Andrew Watson
in reaction to stimuli, emotion, new information, and other experiences, and they can observe the brain adjusting over time to these experiences, lighting up different parts of the brain or in different combinations. They are watching the brain learn like never before. “The technologies that we’re using to study brains are so recent that, before 1995, I could study your brain [only] if it had been damaged,” notes Andrew Watson, a former Loomis Chaffee faculty member who founded the neuroscience-education consulting firm Translate the Brain. “Only since the mid1990s have we been able to get any information at all about healthily functioning brains.” Andrew, who has a master’s degree in mind brain education from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, leads workshops and presentations for teachers, parents, and 24 |
Photo: Stratton McCrady
students on developments in neuroscience and their practical applications to teaching and learning. In September he presented a convocation at Loomis showing students how they can learn most effectively or, from a practical perspective, how they can learn more without adding more hours to their homework. Andrew believes that neuroscience should not direct education but that brain science discoveries can help enhance and strengthen teaching and learning. And he sees collaboration among teachers and neuroscientists as the cutting edge for future mind-brain research. Examples abound at Loomis if you know where to look for them. Science teachers Naomi Appel and Scott MacClintic ’82 teach Loomis’ advanced courses in
Andrew Watson, a former Loomis Chaffee faculty member who founded a neuroscienceeducation consulting firm, sees collaboration among teachers and neuroscientists as the cutting edge for future mind-brain research.
microbiology and molecular biology as “flipped classrooms.” Unlike a traditional classroom structure, where a teacher lectures during class and the students go home and apply the day’s lesson to their homework assignments, a flipped classroom delivers lectures as homework and has students apply the new lessons during class time, with the teacher nearby for support. Naomi and Scott have developed and recorded video lectures on the content of the course. Like regular lectures, the teachers explain new concepts and use visual aids such as PowerPoint slides, but the lectures do not take up faceto-face class time. Students watch the lectures at home on a YouTube channel devoted to the course. They can rewind and replay sections that they didn’t follow or understand the first time. They can pause on