My blogging goal is to engage the Proctor community in a yearlong conversation about how the human brain learns. Each blog will feature a member of the Proctor faculty responding to my thoughts on neuroscience and learning. Assistant Head of School Annie Mackenzie, just now returning from Wilderness Orientation with eight students, is my thought partner this week.
Annie had the audacity to remind me of a story that implicated me and my protective neural systems (amygdala hijacking) when I was attempting to rock climb on Mount Lemmon outside of Tucson Arizona (in the photo below). I was scared, I shut down, and I wasn’t very pleasant when demanding that she and Patty Pond get me back onto the safety of the ground. Immediately.
For the last 54 years (except during COVID), almost every Proctor student begins their experience with Wilderness Orientation in the White Mountains and its foothills. Many educational, social, and personal objectives justify this experience. Perhaps most importantly, it sends a message to our students that they can face a challenge, work through the stresses and anxieties, and come out of the woods having learned something important about how their brains respond to discomfort. Years ago, a student in the group that Sarah Wilkins and I led on Wilderness Orientation suddenly realized that Route 113 was within sprinting distance. She hightailed it for this slight sign of civilization and, when she reached the road, she literally kissed the pavement. She had won! She was victorious. She conquered the Whites and many of her physical and emotional stressors.
Annie- The same dynamics happen every day on campus. In fact, it happens to all of us at some time or another. “I just cannot live with her. She cannot continue to be my roommate. I can’t even talk to her.” An irate student who brings these emotions to me prompts the hard conversations. After some time to calm down, the discussion often moves to “I didn’t realize” or “Why didn’t I understand that about my roommate?” It isn’t easy to get the emotional system calm enough for the thinking systems to re-engage. For so many Learning Skills students (and actually all students), it is the protective chemistry (cortisol) that screams “I can’t. You don’t understand. I can’t.”
Whenever we face a challenge, our brains initiate a series of neurochemical reactions to the potential threats. The challenge can be as obvious at Proctor’s Wilderness Orientation, or it can be as subtle as walking into Brown Dining Commons without a clue where it might be safe to sit for lunch. So often it is in the classroom with a new complex idea, demanding project, major assignment, public speaking request, answering a teacher’s question on demand, facing potential humiliation in front of peers, or a systems overload of work demands.
Annie- We are encouraged to dive into discomfort as educators as well. Faculty are asked to join Professional Learning Groups with topics such as Neuroscience, Student Culture, “The Anxious Generation,” Equity and Belonging, Technology and Social Media, and Environmental Stewardship. We are invited to visit each other’s classes and to develop our own professional “growth model.”
Initially, upon recognition of the incoming stimuli of a challenge, our brains are bathed in a combination of neurotransmitters: serotonin that embraces the opportunity, dopamine that sets off an expectation of pleasure, and cortisol that serves as a caution. The reticular activating system in our brain stem is highly aroused; the hippocampus searches vigorously for previous experiences that fit the pattern of the new challenge. When the potential dangers inherent in the challenge become dominant, cortisol levels sky-rocket. There is an “uh ho” response deep in the basal ganglia of the brain stem. When the first attempt is painful or unsuccessful, the surge of protective hormones dominates, often shutting down our rational, thinking components of our brains. Matters only get worse on the next and the next failed attempts. At some point, the brain determines that the effort isn’t worth the outlay of energy; systems shut down.
This is a neurological description of human behavior we all recognize. We are designed to avoid physical and emotional harm. Educational psychologist James Nottingham utilizes a model known as “The Learning Pit” to help students and their teachers understand this natural “approach-avoidance” dynamic of human metacognition.
Eventually, a pathway to success emerges and brain chemistry changes significantly. How do we dig out of the bottom of the Learning Pit? Research tells us that even “good” learners fall into the inevitable pit of a new task. Effective educators create the environments in which students can pursue the “why” questions without fear of failure. The brain learns through a relentless loop of trial-error-correction-trial-error and so on. If teachers judge errors through a unitary punitive grading system, they have failed to understand how the brain actually learns. We all fall into the learning pit. Our skill set for climbing out of the pit determines our outcomes.
Annie- It is important to realize that it isn’t just kids who fall into the pit. Teachers, parents, and people who are supposed to be experts all fall into the pit. Everyone gets that rush of shame when we cannot find our way to success. We need to offer grace and the gift of time for any human being to work through the process from challenge through to success. When we watch someone in pain, in struggle, in lockdown convinced that they cannot succeed, think about the process- help them find the pathway, allow time, offer assistance, suggest resources, reward effort, expect that human capacity is stronger than the challenge.
When we, as educators, seek to grow, learn, and evaluate the tools we use to climb out of the Learning Pit, we act as models for our students. Whether walking beside them on a trail in the White Mountains or seeking new knowledge, students learn to trust that we are all in this TOGETHER.
Proctor seeks to reward curiosity, utilize errors as feedback to the student, allow for trial and error, inject challenge into our lives, and teach the skills that help students emerge from the learning pit. Eureka!
Check out more photos from Wilderness Orientation 2024!
- Head of School
- Learning and the Brain
- Wilderness Orientation