Attack of the Teenage Brain- part 2

John Medina's text, Attack of the Teenage Brain!, is a delightful read whose quest is to better understand the neuroscience behind executive function (EF) and how to improve it and thus improve academic success. He uses humor and a rich composite of cultural references to explain and explore research and how it relates to teenagers. His well-researched book is highly readable. His target audience is teachers, but parents and perhaps some parts teenagers would benefit form this understanding.

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.

Attack of the Teenage Brain! part 1 exercise

John Medina's text, Attack of the Teenage Brain!, is a delightful read whose quest is to better understand the neuroscience behind executive function (EF) and how to improve it and thus improve academic success. He uses humor and a rich composite of cultural references to explain and explore research and how it relates to teenagers. I know there is lots to digest in this book so I am going to hone in on one area today- exercise.

Exercise has the potential to improve executive function, academic success and emotional health. John points out the research to support these assertions. It reminds me of similar research suggesting that an hour of aerobic exercise per day significantly reduces ADHD related problems. Exercise is also given credit for reducing stress, weight and depression.

First, lets look at strictly the impact of exercise on the body. It increases blood flow. The brain, while only 2-3% of body mass consumes 20% of ingested energy (p. 146). It needs blood to survive. When we increase blood flow, we increase alertness and ability to focus. (ADHD anyone?) Our teenage students who take chronic sleep deprivation to a level of near omnipresence, come to school sleepy. If we get them up and moving, we can sustain their attention better because their brains have enough oxygen to work. If we make them work harder- aerobic activity- that blood flow improvement lasts longer, builds vessels and capacity. Our brains work better with more activity. Students who participate in regular activity actually sleep better than those who do not exercise. Studies have shown that this increases academic achievement to the tune of a letter grade for every 15 minutes of daily activity (p. 137). If we want our kids to do better in school, lets make them work out to activate their brains and prepare them to learn. There will be a side effect of better behavior as students are more able to self-regulate their behavior, increase their focus and engage in the opportunities we present.

The research that John pointed out indicated that cognitively challenging exercise such as organized sports, or, I imagine, watching a new aerobic routine and trying to keep up, increases EF (p. 116). No cognitive challenge, however, was required to improve mood. Since suicide is a leading cause of death for teenagers (and a leading cause of impairment when it goes wrong) and most mental illnesses begin to establish themselves in early teenage years, providing a vehicle for reducing stress and depression seems like an important goal. (Stress does have a significant impact on the brain's ability to learn.) Again our evidence based practice involves activity. Be sure that our middle schoolers still have recess where they can go outside and play. Have PE class available more often. My daughter's school moved from one 80 minute block of PE every 4 days to 2-50 minute blocks every 4 days. The research certainly supports this move to improve academic performance and mental health of our kids. Tight budgets should not keep kids from accessing PE. Our era of intense focus on test performance should not pull PE so that kids can have more time for ELA and math. These things are improved by PE, even if time is taken away from those core areas. A difficult proposition to swallow, but the research supports it.

John's prescription for increasing EF, academic achievement and mental health is exercise. Regular, aerobic and cognitively challenging movements for on a daily basis. While genetics are instrumental is a students' inclination toward EF disorders like ADHD, changing the environmental situation a child is in will improve their situation. It may not take away the problems, but it will offer an avenue for improvement- one that does not involve medication or changing the home living environment. Lets try to change what is in our control to improve student success. Instead of cake, let the mantra be let them eat exercise.

Better than carrots or sticks

Managing classrooms is a challenge. Some schools are identified as needing support when they suspend too many kids or too many in a subgroup. I spent the last year working in one such program where they were trying to implement Positive Behavior and intervention supports (PBIS). They were not fully engaged and did not seem to be making much progress. When I read Dominique Smith, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey's book,

I thought about many of the challenges of the school. I appreciated that they were trying to implement an evidence based program of management, but they were still struggling. This book talked about some nuisances that would, potentially lead to greater success.

Both Restorative Practices and PBIS share the idea that kids engage in behavior because it is what they know. They need to learn alternative patterns of behavior to help them become more successful. Restorative Practices is focused on making things right. I have previously thought of it as a post-behavior intervention, and this book showed me how it can be applied prior to escalation of behavior.  I had also reasoned that putting a victim and a perpetrator together in a room might be cruel. I have seen kids who have been brutalized and cannot imagine making them face their abuser. If the victim is willing and prepared, I can see how this approach could facilitate healing. Unfortunately, such meetings require lots of pre-conference work with the parties, a willingness to participate, and highly skilled facilitators. The average teacher is not prepared to do this role.

I appreciated the idea that students need to develop empathy through guidance and learn skills. The authors identified four questions that students could reflect on to develop these skills:

1. Did you ask for help today when you needed it? 
2. Did you offer help to another when you recognized that he or she needed it?
3. Did you accept help when it was offered to you?
4. If you declined help, did you do so politely?              p. 44

Soft skills are often seen as critical and often lacking in young people today. Helping skills are one such group of skills that students need to work.

They highlight the importance of class meetings. These are not merely activities after a problem, they are proactive, community-building actions that help to circumvent problems. They are opportunities to share ideas, thoughts, joys and sorrows. They are opportunities to remind students about upcoming events and appropriate. They are opportunities to review before a test or debrief study skills afterwards. When they are used throughout the year for these varied purposes, students are not adverse to participating and do not see the class meeting as "someone(s) did something wrong."

Throughout the text there are images of students holding signs like, "I wouldn't make it anywhere else," (p. 16) and "I own my mistakes" (p. 97). These are inspiring comments that showcase trust and personal responsibility. They also have many sentence starters for discussions which would be useful for difficult conversations. Overall a book I know I will read again. Learning about how to correct the course before it is woefully off target is an admirable activity that I know I would improve from.

peer tutoring and the Gifted

When our district started its full day kindergarten program I went to the public sessions. My daughter was not going to eligible for the program for another year yet, but would ultimately attend kindergarten so I was interested. I asked about how they were going to keep my daughter learning all day- I was resigned to her being bored and developing her coloring skills for half a day, but an entire day seemed too much. I was informed of the options the teachers could use for advanced students:

• More challenging work could be sent home- my five year old did not need her learning after school but in school. If I wanted to be her teacher, I am perfectly capable of homeschooling if that is the goal.
• She could help the other students when she finished, after all the best way to learn something is to teach it- who trained her in teaching? Didn’t she deserve to learn new things, too?
• There would be plenty of learning for her to do. Kindergarten is far more advanced than it used to be- true, but she had mastered even these raised standards before kindergarten started.

There was no mention of sending high achieving students to higher level classes or differentiating to individualize her instruction. For a decent school district, their answers seemed woefully lacking.

Catherine Little addresses the concern about peer tutoring or having fast finishers help slow-goers in her article, “PeerTutoring and Gifted Learners- Applying a Critical Thinking Lens.”  She poses three questions for peer tutoring:

• What is the intended purpose of peer tutoring- not just for the tutee, but for the tutor?
• How will you assess progress toward that goal?
• How do we guide students to achieve them?

As Ms. Little and my district superintendent pointed out there is an adage that teaching others is the best way to learn something well. Unfortunately, this is an unproven adage. Helping out others after you finished or being the recipient of “ask 3 then me” all class will slow down progress so the child is not sitting with nothing to do. There might be empathy goals to achieve. If one of these three purposes is the goal then how do you assess it? My daughter would get increasing frustrated with being asked to help others to pass or being constantly interrupted in her work by others. While she shows tremendous empathy for her brother whose ASD presents huge struggles in the social realm, she wanted her school time to be about, well, her. Never was there any measure of her success in any of these areas. Admittedly how would you measure it? She showed kindness during the interaction- she did before, that's why her teachers were so eager to suggest it. She refrained from empathy lacking comments- she did, in school, but when she came home, I would hear about it.

I know the success of Peer Tutoring as an instructional tool. The problem, as Ms. Little points out, is that successful peer tutoring programs involve training of the tutor and clear expectations for both parts of the dyad. Further, they work best with participants who choose to be involved- not those mandated to participate.

If we want to have our schools meet our children’s potential- a goal for many schools and teachers- we need to figure out how to deal with these fast finishers. Merely asking them to help out cannot be the sole answer. Perhaps give them more challenging assignments- not more work, different work. Perhaps have them work on an independent project of interest when they finish.  Perhaps they could read. If they want to help out, let them, but don't demand it of them.