Tuesday, December 12, 2017

The Woman who Changed Her Brain

Barbara Arrowsmith-Young's book, The Woman who Changed her Brain: And Other Inspiring Stories of Pioneering Brain Transformation, discusses her life story and captures vignettes of students of her Arrowsmith Schools. Currently there are 32 schools, mostly parochial programs, in the US using the Arrowsmith program. Details about their program may be found at their website. Barbara details her struggles with multiple severe learning disabilities and what she did to overcome them.

Her program is based on training the brain to complete tasks that are in areas of difficulty without using compensatory strategies. Much evidence for this type of approach exists. We know, for example that the brains of novice readers process reading using far larger portions of the brain than experienced readers do. The act of developing proficiency results in neurological changes in the way the way the brain processes text. Research demonstrated that when chimps had fingers sewn together, the brain started to process input and responses for both fingers collectively as one unit. Learning and experiences do change the brain. Further, we know that neuroplastisity exists. People who have had portions of their brains removed have demonstrated an ability to learn motor skills for regions of the brain that had been removed.

I know that as a child, I had abysmal handwriting. I was a good student whose handwriting grades were always U- unsatisfactory. In elementary school we had an activity period during which teachers and parents ran clubs for 5 week sessions. I participated in the "ornamental writing" or calligraphy activity for at least two sessions. While we learned the formation of elaborate capitals for a single script, we spent lots of focused time practicing handwriting. I made rows of circles and zigzags and fat and thin sideways number eights. Then I wrote one letter over and over and over. Using a pen with a nib and dipping in ink I learned about pressure to make the correct effects. This was hard work for someone whose handwriting was often illegible. Ultimately, however, I enjoyed the practice and became good at it. Hours of practice finally paid off and I have very legible writing now. We do not dedicate the time to handwriting practice and guess what- our children do not have good handwriting. Yes, it can be tedious, boring and hard work, that occupies that most precious school commodity-time- but it does pay off. This is the premise of the Arrowsmith program: practice in the area of difficulty in order to improve brain function.

The program begins with an analysis of skills which can be found on their website, cited above. Once the assessment is complete, they compose a report detailing areas of concern such as symbolic thinking, auditory speech discrimination and symbol recognition. These areas are mapped to specific brain sites which are then tasked with completing activities at graded levels of difficulty, often within a timed opportunity. The exercises, some of which are lightly described in the book, focus attention on the primary task of the region of the brain, exercising it to make it work harder and develop more capacity.

It would be interesting to see her list of exercises so that we could try and implement them with integrity. There is a training program that lasts for 3 weeks offered during the summer in Toronto. Rhonda Hawkins wrote a dissertation, which may be found here, reviewing the program and its impact. Many of the improvements were in areas difficult to assess with standardized assessments.

The book is an inspirational read that holds out hope for individuals struggling with significant disabilities. It does, however, put out there that the path forward is intensive practice. Unfortunately many students do not have the motivations to pursue intensive and monotonous practice and schools often do not have time to facilitate such practice that does not directly relate to a content area. Practice tracing and copying a set of simple of Hebrew or Cyrillic letters for an hour a day to develop fine motor and motor planning skills does not fit into the average school day.

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