Reflection on conference

From: Tiffany Murasso
Email: tmurasso@ccaoh.org
Date: May 20, 2008

Comments

My name is Tiffany Murasso. I live in Connecticut and have been working in the field of early childhood for 20 years. For the last ten years I have worked for Catholic Charities, Inc. Archdiocese of Hartford as the Director of Early Childhood Programs. Last summer I attended Taking Charge of Change at the McCormick Tribune Center for Early Childhood Leadership and am currently enrolled in the Masters of Education online program at NLU.

I attended a session with Keith Pentz entitled “Making the Body-Brain Connection in Teaching and Learning”. I found this session very interesting, and I learned a great deal. The session looked at current brain research and the interconnectedness between the body and the brain, and how the teaching strategies and the ability to create a positive environment can have a significant impact on the learning of children.

We reviewed a concept called “SEAL”- Stimulus (any sensory provocation) leads to Emotion (either POSITIVE or NEGATIVE) leads to Attention (positive emotions drive executive function and negative emotions drive survival) leads to Learning.

Basically what this means is when a stimulus is presented to a child (or any person), that child responds emotionally. That emotion is either positive or negative. When the response is negative, those negative emotions stimulate the brain stem, where “fight or flight” / survival instincts reside. When the response is positive, the frontal lobe where executive or higher level thinking takes place is stimulated. This has huge implications for teaching and learning in the classroom. It means that children learn better when the experience is enjoyable, and fun not stressful and punitive.

Positive emotions stimulate serotonin which improves mood, and makes neural connections that help the brain develop. Cortisol is released when we have a negative emotional response such as fear or anger. Chronic Cortisol in the system can actually decrease brain growth. This information is amazing to me, and confirmed for me the importance of providing a happy, safe, predictable environment for children to learn.

A few other points he made that impacted me were:

“If children do not have choice they will never become self regulated”. Choices develop internal / intrinsic motivation. Choices should be win-win, not win-lose. And “The ability to share materials and wait for a turn does not develop well in children accustomed to deprivation.”