How to Teach Your Students About the Brain
By: Yoga Ed. Team
Tags: Neuroscience, Mindfulness, Children, Brain, Brain Based Learning

Understanding what’s happening in the brain is the first step to empowering students with tools to respond and function optimally.

More often than not, our students can be overwhelmed by their big feelings — anger, fear, sadness — and not know what to do with these feelings when they arise.

Having a basic knowledge of the brain gives us the ability to normalize and make sense of what is happening. It also empowers us to communicate our emotional experience to others more clearly and respond to our feelings more effectively.

This knowledge is equally powerful for our students as for ourselves as teachers: knowing how the brain works allows us to better understand and relate to our students, as well as support them when they need help.

To start, let’s look at the brain.

Limbic System = How we FEEL about the world

The limbic system is located at the center of our brain and includes a famous structure known as the amygdala. Its function is to determine emotional responses by classifying sensory input as either pleasure or threat. Detected threats will initiate an immediate reaction: fight, flight or freeze.

What’s important to note is that the amygdala does not discriminate between real and perceived threats. In modern life, this means that the amygdala can often trigger false alarms from perceived threats and give rise to potentially problematic behavior.

For example, a student may perceive a neutral glance from another student as a threat, leading to feelings of anger and ultimately a fight response. Or a student may perceive a test as a threat, leading to feelings of agitation or frustration and ultimately the inability to perform on today’s test.

1, 2, 3, 4 = the Cerebral Cortext

Prefrontal Cortex = How we THINK about the world

The cerebral cortex is the outermost layer surrounding the brain: the wrinkly layer that you see. It’s responsible for how we think about the world and solving problems.

The cerebral cortex includes the prefrontal cortex, which gives rise to executive functions. Executive functions can be thought of as the mental skills we have to help us get things done or manage ourselves to achieve a goal. In other words, it’s self-regulation. The prefrontal cortex allows us to make well-balanced choices, problem-solve and learn optimally.

When we provide ourselves time and space to consciously process our sensory input, we allow the prefrontal cortex to regulate the amygdala’s knee-jerk reactions and choose the best response instead.

Picture the Brain as a House

In the book The Whole Brain Child, Dr. Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson introduce the concept that the brain can be imagined like a house with upstairs and downstairs sections.

The downstairs section (or the limbic system) is where important, basic functions are — emotions, reactions, and vital functions — similar to the downstairs of the house with the basic kitchen, bathroom, and living room. This is where fight, flight, or freeze live.

The upstairs section (or the prefrontal cortex) is more complex. Its functions include thinking, problem-solving, planning, and regulating — collectively, the center of our executive functions. In a house, this would be the equivalent of office space, library, or bedrooms on the second floor.

Flipping Our Lids

Our brains work best when the upstairs and downstairs brain work together or are integrated. In the house analogy, imagine that the staircase connecting the section of the house is strong and well-developed for high traffic. This is integration.

When the downstairs brain takes over, imagine that it blocks the access to the upstairs so that the two sections of the house are no longer connected. This is known as “flipping our lid.”

We all flip our lids, but children often flip their lids more frequently than adults. Think tantrums in the grocery store, crying over not getting ice cream.

Why? Because while the downstairs brain is fully developed at birth, the upstairs brain is under construction until a person is in their mid-20s. Therefore we must be conscious of the expectations we place on our students because sometimes, calming down and getting it together right now is just not neurologically possible.

That said, providing ample opportunities to understand and strengthen the integration of the brain supports our students’ brain develop during these critical years of construction.