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"If the eye is deprived of the appropriate visual experience at an early stage of development (because of such abnormalities), it loses its ability to transmit visual information into the central nervous system. When the eye that was incapable of seeing at a very early age was corrected later, the correction alone did not help—the afflicted eye still could not see."

This challenges me because I have never heard of this but it makes so much sense. I translate this to a philosophical space, in which anything underused adapts, and if it is underused over an extended period of time, it becomes somewhat fixed. Much like language acquisition has higher potential the more one uses it at an ideal time of development, so too is the eye and seeing.

The best example I can reflect upon as it relates to this chapter and this quote, is my personal challenges with language acquisition. I like to joke that I am half Hispanic so I speak half the amount of Spanish it takes to be fluent. As a child my mother did not teach me Spanish, she simply spoke Spanish phrases with me at times either directly or indirectly. I was able to observe her speak with my grandmother in fluent Spanish. My grandmother did not speak English well and her reading and writing skills in both English and Spanish were extremely limited. My mother would have to interpret a lot for her. Anyway, my mother did not teach me Spanish as a child, and so during my primary years I learned English, with a few Spanish phrases. When I finally had the opportunity to learn Spanish as an adult, it was challenging. When I tried to seek help from my mom, I discovered she could only speak Spanish well, but her reading and writing skills were limited in this language. So she could not help me with grammar, spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, conjugations, or advanced vocabulary. Trying to make sense of the language partially on my own, I found myself studying as an elementary school student learning to read and write. It was eye-opening, and it made me wish my mom taught me Spanish. Her reasons for not teaching me the language is not what I take issue with, it's the social reasons why she chose to not teach me the language. She chose not to teach me so I could blend into whiteness easier. As a woman of color this is a challenge that is real in the Hispanic community. There is a constant push and pull of carrying on our culture, while trying to appeal to the American culture that surrounds us.

Has anyone else had similar challenges with language acquisition?

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"Thus, the gross structure of the cerebral cortex was altered both by exposure to opportunities for learning and by learning in a social context." (p. 119)

The above quotation was one which instantly popped out to me while reading.  My first thought was about inclusive practices and the powerful student growth that can happen for all learners when breaking away from placing students who receive additional services in a self-contained, potentially isolating classroom.

Additionally, my principal is HUGE on teachers creating opportunities for peer-to-peer discourse - which is something I continue to struggle with structuring and facilitating.  Having now read about the neuroscience behind the importance of students learning with and from one another, I find myself motivated to intentionally structure lesson plans to incorporate more social learning.

One way in which my PLC was hoping to meaningfully expand our capacity for peer-to-peer discourse was through ADI (Argument Driven Inquiry) lab experiences in our science classrooms.  ADI is structured in a way which encourages students to explore a science phenomenon by designing an experiment in a small group and working together to craft their own evidence-based conclusion without any lecture or teacher input beyond proximity monitoring and hints in the form of probing questions for direction.  ADI also builds in time for peer reflection and revision which we anticipate will be very beneficial to our students in developing their ability to think critically and scientifically.

We are anticipating however that our launch into ADI will likely be hindered by distance learning in the fall which brings me to the final reason this quote really stuck with me.

I worked with so many strong learners who really struggled during distance learning last spring and I fully believe the lack of peer engagement was a key factor in their struggle.  Even as I type this, I can 100% empathize with my students since I know I much prefer discussions in person, having those real time conversations, and getting instant feedback from both professors and peers as I develop my own understanding of complex ideas, content, and perspectives.

Which brings me to my questions for all of you:   How can we ensure the social element of learning will take place no matter the model come September (brick-and-mortar, hybrid, or full virtual).  What resources have you found to be successful  during our spring introduction to distance learning and what specific skills should we be equipping students with to help them be effective communicators and listeners in a mixed-media/virtual setting?

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As a science teacher, I've always been fascinated by the brain and its ability to physically change and develop as the person learns and grows. The phrase "use it or lose it" for skills is true! You can lose the connections in your brain that allowed you to remember that language or that skill if you don't use them! Super interesting. For chapter 5 I chose the following quote to focus on:

"Studies of brain development provide a model of the learning pro- cess at a cellular level: the changes first observed in rats have also proved to be true in mice, cats, monkeys, and birds, and they almost certainly occur in humans." (p 121)

I chose this because I had a few students this past school year who experienced trauma at an earlier age. I didn't realize this until reading the text, but their experiences during that trauma, short-duration for some, and long-duration for others, must have changed the literal wiring of their brains, to some extent. I really appreciated this "ah-ha" moment because I recall some moments during class when a student would repeatedly act unexpectedly or inappropriately and I would become frustrated that my redirecting strategies weren't effective. I think knowing that their brain is wired to respond differently due to the trauma they've experienced would provide me a reminder that the student perhaps does not know the correct response or behavior, or their brain is literally wired to respond in this way through no fault of their own. When I get into that moment when I think the student is acting a particularly way "on purpose" - perhaps reframing the situation with this new understanding of the brain's development will help me approach the situation with a new sense of patience and understanding.

Questions:
1. When considering student brain development, what strategies have you found to be successful in reteaching appropriate responses and behaviors for students?
2. Does the knowledge that student brain development due to previous experiences may impact current behavior help you understand any of your previous students?

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While reading chapter 5, I found myself drawn to how different areas of the brain develop differently when it comes to language. Our text explains, “For example, there appear to be separate brain areas that specialize in subtasks such as hearing words (spoken language of others), seeing words (reading), speaking words (speech), and generating words (thinking with language). Whether these patterns of brain organization for oral, written, and listening skills require separate exercises to promote the component skills of language and literacy remains to be determined. If these closely related skills have somewhat independent brain representation, then coordinated practice of skills may be a better way to encourage learners to move seamlessly among speaking, writing, and listening” (p. 122). I wonder how this translates for teaching reading to young children. In my core reading curriculum we often focus on teaching specific skills in small groups such as phoneme segmentation or writing. However, I also try to integrate multiple skills into my large group lessons.

I also thought it was very interesting as I read about the similarities and differences between learners who are deaf and learning ASL and learners who can hear, but are learning ASL. “When a deaf individual learns to communicate with manual signs, different nervous system processes have replaced the ones normally used for language—a significant achievement…Also, there are similarities between sign language users with normal hearing and sign language users who are deaf that result from their common experiences of engaging in language activities. In other words, specific types of instruction can modify the brain, enabling it to use alternative sensory input to accomplish adaptive functions, in this case, communication” (p. 123). I teach my kinders to sing, sign and read using ASL. I know from experience that they learn their letter names and sounds better when they are also learning to sign. When I assess them on letter names and sounds, they often forget what it is when looking at the print version, but when I show them the sign, they remember! I think it is a huge benefit for them to learn the ASL signs for letters and sounds along with our core reading instruction, which is more visual.

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"The gross structure of cerebral cortex is altered both by exposure to opportunities for learning and by learning in a social context" (pg. 119).
" ... [an] orchestrated pattern of increased capacity in the brain that depends on experience" (pg. 119).

Reading chapter 5 of Bransford's work, 'How People Learn," I was struck by the connection of brain and synapses development and the deficit mindset. The deficit mindset that teachers may hold,  prevents students assumed to be less capable from the opportunity to develop particular parts of their brain.  As H. Richard Milner IV explains in his book, "Start Where You Are But Don't Stay There," teachers socialized in dominate culture, often see BIPOC, lower socio-economic, and otherwise marginalized students  through a deficit mindset. Milner explains that because the majority of students from these demographics are learning in underfunded schools that lack resources, they are given less opportunity for stimulating learning. Thus, teachers may see these students entering their classroom as having less of an ability to do high-order thinking.  Teachers look at these students through a deficit mindset and in turn do not provide opportunities for students to learn critical-thinking skills. Instead many of these students do not  learn these skills and instead are trained in rote memorization and regurgitation of concepts. If teachers assume that kiddos from these demographics are not capable of high-order thinking, they will not learn critical thinking skills to develop their abilities. If marginalized students do not learn these skills, they will not develop the synapses in their brains to think in this way, and Milner argues  they may not develop a mindset or skill base to critically think about the oppression experienced.

Now, this is also a somewhat racist and  elitist theory in and of itself. As Bransford explains, "The gross structure of cerebral cortex is altered both by exposure to opportunities for learning and by learning in a social context" (pg. 119). Opportunities to develop the capacity of the brain for critical thinking is not reliant solely on the school classroom. Student's brains develop within their social context, and as we know marginalization has nothing to do with ability. Students will hopefully have opportunity to develop these brain connections in their social context outside of school.

The conclusions or implications that I draw from the thinking and research of Milner and Bransford is simply that given what we know about opportunity of exposure being necessary to develop synapses and ability in brain, it is imperative that teachers provide all students authentic opportunities to develop their critical thinking. If we do not challenge this deficit mindset and change our teaching practices, we risk our students remaining caught in the transactional, polarizing, and oppressive results of our public schools. The importance of this research into brain development is that it further supports that if we want to change our students' learning and life outcomes beyond school,  urgent reform in learning opportunity for our students is imperative.

Questions:
How can assure all students have authentic opportunities to develop their critical thinking?
Can we use this research to educate teachers and challenge a deficit mindset?

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“In sum, classes of words, pictures, and other categories of information that involve complex cognitive processing on a repeated basis activate the brain. Activation sets into motion the events that are encoded as part of long-term memory. Memory processes treat both true and false memory events similarly and, as shown by imaging technologies, activate the same brain regions, regardless of the validity of what is being remembered. Experience is important for the development of brain structures, and what is registered in the brain as memories of experiences can include one’s own mental activities. … From the perspective of teaching, it again suggests the importance of an appropriate overall framework within which learning occurs most efficiently and effectively.” (Bransford, 2000, p125)

The complexity here is good for my brain, no doubt. This quotation from How People Learn brings up some very interesting ideas that support best practices in the classroom. Pictures and words together are more effective for retention and building memory. There is repetition involved in learning which activates the brain and cements the pathways accessible when we recall something. There was mention of differences between recalling information such as facts rather than processes but I didn’t get enough practice in this short reading to speak much about that. In light of our obsession these days with fake news, it is no surprise that true and false events can be recalled if there is enough repetition of mental activity around the event whether or not it actually happened or not. Because we develop structures in the brain, there is no guarantee that these are valid.

This leads to a very interesting question. Can we trust our senses? Is something real because we see it? If our brain structures themselves have not got the supporting synapses to see what is real, we see only what the brain determines we can see or recognize in the detail we have already predetermined by our past experiences (true or false but with much mental activity).

Similarly, all of formal systems of education can be misleading or worse, limiting our students in the future if the overall framework is not situated within reality. Education is in this light, dangerous like the exposure to one language limits a child from recognizing and discriminating differences that mean something in a different context. We are back to the social constructivist model (Vygotski) that points out that cultural/societal choices of what is valuable guide the process of learning. In our education system which values itself, we run into a grating problem when students aren’t in school to learn in a standardized way. What if it is not true value? Sure, there are skills and goals that seem worth the effort to impart.

Another question arises. How is the mind really limited to the brain structures that are described as the bases for mental activity? The silent areas of the brain that are supporting higher brain functions are interesting to me. These seem to go beyond the sensory/motor interactions with the world that are more easily reflected by the scans and tests and electrical impulse reading machines we are basing our knowledge of the brain upon. This all leads to the thought that brain structures would be more integratable with real world experience if we exposed students to an authentic environment at an earlier age, perhaps Middle School (Maria Montessouri’s position).

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"Different features of learning contribute to the durability or fragility of memory. For example, comparisons of people's memories for words with their memories for pictures of the same objects show a superiority effect for pictures" (124).

Reading through this whole chapter, I was continued to be amazed at how intricately our brains have been designed, how they organize, categorize, store, and respond to information; and how our experiences with the world shape our brain development throughout our lives.

I was intrigued by the findings of memory with brain processes, and how the mind stores and recalls information. When comparing words to pictures, it was found that individuals remember pictures better, and it made me think of how many objects/furniture/etc. are labeled in school buildings for English Language Learners.

One thing I noticed during the year I spent substitute teaching was that the older the grade, the less pictures/visuals were used; while students were still memorizing a lot of information. In a reading class I took last term, we talked about how some learners struggle with visualization - they might be able to read the words in a book, but connecting the words/content to a picture they've created in their brain is difficult for them to do.

Given what we know about memory and pictures, how can we use visuals in a beneficial way to assist students in their learning and memory rather than overwhelm them when they walk in the classroom?

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I found the fifth chapter of How People Learn very useful, especially when read in tandem with the third chapter of Why Don’t Students Like School. It was interesting to begin with how brains form in Bransford, move through brain development, knowledge retention theory, and finally arrive at implications for the classroom with Willingham. The readings had a really nice flow that made it easy for me to follow the line of thinking from beginning to end. While reading, I recalled several unsuccessful lessons that would have been better, had I had enhanced knowledge of brain foundations and memory retention. In my chosen quote, Bransford states that, “Memory is neither a single entity nor a phenomenon that occurs in a single area of the brain. There are two basic memory processes: declarative memory, or memory for facts and events...and procedural or nondeclarative memory, which is memory for skills and other cognitive operations,…” (124). As I explored what went wrong in the lesson I describe below, I was able to see where I failed to set my students up for successful retention of knowledge.

While abroad, I decided to try teaching my HS Seniors, all high-level English speakers, a unit on morphemes. The English exams in Korea are notoriously difficult; many native speakers struggle with them. My thinking was, with a bit of knowledge about the building blocks of English words, those huge chunks of text on the exams might be more quickly decipherable and more easily put into context. This unit did not work. There were extenuating circumstances, but this unit primarily failed on two fronts. I did not provide students with tools to ignite both their declarative AND procedural memory centers and I did not treat ‘meaning’ in a useful way.

I did not imbue this unit with enough meaning to make it memorable for the students and simultaneously failed to admit that the lesson was “meaningless”. Admittedly, they were able to take heterogeneous and homogeneous (my examples) and extrapolate definitions of heterosexual and homosexual. “Whatever you think about, that’s what you remember” (Willingham, 47). They remembered the ‘sex’ words (sigh), but most of the material was lost. I hated morphemes when they were presented to me in my sophomore year. I was given huge lists of words to memorize and be quizzed on. I did not want to repeat that process, but I saw value in the knowledge. I thought I could do a better job by making the material more relevant to my students’ lives. However, there are things that students will have to learn that do not have meaning (Willingham, 58) and are not relevant to their lives. If I were to repeat this unit (and I might because I still think it has value) I would need to do a better job of splitting the difference between giving it some relevant meaning and admitting that it is also meaningless. I would also need to build functions into the lessons that could ignite declarative AND procedural memory centers in my students.

I am curious to know how others might handle this situation. How do you teach things that are “meaningless” and what skills do you employ to increase knowledge retention?

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"Experience is important for the development of brain structures, and what is registered in the brain as memories of experiences can include one’s own mental activities." (p. 125)

While reading this chapter, I was intrigued in revisiting the study of brain development and the focus on experiences.  I thought that the most interesting thing was reading about how the brain can alter and reorganize thinking and development based on how experiences occur.

In regards of the quote that I chose, it really struck my thinking about how the chapter mentioned an example to represent the interesting quality that people will often mesh false facts with true facts because of the way their brain interprets it.  On page 25, the example talks about how there is a string of words that people are supposed to remember, and they are mostly words that associate with the word "sweet" (e.g. chocolate, sugar, candy).  The fascinating part to me was that people were extremely confident that "sweet" was one of the words in the sequence because of the way their brain associated remembering most of the words.

This makes me think about students in the classroom who are learning so much at once and their brains are finding ways to constantly organize their learnings.  Some students struggle a lot with comprehension when they read or with other learning and I am thinking it has to do with how their false facts and true facts can become merged due to the fact that their brain organizes it a certain way.

What kind of strategies and purposeful experiences can we provide to students to help strengthen their brain in regards to memory?

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"In other words, specific types of instruction can modify the brain, enabling it to use alternative sensory input to accomplish adaptive functions, in this case, communication." (P. 123)

This quote is in reference to the differences and similarities in the brains of people who can hear and people who are deaf. For example, people that can hear have a part of their brain that processes auditory information, but in the brain of someone who is deaf, this same area may have adapted to process visual information - their brain has been reorganized (P. 123). This is an adaptive function.

After reading this quote, I found myself reflecting on this section of chapter 5 the most. "Specific types of instruction can modify the brain" and reorganize it (P.123). This is like a cool superpower that we have in our brains and that teachers can utilize! I just completed a training last week on "The Foundations of Reading" and learned about dyxlexia with Barbara Steinberg, the PDX Reading Specialist. I found myself connecting pieces of her training to this reading. She talks about "re-wiring the brain" through intervention, which helps students use the left side of their brain more (for language processes). People with dyslexia tend to rely more on the right side of their brain as well as their prefrontal cortex. This reminded me of the example in the text of people who are deaf and people who hear, and how their brains can be re-organized to use an area of their brain in a new way.

This quote also sparked the most reflection for me. How am I modifying my students' brains with my instruction? Am I delivering my instruction in a way that is most beneficial for their brain? My main question is - how can we use this knowledge to further support students and mindfully reorganize the structure of their brain for the better? When is it appropriate to use one type of instruction (direct, indirect, etc.) versus another?

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"Research has also indicated that the mind is not just a passive recorder of events, rather, it is actively at work both in storing and in recalling information. There is research demonstrating that when a series of events are presented in a random sequence, people reorder them into sequences that make sense when they try to recall them (Lichtenstein and Brewer, 1980)" (124).

This chapter reminded me of just how important it is to consider the impact that learning has on the brain for educators and how we create curriculum and give instruction. I found the above quote incredibly interesting because although the quote is mostly addressing the way we sequence experiences in our brains, as a Language Arts teacher, I found myself making connections to how this same thing occurs with reading comprehension. In the same section, Bransford also explains the concept of false memories. If a child is told over and over again that they experienced something that they actually didn't, they will not only begin to believe that it actually happened, but the brain will begin to create details about the event that never happened. In an earlier chapter, Bransford discusses the importance of teachers addressing students' pre-existing knowledge in order to effectively teach them new concepts. How do  we as educators address the fact that students come into the classroom with pre-existing knowledge that could be affected by false memories or affected by their brain ordering true, correct information into incorrect sequences because it makes sense for their own brain? I can recall times where a student has vehemently explained information or an experience that to my brain, seems incorrect or out of order.

In chapter five, Bransford also says that different parts of the brain may be ready to learn at different times, which made me think of Willingham's Why Don't Students Like School, which explains that lesson plans must include appropriate cognitive work and cognitive breaks. As educators, we also have to be aware of students' cognitive limits. I would love to know more specifics from a neurological science perspective about what that looks like in a classroom. When is a brain ready to learn certain information and when is it not? Aside from concepts like "zone of proximal development," what are some other ways for educators to know when students' brains are ready for certain kinds of learning?

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"An ever-increasing body of evidence shows that the human mind is

endowed with an implicit mental ability that facilitates attention to and use

of representations of the number of items in a visual array, sequence of

drumbeats, jumps of a toy bunny, numerical values represented in arrays,

etc..." (89).

I have always been interested in the human brain and how it works. Learning more about how children acquire language, the concept of numbers and how to properly walk without falling is intriguing for me. I chose this quote and chapter for that very reason as it explains in detail different aspects of the human brain and how children become speakers, walkers, and math doers.

This quote is explaining that infants when shown various images of household items (3 to a page), they lose interest because they keep seeing the same number of images time and time again. When shown a variety of images with 2, 3, or 4 examples on one page they become more interested in the activity. The only difference among the images is the number on each page that is shown to the infants. Although they are young and unfamiliar with numbers, this is a concept they are beginning to understand.

As mentioned in Why Don't Students Like School,  "Thinking occurs when you combine information (from the environment and longterm memory) in new ways. That combining happens in working memory (11). The more visual exposure infants have to their surrounding environment, the more information they will have stored in their longterm memory. Are they only learning visually? Are they learning when they hear their family speak?

One question I have is pretty generic but fits this discussion, what teaching style helps you learn the best? I ask this because infants are being shown visual images in order for researchers to capture their attention and gain information regarding their level of understanding on the topic. If this is the case, I want to know how you feel you learn the best or have learned the best throughout your experience in school.

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“Interestingly, both the interactive presence of a social group and direct physical contact with the environment are important factors: animals placed in the enriched environment alone showed relatively little benefit; neither did ani- mals placed in small cages within the larger environment (Ferchmin et al., 1978; Rosenzweig and Bennett, 1972).” (p. 119)

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“Interestingly, both the interactive presence of a social group and direct physical contact with the environment are important factors: animals placed in the enriched environment alone showed relatively little benefit; neither did ani- mals placed in small cages within the larger environment (Ferchmin et al., 1978; Rosenzweig and Bennett, 1972).” (p. 119)

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I chose this quote because it resonates with the thinking that I have been doing about my students’ well-being and capacity to learn during distance learning in the spring. The traditional school day was not easy for many of the students at my elementary school- they often expressed the desire for more social time with peers and for more physical activity… they really valued quality time with peers over instruction. I think that is pretty typical of elementary schoolers, and have always thought that explorative play time and social time is important for development, especially in the younger grades. This quote shows that when tested, the rats who had equal social interaction and a large environment to explore were able to perform better cognitively. This all got me really thinking on how our students were doing cooped up inside their houses, small apartments, or even staying with someone else because they are experiencing houselessness. We knew that students were already hurting because they could communicate how the loss of their social group was affecting their well-being, but I had not thought about the added burden of an isolated environment.

How, as effective educators and caregivers, will we ensure that our students feel the sense of social community and enriched environment during hybrid learning in the fall?

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"Language provides a particularly striking example of how instructional processes may contribute to organizing brain functions... Manual sign languages have grammatical structures, with affixes and morphology, but they are not translations of spoken languages. Each particular sign language (such as American Sign Language) has a unique organization, influenced by the fact that it is perceived visually" (p. 122-123).

When I read this chapter, it reminded me of a seminar on the brain I attended during my undergrad. My Prof., Dr. Payne at Corban University, did extensive research on the inner workings of the brain. (He taught my Classroom Management course, which was, by far, my favorite class. It was the aspect of teaching I was most concerned about, and he provided us with real, applicable teaching methods that actually worked.)
Throughout his course, and during the seminar, the information I learned about the brain fascinated me. There is so much that happens in the brain, and when even one wire is crossed, monumental developments don't happen.

I chose the quote above because the learning of a language, specifically sign language, is such an interesting process. Sign language is not acquired like other, verbal languages. The signs do not directly translate into spoken language. When I was in high school, I took an American Sign Language class. One of the things we learned, was how to "write" in sign language. The words you sign are not necessarily the ones you would write if you were to translate it into English.

In addition, for me being someone who had taken every year of Spanish possible, I was shocked that from that one semester of sign, I was able to use and remember so much more than any of my Spanish courses combined. I initially thought it was maybe because I am a kinesthetic learner, and that could be part of it, but this chapter, along with the brain seminar, alludes to the fact that the brain organizes it differently.

One question I have is that since the brain organizes languages differently and visual and physical movements are proven to help the acquisition process, wouldn't it be beneficial to embed a course or seminar in how the brain works into all elementary education programs? How difficult would it be to build it into an already existing course? I think the benefits out way any possible issues a professor might have with setting aside a designated time and place for this opportunity.

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"Magnetic resonance imaging also shows that the same brain areas are activated during questions and answers about both true and false events. This may explain why false memories can seem so compelling to the individual reporting the events." (p. 125)

I witness students creating stories all of the time - that is a lot of what we do in art, especially during free draw time. This passage makes me think about how very alive my students imaginations are, and how they seem to be living inside of the events and characters that they create in art. It makes me wonder about the role of telling their stories out loud, and what that is doing in their brain. Is an exercise like that leading to the creation of "imaginary friends"? Do kids really, truly believe these characters and stories are real - because they have been encoded in their memory by retelling them again and again?

It seems to me that most adults have forgotten that experience and what it feels like. If we can still encode false memories as adults, why does it seem like these fantastical stories belong so much to the lives of children? It would make sense that as we age, we start to tell ourselves a story of what belongs in reality - is that what keeps us from convincing ourselves of fantasies?

An additional question - are adults actually doing the same thing as children, it's just that our stories look different? Have we all constructed imagined realities? When I consider how differently people view the world, I think this could be true.

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“But when the number of synapses per nerve cell was measured, the acrobats were the standout group. Learning adds synapses; exercise does not. Thus, different kinds of experience condition the brain in different ways” (p.120).

I have to admit, while I was reading this text, I was reminded of just how remarkable and fascinating brains are. I am specifically interested in the concept of neural plasticity and the way that our brains physically change and adapt based on our experiences and routines.

The quote that I chose was one that was summarizing the findings of a study that was conducted with four groups of rats. One that was taught an acrobat routine, one that was made to exercise, one that was given the option to exercise, and one that had no exercise.

The fact that the act of learning physically alters our brains is something that is so interesting to me. I resonated with the concept of the study as I was reflecting on the state of our students' learning and what we can expect when we return to school in the fall.

I think, at times, it is so easy to assume that students should be ready to go as soon as school starts back up, but I found this study specifically made me reflect on the different ways that students engaged or did not engage with learning for the past few months. Some students completed the bare minimum of work and did not really critically think to do it, and others completely checked out and will likely continue to check out of learning until we return to school in the fall. That is a total of about 6 months of not truly engaging in learning.

I have a couple questions. The first, I’m not sure any of us will have the answer to, will this prolonged period of inactivity for some students impact neural development? If so, how?

The second, how can we adapt our teaching practices to anticipate the challenges that will come with this prolonged period of learning inactivity and how that inactivity has conditioned students' brains?

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“After about 12 weeks of such discussions, children give fully elaborated accounts of these fictitious events, involving parents, siblings, and a whole host of supporting ‘evidence’” (p. 125).

I chose this quote because I found it impactful. As teachers of children, we must be so careful with our words and the messages we impart. This is why we’re told to keep political opinions out of the classroom. As a captive audience, students can’t help but start to internalize what we tell them. That is also why it’s important to begin the messages of social justice early. Not every student is hearing what they need to on the subject at home, but they will learn if we reference it often enough at school. It’s easy in the language arts and literature classroom. We can read articles and stories about the oppressed and underserved communities. We can discuss what what if would be like to be in that person’s shoes. By teaching my students to empathize with people that are different races, sexualities, genders, or cultures than them, I’m giving them the skills they’re going to need to function in this modern society. In Connecting Cognitive Development and Constructivism: Implications from Theory for Instruction and Assessment  Lutz and Huitt (2004) assert, “ A major problem facing educators and parents today is that the world is rapidly changing and a worldview that propelled our nation to greatness in the 20th century needs to be replaced by one that is more appropriate for the world in which our children and youth will spend their adult lives. One of the most important skills is the ability to get along with a wide variety of people of different backgrounds, ethnicities, personalities, etc (Lutz and Huitt, p. 10). Therefore, we can bring about positive change in the world if we continue to engage students in other points of view. My question then is this: in what ways can we use the brain’s ability to take in information that may be contradictory to what students have been taught by their parents or society and categorize it as true in a positive way?