Medina organizes his book around how to change education to develop EF in teenagers and thus improve their performance. His three pronged approach includes the following components of changing the learning environment:
- Create night school for parents within the existing school
- Engage certified faculty to design and implement a curriculum around positive, evidence based marital practice
- Work with schools of education to create parenting curriculum and insert it into teacher training
- enlist these newly trained staff to create and implement the curriculum- compensate them appropriately
- Partner with researches to evaluate the success of these curriculum
- Design schools centered around a gym
- implement a physical movement curriculum and encourage universal participation in organized sports
- change start times to be compatible with brain development
- Implement a mandatory SEL program that emphasizes empathy
- designate a mindfulness room painted green
- Use certified instructors to implement a mindfulness program that has been verified by research.
p.200-201
Much of this advice centers around three components: teach parents, exercise children and produce research to refine programing. In my previous post I talked about the exercise piece.
EF is affectionately described as "the ability to get something done- and not punch someone in the nose while doing it" (p. 13). Medina organizes EF into three components: response inhibition, cognitive flexibility and working memory. It is easy to understand how these three elements underlie much school success. Students who display strong skills in these areas tend to be far more successful in both school and life than those who do not. They represent soft skills that are important to life after school that we often do a poor job teaching because they are not assessed, are difficult to assess objectively and take extensive time to develop in many students but develop very easily and readily in others (much like reading- can you imagine an EF remediation program as wide-reaching as the reading intervention programs we have today?).
Medina highlights three elements that are essential to understand when talking about learning. First, the brain is interested in survival not learning (p. 83). Second, "human learning is primarily a relational proposition" (p. 87). Human survival was based on working together to make us bigger and scarier and more successful than other apex predators. We need each other to survive. Third, the more fear in our lives, the more we focus on mere survival than on relationships. Safety enables learning. Knowing this information allows us to understand how the kids interact in school- demystifying some of the frustrating behaviors that teenagers exhibit.
Medina highlights the idea that parents are the most important element in a child and teenagers life. Thus he sees parental training as important. The most successful parenting style and teaching style is authoritative- places limits on behavior, explains the rationale for the limits, provides defined feedback about performance, imposes consequences for not meeting the expectations and gradually releases control as children grow and develop. This concept is seen repeatedly in the research and is why the author considers parenting classes so important.
Medina addresses the idea of screen time. Screens seem omnipresent in our current lives. Our phones, our 1:1 devices, TVs, video games, tablets, cars, some refrigerators and the list goes on. Is screen time good or bad. Kids spend an average of 9 hours in front of a screen a day (p. 169). Assessing and understanding the impact of this activity on children is important. Research is somewhat inconclusive. Screen time before bed decreases sleep- this is bad. We need to address the screens in the evening even though it is a hard ask. Screen time decrease understanding of non-verbal emotional cues (p. 171), but social media use increased ability of teens empathetic ability (p. 170). Heavy media multitaskers have poorer performance on filtering tasks than light media multitaskers (p. 185). This is one area where Medina does not discuss the challenge of causation- media multitasking decreases filtering and task switching skills or people who are poor at filtering and switching chose to be media multitaskers.
Medina discusses the benefits of mindfulness and how to develop it through mediation. He showcases how being mindful decreases anxiety and depression. Since as many as a quarter of teenage girls suffer with anxiety, most undiagnosed, identifying ways to address it seem prudent. Meditation is a way to help teens deal with the stress of their lives. While we might hear people say things like, "What's the big deal? When you get older you'll see how trivial that is," to the teen, it is a big deal. Their lives have not given them the big picture yet and they cannot take that perspective.
Understanding how teenage brains work can help us frame programs that can teach them more successfully. We need to reach these youngsters. We cannot keep doing the same thing since we need better results and ever before.
Medina highlights three elements that are essential to understand when talking about learning. First, the brain is interested in survival not learning (p. 83). Second, "human learning is primarily a relational proposition" (p. 87). Human survival was based on working together to make us bigger and scarier and more successful than other apex predators. We need each other to survive. Third, the more fear in our lives, the more we focus on mere survival than on relationships. Safety enables learning. Knowing this information allows us to understand how the kids interact in school- demystifying some of the frustrating behaviors that teenagers exhibit.
Medina highlights the idea that parents are the most important element in a child and teenagers life. Thus he sees parental training as important. The most successful parenting style and teaching style is authoritative- places limits on behavior, explains the rationale for the limits, provides defined feedback about performance, imposes consequences for not meeting the expectations and gradually releases control as children grow and develop. This concept is seen repeatedly in the research and is why the author considers parenting classes so important.
Medina addresses the idea of screen time. Screens seem omnipresent in our current lives. Our phones, our 1:1 devices, TVs, video games, tablets, cars, some refrigerators and the list goes on. Is screen time good or bad. Kids spend an average of 9 hours in front of a screen a day (p. 169). Assessing and understanding the impact of this activity on children is important. Research is somewhat inconclusive. Screen time before bed decreases sleep- this is bad. We need to address the screens in the evening even though it is a hard ask. Screen time decrease understanding of non-verbal emotional cues (p. 171), but social media use increased ability of teens empathetic ability (p. 170). Heavy media multitaskers have poorer performance on filtering tasks than light media multitaskers (p. 185). This is one area where Medina does not discuss the challenge of causation- media multitasking decreases filtering and task switching skills or people who are poor at filtering and switching chose to be media multitaskers.
Medina discusses the benefits of mindfulness and how to develop it through mediation. He showcases how being mindful decreases anxiety and depression. Since as many as a quarter of teenage girls suffer with anxiety, most undiagnosed, identifying ways to address it seem prudent. Meditation is a way to help teens deal with the stress of their lives. While we might hear people say things like, "What's the big deal? When you get older you'll see how trivial that is," to the teen, it is a big deal. Their lives have not given them the big picture yet and they cannot take that perspective.
Understanding how teenage brains work can help us frame programs that can teach them more successfully. We need to reach these youngsters. We cannot keep doing the same thing since we need better results and ever before.
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