Kenneth Wesson | Education Consultant and Neuroscientist

Kenneth Wesson

Education Consultant and Neuroscientist

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Kenneth Wesson
Featured Video

Current: Integrated Learning Summer Institute

Time 54:17

If It’s Your Job to Develop Young Minds, Shouldn’t You Know How Their Brains Work?

The brain is not only the most complex organ in the human body, but this “three-pound universe” has also been described as the most complex object known to mankind. Understanding how the young brain learns will help educators design classrooms that are “Brain-considerate” – where we capitalize on the brain’s natural inclinations for learning. Joseph Epstein stated that "We are what we read." Neuroscientists, however, would offer a differing viewpoint highlighting that “we are what we experience” instead.

Young learners create meaning from content through what they do, when they are actively engaged in sense-making and constructing internal visual models of their world (not necessarily through listening, textbooks and tests). The mind becomes what the brain does. Deploying teaching methods aligned with “how the brain works” will enhance the results of your instructional efforts, as well as the learning outcomes for young learners.

With the latest discoveries in cognitive science, the human brain is regaining its rightful place as the centerpiece for all conversations about learning in the contemporary early childhood educational environment.

Creativity and Innovation in the Classroom

Humankind has transitioned from the agricultural age to the industrial age to the information age. We are now well into the second decade of the "Innovation Age," yet creative thinking remains the bridesmaid to "standardized" thinking in most schools. However, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, there is an inverse relationship between high test scores and entrepreneurship/creativity. Moreover, creativity (“CQ”) turns out to be three times more accurate as a predictor of lifetime accomplishment than IQ. The students who learn how “to play with ideas” to generate newer ideas are destined to accomplish far more than their less creative classmates.

S.T.2R.E.A.M. – A “Brain-considerate” Model for Student Learning

Once our students leave school, they often discover that real-world problems are almost invariably solved through an adaptable transdisciplinary process focused on the nature of a problem. It is not limited by the artificial constraints imposed by the content-area boundaries of any single subject area. Instead, solutions typically come by way of simultaneously utilizing our accumulated knowledge and skills from all of the S.T.2R.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Thematic instruction, Reading/Language Arts, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) disciplines. Combined, S.T.2R.E.A.M. is not merely a collection of academic disciplines, but instead represents an instructional approach that mimics how professionals solve local and global challenges, where all of our cognitive resources converge to serve our “applied human knowledge.” The defining goal of formal education is not the accumulation of knowledge, but an understanding of the applications of knowledge.

If we hope to cultivate students who can solve problems in the future, then we must reorganize our educational delivery approaches to match the thinking processes regularly deployed by contemporary innovators and problem solvers. The S.T.2R.E.A.M. model embeds student learning in active long-term investigations that are experience-rich, language-rich, and print-rich.

According to several sources, “…no one has delivered more STEM keynote addresses and seminars at state, national, and international conferences” than our presenter, Neuroscientist Kenneth Wesson (see attached brief bio). Participants in this workshop will learn how to merge the CCSS E/LA standards, the California ELD standards, and the Next Generation Science Standards into engaging, brain-considerate, student-centered learning.

Brain-STEM
Merging STEM, Common Core, and the NGSS

The human brain learns by making relevant connections, which is why cognitive scientists contributed to the development of the Common Core, the Next Generation Science Standards, and STEM education. Today’s educators are undertaking the unprecedented challenge of digesting and implementing these three reform initiatives simultaneously, but in isolation. STEM is best delivered via a “ST2REAM” model where Science, Technology and Thematic instruction, Reading/LA, Engineering, Art and Mathematics are conjoined through meaningful interdisciplinary learning experiences. The acronym STEM should stand for “Students and Teachers Enjoying every Minute” of the school day, because content is finally connected and the content suddenly makes sense!

Kenneth Wesson
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