When you travel to a new place, it always “feels” as if your voyage, your travel, takes a very long time.  Why?

Since you are traveling to a new destination, one that you have never been before, you are observing everything around you. Your senses are hightened, and because of your awareness of this new place, your brain is trying to retain as much information as possible.

Your brain is now working overtime; it is absorbing massive amounts of new information

This new information has to be reorganized in a way that makes sense to us, and this takes time

So our feeling, our PERCEPTION of time is thrown off, not because time has changed, but because of our EXPERIENCE of our new surroundings causes our brains to process new information SLOWER… which causes us to experience our newness in a SLOWER, more detailed, way.

This is why when you travel to a new destination, it feels like it is taking LONGER

This is why you remember so much about the first time you met someone of significance and importance to you

This is why accidents and traumatic events leave such vivid memories; because your sense and your brain are ACTIVELY recording and retaining as much information as possible.

 

And this is also why, the return drive or flight home seems so quick; because your brain remembers everything going back. It doesn’t spend as much time trying to observe because it has already seen, so in order to be more efficient, it ignores or allows the familiar to not be retained

This is why, people whom you see on a regular basis, you might tend to overlook.

But what does this mean for the classroom

 

It means that learning, is an organic experience.

 

It means that learning, happens.

 

It is a part of being a human being, it is part of the human experience. We are wired to learn, to observe, or retain information, to process our surroundings and to process new experiences fully.

 

So is learning truly is an organic experience; then why do so many of our students have so many problems learning? Why is it that you have to repeat yourself sometimes over and over again, or why is it that some subjects seem completley out of reach.

 

Barring medical conditions, or a diagnosis that specifically states that one of your students will have some difficulty, if the learning is not happening, it is because the conditions, the ENVIRONMENT is not condusive towards allowing the learning to happen.

 

What could affect this learning environment?

 

Biology: maslow hierarcy, safety, food, shelter, love
External forces: societal pressures (peer pressure, friends) and parental stressors.

 

As the teacher in the classroom, it is up to us to create an environemnt in which the organic learning experience HAPPENS as it should.

 

If we believe that learnign happens naturally, organically, then that means that we need to provide the appropriate conditions for this natrual even to happen.

 

In our classrooms we need to provide: Agency, Safety, Care





agency

“I will do…”

safety

“I can do…”

care

“I can and will do for myself”

This comes from an emotionally and psychologically supportive teacher
This is not BS; but rather engrained and deeply rooted in collaborating with your students.

And if very effective