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Learning tends to stick when it matters to someone.

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Humor allows students to create emotional engagement, which helps in improving processing and memory.

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Article: Laughter and Learning: Humor Boosts Retention

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Article: Laughter and Learning: Humor Boosts Retention

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E.B. White famously quipped, "Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process." At the risk of committing some sort of "humor-cide," a type of scientific dissection must take place if teachers are to consider harnessing the powerful effects of humor, not only to increase joy and enhance the classroom environment, but also to improve learner outcomes.

The Funny Bone Is Connected to the Sense of Wonder

Teachers understand that humor is inherently social. How many times have you heard that same "Orange who?" knock-knock joke spread through your classroom? The contagious nature of humor naturally builds a sense of community (PDF, 731KB) by lowering defenses and bringing individuals together. If the brain is faced with an inconsistency, then laughter is the response when it is resolved in an unexpected way. This sentence, "Memorization is what we resort to when what we are learning makes no sense," may make us smile as our brains resolve its inconsistency.

Essentially, humor activates our sense of wonder, which is where learning begins, so it seems logical that humor could enhance retention. A Pew Research poll showed that viewers of humorous news shows such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report exhibited higher retention of news facts than those who got their news from newspapers, CNN, Fox News, or network stations. When Stephen Colbert demands, "If we don't cut expensive things like Head Start, child nutrition programs, and teachers, what sort of future are we leaving for our children?", viewers laugh and also retain the knowledge of that specific budget issue.

A substantial body of research explains why we remember things that make us laugh, such as our favorite, hilarious high school moment or the details of that funny movie we saw last weekend. Neuroscience research reveals that humor systematically activates the brain's dopamine reward system, and cognitive studies show that dopamine is important for both goal-oriented motivation and long-term memory, while educational research indicates that correctly-used humor can be an effective intervention to improve retention in students from kindergarten through college.

Foolishness as a Tool

What does "correctly used" mean? Let's take a closer look at some of the classroom research to find out. In one study, researchers asked nearly 400 college students to document their teachers' appropriate or inappropriate use of humor, their effectiveness as teachers, and how students perceived the humor. The results of this study showed that related, appropriate humor resulted in increased retention, while inappropriate, cruel, or unrelated humor did not. The study also discovered that humor can be perceived and appreciated without improving retention -- essentially, the student can think a teacher is "funny" but not show an improvement in retention. So, just being silly may get your students' attention, but may not lead to better retention. These researchers concluded that for improved retention, appropriate, topic-related instructional humor is most effective.

"According to recent surveys, 51 percent of the people are in the majority." Did that statistics joke make you smile? Statistics may not be the first field that comes to mind when you think of content-related humor, but researchers wondered if humor could increase retention even in typically "dry" courses. In this study, college students listened to statistics lectures with and without content-related humor. They were then tested over the material and completed surveys regarding their enjoyment of the lectures. The test and survey results showed that retention was strongest in the lectures with content-related humor, and that students reported more enjoyment in the experience.

Age-Appropriate Humor

What about using humor with adolescents? If the idea of using humor in front of a classroom of judgmental teenagers makes you more nervous than a rookie teacher in his or her first parent-teacher conference, consider the research showing that adolescents tend to release more dopamine and have more dopamine receptors than adults. Because of their hyper-responsive dopamine reward system, adolescents may be uniquely primed to react positively to educational humor. Try telling a funny story or allowing your students to come up with humorous examples in their projects or discussions. Teach Like a Pirate has some great ideas for enhancing the humor in a high school classroom.

The children's TV show Sesame Street has harnessed the power of humor for decades. If you were asked to recall something from watching Sesame Street as a child, could you? Most likely, yes. You may remember Grover's silly antics, Mr. Noodles' constant confusion, or Big Bird struggling to get his friends to believe Mr. Snuffleupagus was real. That's why researchers chose Sesame Street episodes to test the impact of humor on retention and engagement in young children. Kindergarten and first grade students watched either a humorous or non-humorous Sesame Street segment. When content was tested, the children who watched the humorous segments scored higher and showed better engagement than the control group. Their engagement transferred even to the non-humorous portions of the lessons, resulting in improved retention throughout.

Here are some research-supported tips for using humor to increase retention:

Do

Use humor to enhance classroom joy

Use humor to develop a sense of community

Use content-related humor

Use age-appropriate humor

"Sandwich" humor between instruction and repetition

Avoid

Sarcasm

Cruel or inappropriate humor

Forced humor

Off-topic humor

Too much humor

About That Frog. . .

To sum up, we can turn to a meta-analysis of 40 years of educational humor research indicating that humor increases the strength of human connections, and that non-aggressive, relevant, appropriate humor appears to be a helpful learning tool. It seems to be particularly useful to sandwich humor between instruction and repetition. The authors of this meta-analysis caution that not everyone is naturally humorous, so educators shouldn't force it. Watching someone struggle to be funny is a very awkward experience and can defeat the purpose. Developmental differences must also be considered, as younger students may find irony, sarcasm, and exaggeration difficult to understand.

Although we may have slaughtered the proverbial frog in this analysis, these studies indicate that the use of appropriate, content-specific humor to reinforce concepts can be a positive tool to improve retention. Educators can utilize humor's systematic activation of the dopamine reward system to reinforce the brain's pathways to new knowledge.

Have you noticed humor-enhanced retention in your classroom?

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Laughter and Learning: Humor Boosts Retention

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E.B. White famously quipped, "Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process." At the risk of committing some sort of "humor-cide," a type of scientific dissection must take place if teachers are to consider harnessing the powerful effects of humor, not only to increase joy and enhance the classroom environment, but also to improve learner outcomes.

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"Humor activates our sense of wonder, which is where learning begins, so it seems logical that humor could enhance retention."

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Meaning isn’t just seriousness. Laughter deepens memory by lowering stress and increasing attention while making it more engaging for students.

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Intrinsic motivation is more important than extrinsic rewards in the long run.

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Students are more likely to engage deeply in an activity when it aligns with their values, not just for points in a class.

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Introducing and Customizing the Model

In this post, I'm proposing a classroom management model that I developed with the help of Judy Willis. This model for behavior and emotional engagement incentivizes students to self-assess and reflect, choosing options that are socially rewarding. The model resembles a video game, with students moving through levels and noting how they feel. They choose options at each level that motivate them to the next level, which lessens growing anxiety and anger. Many of our students don't have the social modeling from their environments to assess an alternate way of approaching a problem, especially in those moments when negative emotion is growing stronger.

Just as we discuss and model other procedures, we will initially need to teach students about this model. It will look different based upon students' grade level and age. Teachers and students must agree ahead of time about how they will communicate their growing frustration, ideally with a signal or gesture that indicates a need to choose an option at a specific level. Adjust this model to the growing and changing needs of your students and your personal teaching profile.

The first aspect of this behavior engagement model is to teach our students about their own neuro-anatomy. When we understand how the brain learns and feels -- with every word, thought, and experience -- we empower our students with the lifetime tools that will enhance their experience in and out of school.

As many teachers report that the most difficult parts of the day occur during transitions, we begin by creating a mutual goal for the students participating in this model, generating "forced academic and behavioral success." This goal must be clear, malleable, specific, and measurable:

1. John will work on the assigned project for 15 minutes without distracting his classmates by talking, gesturing, or interrupting their learning.

2. Alice will enter the classroom, gather her work or supplies, and be ready for instruction within three minutes.

3. Anthony will choose a signal and a Level 2 option within a five-minute period when feeling angry or frustrated.

Game On: Levels 1-7

Level 1

The student has reached the point of no return -- angry, closed off, disengaged, hopeless, and feeling the desire to fight, freeze, or flee. At this level, we need space and time to drain off the negative emotion. We emphasize process, effort, and attainable goals once the negative emotion has been cleared away.

Level 2

All learning has ceased. The student feels increasingly irritated, somewhat oppositional, and shuts down to feedback and learning. He or she is reacting from lower-brain and emotional centers and needs options to recharge and begin again:

Revisiting choices previously discussed during a neutral time

Movement, stretching, water, snack

Focused attention practice

Minutes off the task with an activity that de-escalates the stress response (such as running an errand for the teacher)

Moving to another classroom to assist another teacher or serving another student

Design instruction in an area of choice and expertise for a few minutes

Level 3

The students and teacher may begin to feel frustrated, irritated, and antsy. The distracted student may be willing to try another option and begin again.

Level 4

The student is slightly engaged, a bit distracted, and the flow of learning is interrupted. It is at Levels 3 and 4 that we move in closer to the student, touching a shoulder, showing authentic interest while observing all forms of communication. Notice with words, tone, questions, and affirmation:

What could I do to help you?

What do you need?

How can we come up with a plan?

Should I check in with you in five minutes?

Level 5

The student is less engaged but there is still effort and collaboration. We continue to implement affirmation, noticing the effort, and sharing our observations about the high engagement.

Level 6

The student is engaged and trying to complete tasks.

Level 7

The student is engaged and in the flow. Teaching and learning are happening seamlessly. Social intrinsic rewards work well here, because when someone else notices what's working well, we continue doing it.

Goals and Higher Levels of Attainment

The social rewards can be many and varied for students who attain the higher levels of this model on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis. Depending upon the student's age, grade level, and severity of reactions during stress responses, these higher levels can offer:

1. Designing a special project and teaching a younger class or another teacher

2. Choice of outside speaker aligned with the student's interest, learning about a vocation or life passion

3. Song selections for a class blog

4. Organizing a service event

5. Teacher completes weekend homework that directly ties in with the student's interests and passions

6. Positive referral certificates

7. Developing a class newspaper

8. Leading discussion groups

9. Bring in college or vocational students to share different majors and minors

Consequences for repeated low levels of engagement are still explained and enforced. If a student is not working during class time, we need to think about an alternate environment and time where he or she can complete assignments once the negative emotion has been drained. Research repeatedly reports that social rewards are sustainable and meaningful when assisting students in shifting habit, mindsets, and behaviors.

Do you offer your students incentives? Please tell us about it in the comments section below.

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Incentivizing Your Class: The Engagement-Based Classroom Management Model | Edutopia

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In this post, I'm proposing a classroom management model that I developed with the help of Judy Willis. This model for behavior and emotional engagement incentivizes students to self-assess and reflect, choosing options that are socially rewarding. The model resembles a video game, with students moving through levels and noting how they feel.

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Editor's Note: This post is co-authored by Marcus Conyers who, with Donna Wilson, is co-developer of the M.S. and Ed.S. Brain-Based Teaching degree programs at Nova Southeastern University.
The human brain has an amazing capacity to wield a potent cognitive strategy: selective attention. When we consciously focus our attention on something, we bring the power of the prefrontal cortex to this endeavor. By honing our ability to focus attention at will, we can more effectively screen out two types of distractions:

1. Input through our sensory organs

2. Our emotional responses

Distractions via sensory input may be the easier of the two to block, according to Daniel Goleman in his book Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence. As educators, we may tend to notice the impact of sights, sounds, and touch points that draw students' focus away from lessons and learning activities. But while all of the sensory stimulations in the environment are readily obvious, emotions can be even "louder" when it comes to diverting attention in unwanted directions and making it hard to focus on learning.

Which Neural Network Do We Activate?

To help students learn to maintain focused attention, we can guide them to wire their brains for staying the course even during times of emotional upheaval, remaining level-headed, and riding the emotional waves of life. As with other skills, this cognitive strategy comes with conscious recognition and deliberate practice.

Brain research summarized in a briefing paper from the Dana Foundation indicates that attention activates not one but several neural networks, including an alerting network that signals the brain about incoming sensory stimuli and an orienting network that directs the brain to take notice of the source of the stimuli. A third network, referred to as executive attention, enables us to choose which of the stimuli competing for our attention we will focus our thinking on. In effect, executive attention functions as a control tower for guiding the brain's higher-level cognitive processes to land on specific tasks and information.

Applying this research, scientists suggest a different way of thinking about and addressing attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The "deficit" in its label suggests inaccurately that students diagnosed with ADHD have a shortage of attention, when in fact the problem may be that they have difficulty in allocating their attention on learning in the classroom.

Cognitive Strategies

This shift in emphasis about where problems with attention may lie, when combined with recent neuroscientific findings, suggests that explicit instruction on regulating students' attention may provide them with a valuable cognitive strategy to support self-directed learning. The focus of this instruction is on guiding students to understand that they can consciously direct and maintain their attention on learning tasks and that, with regular thoughtful practice, they can improve their ability to attend to learning.

1. Shine the spotlight on attention.

Introduce the subject of attention by asking students to share examples of being so focused on an activity that they've blocked out distractions around them, such as getting lost in a good book or movie, practicing the piano, or perfecting their jump shot in basketball. In the same way, they can purposefully focus their attention on learning, and shift their attention from one learning task to another throughout the school day. The prefrontal cortex is in charge of focusing attention, and students can train their brains to better control their attention. Brainstorm ways that regulating attention can improve learning, such as:

Paying attention to a lesson instead of being distracted by noise in the hallway or something happening in the schoolyard outside the window

Switching from learning one subject to the next or from one class to another

Putting aside a lunchtime disagreement with a friend to focus on class in the afternoon

Completing a homework assignment before turning on TV or a video game

"Turning off" worries about doing well on a test in order to stay focused and remember everything studied

Identifying what's most important right now and paying attention only to that most important thing

2. Emphasize that focusing attention is a skill that can be learned and improved.

Like any other skill, students can develop their attention for learning through regular practice and training. Give them good reasons for training their attention -- people who can take charge of their attention are better at remembering things and figuring out what new information means and how they can use it. They are better at metacognition and higher-order thinking processes. For practical tools to increase student attention and other thinking skills, check out these suggestions.

3. Pace your teaching with students' attention.

While attention spans vary between individuals, we've found that a useful rule of thumb is to focus on presenting new information in roughly eight-minute "chunks." Students under age eight may benefit from even shorter chunks of lessons and learning activities. In our book BrainSMART: 60 Strategies for Increasing Student Learning, we suggest the acronym CRAVE as a way to remember five other strategies for keeping students' attention focused on learning:

Build curiosity for learning with "teasers" that get students interested in a lesson.

Look for ways to make lessons relevant to students' lives.

Ask questions to engage students in learning and inquiry.

Remember that variety is the spice of attention -- a mix of learning activities helps keep students engaged.

Evoke emotions. Just as emotions can be distracting, they can also be used to enhance attention by making a lesson or learning activity more interesting.

Advertisers use these same strategies to grab consumers' attention, so you might find inspiration for ways to adapt them to your lessons in a TV ad or on the side of a city bus! Keep this in mind as you guide students to improve their selective attention: The first step toward learning is paying attention.

Research

Wilson, D. L., & Conyers, M. A. (2011). BrainSMART: 60 Strategies for Increasing Student Learning. Orlando, FL: BrainSMART.

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Strategies for Getting and Keeping the Brain's Attention

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Editor's Note: This post is co-authored by Marcus Conyers who, with Donna Wilson, is co-developer of the M.S. and Ed.S. Brain-Based Teaching degree programs at Nova Southeastern University. The human brain has an amazing capacity to wield a potent cognitive strategy: selective attention.

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When creating bellringers for my class, I try to connect with current events, student interests, or personal stories.

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1. Shine the spotlight on attention.

2. Emphasize that focusing attention is a skill that can be learned and improved.

3. Pace your teaching with students' attention.

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Article: Cognitively Priming Students for Learning

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Article: Cognitively Priming Students for Learning

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There are some standards or units of instruction that, for whatever reason, you know aren't going to be runaway hits with students. While you can certainly reconsider the unit design, there are other strategies you can use to help prime student brains for learning.

Among the simplest of these strategies is promoting curiosity -- and students' natural tendency to predict -- by advertising the content the same way that a marketing company might. This promotes advance interest, and the resulting questions increase the student curiosity, opening the brain's attentive intake filter. In short, it preps their minds to engage.

New Unit, 1-2 Weeks Prior

How might this work? Try advertising a coming unit by cutting up a related, compelling image, and then adding pieces daily to reconstruct that image as the "advertisement" gradually takes form.

Similarly, different clues -- visual or otherwise -- could be added every few days leading up to the new unit's introduction. For fractions, these clues might be:

An x-ray image of an arm fracture

Sheet music with half, whole, and quarter notes

A carrot cut into quarters

A photo of an iceberg showing the parts above and below water.

These both visualize the content and prime the mind to learn new content.

Even though curiosity gradually decreases in favor of caution, the need to find out if a prediction is right or wrong is part of the brain's permanent wiring. The brain strengthens future predictions and corrects any inaccurate prior knowledge leading to incorrect predictions through a prediction-reward system fueled by dopamine pleasure. (This will be a topic of a future post.) In short, even if students gradually become less interested, it won't diminish their need to know as the unit begins.

New Unit, Day 1

On the day the unit is scheduled to begin, students' curiosity, along with their written or verbal predictions, will tune their brains into the perfect zone for attentive focus. They are like adults placing bets on a horse race. Students may not be interested in the subject matter itself, but their brains need to find out if their predictions are correct, just as the race ticket holder needs to know if he holds a winning ticket. Now the students' brains want to know what you have to teach! If nothing else, you're set to reach them from day one.

The brain is wired for high interest when clues prompt prediction, anticipating the pleasure of the dopamine reward response. There is no such intrinsic motivation for drills and memorization of rote facts and procedures. Isolated skill practice is contrary to the brain's instinct to preserve its energy, because there is no expectation of pleasure from energy output. On the other hand, when students want to know required information to create solutions to problems that interest them or to create products that they care about, the brain applies the effort to learn what is required to achieve desirable goals. This isn't a personality thing, or a characteristic of apathy, but a fundamental neurological system that preferentially attends to and stores input considered useful for desired goals.

Preconception Meets Cognitive Engagement

Consider, for example, starting a unit by showing students an image of two people or groups of people whose differences and known disagreements are likely to trigger historical or cultural assumptions (such as Native Americans and early Great Plains settlers, British and German soldiers from World War I, or police officers near a picket line of striking workers). Encourage students to evaluate and express with words or writing what emotions the picture evokes, what event they think is represented, and who the "good" and "bad" people are.

As the unit progresses, encourage them to journal or describe any changes in their feelings about the picture and their original prediction of the events they think preceded or followed the scene depicted. As the unit culminates, ask them to give their opinions as to who might have created the image and if art or photography can be a representation of fact or misleading advertising. In this way, you have connected the beginning and end of the unit by consistently asking students to cognitively engage with the content and their own thinking.

Make Learning Worth the Energy

So why the need to have students predict, engage, reflect, and monitor? It has to do with parsing learning events into segments that students feel confident about learning. In survival terms, withholding effort is beneficial when there is low expectation of success. This response will benefit a fox living in a region with limited prey when it avoids chasing a rabbit uphill because the energy expended is not likely to result in energy restored when the chase fails to yield a meal. The human brain weighs three pounds and uses 20 percent of the body's oxygen and glucose. It has the same survival mandate as the fox to limit energy and effort when it predicts a low yield of success based on past experiences. In short, students need to believe that they can, and that there is valuable reason for them to try.

The cycle for disengagement and the self-fulfilling prophecy of failure is sustained because, without effort, the student does not keep up with the foundational knowledge needed to understand the subsequent lessons and related concepts. A student might have excellent skills at creative problem solving and concept construction, but because he or she didn't have the opportunity to construct understanding with a relevant goal that would motivate the brain to hold the necessary factual or procedural information, this student fails to acquire the knowledge. His or her brain now adds another failure to its experiences that further reduces the likelihood of sustained effort toward the next goal. With decreasing expectations of future success and without the needed concept and factual knowledge to persevere in the topic or subject, subsequent information is increasingly decontextualized. The student can't see the forest for the trees. In response, the brain "unplugs" as part of its energy-preserving survival mechanism.

Stop this unplugging! Through sustained student awareness of relevance and context, and through incorporating cognitive interactions with learning, students' brains will ignite and hold what they learn.

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Cognitively Priming Students for Learning

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There are some standards or units of instruction that, for whatever reason, you know aren't going to be runaway hits with students. While you can certainly reconsider the unit design, there are other strategies you can use to help prime student brains for learning.

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Pre-activating prior knowledge prepares the brain for new information.

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Connecting to students’ experiences and lives builds bridges that help with deeper thinking.

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1. Halt

2. Engage

3. Anticipate

4. Replay

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During the school year, students are expected to listen to and absorb vast amounts of content. But how much time has been devoted to equipping students with ways to disconnect from their own internal dialogue (self-talk) and to focus their attention fully on academic content that is being presented? Listening is hard work even for adults. When students are unable to listen effectively, classroom management issues arise.

Explicit instruction on cognitive strategies that can help students learn how to learn may have a positive impact on both academic performance and classroom management by emphasizing that students are in charge of their own behavior and learning. Teachers we've worked with find that classroom management issues decrease over time as students begin to master thinking skills that help them become more self-directed learners.

Learning to listen well is a prime example of a skill that many assume shouldn't need to be taught. The Common Core State Standards for Language Arts recognize the importance of listening as an ability that students must master to become college and career ready:

Students must learn to work together, express and listen carefully to ideas, integrate information from oral, visual, quantitative, and media sources, evaluate what they hear, use media and visual displays strategically to help achieve communicative purposes, and adapt speech to context and task.

From a developmental perspective, this Common Core standard is interwoven with the acquisition of verbal and social skills that are critical for students' success across many contexts. Listening is a crucial aspect of school and life, but it is often expected of students without ever being taught. As a former teacher, school psychologist and licensed counselor, Donna worked with many students whose learning challenges were rooted in an inability to listen effectively, and with couples and families in distress for the same reason.

The Anatomy and Psychology of Listening

A lesson on listening might begin with how the brain processes the sounds around us. We find that many students and teachers are fascinated by the inner workings of their brains. The process of receiving and decoding spoken words takes place in the auditory cortex, which is the part of the human brain's cerebral cortex that processes auditory input. The auditory cortex is located on both sides of the brain in the upper parts of the temporal lobes. Its job is to receive signals from the ears and to transmit those signals to other parts of the cerebral cortex for decoding sound into meaning. This system is instrumental in both profound and everyday aspects of hearing -- from the language development of infants to the appreciation of a stunning symphony.

The most common obstacle to effective listening is noise. The classroom can be a cacophony of teacher and students talking, chairs scraping across the floor, papers rustling, pencils dropping, doors opening and closing. While the brain's auditory system is capable of blocking out background noises to focus on specific stimuli, nonetheless all these sounds can be distracting.

"Noise" can also arise inside students' minds -- a persistent song stuck in one's head, pleasant daydreams, or unpleasant doubts about one's ability to understand a new concept or complete an assignment. The HEAR strategy described below is designed to help students recognize and block out that noise as they devote their attention to listening.

Teaching Students to Focus and Listen

Explicit instruction on using the HEAR strategy offers concrete steps to focus on and improve listening -- and emphasizes why and how developing this skill is so important. As Michigan teacher Aaron Rohde says, "Just saying that one is going to be a better listener is not enough to make it happen. One must work hard to improve such an essential skill."

The HEAR strategy consists of these four steps:

Halt: Stop whatever else you are doing, end your internal dialogue on other thoughts, and free your mind to pay attention to the person speaking.

Engage: Focus on the speaker. We suggest a physical component, such as turning your head slightly so that your right ear is toward the speaker as a reminder to be engaged solely in listening.

Anticipate: By looking forward to what the speaker has to say, you are acknowledging that you will likely learn something new and interesting, which will enhance your attention.

Replay: Think about what the speaker is saying. Analyze and paraphrase it in your mind or in discussion with the speaker and other classmates. Replaying the information will aid in understanding and remembering what you have learned.

Credit: BrainSMART
Initially, teachers may need to lead several demonstrations of using the HEAR strategy and remind students when it is time to HEAR, but over time, listening should become more automatic. When Mr. Rohde taught this strategy to his third and fourth graders last fall, he wore a hardhat to emphasize that learning how to listen well is hard work. But he also tells his students, "Being a 'listening genius' will be beneficial in all areas of life -- in school, in personal relationships, and in professional work situations." We wholeheartedly agree!

A Few Words in Your Ear

We leave you with three questions.

1. Is teaching cognitive strategies, like effective listening, part of your school's curriculum?

2. What would happen to learning in your classroom if students became more effective listeners?

3. How might you use (with modifications, if necessary) the HEAR strategy in your classroom?

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Training the Brain to Listen: A Practical Strategy for Student Learning and Classroom Management

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During the school year, students are expected to listen to and absorb vast amounts of content. But how much time has been devoted to equipping students with ways to disconnect from their own internal dialogue (self-talk) and to focus their attention fully on academic content that is being presented?

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"The most common obstacle to effective listening is noise."

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Strategies to Prevent the Neurotoxic Impact of School Stress

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The chronic stress of sustained or frequent boredom correlates with neurophysiologic changes that impact cognition, memory, social and emotional behavior -- changes that affect school success. Over time, high stress increases the risk for other medical conditions including heart disease, obesity and diabetes.

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"Using metacognition and strategy development skillsets, we can guide students through the experience of developing the executive function of their neural networks, which are most actively maturing during the school years, and help them recognize the benefits of metacognition"

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Continued efforts to provide engaging and personally relevant learning experiences

Helping students build the executive functions of emotional self-control to give them strategies for stress reduction

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Supportive and emotionally safe environments help foster the necessary conditions for deep, meaningful learning.