Using Neuroscience to Help Students by Heather Dinicola

hdinicola1 — 2025-09-14 18:49:59 UTC

Prof D-

1. In the video, it is a great reminder that some students are raised to value independent learning while others are raised to put a higher value of collectivism.

2. I appreciate her emphasis on "trust generators" in Chapter 5 of her book. This level of trust allows kids to "do the hard things" that release the dopamine!

toddalexander79 — 2025-09-16 20:34:44 UTC

I appreciate the authors views on cultural responsive teaching. For me, this is the community outlook of VARK learning styles where students are learning from social, community, or learned experiences. A teacher may just appeal to the students with certain methods of teaching by including the community.
Commit to practicing affirmation with individuals. I strive to be able to do this currently, but first want to build rapport with small moments. Maybe they would work hand in hand?

2025-09-16 21:02:34 UTC

Zaretta Hammond has encouraged us to view our students as coming in homogeneous groups; part of the ecosystem of our classroom. The students can be addressed in groups, according to the learning style native to them/learned at home in the first seven years of their lives, as culture...she metaphorically calls, 'software'. I think that while students bring a culture that they are familiar with, they are in school exposed to other ways of doing things, just as they are mixing with other cultures. I like the idea of neuroscience...saying that we, teachers, must acknowledge the patterns already present in students' brains. Use curiosity to give them something new that they might not have had at home. Some students have been told, "Do this because I've told you to do it that way". There may be more effective rewards to doing hard work, in the dopamine that the mid-brain releases. We're competing with cell phones and videogames, here. Make games out of lessons and give more than praises... physical rewards, such as kudos tickets that can be saved to purchase snacks? Consider the lighting in the classroom? Repeatedly praise students and have them praise each other for jobs well done? There are lots of ideas out there.

2025-09-16 21:08:37 UTC

Video: I really appreciated when they discussed how it's not about changing the "hardwiring" of the students but about developing the "hardwire" the students already come in with. I think this gets us away from seeing students as empty vessels to be filled and instead as unique individuals who each come with their own funds of knowledge.
Chapter: I really liked the discussion of the components of building trust (listening, vulnerability, familiarity, interests, concern, and competence). This really made sense to me and shows how there are multiple in-roads to earning a student's trust.

2025-09-16 21:13:49 UTC

The video: “Do it because I said so. No student has ever learned that way.” An aha moment for me not as something new but as something I believed in already but had never heard so succinctly. Much of what teaching is is meeting the student where they are, which the remainder of the video reinforces.
In the chapter I like the idea of the Pedagogy of Listening. So much of what allows a student to work with a teacher comes from making sure they feel heard. This is why so much of the chapter is based on building trust. With trust the student can go to the teacher without fear when they don’t understand something, or believe in the teachers sincerity when they receive an affirmation.

2025-09-16 21:15:40 UTC

The idea that I found helpful was getting the students away from the cortisol and steering toward the dopamine. I love the way that she talked about dopamine saying that it is a reward for doing the hard thing and it goes together with motivation and why students are doing things. I have ADHD so I'm always chasing the dopamine, but I don't think people realize how helpful it is to use dopamine hit as a refresher and a brain hack.

Learning how to learn skills vs. teaching them new study skills. This sounds so obvious when you hear it in the video but it needs to be said. It was a lightbulb moment that I can connect to my early experience in the classroom. It's about teaching the student how they can learn and retain the information in a way that works for them. The idea that this is what provides equity in the classroom honestly lit up like flashing lights in my brain. It makes so much sense and it's student focused. It's about them learning how to do all of this without you. That's a cool idea.

2025-09-16 21:19:11 UTC

Jack Walsh:

From the video, I learned a lot more about how students learn. It is not just about things like motivation or relationships it is about how the brain processes information. Students are motivated when they complete difficult tasks because dopamine is released and it makes them want to complete even more challenges. I want to be able to structure learning so that students can train their brain to be more successful.

From the chapter I learned how amygdala blocks the release of cortisol and how this blockage can be deactivated through trust. This shows that building a rapport with the students isnt just about being kind. Checking in with students scientifically is proven to encourage students to learn.

davidcarlosstumpo — 2025-09-16 21:22:19 UTC

1. In the video, what I found most striking is the notion that you cannot change how a brain thinks, you can only help it learn more effectively, which connects to the practice of differentiation and UDL.

In the chapter, I appreciate the idea that "trust frees up the brain for other activities like creativity, learning, and higher order thinking." This ties in with Maslow's Hierarchy and students' needs for validation and affirmation. Trust is certainly the foundation for teaching and learning, which is supported by neuroscience with cortisol.

2025-09-16 21:25:14 UTC

Professor D,

What I found most interesting in the video was the notion that there is a level of neuroscience involved in teaching. To ensure the best learning outcomes, students need dopamine moments and productive collective struggle. In an effective classroom, students become the unit of change. By productively struggling together or working through challenges as a group, students are able to do hard things and achieve satisfaction in their own learning experience. This alliance accelerates the learning that our students' brains naturally do.
From Chapter 5, I would emphasize the point that building rapport with students is much more than just getting to know their interests. In order to support learning, there must be trust between all learning partners. "Trust deactivates the amygdala and blocks the release of cortisol." (Hammond, 2014) Even if you can assess who students are as individuals, it still does not guarantee that they will be affirmed. Affirmation requires a level of trust between the student and educator; building students' self-confidence is not enough; the educator must respect and validate each student as an individual.

2025-09-16 21:34:19 UTC

Video: I was struck by the metaphors Zaretta Hammond attributed to learning. The idea that the brain is the "hardware" and culture is "software" makes a ton of sense to me. I also really was struck by the phrase "pedagogy of compliance". I often tell my students that my favorite part of my job is to incentivize and cultivate their curiosity - ideally, a sense of curiosity that will stick with them for life (making them life time learners).

Chapter: I too was blown away at the obvious, yet woefully overlooked, idea that "trust frees up the brain for creating, learning, and higher order thinking". One of the biggest and unanticipated challenges I am currently tackling in my internship placement is building trust in order to have more student engagement. Because of their previous negative experiences in the education system, I am having to not only bridge my own connection, but also "overwrite" the previously "downloaded viruses".

2025-09-16 21:37:20 UTC

Video: One powerful insight from Hammond is her explanation that the brain is like hardware, and culture functions as its software. Students don’t enter the classroom as blank slates; from birth to age seven, their cultural experiences have already shaped how they process and organize new information. As teachers, we aren’t installing new software instead, we are learning how to leverage students’ existing cultural “programs” to help them connect new knowledge to what they already know.

Book: The section on the “Unaware Stage” really stood out, especially the idea that being unaware isn’t weakness the weakness comes if you stay unaware. Many teachers may be well-intentioned, but they aren’t reflecting on student needs or adjusting their practice. The big takeaway for me is that professional growth starts with realizing what you don’t know and being willing to “learn, unlearn, and relearn.” That mindset shift is what moves teachers toward more intentional and effective practice.