A new school year, like a new calendar year, often brings with it new year’s resolutions. I recently re-read an article entitled “This Year, Change Your Mind” by physician-author Oliver Sacks. Sacks wrote that “New Year’s resolutions often have to do with eating more healthfully, going to the gym more, giving up sweets, losing weight -- all admirable goals aimed at improving one’s physical health. Most people, though, do not realize that they can strengthen their brains in a similar way.” This kind of “brain strengthening” is much of what our teachers do with our children over the course of the year.
As Sacks points out, the brain has the “mysterious and extraordinary power to learn, adapt, and grow,” particularly in childhood, but also throughout the life cycle. He cites his work with numerous patients who had various deficits -- blindness, strokes, spinal cord injuries, Parkinson’s, and dementia, for instance -- and who “learn to do things in new ways, whether consciously or unconsciously, to work around those deficits.” If these older brains are capable of dramatic adaptations to overcome significant obstacles, imagine the growth and transformation that our children’s brains can achieve.
At The Country School our students’ young brains receive practice with lots of new skills, lots of new ways of thinking, and lots of challenge. Part of our mission is to stretch each child in a purposeful but well balanced way. Our teachers, to paraphrase Sacks, help our students shape their brains and not just be shaped by them.
As Sacks writes, “Neuroplasticity -- the brain’s capacity to create new pathways -- can be part of every day life… Every time we practice an old skill or learn a new one, existing neural connections are strengthened and, over time, neurons create more connections to other neurons. Even new nerve cells can be generated.” Thus learners develop new and sometimes unimagined capacities.
The Country School’s teachers and curriculum recognize that “Just as physical activity is essential to maintaining a healthy body, challenging one’s brain, keeping it active, engaged, flexible, and playful, is not only fun. It is essential to cognitive fitness.” That kind of cognitive workout is an important one of our new year’s resolutions for 2011-12. Welcome to what I know will be a great year of growth for your children!