Myths that Shape Secondary Schools (2)

Rejuvenated secondary schools stoke life, zap brainpower, and replace mental myths with  brain facts that reboot learning success. Boring is not better – as some secondary schools seem to accept as inevitable, in certain classes.

Secondary and higher education renewal, at least change for higher motivation and achievement though, takes faculty, parents and learners.  Reconfiguration starts when a learning community identifies myths and seeks to live realities at the peak. How so?

1. BOREDOM MYTH: Certain topics bore learners and that’s why they’re not getting ahead in a class.
Reality: Boredom’s ruts forms in brains- successful learners use 2-footed questions to stoke interest. 

2. MYTH:Disorganized or unpleasant settings have little to do with learning outcomes.
Reality: Environment counts, and mentally healthy settings add to top solutions.

3. MYTH:When systems change and improve, then learning too will improve.
Reality: Curiosity stokes higher achievement, and it’s fueled and extended by serotonin chemical hormones.

4. MYTH:Sometimes education systems make faculty or parents angry, fearful or frustrated and they react as expected.
Reality: Anger, fear, and frustration  are fueled and extended by cortisol chemical hormones.

5. MYTH:It’s best to get things off one’s chest by venting and speaking out about key problems.
Reality: Venting is bad for the brain, shuts out solutions, and creates new neuron pathways to much more of the same.

6. MYTH:Only once a situation improves at times, can secondary schools or universities achieve success in response.
Reality: Dendrite brain cells use the outside world and  take shape, or grow based more on what you do than what’s done to you.

7. MYTH: Music is the last thing that can help in stressful situations or aid concentration for some learners,
Reality: Music changes brain wave speeds in ways that impact moods and alter productivity.

8. MYTH: Lectures offer valuable way to learn – especially when faculty interests learners.
Reality: Lecturing or telling work against listeners’ brains and benefit speaker’s intelligences mostly.

9. MYTH:It’s good to spend time in staff rooms in order to build learning communities.
Reality: Hebbian workers can rewire  brains to kill incentives, limit focus or even shrink brains at breaks.

10. MYTH:In order to include others it’s usually good to attend diversity training programs.
Reality: Diversity training commonly works mentally against benefits because of its deficit model.

11. MYTH: When people feel sleepy it’s impossible to concentrate or to get motivated.
Reality: Brain waves can bring either sleep or peak performance, based on how you activate them.

12. MYTH: Some things are  impossible for some people to learn well in reasonable time limits.
Reality: Hook even difficult facts onto one thing you know and learning increases in less time.

13. MYTH:Following a predictable schedule and holding  strong traditions is preferable practice.
Reality: Novelty stokes memory, and working memory holds few new facts yet leads to change. Research shows that stressed brains rely on habit.

14. MYTH:Intelligence is established in early years and IQ is pretty much fixed before secondary school.
Reality: Multiple intelligences are common to all, used by few, and can be more developed daily.

15. MYTH:Cynicism is just part of people’s nature and can be an intelligent approach to life.
Reality: Cynical mindsets literally block creativity, impact talent, and stomp out innovation.

16. MYTH: When faculty age they tend to forget keys more, and forget people’s names more.
Reality: Memory can be outsourced to help aging brains remember, and to free the mind for  focus.

17. MYTH:Once a person reaches older age, learning decreases and with it, intelligence fails.
Reality: Plasticity enables people to rewire the human brain in ways that keep it younger and smarter.

18. MYTH:When discouragement hits, not much can change moods until life improves.
Reality: Encouragement can change the chemistry of a brain with tactics that increase serotonin.

19. MYTH:It’s fine to respond to people in softer ways to avoid  hurting other’s feelings.
Reality: Meta messages destroy relationships through implications different from what is said.

20. MYTH:Some careers call for hard skills and some call for soft skills, yet hard skills trump soft.
Reality: Smart skills – an integration of  hard and soft – help solve problems with the brain in mind.

21. MYTH:There’s good and bad stress, and some situations or people work better with stress.
Reality: Stress literally shrinks the brain, and tone in communication acts as a silent killer.

22. MYTH:With so many people gathered at times, use of names is simply not expedient.
Reality: Greet  people  by name, for a spike in the brain area responsible for personal awareness.

23. MYTH: After learners master a skill, only then are they ready to teach that skill to others.
Reality: Learners inspire creativity and invention as they teach others at the same time they also learn.

24. MYTH:There are  many problems that administrators need to solve before improvements can be seen.
Reality: Create new neuron pathways each time learners add a solution to any problem they encounter.

25. MYTH: What’s good for males is good for females and both can master similar approaches.
Reality: Female and male brain differ biologically and intellectually in ways that few optimize for benefit of both.

What myths limit your brainpower? Could these realities help to improve your situation?

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Created by Ellen Weber, Brain Based Tasks for Growth Mindset