How This Came About . . .

The purpose of this blog is to chronicle the work we're doing around Dr. John Medina's book, Brain Rules. Where this journey takes us as a school, I'm not sure. I do know that there's some very compelling reasons why we need to take a closer look at the data, concepts and suggestions that are discussed in the book.

This work came about close to two years ago when I was visiting a superintendent friend and he gave me a copy of Brain Rules. He had Dr. Medina to his district for a half-day presentation/workshop and said that the work was groundbreaking. I finished the book in two days. Loved it but . . .

So many times in education we have the fly by professional development that's great at the time, but doesn't lead to lasting change of practice. When I called my superintendent friend just last week and asked him what he's done with the material in Brain Rules, he said the district hadn't done anything besides the initial workshop.

Hmm . . .

So that got me thinking, what if. You have to be careful with "what if . . ." because it's a powder keg in a lot of ways, one of which is changing a person's/system's paradigm.

For a year I did nothing around the work. I would occasionally reread a section or two, but not much else. That all changed this last summer when I decided that I would delve deeply not only in Dr. Medina's work, but in brain research and how it relates to education.

I asked the question of myself . . .

What if we used some of the concepts and suggestions from Brain Rules and actually attempted to implement some of the strategies?