Education is more than reaching certain standards of learning; education is developing the desire to learn, knowing how to learn, and implementing teaching practices based on how the brain actually functions.

Teaching to the Brain’s Natural Learning System, Barbara K. Given

The brain is a complex of five major learning systems – emotional, social, cognitive, physical, and reflective. With the advent of new brain research, much of it made possible by the mapping of the human genome, there has been a reversal of the previous belief that the majority of learning occurs in a child’s early years prior to beginning school. Although this learning window is important, new research reveals that the brain’s nerve cells or neurons continue to be stimulated throughout life by new experiences and exposure to new information. Neurons are the only cells in the body that process information producing chemicals called neurotransmitters. Evidence of new learning has been observed in scientific studies that have traced the new neural pathways created by neurotransmitters.

The brain’s ability to stay focused for long periods of time is rare and difficult. In most people, the brain works at high levels of attention followed by time periods of low level attention. Our brains need downtime for new “information” to strengthen or codify into learning, and it is our emotional system that drives our ability to pay attention. As researcher Robert Sywester notes, “It is biologically impossible to learn and remember anything that we don’t pay attention to. The emotional system tells us whether a thing is important – whether we ought to put any energy into it.”

It follows then that complex learning is enhanced by thinking and feeling because our basic human patterning is emotional. Emotional intelligence theorist Geoffrey Caine asserts, “That means that we need to help learners create…a sense of relationship with a subject in addition to an intellectual understanding. Once educators and parents grasp that complexity, they begin to function differently in their lives and in their classroom.”

Leading educator and emotional intelligence advocate Eric Jensen believes that, “Students are emotional beings, physical beings, cognitive beings. If we are not engaging emotions, then students feel a void, which they will fill elsewhere – and it may not be in school.” Educators and parents have witnessed the dramatic effects of emotional non-engagement in students when the end result of failure in these key areas has resulted in tragic consequences.

There is now a body of evidence that suggests that students’ brains are affected by their environmental influences – social, emotional, cognitive and physical. This means that their brains are altered by their school experiences. Chronic stress is one of the factors that can affect the way the brain learns. The brain responds to chronic stress by creating a different, less healthy baseline. Unlike most other systems of the body that revert to a previous state of health, the brain does not respond to stress in this way. “Allostatic,” stress loads are associated with a range of serious health and learning problems. Understanding what causes stress in students and taking action to create a stable, nonthreatening learning environment can have a direct affect on learning success. Eric Jensen points out there are many ways to decrease the stress students feel by teaching coping skills and utilizing physical movement (stretching, physical education, recess). There is a strong correlation between exercise and increased brain mass, mood regulation, and better cognition.

Why We Need Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional health is now considered fundamental to effective learning. According to a report from the National Center of Clinical Infant Programs, the most critical element for a student’s school success is learning “how to learn.” Key ingredients to that success are: confidence, curiosity, intentionality, self-control, capacity to communicate, ability to cooperate, and relatedness. In fact, according to leading expert Daniel Goleman, emotional intelligence has proven a better predictor of future success than IQ, GPA and standardized test scores.

Elements of emotional intelligence such as awareness of personal feelings, knowing how to handle a conflict or crisis, being able to empathize with others, and knowing how to skillfully handle relationships are essential abilities for life in the 21^st century. Goleman suggests that we should be teaching the basics of emotional intelligence in schools as data indicates that these abilities may be on the decline in children in modern economies around the world. Goleman further maintains that, “Brain researchers now accept that our repeated experiences help shape the brain itself and that this ‘neural plasticity’ occurs throughout life. Childhood experiences have special potency in this process. This means that the school years are a neurological window of opportunity, a chance to ensure that all children will get the right experiences to help them flourish in their jobs and careers, as mothers and father, husbands and wives, as citizens of our communities.”

In a number of schools and districts, SEL programs, shorthand for “social and emotional learning,” have been incorporated into the school curriculum. SEL programs feature facets of emotional intelligence including self-awareness and social problem solving. These aspects of learning are repeated from year to year throughout school in developmentally appropriate ways that enhance other aspects of the curriculum without taking time away from the rest of the curriculum. Data shows that helping children increase their self-awareness, manage distressing emotions, and fine tune their relationship skills could protect them against violence, crime, substance abuse, unwanted pregnancies, eating disorders, and depression.

What is Social Intelligence?

One of the most exciting discoveries emerging from new brain research is that our brains are wired to connect with each other. Neuroscience has determined that our brains are designed to be sociable. There are neurotransmissions that allow us to impact every person we engage with and they, in turn, to impact us.

Social interactions result in quickly changing transmissions as we move through the range of emotions. The resulting feelings create a hormonal flow that ripples though the body from our heart to our immune cells. Science has now tracked connections between stressful relationships and the operation of specific genes that regulate the immune system.

This means that our emotions, through our relationships, shape our experiences and our biology. Daniel Goleman states, “The brain-to-brain link allows our strongest relationships to shape us in ways as benign as whether we laugh at the same jokes or as profound as which genes are (or are not) activated in t-cells, the immune system’s foot soldiers in the constant battle against invading bacteria and viruses.”

This means that social conditions have greater impact on neurons than previously thought. Family

For too long, we have maintained a status quo in education that has at best prepared children for life as it was in the past and at worst marginalized those families least able to access a better life for their children through means other than education.

ASCD President Richard Hanzelka

Stephanie Pace Marshall, a national expert in educational leadership, notes that our current approach to education comes from a belief that the world works mechanically – a function of inputs and outputs. What the new research indicates is that we must create a new approach that reflects a better understanding of the learning process. This newly envisioned learning process focuses on potential, abundance, integration, and connectedness. Marshall maintains that a new story of education says that whole children are neither test scores nor bundles of frenzied activity.

A new report from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) entitled The Learning Compact Redefined: A Call to Action proposes a new agenda for schools that focuses on five key premises:

1. Each student enters school healthy and learns about and practices a healthy lifestyle.
2. Each student learns in an intellectually challenging environment that is physically and emotionally safe for students and adults.
3. Each student is actively engaged in learning and is connected to the school and the broader community.
4. Each student has access to personalized learning and to qualified, caring adults.
5. Each graduate is prepared for success in college or further study and for employment in the global environment.

Although these tenets may seem obvious, in practice they are present only in a minority of public schools. Ensuring that every child has equal access to resources and that the evaluations of success are made on a broad array of metrics rather than the narrow definitions of today’s achievement process are going to require large-scale reform. As the report makes clear, “Children entering school today will engage in careers that have not yet been invented but will become obsolete within their lifetimes…Perhaps anticipating these changes, businesses, service industries, and professional organizations are already seeking out individuals with strong communication skills, honesty and integrity, interpersonal skills, motivation and initiative, a strong work ethic, and teamwork skills.” Acquisition of these 21^st century skills is firmly anchored in social and emotional fitness, and so must be incorporated into a whole-child curriculum.

Embracing the Whole Child

It is time to put the students at the center of the education system and align resources to their multiple needs to ensure a balanced education for all.

The Learning Compact Redefined: A Call to Action

The need to expand our view of balanced learning through the inclusion of social and emotional intelligence is necessary for our students to grow into global citizens and contribute to an international community that is becoming even more inter-dependent and complex. We need to be helping students develop the ability to think critically and analytically while creating innovative solutions to problems.

The research is clear that children need supportive environments that nurture their social, emotional, physical, ethical, civic, creative, and cognitive development. The question is: who bears responsibility for creating this environment? This responsibility has historically been that of families and schools. But education advocates now believe that the entire community bears responsibility for the full development of our children.

There is clear scientific evidence that both nature and nurture shape a child’s initial and continuing development. The importance of this cannot be overstated in terms of our educational goals and strategies. The ASCD report writers assert, “We know that children do not develop and learn in isolation, but rather grow physically, socially, emotionally, ethically, expressively, and intellectually within networks of families, schools, neighborhoods, communities, and our larger society. Educating the whole child cannot happen if emphasis is placed solely on academic achievement.”

Schools and communities must take responsibility to support the whole child by meeting the child’s basic needs of safety and security. They can look to Maslow’s hierarchy for an order of needs to which schools and districts can reference for policies and practices.

Students whose basic needs are met (safety, belonging, competence, and autonomy) are more likely to:

• Become engaged learners
• Develop social skills and understanding
• Contribute to the school and community
• Act in accord with the values of the school and community
• Achieve academically

The School of the Future

The Illinois State Board of Education has provided a model of how schools can incorporate the social and emotional needs of children into a rigorous curriculum. In addition to the academic standards needed to meet NCLB requirements, they also have established indicators for physical development and health, fine arts, foreign language, social and emotional learning, and measurements of the educational environment of each school. Farsighted states and districts have everything they need right now to create learning environments that foster development of the whole child in preparation for life in the 21^st century.

Recent findings by the Department of Health & Human Services:

• U.S. students are among the higher ranking countries for frequent bullying.
• Only 38% of U.S. students always feel safe at school.
• 30% rarely or never feel safe at school.
• U.S. students are among the least likely to feel that their fellow students are kind and helpful.

Schools and communities have a common interest in the education of our future workers and leaders. Together they can foster a sense of engagement and connection for students. Using a discovery-based education model, students will have the opportunity to practice the skills, knowledge, and behaviors required for active participation in a global society.

Based on comprehensive research and the best thinking of today’s educational leaders, the ASCD report outlines recommendations to incorporate social and emotional learning into the curriculum:

• School Districts should develop policies for incorporating social and emotional development into the district’s educational program.
• States need to develop and implement policy that incorporates social and emotional learning into state standards and licensure requirements.
• The federal government should provide resources and incentives for communities to develop comprehensive youth development plans that incorporate social and emotional development.

One of the essential components of social and emotional fitness is a feeling of connection and a personal stake in the process. Comprehensive educational reform will include opportunities for students to participate in decision making, problem solving and service to the community. There is clear evidence that schools who work to foster meaningful relationships between teachers and students experience decreased discipline actions, increased attendance, and improved graduation rates. Helping students understand that not all learning happens in a classroom, how to find the resources they require, and to develop a life-long love of the learning process are among our greatest goals as educators.