.4 Brain-Based Behaviors that Teachers Try to Stop

Does anyone know what a tropistic behavior is? It is faddish or cliquish behavior. Example, buying Nike shoes, is a tropisitic behavior. Certain clicks are popular, some groups are in-groups. That's what fraternities are all about. That's what clubs are all about, there are in-groups and out-groups. This is all tropistic behavior. It turns out tropisitic behavior is something the brain really digs.

Preening, the brain needs preening. You need an opportunity to show yourself off. The brain loves to have meaningless discussion. The brain love informal debates on meaningless notation. Example, the endless discussion people have about sports. How people will really be influenced by who goes to the Super Bowl? I suppose the two teams that do, their families, die hard fans and owners, and of course the teams that don't. In all, a few hundred people. How many people are going to be talking about who goes to the super bowl? Millions. The sports folks have gotten this organized in better ways than the teachers have.

Informal role play, and nested learning environments are all brain based behaviors. Nesting is when an animal builds its own little house, and then peeks out over the top of it and looks at the world and feels comfortable inside its nest. We humans also like that. We want to have kind of our little nest, our comfort zone that we can call our own, and brains love that. Another kind of typical behavior is called top dog behavior. Or my stuff behavior. Another kind of brain behavior is flocking in teams. Flirting is another brain-based behavior.

The thing of it is, traditionally teachers spend a lot of time trying to combat these behaviors. That whole list is stuff teachers don't like, "stop flirting, stop this, stop that, stop the other thing" The question is can we create an environment which builds these behaviors rather than combating them. That means going about it in a completely different way. More personally meaningful projects under choice. Productive rituals, the absence of threats, and the absence of rewards that people think are beyond them. The absence of artificial dead lines. The prevision of the needed learning resources. All of these create a brain affirming learning climate.

It is very frustrating to people if you know computers are an important part of learning resources of this class, and you look all around you and see a whole lot of other folks who have computers in their home, and you don't have one. That's a threat. We try to provide for that threat by having computer labs on campus, but I am hear to tell you, going to do your work at a computer lab, ain't the same as having a computer at your house. That has to do with need learning resources.

If every child in the US had a laptop computer provided by their school, it would cost us about six billion dollars. That includes replacing it every year. That is really not very much money, on a national scale. We spent 10 billion dollars on Hurricane Floyd. Providing kids with learning sources is as important as cleaning up the mess after a hurricane.

We need to take positive learning rituals, and Jensen suggests some these. Arrival rituals, music and fan fair. A lot of societies have figured it out. In our society, at a football game what do you think it is all about to play the national anthem before the game? It is a ritual. Why don't you play the national anthem before a movie? Why should you play the national anthem before a sports game, and not before a movie? Why don't you go into a movie theater and everybody stands up and sings the national anthem? These are just, sheer rituals, nothing to do with anything real. Arrival rituals, fan fair, positive greetings, special handshakes, hugs, all of these are arrival rituals. Guests come to your home, and you welcome them with hugs, or handshakes or something you have as an arrival ritual. Organization rituals, team or class names. We are the monarchs. Cheers, jesters, different kinds of games. Situational rituals, applauds when learners contribute. Closing and ending rituals, journal writings, self-assessments. See all these possibilities. We really haven't figured out how to make these a positive part of education. If you don't do it right, it turns out dorky. If I were to say in a class "anytime someone answers a question well when I call on him or her, then everyone should applaud," that would be ridiculous.

That would probably work better if anytime someone succeeded, we all congratulate that person for their success. Like these positive thinking things, some of these informational things you see on TV where someone says something and everybody in the audience sits there, and claps, even though you know they are being paid to do it. You are influenced by the fact that when he says "Aww this thing slices and dices better than anything else" the audience goes "yeah." You know they are sitting there getting paid to go "yeah" but guess what? When you see this thing slicing and dicing and everybody going yeah, and then when they throw in the free whatever it is, you go and buy the stupid stuff.

My wife, who declares war on all this stuff, bought a George Foreman Grill. I couldn't believe it. We were one of the first kids on the block to have one of these George Foreman Grills that grills chicken on both sides simultaneously. You can now get them in the store, but when we got one the only place you could get them was from those infomercial with everybody going "yeah." It works very well incidentally. It was a good choice, but it's hard to clean.

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