Edificando cerebro
Article By PEGGY KREIMER of the Kentucky Post; May 12, 2003
Michelle Hancock doesn't need to read brain research books. She reads
her children. One got in on the start of an experimental brain-building
program in Owensboro, Ky., and one only experienced part of it.
Eleven-year-old Adam Hancock is in the first target
class of 2010, which started in kindergarten with brain research
programs in foreign language, music, art, exercise and chess. He knows
some Spanish words, he reads music, he plays chess - and his brain just
works differently from his older sister Tori's, says Hancock.
"Adam is much more of a planner than his sister. He has
got to know what he's doing ahead of time. He thinks things over, then
makes his move," his mother says.
"
It could be just a difference in personalities, but I have to think the chess has something to do with it.
"He's getting things that Tori wasn't exposed to. When kids are
younger, that's when their brains supposedly absorb like sponges."
They're not only absorbing, say brain research experts. New
evidence shows that children's brains are still forming well into
elementary and middle school.
Experiences in those years wire the brain, creating the
connections that will be the brain's pathways to learning and behavior
for the rest of the child's life.
That research is infused into the Daviess County school
system, creating what internationally recognized author and brain-based
education consultant David Sousa calls "a lighthouse district" among
the nation's schools.
Sousa, author of "How the Brain Learns," was one of the
school system's research consultants. He spoke at community meetings,
helped train teachers and has watched the program progress.
"
It's a well-organized, well-thought-out plan that's been
working for six years now," he says. "We're beginning to see more
schools changing their programs (to reflect brain research), but
Daviess County was one of the first."
The use of challenging games and methods…
The program emphasizes major research areas in brain/education science:
the well-accepted "window of opportunity" for foreign-language learning
that closes around age 12; the connection between making music and
ability in mathematics; and the development of what Sousa calls
higher-order problem solving using chess and other challenging games
and teaching methods.
It also incorporates a fitness program and expanded arts programs including dance and professional performances.
There's a strong emphasis on parent involvement and a
community-sponsor program where corporations adopt a class for those
students' full 13 years in school, acting as mentors and participating
in classroom and community projects.
In the halls of Daviess County schools, the most used word may be "brain."
Every Daviess County teacher has received brain-based
training. From kindergarten on, children are exposed to non-graded
Spanish language lessons; music and keyboard labs; dance lessons; and
chess to encourage critical thinking skills.
In second- and third-grade teacher Stacy Harper's
classroom, chairs, coat racks, computers, soap dispensers and maps are
labeled with their English and Spanish names to reinforce language
skills.
Her students arrive early to play Chess Mates on the computer - pitting their chess skills against an animated wizard.
The value of sport stacking At Highland Elementary
School, student teams go head-to-head in stacking exercises - a
fast-moving routine that looks like a shell game played in triple-time
as students stack and collapse pyramids of plastic cups.
"
They're using both sides of the brain - eye-hand
coordination and problem solving," says physical education teacher
Connie Harper. "It's forcing them to cross the midline in their brain."
"I see a difference in the way these children respond to
learning, and children 10 years ago," Stacy Harper says. "These
students are much more involved in their learning process."
Harper has read about the brain research findings, but her students prove it every day.
"
You can see, they're developing those connections. We do
Spanish videos two or three times a week, and we're learning together.
It's so much easier for the kids to learn Spanish than for me as an
adult. Now is the opportunity for them."
Children who learn early don't just follow a different
timetable for acquiring facts, says Daviess County Superintendent Stu
Silberman. They increase their learning capacity forever.
That's a staggering concept that educators can't afford to
ignore, says Silberman, who took the information and preached it to his
community with the zeal of a prophet and the savvy of a politician.
The program is called Graduation 2010 because it was
started with the 1997 kindergarten class, which will graduate in 2010.
The brain-based components are phased in as the class proceeds through
the system.
That is one of the secrets of Daviess County's success, says Silberman.
Phasing in the program makes it easier to afford and reinforces the flexibility of the program.
"When we started, this program did not exist anywhere in the
country," says Marilyn Mills, Graduation 2010 coordinator and
curriculum director for Daviess County Schools. " We are constantly
evaluating, adding, expanding, deleting."
The school system did not start out pursuing a brain-based
curriculum. That followed a simple decision to make a good thing
better.
Silberman came to Daviess County in 1995 to take over a
school district that already had solid achievement levels and a good
academic record.
In a state where many school districts were struggling to
bring students to an acceptable level, Daviess County was already
beyond acceptable - which gave Silberman the luxury to take what some
may perceive as chances.
"
The question was how to take a good district and make it a great district," he says.
One of his principals, Pat Ashley, co-chaired a committee of
what Ashley calls "creative problem solvers" from the school district
and the community, holding 6 a.m. discussions on ways to improve the
schools
"We quickly began to focus on the new brain research," says
Ashley, who now is director of instruction for the nearby Owensboro
Board of Education.
The group called for a community forum.
"Two hundred people showed up," Silberman says. "And 165 signed up to be part of the committees."
From the beginning, the school curriculum changes were a community project.
Sousa spoke at several community meetings, answering
questions about the research and its connection to education.
Committees investigated ways to stimulate brain development using
music, arts, language and critical thinking tools.
"We didn't talk about what we can afford to do. We talked about what we need to do to help the kids," Silberman says.
By the time the committees presented recommendations, most of the community leaders were already sold on the ideas.
Silberman became the program's top salesman.
"He believed in that more than I've ever seen anybody
believe in anything," said Larry Hager, president of the Hager
Foundation, a local family trust that donated $136,000 to buy the
video-based Spanish program for all the elementary schools.
The health department and local hospitals agreed to donate
nurses and health workers for the schools. The local health system put
up 50-50 matching funds to buy fitness equipment _ a program the
hospital and the health system's Foundation for Health offers to all
school systems in the area.
The fitness program has changed typical gym classes.
"I was worried the physical education techers might not be
interested. But they loved the idea," says Silberman.
"Now a kid might
not be the fastest kid in class, but he might get an ‘A' because he
kept his heart in the target zone for the right amount of time on the
fitness machines."
The fitness rooms in Daviess County schools look like high-priced health clubs.
"The first reaction people have is that we must be an
affluent school system," Silberman says. "But 35 percent of our kids
are on the free or reduced lunch program (for low-income families).
We're not a wealthy district. Our funding (from the state) was 135th
out of 176 school districts, in revenue per student.
"It's not a matter of dollars. It a matter of how you prioritize."
The school board made a major commitment to help launch the
program. Part of that included using an end-of-year allocation of state
funds that hadn't been budgeted. Instead of plugging that into
rainy-day funds, it went into the 2010 programs.
The Daviess County music teachers were due to receive their
every-seven-year funding for new music textbooks in 1996. Instead, they
allocated their money toward keyboard equipment in the new music labs
that cost about $15,000 per school for 12 elementaries and three middle
schools. The textbook money covered about half the cost of the labs and
teacher instruction and the school board matched that - a small portion
of its $70 million budget.
Most of the costs were one-time expenses.
"We looked at practical things we could really do," said
Ashley. "We couldn't afford to hire 12 Spanish teachers for all the
elementary schools, but we could buy a Spanish video program that we
could use for years."
As part of the arts enhancements, the school board spent
$35,000 for artists-in-residence who would visit the schools for the
2010 program. Today, that program has grown to $105,000 as it covers
more students.
The Spanish program also is growing. The school system
recently won a $188,000 state grant recognizing creativity in
education. That will be used to augment the Spanish lessons with new
software.
And in a cost-saving move, the school system adjusted its
class-size ratios, adding a few students to the class limits. The
change allowed the school system to forgo hiring a few teachers who
would have been required in some schools with growing enrollment.
The changes came in the midst of state education reform
mandates that changed the way Kentucky teachers teach, encouraging a
team approach and teaching themes across disciplines.
"We were laying a lot of things on our teachers all at once," says Silberman.
So how did Daviess County avoid a teacher revolt?
"We did not mandate any of it," Silberman said. "We decided
to make it good enough that every school wants to be part of it. And
that's what happened."
Schools that did not sign on in the early days were
persuaded by results and by parents asking why other students got the
special programs. Within a year, every school had active 2010 programs.
There is no hard proof that the program is changing brains
or making kids smarter, Silberman says. But there are indications that
something good is going on.
National achievement scores for Daviess County schools have
jumped since the program started. In 1997, Daviess County's
third-graders, who had not participated in the new program, scored in
the 60th percentile, which means they scored better than 60 percent of
third-graders in the country. In 2002, third-graders who by then had
been in the program since kindergarten scored in the 76th percentile.
Silberman anticipates a continued rise as the 2010 class takes the sixth-grade national achievement test next year.
Those tests, however, measure different students. Later this
year the same students who were tested for IQ in 1998 will be tested
again. IQ usually doesn't change as students progress through school.
"We expect to see some dramatic differences," Silberman says.
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