Sunday, May 2, 2010

Making Tomorrow Conference: Inspiring Young Minds

On May 1st, I went to the 33rd annual Making Tomorrow Conference held at UVic. We started the day with a Keynote Address, and then went on to attend 2 different workshops of our choice throughout the day.


The theme of the Keynote was How to Grow a Child’s Brain and the speaker was Gary Anaka. If you ever have a chance to see him, I highly recommend it. He was incredible!! He started off by saying that we need to “build” the brain, and that one of the ways to do that is through “brain gymnastics.” He kept stressing that children have got to MOVE in order to learn, and that movement and exercise grow a more efficient brain…and what are we actually growing? Dendrites! He told us that TV causes children to: become mentally passive, experience electronic sedation, have a short attention span, and to be socially isolated. The brain learns through INTERACTION with real people, and that early childhood is the most critical time for the brain. He also gave us 10 “brain boosters.”
1) Movement and exercise: what makes us move is what makes us think
2) Learning
3) Brain nourishment: oxygen, water, and a nutritious diet
4) Safety: when we feel safe, we upshift and our brain is open to learning; when we feel threatened, we downshift and close ourselves off from learning
5) Play for FUN
6) Storytelling: it has been said that children need to hear 1000 stories before they can read
7) Reading: reading grows dendrites
8) Experience: experiences determine what kind of brain develops
9) Novelty
10) Caring

However, I have to say that the most interesting, and perhaps the most obvious thing that Gary Anaka told us was “growing your child’s brain requires COMMON SENSE. I think that is 100% true, because almost every time I learn something new, I say to myself “Duh!”


After the keynote address, we split into our separate workshops. I was lucky enough to have chosen the workshop that Gary Anaka was teaching: How the Brain Learns Best- Help For All Children. A lot of what he said was repetition from the Keynote. Children, or anybody for that matter, learn through movement.

However, he also made some really good points that I found applied to me as a student as much (if not more) as they applied to me as an educator. For example, he said “too much, too fast won’t last” meaning that if we try to feed children too much information, they won’t absorb all, if any, of it, and we are actually being counterproductive. Another thing that really interested me was that all learning must relate to prior learning. Doing this, he said, jumpstarts leaning, activates neural networks, and increases memory. He said that the brain needs to take breaks in order to replenish glucose and oxygen, store the information it just learned, and “retune” itself. He also said that the key to getting something in your brain is REPITITION.

Another key point that Gary talked about was plasticity. He told us how the brain can change, and, more importantly, how to positively change the brain. Number one: physical activity, two: challenges, three: problem solving, 4: feedback, and 5: repetition.


The second workshop I went to was called A Creative Approach to Meet the Needs of Medically Challenged Children. It was very different from what I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be about different ideas to work with children with mental and physical disabilities. Instead, it was the story of how this woman, Phyllis Lysionek, came up with a way to help her son deal with his fear of hospitals. Her son was born with Down syndrome, and then diagnosed with Celiac disease, autistic tendencies, as well as several other disorders. His entire life was centered around hospitals and he was just petrified. Unfortunately, his communication skills were lacking, so it was very difficult to communicate to him what he could expect at the hospital.

So, Phyllis designed a doll named Olly that was specially designed to “undergo” different medical procedures. These procedures were photographed in sequence and then shown to her son so he could get a sense of what was coming. Now, Phyllis makes custom dolls for all sorts of conditions; she’s even made dolls with cochlear implants!


I feel that attending conferences and Pro-D days at my age/experience level is so beneficial and I’m really getting a lot out of them. I feel like I’m way ahead of the game and I think that no matter which field I finally decide to settle into, whether it’s OT or ECE, or something that I haven’t even considered yet, I’m going to be able to draw from everything I’ve experienced and that it's really going to help me in the long run.

2 comments:

  1. Kaity, this is amazing. The other huge benefit is that ALL of the information you're hearing relates to what you're observing every day at Little Blue - so YOUR learning is hugely scaffolded onto itself.

    You've got me thinking about students at Pro D events. How do we get the information to them so they would be interested in attending even though there's a registration fee? I kind of think the topic needs to be timely for them - like these conferences you are going to connectt to your work experience directly. There must be other opportunities and other ways for students in other areas of interest.....

    I guess what I'm asking is how can we turn your experiences into something that is a catalyst for future students doing the same thing?

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  2. I think just getting the word out there is well over half the battle.

    I'm lucky because I have my mom and Janet who see that I really want to learn so they pass along anything they hear of that might benefit me.

    I feel like people believe that I can do great things (for lack of a better phrase) when they invite me to these events. I think that they know how much I want to learn and they want to do anything they can to help me reach my goals.

    The bottom line: if you think you have a student who is dedicated enough to use their days off to attend Pro-D's and conferences like the Making Tomorrow conference, then ask them if they want to go! If they are willing to learn, chances are they will be more than happy to go.

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