EBOOK
About
Welcome to your cognitive revolution. I am so glad that you found your way to this workbook. Each of us, whether we are parents or educators (or both), have been laboring in a cognitive world for a long time with tools that were designed for a behaviorist world. With the paradigm shift that accompanies this exploration, your life will experience many amazing changes. Expect greatness; enjoy the freedoms that will soon be self-evident; and especially, marvel at the impressive leaps your children and students will experience through implementation-leaps in autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
In retrospect, we confess that it often seems strange as we immerse our labors each day in neural development of young children with precariously scant, if any, knowledge about how the human brain works and how children learn. We might be the only profession that basically ignores the organ with which we are privileged to manipulate every day. It would equate to a heart surgeon offering to do a critical transplant when they had never studied the heart, or your car mechanic working on the engine of your new Tesla if they had never looked under the hood.
When we marry information about the human brain with a pedagogic model that is brain-aligned, learning spaces ignite. The insights that are in this workbook are not invented out of thin air. Nor are they solely theoretical. All strategies, hints, and suggestions come from hands-on trial-and-error experiences from teachers who have already walked this journey. They attended in-person, face-to-face institute coursework with hundreds of other teachers. Together, in an immersive learning space, they figured out how to implement a cognitive teaching and learning mode, often in spite of existing and deeply entrenched behaviorist school systems.
Teachers were not always successful and it was not always the same for all teachers—hence the broad spectrum of tools. But, the experiences were always meaningful and paved the way for outcomes that align as brain-based, social emotional, and academic in their unique circumstances. One of our teachers put it succinctly and powerfully when she said, “Our results are always significant, and often breathtaking.” Our goal is twofold: (i) eliminate labeling and stratification in classrooms and, (ii) increase teacher capacity in this new educational field where neuroscience informs classroom practices and processes.
The workbook has a simple layout mindful of accessibility and ease of use. We begin with a story—typically, a teacher wanted to implement a particular strategy so that a child or a situation could be made more successful. The theme typically focuses on changing environments, rather than changing the child. The story gives way to a two-page spread in which the problem is described in a broad and general way on the left panel. First, we describe a behavior or a situation that is daily typical in a learning space. We then describe possible neural substrates that posit that situation. Opposite this on the right panel, we describe a solution. In each case, we look at the issues through a neural lens and focus the solution in a cognitive space. Each two-page spread is a seaport and distinct unit that contains the problem and a solution that some educators have found useful in solving the situation.
All children have brains; all brains are unique. From that standpoint, it is not practicable to have a “one-size fits all” silver bullet strategy. Classroom activities and methods are therefore works in progress. I like to view progress like a caterpillar emerging out of a cocoon. Ideas and strategies mature in a cocoon-like co-created incubator so that solutions emerge, alighting their delicate wings into our learning spaces like a butterfly set free.
In retrospect, we confess that it often seems strange as we immerse our labors each day in neural development of young children with precariously scant, if any, knowledge about how the human brain works and how children learn. We might be the only profession that basically ignores the organ with which we are privileged to manipulate every day. It would equate to a heart surgeon offering to do a critical transplant when they had never studied the heart, or your car mechanic working on the engine of your new Tesla if they had never looked under the hood.
When we marry information about the human brain with a pedagogic model that is brain-aligned, learning spaces ignite. The insights that are in this workbook are not invented out of thin air. Nor are they solely theoretical. All strategies, hints, and suggestions come from hands-on trial-and-error experiences from teachers who have already walked this journey. They attended in-person, face-to-face institute coursework with hundreds of other teachers. Together, in an immersive learning space, they figured out how to implement a cognitive teaching and learning mode, often in spite of existing and deeply entrenched behaviorist school systems.
Teachers were not always successful and it was not always the same for all teachers—hence the broad spectrum of tools. But, the experiences were always meaningful and paved the way for outcomes that align as brain-based, social emotional, and academic in their unique circumstances. One of our teachers put it succinctly and powerfully when she said, “Our results are always significant, and often breathtaking.” Our goal is twofold: (i) eliminate labeling and stratification in classrooms and, (ii) increase teacher capacity in this new educational field where neuroscience informs classroom practices and processes.
The workbook has a simple layout mindful of accessibility and ease of use. We begin with a story—typically, a teacher wanted to implement a particular strategy so that a child or a situation could be made more successful. The theme typically focuses on changing environments, rather than changing the child. The story gives way to a two-page spread in which the problem is described in a broad and general way on the left panel. First, we describe a behavior or a situation that is daily typical in a learning space. We then describe possible neural substrates that posit that situation. Opposite this on the right panel, we describe a solution. In each case, we look at the issues through a neural lens and focus the solution in a cognitive space. Each two-page spread is a seaport and distinct unit that contains the problem and a solution that some educators have found useful in solving the situation.
All children have brains; all brains are unique. From that standpoint, it is not practicable to have a “one-size fits all” silver bullet strategy. Classroom activities and methods are therefore works in progress. I like to view progress like a caterpillar emerging out of a cocoon. Ideas and strategies mature in a cocoon-like co-created incubator so that solutions emerge, alighting their delicate wings into our learning spaces like a butterfly set free.