Students need a safe place to take the risks involved in learning. They need a safe place to develop their thinking skills, cultivate their voice, and grow their confidence. Before you can get students into any type of active, engaged learning and thinking, you must establish strong relationships and a warm classroom community — because that will create the sense of safety that risk-taking and academic independence require.

Intentional Teach Project

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The Brain Science Behind Learning

When I first started teaching, I struggled to understand why so many of my students refused to even try. I really couldn’t fathom it. 

Why couldn’t he pick up his pencil and attempt to answer the question? Why did she refuse to lift her head from her desk the entire class? Why wouldn’t they stop messing around and just get the work done so we could move on?

It was a huge source of frustration. Because I didn’t understand it, I didn’t know how to solve it — and I am sure I did not always respond in the most effective ways. 

The reality is: learning is scary.

It requires us to be vulnerable. 

It requires us to be OK with not knowing.

It requires us to face the possibility of failure. 

And our culture does not look kindly upon failure.

Even my four-year-old can sense this and has picked up those attitudes. 

“I know!” she exclaims, when we are playing a learning game or doing a short lesson. 

She didn’t know. That much was obvious. (And how was she supposed to? She is four and just learning letters and sounds and math concepts and all of that. There was no expectation for her to know. But still, she is uncomfortable with being caught not knowing.

What Brain Science Tells Us About The Risky Business Of Learning

Let’s start with our mission in life, according to your brain. 

Our brain basically has a few goals in life, but the one we are going to focus on is…

our brain works to avoid threats.

Our brain has evolved to work to avoid threats of any kind. These could be physical, emotional, or even (being the communal organisms we are) social threats. 

It’s really interesting that when the brain experiences pain, it doesn’t actually differentiate between physical and emotional pain. The same parts of the brain that light up for physical pain also light up for emotional pain. 

Keeping that in mind, it makes sense that the brain works really just as hard to avoid emotional (or social) pain as it does to avoid physical pain.

What does that mean for our students?

It means that being embarrassed, being socially excluded or ostracized, feeling like a failure are all very real threats that our brain is programmed to work really hard to avoid. This programming influences the way that our students act.

Remember: The student who simply won’t engage, won’t answer questions or volunteer ideas, won’t even pick up a pencil.  They keep their head down, they don’t participate. 

Oftentimes, this is a defense mechanism.  It’s better to not try than to try and fail. Because failure is a threat. Trying is a risk. And they – their brain – is working to avoid those risks.

And engaging in learning – especially through exploration and discovery – is by its very nature a risky behavior. It demands those involved be willing to make mistakes, to consider new ideas or try new things. Exploration is not a simple path to the right answer, and so there is no way to engage in it without the risk of being wrong.  

Ironically, the brain can pose a real challenge for true learning. (But it’s not hopeless!)

Quick Summary: Our students’ brains are working to avoid threats, and this can affect their willingness to engage in learning activities.

When our brain is busy avoiding threats, it cannot engage in learning and growing. 

For some children who have experienced this over time, we’ve actually inadvertently taught them that they cannot learn, and they cannot improve — even though this is far from true. (This is a phenomenon called learned helplessness.) 

But for most students, they still have those innate drives left from birth — those brains that are programmed to want to improve and grow and thrive and survive better. We just have to create the conditions that make it safe to do so!

ENTER: RELATIONSHIPS AND COMMUNITY

Students need a safe place to take the risks involved in learning. They need a safe place to develop their thinking skills, cultivate their voice, and grow their confidence. 

Before you can get students into any type of active, engaged learning and thinking, you must establish strong relationships and a warm community — because that will create the sense of safety that risk-taking and academic independence require.

Reflection Questions:

1. Think about the students in your classes. Do any “fit the mold” of those avoiding engagement in learning activities as a way to minimize the risk of failure?
2. How do you typically respond to students who are failing to engage? How have the strategies you have been using been working for you?
3. What are some things that are going really well in your classroom right now? 
4. What are some aspects of your classroom or instruction that need your attention? 
5. Imagine a classroom space that is 100% safe — emotionally, socially, and obviously physically — for your students. What does that actually look like? What does it sound like? 
6. Which students are currently really struggling in your classes? Consider your relationships with these students right now. How would you describe them? What is impacting that relationship? What might be preventing your struggling learners from engaging? 

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