Teacher, Meet Brain.

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Andrea Fanjoy

That’s how it felt to read Teaching with the Brain in Mind by Eric Jenkins. While the bond between the brain and learning has been known for centuries, the two have been notably coy. It is only recent research which has started sharing and subsequently sparking the intimate side of this complex relationship. And like the rush of first love, it will blow your mind.

My measure of a great book on education is the degree to which it ends up highlighted. Barely a page of Jenkins’ book escaped my yellow swipe. Starting with Neuroscience 101, Jenkins addresses many of the major areas related to learning and highlights the research and implications it has for teaching. From birth and beyond, he looks at preparing the brain for school; the connections between movement, emotions, and one’s physical environment with learning; managing the social brain; and optimizing motivation, engagement, critical thinking, memory and recall. Clearly affecting a significant chunk of the school experience, Jenkins is devoting his career to having teachers ‘teach with the brain in mind’.

Some insights include:

The brain changes and can even grow new neurons throughout life. Nature and nurture both clearly play a role in defining who we are, with growing evidence revealing that nurture can override some nature, even to the degree of changing the impact of our genes.
Exercise offers much more than just physical health. If you desire a denser and better brain, make regular exercise a lifelong habit.
Much of what distinguishes teenage behaviour is rooted in the enormous changes taking place in their brains. Teens even temporarily regress in a number of abilities, such as their ability to recognize emotions in others.
While collaborative learning gets most professional press these days, brain research supports the integration of group activities with traditional learning tasks for optimal learning.
Emotions play a central role in learning and can hinder as much as enhance the brain’s ability to remember. Teachers would benefit from mindfully leveraging them.
Frequent opportunities for movement, and breaks where no new learning happens, are important for long-term storage of learning.

Teachers, indulge in the intimate details of the learner-brain relationship. Meddle even. This is one couple that needs you in the middle.

Andrea Fanjoy,
Assistant Head, Academics
You can follow Andrea on Twitter @afanjoy.

This article was first published in SNAP Etobicoke, May 2013.

Thinking, Doing and Checking Assumptions at the Door

Posted on October 3, 2012 by Andrea Fanjoy

By the time this is published, the four months of construction on our house should be nearly done. The experience has left me with more than just an addition.

Browsing for a good summer read, I stumbled upon Shop Class as Soul Craft by Matthew Crawford. Crawford was a 14-year-old electrician, who moved on to tinkering with car and motorcycle engines, then went to university to earn a PhD in philosophy. Hired to work in a think tank, he assumed he had reached the pinnacle of achievement. He was highly educated, well paid, well dressed and looking forward to the intellectual challenges that would surely ensue.

Assuming the prevailing attitudes of the day, he grew up with the notion that university and the jobs it led to were a higher calling than the trades. University was for people who were good at thinking, while college was for those better at doing. Reverence was reserved for the former.

Not many people have so fully walked down both paths as Crawford. His voice of unique experience reveals that our thinking had more than a fair share of nonsense. First, the notion that all work following university requires supreme thinking he found to be supremely hollow. The many people he met working in the trades spent their days pondering and solving complex problems the likes of which he never found at the think tank.

Equally revealing, Crawford outlines the evolution of both work and attitudes surrounding it. Prior to the onset of the Ford Motor Company and other more efficient models of machine-making, the trades were recognized for what they are – pursuits that offer endless thinking as well as doing, that bring evident value at the end of a day’s labour. The rewards inherent in self-reliance have vanished for many of us today. Of course, university is a training ground for significant work. It simply isn’t the only such training ground.

Smart thinking includes scrutiny of assumptions. Thanks to the scrutiny in Shop Class as Soul Craft, and made real by our home renovation, my summer has included this unexpected bonus of appreciation and humility. Encourage youth to find their calling, and check assumptions at the door.

Andrea Fanjoy,
Assistant Head, Academics
You can follow Andrea on Twitter @afanjoy.

This article was first published in SNAP Etobicoke, October 2012.

The Leader in All of Us

Posted on August 31, 2012 by Andrea Fanjoy

Read any good books over the summer?

I hope you all had time to enjoy the ‘dog days’ of summer. I know you didn’t have homework to supervise and uniforms to wash. While you may have continued working, I hope summer offered you time to slow down and curl up to a good book.

Our teachers did. All of our teachers read the book The Leader in Me, by the late Stephen Covey, renowned author of “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. Every summer, KCS faculty read a common book that relates to an area of focus for the upcoming year. I stumbled upon The Leader in Me while browsing through the shelves at Chapters last Christmas. It told the stories of schools around the world, not too many, that had embraced what we also embrace at KCS: Habits that matter and ubiquitous student leadership. These are exceptional schools that have had exceptional impact. We’re on the same path.

Everyone has the power to be a leader. In fact, we exert our influence all the time, often without even knowing it. Last week all faculty watched Drew Dudley’s TEDxToronto talk “Leading with Lollipops” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVCBrkrFrBE ). A few words and an impromptu gesture on his part served to keep a peer in university and catalyzed a relationship that led to marriage. And he doesn’t even remember it. We’re all leaders, whether or not we know it. By recognizing and encouraging leadership in everyone, children included, there’s no limit to the positive impact on the world.

This may not have been the theme of the books you read over the summer. But I thought you’d like to know that this was the theme of what we read. Leadership is ubiquitous at KCS. And little by little, our students help make the world a better place. There’s always room for more. We hope you’ll embrace our Habits and join us.

Andrea Fanjoy,
Assistant Head, Academics

You can follow Andrea on Twitter @afanjoy.

Make Room for Passion

Posted on May 2, 2012 by Andrea Fanjoy

Maybe we already ask too much of education. Our profession has certainly evolved from a focus on the ‘3 Rs’ to include many other expectations, academic, social, moral, physical and otherwise. Because these expectations are all worthy, we accept them as part of our role. And because making room for passion is also worthy, and increasingly so, it should be included among the expectations we place on ourselves.

Anyone following the dialogue in education is aware of the growing need to prepare students for an unknown future. Students today are likely to have many different careers in their lifetime, holding jobs that don’t even exist yet. The future is full of opportunity for people who can drive their careers, who are adaptable, who can learn what needs to be learned, and who are energized enough to make their role matter in a global competitive market. If it ever was straightforward, the world is decreasingly so, thanks to technology and the interconnectedness that binds our lives to every other person and place in the world.

Sir Ken Robinson is one of the most highly renowned voices, and critics, in education today. A major theme in his work is the importance of nurturing creativity. Another theme, captured in his book The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything (2009), is the importance of nurturing one’s passions, and the unfortunate absence of that as a priority in conventional schooling. Of course, all is well for students whose passions align with the school curriculum. The trouble is, the world is much bigger than the scope prescribed by the Ministry of Education. Student-driven learning, during the school day and with the guidance of interested adults, is too rare a part of formal education. Yet this is exactly what we need to instill in them to be successful as adults.

Finding one’s passion can be the difference between a life driven by happiness and one crippled by disinterest. It can be the difference between a life fully lived and one only a fraction so. It can also be the difference between the students who feel school matters, and those who feel it doesn’t. Make room for students to explore their passion at school. And see how it changes everything.

Andrea Fanjoy
Assistant Head, Academics
Twitter: @afanjoy

This article also features in the April edition of SNAP Etobicoke.

Sharing What We Know about Heroes, Big and Small

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Andrea Fanjoy

A hero is an ordinary person who finds the strength to persevere and endure
in spite of overwhelming obstacles.
– Christopher Reeve

Need a hero? Look no further – we’ve cornered the market at KCS.

Every student is creating a work of art that represents either a hero or heroism to them. Students in grades one to five are each working on a teacher-led project. Students in grades six to eight have designed their project entirely on their own, choosing everything about it other than the theme. Each student has his/her own hero, and their own way of showing it. The Spring Showcase from May 17th to June 6^th will be the richest, most interesting, and most inspiring exhibit of Sharing What You Know at KCS ever, I’ve no doubt.

Since reading a biography of Golda Meir in high school, heroes have always nestled in the periphery of my thoughts – all the big ones, the ones who stared down gross injustice, the ones who believed humanity could be better, the ones who courageously devoted their lives to it – reminding me to get off my duff and strive to live a life that matters.

I’m also recently thinking a lot about a smaller hero. Most people don’t know him, though all KCS faculty and staff, and many of our parents do, as well as many people like us in communities across the continent. He’s small in stature, quiet and humble in demeanor. In that way alone could he be considered small. A hero for me, he speaks a common sense about raising and educating children of character that few people speak. Challenging mindsets à la mode, he devotes his life to helping parents and educators be the better people they are capable of being.

This hero, Ron Morrish, is speaking at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic School on May 9^th. You can also learn more about his message by visiting http://www.realdiscipline.com/ or reading his book Secrets of Discipline for Parents and Teachers: 12 Keys for Raising Responsible Children.

Heroes come in all sizes. Whether big or small, far away or right in our midst, their example has earned them a place in the periphery of everyone’s thoughts. Thanks to the artistry of our students, our Spring Showcase is KCS’s effort to make that so.

And maybe, just maybe, this occasion of Sharing What You Know might help us ordinary folk move one step closer to being heroes: people devoted to making humanity a little bit better.

Andrea Fanjoy,
Assistant Head, Academics

A Good Read

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Derek Logan

On the weekend, I finished reading a book entitled, Inside Out Coaching: How Sports Can Transform Lives by Joe Ehrmann. The author is a former scholarship athlete who played football in the NFL. He now coaches high school football, writes and speaks about the impact coaches have on children. He certainly provides an important and thoughtful perspective on a coach’s influence.

While reading the book, I made notes on a number of quotes/stories that he references. Two of my favourites are below. This morning I forwarded the first story on to my son’s soccer coach as I know he’s experienced similar situations to this one over the past few years.

From page 193
The following is the story of the coach and a conversation he had with one of his players. Please note the quote is taken directly from the book and does not reflect the everyday vocabulary of the author of this post.

“Do you understand what cooperation is? What a team is?” The player nodded in affirmation that he knew. “Do you understand that what matters is not whether we win or lose but that we play together as a team and do the best we can individually and collectively?” Again, the player nodded yes. “So,” the coach continued, “I’m sure you know that when a coach makes a bad call or the referee drops a penalty flag you shouldn’t argue, curse, or call them a peckerhead. Do you understand all that?” The player again said he did. Coach continued, “And when I take you out of the game so another player gets an opportunity to play, it’s not good to call your coach an idiot, is it?” The player shook his head. “Good,” said the coach, “now go over there and explain all that to your mother and father.”

From page 214
We are all familiar with the saying, “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” Ehrmann prefers Buffalo Bills coach Marv Levy’s retort: “The only must win was World War Two.”

Derek Logan
Head of School

Summer Reading

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Derek Logan

Summer provides some of us with the opportunities to get to do many of the things we are not able to get to during the school year. For my family we take the time in the summer to travel, to spend more time together with friends, to read and cook, and just hang out around the house. Reading for me has always been a pleasurable activity. Since I entered the profession of teaching eighteen years ago, over the course of each summer, I’ll typically read about dozen books.

My daughter has always enjoyed reading; my son, not so much. In August, the three of us were in a bookstore, and I picked up Alexandra Robbins new book entitled The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth. Although I do spend some of my time reading educational articles, books, etc., it is unusual for me to pick up an educational book to read in the summer. My interests lie in military history, sports, biographies and sometimes the books that are referred to me by others. For some reason, this book caught my eye. As I took it to the checkout, Alyssa said to me, “I was going to buy that book, Dad.” That’s interesting, I thought to myself as I made my payment. I wasn’t disappointed; neither was Alyssa. It has been passed to my wife Heather. It’s an eye opening look at adolescents, groups, and high school. It will bring back memories of school days and make an impression. It may bring watery eyes and tears. And hope. Definitely a good read for parents, educators and students.

Derek Logan
Head of School