![Best Practices at Tier 1 [Secondary] - Gayle Gregory](/cover_679455.jpg "Best Practices at Tier 1 [Secondary] - Gayle Gregory")
and learning. These neurotransmitters also benefit students with attention deficit disorder.
Yet, there is even more evidence suggesting that exercise promotes brain health. In Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, John Ratey (2008) describes a critical biological link among emotions, thought, and movement. This brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, is a protein that works like a master molecule to promote growth in dendritic cells—cells that play an important role in the immune system. The BDNF, or Miracle-Gro for the brain as Ratey (2008) puts it, increases voltage in the electromagnetic charges of the brain’s neurons, thus improving the signal strength. Additionally, it helps increase the brain’s levels of serotonin. Educators can help students increase their levels of this so-called fertilizer by ensuring that classroom routines incorporate ample opportunities for physical activity. Here are just some of the ways teachers can get their students up and moving.
Music can play an important role in nourishing student brains through movement and exercise. Because music can be so engaging, setting activity times to music can create a physical, mental, and emotional break for students. Music creates a sense of fun and spirit, even in learning tasks. These are just some of the ways that physical activity can nourish student brains and benefit their learning processes.
Of course, students also require whole-body nourishment. You can’t learn if you’re hungry, and many students come to school hungry. Even with free and reduced-cost breakfasts and lunches, many students still lack adequate nutrition. While educators can’t ensure that students get to school on time to take advantage of a free breakfast or that they have adequate food at home, they can provide nutritional boosts to students throughout the day. In fact, frequent minimeals are preferable to fewer, heavier meals, in order to keep students’ glucose levels up (Riby, Law, McLaughlin, & Murray, 2011). Sharing this information with adolescents empowers them to be self-sufficient moderators of their own glucose levels. Thus, they can carry nutritious snacks to keep them alert and learning. Teachers might also keep some nutritious snacks (if schools permit) to help students who get into a slump. Complex carbohydrates and proteins, like granola bars or string cheese, are better choices for these snacks, since they take longer to digest and don’t cause the spike and crash of simple sugars and starchy foods (like soda, potato chips, or candy).
Finally, educators can teach students the need for good nutrition and model good nutritional choices by emphasizing the need to drink plenty of water during the day. Water is part of the body’s nutritional arsenal for maintaining attention and alertness. The body is 75 percent water, so it requires frequent hydration. By the time we feel thirsty, we’re already beginning to be dehydrated. Therefore, students should have access to water bottles or fountains as needed. In addition to giving students adequate amounts of water during the day, teachers must also offer frequent bathroom breaks.
Again, educators have an important role to play in nourishing students’ minds and bodies. These are just some of the ways that educators can help accomplish that goal.
Mindfulness
In addition to challenging lessons, group work, physical activity, and adequate nourishment, students also need quiet time to process information and reflect on tasks. In The Hurried Child, David Elkind (2007), an American child psychologist and longtime professor at Tufts University, writes about children who have their every waking minute filled with activity. Thus, they have little of the respite time necessary for metacognition, an activity that allows them to consolidate their thinking and develop the awareness of their own identity and thought patterns. This is similar for adolescents as well. Tim Burns (1991), a teacher, trainer, and adolescent counselor from Santa Fe, New Mexico, suggests:
If we expect our children to make the transition to the highest level or intelligence, their environment and their role models must view “down time” or quiet time as a positive experience and a welcome respite from the world’s increasing deluge of sensory stimulation. (p. 73)
Even without a full schedule, a student’s brain is constantly busy, processing data and responding to external stimuli—even a teacher’s eye-rolling or sigh of exasperation can trigger the student’s brain to send out distress signals and derail learning. Managing emotions and self-regulation, therefore, are key skills for success in school and life. Daniel Goleman (2006b), in his significant book Emotional Intelligence, suggests five components necessary for successful living.
1. Having emotional awareness
2. Managing one’s emotions
3. Self-regulating and self-motivating
4. Showing empathy
5. Using appropriate social skills
How can educators help students develop and foster these characteristics as habits? One way is by teaching students techniques for developing mindfulness—a term with multiple definitions but that we use to describe the state of purposely paying attention to one’s thoughts and feelings. Students of all ages, from elementary to high school, can benefit from mindfulness training. By incorporating some short, easy-to-do mindfulness exercises into daily classroom routines, teachers can help students learn to be more aware of—and, thus, able to control—their thoughts and actions. Not only does mindfulness training help students manage their emotions, but it also can help improve their attention and develop their abilities of concentration, conflict resolution, and empathy for others—all of which offer huge payoffs for school and life. Practicing mindfulness can help build a calm atmosphere in the classroom and improve the overall classroom environment.
Teaching mindfulness doesn’t require complicated strategies. A very basic mindfulness strategy, for example, is simply teaching students to quiet themselves and take some deep breaths. Teachers also can encourage students to eliminate the distracting noise of external stimuli by taking a short walk or focusing on a short period of creative exploration, such as drawing using noise-canceling headphones, journal reflections, visualizations, meditation, or simply taking a short time-out to regroup thinking before moving to another learning exercise or activity. See also the Hawn Foundation (http://thehawnfoundation.org/mindup) for more on mindfulness and mindful awareness training.
In the 21st century, we are bombarded with stimuli that fight for our attention. Helping students learn to use the quiet, reflective time mindfulness affords can teach them to be more in the moment, rather than obsessing about past events or future worries. At the same time, mindfulness goes a long way to quiet student spirits and, in the process, increase their ability to focus their attention on the task at hand.
Providing Relevant, Meaningful, and Engaging Instruction
Learning new information can be a stressful experience for students and, therefore, needs special attention from educators as they attempt to build a brain-friendly classroom. The more relevant, meaningful, and engaging the learning experience, the more effective it will be for students in the classroom.
One way to make learning more engaging is to make it more accessible, something
