike. Teachers can use reflective teaching techniques to improve their teaching methodologies. Reflective practice can consist of teaching instruction, conducting self-assessments, considering improvements, while problem solving and developing analytical skills.

Over time, experience in this area will help you in developing a critical eye for troubleshooting. Naturally, this practice can also benefit the students' experience by improving their critical thinking skills, heightening their motivation and boosting their overall performance levels.

In this article we will contemplate reflective teaching and its benefits for teachers and students alike. If you are a teacher, tutor, lecturer, or teaching assistant (TA) who wants to improve their performance or liven up a class session, this article is for you. Getting started is rather easy: you only need to show some level of commitment and willingness to engage your mind, analyse previous sessions and look for ways to improve on your weak points. Let's get started.

Benefits of Reflective Teaching For Teachers

Teachers benefit from reflective teaching practices in a variety of ways. A major part of this practice includes planning your sessions, analyzing, and improving your previous sessions to improve your delivery techniques and develop a better understanding of your topics and yourself, as a teacher. If you are looking to improve your teaching experience, reflective practices have a lot to offer.

1. Professional Growth

Reflective teaching can help to promote your professional growth. By carrying out an extensive inner thought process, you can have a much better understanding of your strengths and weaknesses. Studies such as this article entitled Reflective Practices: A Means to Teacher Development (2017), demonstrates that reflective teaching helps to facilitate professional growth. You can start by practising simple reflective practices such as preparing and then analyzing your class sessions. By noting down your goals and the results, you can use the information to adjust your teaching routine, modify teaching techniques and improve your strategies when addressing the class.

Reflective teaching really does help and the benefits are both in terms of short-term and long-term. Simply begin with a reflective journal and write down your thoughts after each session. Recording certain activities or your sessions through video can also be an awesome idea, but this might cost you a bit more in terms of time and investment.

2. Enhance Innovation

Reflective teaching is not a complicated practise. As an organised teacher, you normally prepare and keep track of your lessons, right? Or perhaps those lessons were prepared for you? Lucky you! After you have taught your lesson, take a few minutes to assess your teaching. Do this the very same day, since your feelings and memories will be fresh. Be sure to note down the positive experiences, along with the more challenging ones. Later on, you can take the time to find ways to improve those problem areas.

You can also use reflective teaching methods to search for innovations on how to improve your teaching methods. Reflective teaching and innovation fully complement each other. For instance, if you notice that your students' interest is waning, perhaps you can use screen projectors, online platforms, and web applications to improve your delivery and capture their interest. You could also use the same methods to administer tests and evaluations.

A major component of reflective teaching is based on needs assessments. Recognizing that your methods are perhaps falling short is an important part of the process. Research and networking will help you to keep up with new and innovative teaching techniques, while expanding your professional network with new colleagues across the globe. You can do this by joining and learning from dedicated forums like the one our our site.

3. Facilitate Teaching

Teaching can be quite a challenge. It can be challenging to plan lessons, teach classes and then manage and assess your students' progression. Successful teachers strive to learn all of their student's names, while creating a safe and secure classroom setting. They also try to ensure that all of the students are following along and keeping in line with the program. Reflective practice will ensure that each student is benefitting from the learning experience. Motivation is the key to a successful learning environment for both the student and the teacher. Engaging your students will improve the overall experience. For instance, if individual participation is a problem, the students may prefer to solve problems in small groups. Reflective teaching techniques can really help you to understand student preferences and make it easier for you to deliver your message.

4. Boost Teacher-Student Relationship

Teachers really value their relationships with their students. If you want to help your students to understand your teaching methods, it is important to cultivate positive individual relationships with your students. Reflective teaching practises really help you to think about each student as an individual learner with unique needs. Employing various reflective teaching strategies can help you to analyze your students' performance, behavior, and needs, while learning more about your students' personalities and traits. Such information can be very beneficial to your overall teaching experience, both in the short and long term. Your students are more likely to perform better if they feel safe and comfortable, and enjoy your teaching sessions. You will find it easier to engage directly with your students and chances are good that you will also really begin to enjoy teaching itself and become more motivated to continue.

5. Make Lessons More Lively and Interesting

A dull class is every teacher's nightmare. You know the feeling and the number of times you look at the clock. To avoid this experience, you can implement some reflective teaching strategies to troubleshoot and liven up your classroom. We all dream of a lively classroom where students actively contribute to the class.

For example, you can start your classes with a "refresher session" and review what was taught in the last lesson. A fun way to do this is in a game show or competition setting. Your students can give their ideas, raise queries, and contribute towards answering your questions. Not only does this jog their memory, but it also makes the class lively, fun, and engaging. Take the time to review the material and assess their knowledge recall. Students are more likely to perform better if they are allowed to actively ask questions, or give feedback on the information they are learning. As a teacher, you also have a unique opportunity to hear about new perspectives from your students.

6. Enhance Problem Solving

Experienced teachers would agree that a major part of teaching includes strong coping skills. Learning to solve problems and meet challenges effectively and efficiently is of the utmost importance. Reflective teaching practices can help you improve your skills in solving problems and challenges. For instance, a teacher can use previous teaching experience (their own, or a colleague's) to search for solutions for students who face learning problems.

The practice allows teachers (and tutors) to devise strategies and map out personalised techniques for their struggling students. By drawing on your knowledge and past experience, you become more resourceful and confident when obstacles arise in the classroom ( source) Reflective teaching encourages you to learn to cope with problems (and not flee them) as you teach. It also incites your creativity and problem-solving skills. As a teacher, this is not only beneficial, but most significantly crucial for intellectual stability and a long, healthy career.

7. Boost Classroom Democracy

Encouraging a democratic environment within your classroom has its benefits. You can interact more freely with your students, raise issues, and deliver knowledge much easier. Democracy within the class environment also makes it easier for your students to open discussions with you or between themselves. Having a democratic environment includes adopting and including the principles of democracy within your classroom. This can include respecting human rights, equality, freedom, while discussing intercultural differences and shared cultural values. As a teacher, this can help you to prepare your students for the outside world and allow them to think critically and interact with more respect for cultural differences both inside and outside the classroom environment.

Benefits of Reflective Learning For Students

Students can also benefit from using reflective practices in their studies. In this context, reflection includes, analyzing, and improving learning acquisition to improve knowledge assimilation, while developing an improved level of understanding of the lessons and topics. Including reflective learning strategies in your lesson plans will benefit students in the following ways:

8. Improve Student Performance

Student performance can be improved by using reflective learning practices. Since individual students can reflect on class sessions, they will identify, and improve on their weaknesses to ameliorate their overall performance in a topic. According toresearch such as The Effects of Student Reflection on Academic Performance and Motivation by Derek Cavilla ( source) students who use reflective practices develop metacognitive skills, which are very important transversal life skills. Reflection can help you to obtain a deeper understanding of a concept or a topic, while reflective practices stimulate your ability to remember difficult topics and formulate solutions, in moments of crisis. Students can use reflective practices to improve their performance in different subjects by using a reflective learning diary to note down key theories, formulas, and lessons. It is also very important to note down areas of difficulty. For teachers, these reflective learning diaries provide valuable insights into what works well and what does not work in your teaching techniques and lessons.

9. Boost Engagement in Class

Students detest dull classes, as much as their teachers do. In the case of a less than inspiring lesson, students can p rovide productive feedback for teachers, by using their reflective learning diary to express their ideas or suggestions. Students are much more likely to understand difficult topics if they are active in their learning process. By providing such important feedback, they feel that they have a say in how they are learning.

For example, it is important to vary the rhythm of the class from week to week. Why not consider using brainstorming sessions or mind maps to recall what was done in a previous lesson. While working in small groups, the students are free to be innovative and creative in their presentation styles. Each student or group can share their ideas, raise queries, and contribute.

In this flipped classroom setting, the roles are reversed and the students become the teachers since they are given the floor to explain what was taught to them. This unexpected turn of events can surprise the students and make the lesson much more interactive and engaging. Active learning is not only about assimilating knowledge and practical theory, it is also about actively assuming one's responsibility in the learning process. Knowledge is power; however sharing your knowledge with others is even more powerful.

10. Develop Critical Thinking and Coping Skills

For students, reflective learning can help improve their skills in solving problems and challenges. Most students face many different challenges in their attempts to learn new concepts, lessons, subjects, etc. Using reflection will improve their problem-solving abilities and stimulate their cognitive thinking and analytical skills.

For instance, when faced with problems or questions related to coursework, students can formulate and note down the issue and then search for creative solutions, such as asking a classmate or friend for assistance or advice. Developing critical thinking and coping skills will greatly benefit their ability to focus and understand their studies. By noting down troublesome areas, they will be more free to learn and concentrate on finding the appropriate solutions. This will definitely have an effect on their performance and confidence levels ( Critical thinking and reflective practice The role of information literacy, Monica Vezzosi, source). Students who wish to improve their critical thinking and problem-solving skills, as well as their creativity levels should strive to adopt reflective practices as part of their study routines.

11. Enhance Student Motivation

Motivation is the motor of our classrooms. It is also very important to students. Students who lack motivation can exhibit poor performance and encounter problems with learning acquisition. This can sometimes lead to absence and erratic behaviour such as overall indifference or skipping a few classes, here and there. For students who lack motivation and investment, reflective learning practices can encourage them to face and overcome their learning issues and problems.

Studies show that reflection can have a direct impact on motivation and performance levels. In using reflective learning techniques to improve student motivation, teachers can improve relations with their students. They can empower their students to take control of the situation by encouraging them to adopt an analytical approach to learning. In critically thinking about their learning process, students are able to better understand themselves, from their personalities, to their limits and behaviour patterns. A motivated student who is successfully learning is more likely to perform better in class. Those who are less motivated may need some assistance in order to take charge and assume more responsibility in the learning process. In this way, reflective learning strategies foster a productive learning environment for the individual learner and class as a whole.

12. Improve Overall Effectiveness

Teachers who encourage students to form learning groups may find the overall experience is much more effective if the students include reflection as part of their routine. Learning groups are effective, since they create peer forums to share thoughts, process new information, and encourage interaction in a controlled learning environment. This type of activity enhances the development of critical thinking and analytical skills.

A good illustration of this is a learning group that meets to discuss previous lessons, generate questions, and hold discussions on relevant topics. Reflective practices can help improve their assimilation and recall capacity, while boosting motivation levels through active group performance, as well as critical thinking skills development ( source). Reflective practices make group discussions much more appealing, interesting, engaging and rewarding. An effective learning group will benefit the entire class and stimulate active investment during the lessons.

Sharing reflective teaching processes with direct colleagues may be intimidating due to social pressures. If you would like to learn methodologies, techniques and best practices from other teachers around the globe, join our reflective teaching forum. On our forum, teachers can share their didactic approaches, ideas, and self reflective processes without fear of judgement from direct colleagues.

Related Questions

What are the benefits of reflective teaching? Reflective teaching offers many benefits for teachers and students alike. As previously mentioned, reflective teaching practices can boost creativity, motivation and critical thinking and the development of metacognitive skills.

Does reflective teaching affect performance? Reflective practices can improve performance for both teachers and students. Teachers can use the techniques to analyse students behaviour and identify potential weaknesses and strengths in their teaching methods. When students provide individual feedback on their learning process, teachers can better understand which methods work and which ones need improvement.

How can students use reflective learning practices in their studies? Reflective learning practices can be very beneficial both to students who are excelling and those who are not. Reflection encourages students to assume responsibility in their learning and this empowers them. Reflection can improve performance, memory, and motivation levels. It can be part of a strategy to engage with classmates and develop fruitful relationships with teachers and classmates.

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12 Benefits of Reflective Teaching and Learning | Reflective Teaching Journal

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Reflective teaching involves using reflection techniques to convey, analyse, and deliver information, in the goal of generating feedback. The reflection process is a part of a cycle that should be continuous if you strive to achieve positive results. Learn more about reflective teaching on our site in this article.

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Core Ed Talks provides information regarding Modern Learning Environments, which involves technology being brought into classrooms and different learning techniques and designs.

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This article outlines some of the effects of screen time on the brains of young children. The research conducted showed that higher screen times were linked to lower brain development. Some information that could be connected to children's way of their behavior and prefered learning techniques.

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mris show screen time linked to lower brain development in preschoolers - cnn

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MRIs show screen time linked to lower brain development in preschoolers

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A new study found the brains of 3- to 5-year-old children who overused screens were not as developed in areas needed for language, writing and cognitive skills.

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A heart-warming documentary displaying a story within the walls of Lucy Laney and together envisioned a year-long project inside the school, to document the lessons inside one of Minnesota's lowest performing schools, on the state's list of failing schools for almost two decades. It shows the perseverance and dedication in the school administration, students, and teachers at Lucy Laney. Administration, students, and teachers go above and beyond to try and raise their test scores from being one of the lowest performing schools in the state.

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How this film began

Love them First: Lessons from Lucy Laney began when KARE 11 reporter Lindsey Seavert and photojournalist Ben Garvin met Lucy Laney principal Mauri Melander Friestleben giving an impassioned speech to the North Minneapolis community after several deadly shootings near the school.

Seavert and Garvin sensed a greater story within the walls of Lucy Laney and together envisioned a year-long project inside the school, to document the lessons inside one of Minnesota's lowest performing schools, on the state's list of failing schools for almost two decades.

Friestleben and the Minneapolis Public School district generously gave Seavert and Garvin permission to proceed with their idea, and thanks to the supportive leadership at KARE 11, Seavert and Garvin became embedded in the school for one year.

As a storytelling team, they gained unprecedented access by slowly building trust in a news series spanning nearly two dozen stories, taking viewers on a journey through the daily joys and challenges in the school.

Friestleben's vulnerability and open heart as the school's leader allowed Seavert and Garvin a window into a world many don't often see. They documented the exceptional resilience of Lucy Laney's student council president as she grappled with her own future when she realized she was placed for adoption. They gave an up close view to the toll of violence in the neighborhood, sharing a principal's sorrow when gunfire ripped through the playground with children outside.

KARE 11 and parent company TEGNA media believed the story outlined in this series could powerfully inspire educators and communities across the country. TEGNA then spearheaded a pilot project to turn the Lucy Laney news series into a documentary film.

Love Them First: Lessons From Lucy Laney Elementary is anchored by Garvin's award-winning photography and Seavert's sensitive storytelling style, and together the storytelling duo captured the purity and force of love transforming the school and its students.

Cast

Mauri Melander Friestleben

Principal
Lucy Laney Elementary School

Mauri Melander Friestleben is a lifelong educator who started her career as a middle school teacher. She served as principal of Lucy Craft Laney at Cleveland Park Community School in North Minneapolis for 8 years. In the 2019-2020 school year, Friestleben accepted a new position as principal of Minneapolis North High School. Many of Friestleben's former Lucy Laney students will eventually attend North High, which has a rich 120 year history as the neighborhood's community school.

Friestleben was a student in North Minneapolis, and says it is an honor to serve as a teacher, an assistant principal, and as a principal in the community where her earliest memories of childhood exist.

She didn't expect to be a teacher. Her dream in life was to cover the stories of the world through print journalism. Becoming a young mom in college at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul changed her focus and a short time later, rather than covering guerilla warfare in Central America, she found herself standing in front of a room full of 6th graders, and surprisingly, came alive with them.

Her years in the classroom overflowed with great challenges and even greater rewards, teaching 5th-8th grades, and she also served as a vice principal at a charter school, a teacher on special assignment and as an assistant to two superintendents. She served as Lucy Laney's Assistant Principal for several years before taking the Principal position in 2012.

In her time at Lucy Laney, under Friestleben's leadership, the school has seen unprecedented academic gains, with four years of growth on the state's standardized tests. Friestleben says there are many commonalities she shares with her students; yet through barriers and strongholds, she stood strongly on her faith and strives to model for her students how odds can be beat, goals can be achieved and perseverance can be rewarded.

Sophia

Fifth Grader
Lucy Laney Elementary School
"You can always find light in the darkest places."
Sophia, age 11 at the time of filming, has attended Lucy Laney elementary since she was in the High Five program at just four years old. She is the school's student council president, and as the school year begins, Sophia faces uncertainty as she learns she will be placed for adoption, along with her two younger brothers, who also attend Lucy Laney.

Lisa Pawelak

Assistant Principal
Lucy Laney Elementary School
"I believe really firmly that where you bloom and you plant roots, plant seeds. The more and more my eyes were opened to the garbage that happens, the racism, the inequities, all those different things. I just knew I couldn't leave."
Lisa Pawelak became Lucy Laney's new principal in the 2019-2020 school year after Mauri Friestleben's departure for North High School. She is originally from Illinois but came to Minnesota to attend college. She has worked in Minneapolis Public Schools as a longtime assistant principal and school social worker.

Pawelak believes compassion is the force that has allowed her to strive for equitable educational standards for her students, and she has witnessed on how cultivating compassion within a school can dismantle the constructs creating achievement gaps.

Morgan McDonald

Student Support Specialist
Lucy Laney Elementary School
"I'm from the streets, honest truth, I've been there. Like no water, I've been there, like no food. Mom on drugs. Shoot outs. I've been on that side of the fence, it's just this side of the fence feels better."
Morgan McDonald is the "first responder" of discipline at Lucy Laney school, handling suspensions and behavioral referrals. McDonald, a native of inner city Chicago, relates to the trauma many of his students face. He credits mentors and coaches with helping him find the right path as a college graduate and is driven to give students the same hope that inspired him to become an educator. McDonald is known for using boxing as a method to help his students diffuse anger.

Edward Davis

Fourth and Fifth Grade Teacher
Lucy Laney Elementary School
"When you come into our classroom, I accept you for everything you bring."
Davis holds a bachelor's degree in therapeutic recreation from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He grew up in inner-city Milwaukee and was the first in his family to attend college.

In 2012, he started working for Minneapolis Public Schools as a special education assistant, where he realized his life's calling to serve students of color. He pursued a teaching license through Minneapolis' Grow Your Own program, a rigorous one-year program to help diversify the district's teaching workforce.

Nashya

Fifth Grader
Lucy Laney Elementary School

Nashya, 11, is a fifth grader at Lucy Laney, and is involved in the Lucy Laney dance troupe. Her mother navigates poverty and access to affordable housing as a single mother to seven children. Nashya briefly faces homelessness in her fifth-grade year, and tries to hold onto her childhood, while the demands of her home life force her to grow up too quickly.

Filmmakers

Lindsey Seavert

Reporter, KARE 11

While Lindsey Seavert is an Emmy and Edward R. Murrow award winning reporter, her greatest successes do not sit on a shelf. She is most proud of unearthing untold stories that encourage understanding and bringing them to light.

Her parents were Minnesota public school teachers who gave her the gift of curiosity, so with a book and pencil often in hand, she began writing as a young child, and hasn't stopped since.

She graduated from Indiana University's Ernie Pyle School of Journalism and worked as a reporter at five news stations stretching from Northern Minnesota, Nevada, and Ohio before coming home to the Twin Cities. She's been a storyteller at KARE 11 since 2012.

The legacy of teaching in her family inspires Lindsey to use stories as a vehicle to educate and serve the community. Her work often focuses on women, families and children, but she is most passionate about bringing a voice to underrepresented communities, which is how she discovered the transformation inside Lucy Craft Laney Elementary school.

When Lindsey is not on assignment, she mentors young journalists, enjoys running, creative writing, and volunteering in the community.

Her greatest rewards are her husband, Ian, and two children. Their son Stellan attends Minneapolis Public Schools, and the couple also has a younger daughter, Phoebe.

Directing and writing a documentary has always been a life's dream, Lindsey dedicates her work to her late father, Larry Seavert. She imagines he is smiling down on this project with pride, as he spent his career fighting for the rights of teachers and opportunities for students.

Love Them First is Lindsey's first documentary as a director.

Ben Garvin

Photojournalist, KARE 11

Ben grew up in Fayetteville, Arkansas, raised by hippy dippy parents who taught him to remain idealistic about a world that's often dark. As an Emmy and Edward R. Murrow award-winning-photojournalist now at KARE11 TV, Garvin was named 2011 Journalist of the Year by the Minnesota Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and photographer of the year by the Minnesota Press Photographers Association in 2007. In 2017 he served as president of the Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists where he helped overturn a ban on photography in state prisons. His work on assignment for the New York Times was included in the paper's Pulitzer Prize-winning story on food poisoning in 2010. In 2012 Garvin published an award-winning photography book called "Ant Farm, Glimpses of Daily Life in Minnesota".

Previously Garvin worked for the Pioneer Press and Star Tribune in Minnesota, the Christian Science Monitor in Boston and the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire where was named three-time New Hampshire Photographer of the Year.

Garvin studied creative writing at the University of Arkansas before earning a BFA in Visual Journalism with a minor in philosophy from the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. He lives in South Minneapolis with his wife Jessica, a cellist and baker, and children Arthur, Lewis, Bailey and Netta. Love Them First is Ben's first documentary as a director.

A Brief Sketch on the Life of Educator, Social Reformer, and Civil Rights Activist

Lucy Craft Laney (1854 - 1933)
"God has nothing to make men and women out of but boys and girls."
With encouragement of the Christ Presbyterian Church and other Augusta civic-minded leaders, Miss Lucy Craft Laney, a native of Macon, Georgia, started a school in Augusta, GA for African American boys and girls in 1886. Miss Laney did not have many resources; but, what she did have was dedication, solid credentials, and a sterling reputation. The abundance of these three qualities would prove to be all this unique woman would need in the challenging Post-Reconstruction Era and early 20th Century.

In 1888, the first class of five (5) students graduated from Miss Laney's School. Among them, Fannin Belcher, M.D., who went on to become medical examiner for colored public schools in Savannah, GA and a civil rights trailblazer. Louisa A. Smythe taught in Augusta's colored public schools until her death. The rapid growth of Miss Laney's School required a bigger facility and more money for the growing enrollment. Armed with a one-way ticket, only a little money, her prayers, and her desire, Miss Laney traveled to Minnesota to tell the Presbyterian Church Convention about her school; hoping, to gain funding, so that the school could expand. Unfortunately, the Convention didn't have adequate funds to commit to Miss Laney; however, she was compassionately provided a return train ticket home. Miss Laney was unsure how she would later proceed. However, as a person of strong spiritual conviction, she knew that her mission was a good one and that her school would continue.

Shortly after her trip to Minnesota, Miss Laney received a letter from Mrs. Francine E.H. Haines, President of the Woman's Department of the Presbyterian Church, USA who had heard her speak at the convention. Mrs. Haines was so impressed with Miss Laney and her mission, that she secured funding for the expansion of the school in the amount of $10,000. In gratitude for such generous philanthropy, the school was renamed Haines Normal and Industrial Institute, a boarding school that eventually offered coursework through the junior college level.

Miss Laney was always forward thinking. She believed that the best way for African Americans to be successful in America was by being well educated. In 1890, she also started the first kindergarten for African American children in Augusta. Lamar School of Nursing, another educational component introduced by Miss Laney in 1892, was the first African-American school for nursing in Augusta.

The Lamar School of Nursing, similarly to Haines Institute, garnered a nationwide reputation and is credited as the oldest nursing school for African Americans in the Southeast. Affected by the winds of integration, under the auspices of University Hospital, Lamar School merged with Barrett School of Nursing in 1965. As an early individual member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in 1917 Miss Laney opened her home for 27 local residents to hold the charter meeting of the Augusta Branch of the NAACP. The chapter was composed of Haines graduates and other influential educators, entrepreneurs, physicians, religious leaders, railroad, and federal employees.

Lucy Craft Laney at Cleveland Park Community School in Minneapolis, MN and Lucy Craft Laney Comprehensive High School in Augusta, GA are two (2) schools in very different parts of the country named for Miss Laney. Many buildings, awards, and civic organizations throughout the United States have also been named in Miss Laney's honor to help preserve her legacy and inspire future generations.

Joyce Law, Program Manager/Historian, Lucy Craft Laney Museum of Black History; Augusta, GA

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About | Love Them First | Lessons from Lucy Laney Elementary

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Love them First: Lessons from Lucy Laney began when KARE 11 reporter Lindsey Seavert and photojournalist Ben Garvin met Lucy Laney principal Mauri Melander Friestleben giving an impassioned speech to the North Minneapolis community after several deadly shootings near the school.