The Kinesthetic Classroom

I attended a session on teaching through movement. The speaker led with "your immune system is eavesdropping on your inner dialogue." - Deepak The speaker used John Ratey's research support from SPARK detailing the science of exercise and the brain. The emphasis was on "fitness over sitness" across all academic classrooms. Practical strategies were given to easily incorporate movement into any class that were immediately applicable on my return to the classroom on Wednesday. The speaker argues that meaning making is state dependent and learning is a very powerful tool to make learning relevant. It was an engaging session because the speaker practiced what he was preaching by engaging session attendees in many of his suggested activities.

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The Developing Adolescent and Creating a Positive Learning Environment

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AMLE presentation "Middle School: A Place to Belong and Become"

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Growth Mindset, Debbie Silver

Debbie Silver's wit, sense of humor, and passion for education was evident in every facet of her presentation at the National AMLE Conference. She presented herself as human (and all of the faults that are associated with that) and wasn't afraid to identify singular mistakes that she made during her career; mainly buying into the idea early on that we should praise every child, often, and often times for things that they ultimately couldn't control (i.e. naturally smart). This was the prevailing educational thinking (even now in some circles) at the time (I still recall an undergraduate professor lecturing me on the evils of red pen on self-esteem). She went on to detail that she felt it her duty to insulate her students from failure or struggle. She summed all of these ideas up with one word, wrong. That led us to the not so new, but seldom used pedagogy of growth mindset. Debbie identified a few people as being responsible for helping her to shift her thinking from e...

Patton @ AMLE 2017

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