Brain Compatible Strategies

One of the most important avenues of debate when it comes to education is the question on how to make the learning be also connected with real life. There are many hurdles to answering this question. For example, the feeling of being closed in during learning makes the students feel that school is an entirely different world and is an entirely different experience, and when classes and end and they rejoin the real world, they tend to leave the things that they relate to school in the recesses of their mind and shifts their cognition by turning on the brain they use for real life.

This is just one of the many different factors, and because of this reason, experts are consistently looking for a way to ensure that what the children learn is something that they also apply in real life. The effective designing, formulation and use of brain compatible strategies are important in the learning experience of the students; but more importantly, the brain compatible strategies should also be updated and up to date.

As Sousa (2003) explained, “the sit-down-be-quiet-and-listen model is not compatible with the brains of many students who now cross the thresholds of our schools because the environment has affected the contemporary student brain compared with that of just 20 years ago (Sousa, 2003, p. 101). ”

The use of brain compatible strategies are strategies which do not just help in the effective teaching and lesson retention inside the classroom; more than that, the application of these approaches of this type of style is also usually connected with approaches that individuals take in real life when they are faced with different scenarios, picking a system which the individual feels is suitable for a particular situation.

Because of this, brain compatible strategies help not just in the learning process of school-based education but also close the gap found between school life and real life. According to Karten (2007), one of the basic principles of brain-based learning strategy is the use and the presence of the effect of “activities such as simulations and role (that) provide real-life emotional connections (Karten, 2007, p. 57).

” This is one of the proofs that through the use of brain compatible strategies in teaching and in the learning experience of children, the lessons learned are applied in real life, closing the gap found between school life and real life. What is the gap between school life and real life? For some students, the problem with going to school is that they see lessons in school as purely limited for use inside the school or inside formalistic educational grounds.

They see math solutions as tools to achieve problems inside the classroom as well as history notes as the key to answer the midterm history exam. The manner by which the students are thought sans brain compatible strategies isolate school life and real life, and when this happens, the students feel that whatever it is they learn in school is exclusive for school use alone, which should not be the case because the lessons learned in school should be transformed as intellectual tools that should be used in real life so that a person can react correctly and rationally in real life situation.

This is the gap present in school life and real life, and there was a point that the gap grew bigger and bigger simply because of the fact that the teaching style does not make the learning experience of the students a way for them to realize that what they learn in school should be applied in real life – that math solutions should be applied for counting changes when buying in a store, that the critical thinking during science experiments should be extended in real life. Take for example the different types of brain compatible strategies being used today.

In cooperative learning, the student is learning school based education while at the same time learning the value and use of cooperation between individuals, and because of that, the student transfers this knowledge about cooperation in real life. The same is true with the use of problem-solving, which infuses in the child’s conscious and unconscious mind the need to use critical thinking not just to solve school examinations but real life problems as well (Cooperative Learning, Collaboration, Problem-Solving etc. ), not only increase student learning but also help bridge the gap between school and “real life.

” Experts are inclined also to believe that as much as most people believe that brain compatible strategies for learning should impact not just school-based scenarios but real life as well, the truth is that proponents of brain compatible strategies who teaches this system to teachers are advocating the use of not just school-based examples but also to use real life examples to teach the students how the lessons in school are actually usable as well in real life scenarios and not just limited to school experience.

As Tate (2006) explained in her book about integrating brain compatible system in teaching inside the classroom, “a third way to gain student’s attention is to connect the learning to real life. It stands to reason that if the brain was meant to survive in the real world, then the closer a teacher can get the instruction to the real world, the more memorable it becomes (Tate, 2006, p. 51). ”

Conclusion – The use of brain compatible strategies to teach students today has already garnered many followers, if not something that is already widespread, and people ask why such phenomena occurred. Brain compatible strategies are always changing, based on the changes happening on the target audience, and it is important that everyone is on the same page. Maybe the shift in the education paradigm has happened. Before when education was limited to a select few, the idea was to teach things that cannot be easily learned by sheer experience alone (i. e.

technique in arts, formula in sciences, strategies in politics), but now educators are looking the reality that what the students needs is a good dose of traditional educational content and lessons which have practical application to assist in the refinement of the actions and reactions individuals make when faced with circumstances, using the knowledge transmitted and embedded in a child’s brain through the use of brain compatible strategies that closes the gap between school learning and real life learning. References Fisher, Robert (December 2005). Teaching Children to Think. Thornes Nelson.

Karten, Toby J. (April 2007). More Inclusion Strategies That Work! : Aligning Student Strengths with Standards. SAGE Publications. Sousa, David A. (May 2003). The Leadership Brain: How to Lead Today’s Schools More Effectively. SAGE Publications. Tate, Marcia L. (August 2006). Shouting Won’t Grow Dendrites: 20 Techniques for Managing a Brain-Compatible Classroom. SAGE Publications. Tracy, Kim (May 2000). Brain Compatible Learning: Another New Program… or Is It?. The Teachers. Net Gazette. Volume 1 Number 3. Retrieved June 14, 2008, from http://teachers. net/gazette/MAY00/bcl. html