Want to Empower Your Students?

At the Learning & Brain Conference I had the opportunity to listen to a number of insightful speakers.  Here’s information on one of them, Dr. Judy Willis.

Read neurologist & teacher, Dr. Judy Willis’, new article, “How to Teach Students About the “Brain.”  December 2009/January 2010 | Volume 67 | Number 4 .Health and Learning

“I guide students in activities that help them focus and achieve positive moods to prime themselves for learning. We practice techniques to increase mindfulness. For example, students learn to do visualizations, deliberately recalling in detail a place where they felt happy, calm, and safe. The more learners practice visualizing their particular calming place, the stronger the neural network holding that memory becomes; eventually, the students can easily return to that memory whenever they feel stressed. Returning to that safe place enables learners to let new information that someone is presenting flow into their thinking brain rather than being filtered out.

Teaching students the mechanism behind how the brain operates and teaching them approaches they can use to work that mechanism more effectively helps students believe they can create a more intelligent, creative, and powerful brain. It also shows them that striving for emotional awareness and physical health is part of keeping an optimally functioning brain. Thus, instruction in brain function will lead to healthier learners as well as wiser ones.”

Wow, sounds like a lot of what we do in vision therapy and See It. Say It. Do It!

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/dec09/vol67/num04/How_to_Teach_Students_About_the_Brain.aspx