Brain Responsive is all about growth and change in a positive way. It’s the idea of extending the brain compatible or brain friendly language to one that’s RESPONSIVE. I always said to my mentors and teammates, “I need my students to respond to my instruction. I need them to engage with the information and show they have a desire to learn by applying the information with the end in mind.”
When you apply The Brain Responsive Approach™ motivation and engagement are directly affected because your strategies generated a process and activates desire. The desire to learn. The desire to interact and process the information through conversations, projects, simulations and assessments. That leads to action. When those you work with respond and engage 1) growth happens automatically. 2) dendrites grow in the brain. 3) positive chemicals dump throughout the body. This creates an increase in good feelings and awareness and thus more engagement. As a parent, teacher, coach and/or leader it’s about helping those you love and lead have a positive experience consistently and constantly. And why is this important?
Growth is happening whether you’re positive or negative. The power of making parenting, teaching, coaching and/or leading a positive experience lies in the fact that your positive thoughts, words and actions with your kids create a positive chemical dump in their brains and bodies just like your negative thoughts, words and actions with your kids create a negative chemical dump in their brains and bodies. This directly affects their thoughts, feelings (moods) and actions.
As a teacher, I always bought into the idea that the strategies I use in the classroom directly affected the moods and attitudes of the students in my classroom. I also experienced quite quickly that there was a difference in the strategies that were brain compatible verses those that weren’t. I understood that for someone to learn, it had to connect to what they already knew, their prior knowledge. It made total sense to my brain that connections were actually physical connections through the synapses of the dendrites that already existed. I had to instruct and lead so to connect to those dendrites in their heads. The mantra was to “make the electricity flow.” Somehow, if I could get them to process the information by using what they already mastered and associating it to what they already knew, we were 80% there to understanding, applying and mastering the knew information and skills.
My understanding of the learning process really started when I learned, applied, relearned, analyzed, and synthesized the information processing model that I only began to understand learning and the brain.
The opposite of ‘brain responsive’ would be deficit remediation. The actual idea of identifying the deficits or weaknesses and trying to ‘fix’ them has existed in our schools and homes for decades. It’s the general response for the majority of those taught, parented, coached or led.