Human Development and Teaching Abstact Thinking

As I work through the experiences provided by the CSU School of Education and the Professional Development School while simultaneously completing the university coursework for my content and bachelor's degree in Fine Arts, I seem to be increasingly challenged by the level of abstract thinking and complex understanding I can expect from my school-age students. I am sitting here this morning captivated by the research I'm doing for my paper in a class on Art of Mexico in the Age of Conquest, a 400 level group study in Art History and simultaneously reveling in the fact that I've learned that I can do just about anything simply by being able to read at a high level of comprehension (welcome to my nerdy brain.) While reading about the genius of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala and his ability to play the game of his Spanish captors in Peru while actually outsmarting them, my teacher self is going through the dialogue of how to get students to the point of being able to (and wanting to) perform the same analysis I am doing while reading a book entitled "Art and Architecture in Viceregal Latin America, 1521-1821" because I can't help but marvel at my own power. It is a funny thing to get to the end of four years in college and realize all the skills that you've gained. And it is sometimes a scary thing to realize that you have chosen to embark on a lifetime of inviting other people into the same endeavor without knowing exactly what steps have brought you to the point of intelligence you have now reached.

And yet that is what I've chosen. And it is the thing that I am most excited about doing, this career of teaching people how to use a bundle of nerves that are beyond visual understanding because it is housed sometime inside the head.

As I've worked with third and fourth graders at the Lab School for Creative learning, struggled with Drawing I students at LHS, and daily battle with the behavioral frustrations of children who spend a great deal too many hours at school every day, I am learning at increasing intervals that there are certain capacities of children at various ages and as a teacher it is my job to figure out what layer of the essential foundations of learning need to be laid for each child who enters my classroom or charge. Parts of me want to present to them all the thinking processes that my 22-year-old brain has gone through in deciphering complex information about the Spanish Conquest from hundreds of pages of tiny symbols, but then I remember recieving a photocopy of my own 8th grade English teacher's scrawled notes from pages of literature and having absolutely no experience with which to apply interest to such an example. I wasn't ready for the complexity of that thinking yet.

And so I find as I get deeper into the field of education, the more I want to know about human development and how the brain learns. I feel myself entering the "trendy zone" with this statement as brain research is all the rage in Educational circles these days, but I think such research is becoming more prevalent for good reason. Being the education nerd that I am, I want kids to understand their own brain capacity and educational potential in a blink, but the personal side of my spirit wants to remember that kids are still kids and brain development takes a lifetime.

So-- what is the point of this diatribe? I need to remember as an educator that learning takes time and we are still restricted to the development of the brain over time, regardless of the vastly growing pool of information that is brought so close to home through the wonder of technology. I have a growing passion for literacy and the thinking strategies that accompany it, but I want to increase my understanding of the art that is developing this skill in effective ways appropriate to the development of each student. I want to grow in patience and understanding in my role of adding one building block at a time and trusting that with the right foundations, students will continue to grow.

In the meantime, I think I'm going to make it my goal this summer to do some more research on human development and studies of the brain. who knows where that may lead, hm?