This post begins with a copy of an email I wrote yesterday to my department chair:
So
today while I was eating lunch, my husband told me about an Education
Virtual Town Hall that was on TV so I watched it. They had Arne Duncan
and Bill Bennett
on, talking about virtual ed. Then they had some parents talking about
their experience teaching their kid at home. Then they had a
psychologist answering the parents questions.
The last third of the show they had teachers discussing the state of things and answering some questions.
The
most outstanding thing I heard was from the psychologist. We all know
we are under stress, and that accounts for a lot of how we feel and
react.
But
even more, kids at the stage of puberty are in such a place in their
development, that this is harder on them. What struck me was that she
said something to
the effect that stress without an endpoint in site actually causes
the brain to rewire itself, basically slowing down the frontal cortex
which affects memory, motivation, and even motor skills and spatial
reasoning. It can add to changes in behavior
like aggression (which I’m guessing is why there have been so many kids Baker Acted lately)
What
I came away with was an even deeper understanding on how we have to be
careful about our expectations. In many cases, the kids really may NOT
be able to remember
if they did an assignment, or be able to read or understand what to do.
And it might cause them to push us away, as they may no longer be
responding to the “reward” of a job well done or good grades. The brain
may have made those things unimportant as a means
to survive and handle stress.
I
know you are doing a presentation tomorrow, and I know you may not have
time to get into this stuff. But it seems very important to understand
that there can
be some real physical changes in the brain that will affect our kids.
Today I wrote this poem, modeled after Owen Sheers' "Winter Swans."
It's a new moon today
and it has brought
me back in balance.
It has been so
up and down
this week, trying
to figure out my
new role, trying to
make sense of where
we are. And I am
coming into a place
of understanding
all I can do is be
a safe place, a
possible haven
in a world with
no endpoint in sight.
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