While flying back to Richmond a few weeks ago, I drew up a brainstorm for my future. All of the sudden, it became clear that local history is something that I could champion for a lifetime. It’s not really a brainstorm. It’s an observation of my past and a hope that, with a lot of work, all of my various interests might be resolved into one goal:
I love books written by journalists. In his latest, How Children Succeed, Paul Tough weaves together delicate personal stories and obscure academic research into a nonfiction that reads like the biography of a life I would be proud to live.
Beyond a student’s GPA and SAT score, there is an entirely different measure that determines whether a they have what it takes to succeed. These “hidden” strengths are called a range of terms including non-cognitive skills, socio-emotional intelligence, soft skills, and character. Without a critical mass of these character traits, which range from self-control to optimism, an individual has a significantly lower chance of success. The research on character forces us to look past academic knowledge to something deeper that guides our choices and drives our behaviors. While the new psychological research is fascinating, the idea of character isn’t the most revolutionary.
But there’s another concept that I find to be more eyeopening and important: the idea that stress in life causes harm to the body and the mind. I first wrote about this topic in a blog post a year ago in response to a This American Life episode. In it, Ira Glass (also a reader of the book) interviews Tough and others about the emerging research on the relationship between stress and the brain. As I listened, I memorized the phrase, “the biology of stress.”
As in, the biological response to the stress of life.
You see, ever since I graduated from college I’ve followed a meandering path of books on topics such as leadership, therapy, and growth. But none of these books made a biological connection between life and the body. In his book, Tough more clearly describes this connection as the HPA Axis which stands for the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (the chemical) response to stress. It’s this system that senses stress and responds in an attempt to protect the person involved. When these chemicals flood your brain, you lose the parts of your brain that house the executive function and revert to a “fight or flight” response and a more reactionary animal nature. Sadly, the more often you’re in stressful situations, the more likely this will be your primary response to life.
It’s this connection that most influenced me when I heard Tough speak about his book at the Sabot School in Richmond. (I’m also proud to say I shook his hand and spoke with him when sat down at the end my row before the program.) While he spoke, I diagramed his speech on my bulletin:
As you can see, I found two main ideas: The Biology of Stress and the Psychology of Growth. It’s clear from the research that trauma and stress (and especially chronic stress) wreak havoc on the human brain, stunt learning, and prevent growth. But there is also incredible research in the field of psychology about the antidote to this stress: a secure attachment to parents who are are comforting and who help children manage their stress. For those who are older, a caring adult and a safe support group can also provide opportunities for people to feel accepted and to accept themselves.
This acceptance is the first step to growth.
But there also is a surprising third point that connects both stress and growth: that is the believe that growth is enhanced by, indeed requires, the presence of stress. And on the affluent end of the spectrum, Tough and others believe there is even a deficit of adversity which prevents students from ever fully developing into themselves. They simply pass from one institution to another seeking stability and a straightforward path of rewards for their work. In contrast, students in poor communities have a much higher risk of failure, but the students that get out have something their wealthier peers lack: the knowledge that they have achieved something great and the determination to do it again. I drew another diagram while trying to explain this concept to my girlfriend and simultaneously trying to understand it myself:
The point is not to be naive about poverty (especially extreme poverty) and it’s also not about “success” in monetary terms, but in the more personal sense of achievement. Tough writes that the point is to be more understanding of the role of adversity. For the high school student I mentor in Richmond, it wouldn’t help for me to remove all adversity from his life. That would stunt growth as well. Instead, I need to give him a safe place to feel accepted, to know he is loved, and to enjoy life for a moment. He can go to school or the basketball court and know that I’m only a phone call away. And, of course, when he needs something that he definitely can’t get on his own, I’ll do my best to help him out.
Which brings me to Fatima.
I first met Fatima while she was walking home from work one day this summer. I am friends with her roommate, but I had never met her so I made the connection and asked her about her life. I quickly realized that Fatima has a goal: she is determined to get her driver’s license. So I agreed I would teach her how to drive and do whatever I could to help her. A month or two later, I got a call and for the past two weeks, her roommate and I have been riding in the passenger seat while Fatima, timid and incredibly nervous, has been learning how to drive.
This morning, I picked her up to go to the DMV and take the driving test for the first time. She told me she has three chances to get it right before her learner’s permit expires on October 14 so she wanted to get an early start. “I want to drive,” she said when I picked her up. “I want to drive to the DMV.” Aside from a few “dad moments,” I kept my cool on the way and she got us both there with relative skill. As expected, the place was crowded so Fatima got in line to get her number (to wait in another line) and I sat in a seat nearby.
As she stood there, a short, middle-aged Moroccan woman, I was amazed by her courage. No mother or father was there to help her. No husband, partner, or lifelong friend was there with her for support. A stranger (me) was her only chance to get this right and to accomplish her goal. But to Fatima, none of that mattered. It didn’t matter that the woman behind the counter was a little rude or that she was surrounded by people speaking a foreign language. She was focused on one thing: getting a driver’s license to get a car to get a job.
And at first I thought she was incredible for her courage, ambition, and resilience (qualities she certainly possesses in great measure). But, as Tough writes in his book, that is never the full story. While we were waiting in her third line of the morning, I asked her about her family. She told me that she has three younger brothers: one who lives in Rhode Island, and who two live in Morocco with her mother. Her father has passed away. “How is your mom?” I asked mostly to be polite.
“She’s doing good,” Fatima replied.
“Do you get to talk to her very often?”
“Oh yes, I talk to her everyday.”
Every day. I don’t quite know what drives Fatima, but I know it’s somehow connected to the relationship she has with her mother and her brothers. She is loved. And every day when she goes out into this stressful, foreign world she knows that she can return home to a conversation with her mom, a peace, a calm. She’s even told her mom about me, about her goal of getting her license and the stressful test she has to take. And from this loving relationship she goes back out into the world, ready to fight every step of the way. Tough writes that this is the fundamental difference between stress that harms and stress that results in growth: a chance to be restored.
This book may make you think about your life, your kids, your students, your friends. It’s a study that pushes the conversation about “education reform” to a new and more meaningful place: failure, success, and the perilous journey in between.
Sadly, Fatima did not pass the driving test today. I don’t even think the instructor let her out of the parking lot. She very gently told us that Fatima needs more practice. She was just way too nervous and unable to complete some basic tasks as a result. I know she was devastated. After months of work and hours of waiting, she her license was still out of reach..
If that were the end of the story, if Fatima went home and gave up on her dreams, it would be a pretty sad story. But I am sure that she is Skyping with her mom as I write this post, telling her all about this morning, the lines at the DMV and the events of the day. And as she shares with her mom, Fatima is slowly replacing her own stress and fear with her mom’s love and acceptance. She even called me a few hours later to make sure I would let her know when I found a time to take her back for her second test. I believe that through her experiences today Fatima will move forward more prepared for the test and determined to pass.
And that is how anyone succeeds.
Posted in Ambition, Education, Learning
Tagged biological connection, biology of stress, chemical response, Driving, Driving school, Early childhood development, Family, Fatima, How Children Succeed, hpa axis, Ira Glass, Love, Paul Tough, Peace, Public Schools, Richmond, Sabot School, Schools, stress and the brain, Success
For me, grad school is a foreign country. Below is a brainstorm I wrote down after having a clarifying conversation with a friend last weekend. You may notice that I use the word “clarifying” relative to what my thoughts were before the conversation, but I’m nowhere near clarity. These are the topics that I’m interested in, not the path.
Having a blog has given me momentum through this process since I’ve had a chance to “try out” different topics and disciplines. While “trying out” is fun, it will soon be time to choose. For now, I have the intersection of three areas of interest and the title of my hypothetical grad school thesis:
Tagged brainstorm, clarification, disciplines, grad school, topics
As I rode home from work on Friday, I decided I needed to get out of Richmond. For me, a 70-mile drive to Charlottesville is far enough to feel like I got “away” from my routine life. That drive down I-64 was the beginning of an idea that has everything to do with highways and hallowed halls: the faster you can get somewhere the closer it feels.
I’ve been told that humans have always considered a reasonable commute to be about a half of an hour to an hour of travel. Walking, that would be about 3.5 miles. Driving, that could be a trip from Trenton to New York. Flying, that’s a D.C. to Chicago commute that no child dreams to have when they grow up. While the amount of time we travel to work has remained relatively the same, the increase in distance has been significant. The affects of this distance are profound.
In the early 1900s, before the Model T and good roads, many wealthy Americans owned second homes just outside the city. In Boston, for instance, this was the rural getaway known as Jamaca Plain. Near Richmond, it was the neighborhood of Bon Air. Originally a retreat ten miles outside the city, Bon Air was frequented by Richmonders who wanted to get “away” from the stifling life of an industrial city. Today, Bon Air is near the middle of a metropolitan region and considered just another inner suburb. Meanwhile, the wealthiest residents are more likely to have second homes in Sun Valley or Naples than rural Virgina. The idea of buying a second home 10 miles away seems absurd. The faster you can get somewhere, the closer it feels. But is it actually close?
Many American cities today are populated by the children of faraway parents that raised them and watched them leave. I am one of these children. I was given the chance to move over 1,000 miles from home to live somewhere new and exciting. I have been given the chance to go out on my own. But when did this become normal? We, the millennials, are the fifth generation of Americans with access to cheap gasoline and the third generation to grow up with interstate highways.
We grew up as the unsettled generation of an increasingly mobile nation. There have always been wealthy people, but there have not always been turbojets and 70 mph speed limits. This has changed the way we see distance and separation.
For instance, I live about three-and-a-half hours away from my hometown of Tyler, TX. By plane. So that’s about 22 hours away by car and 349 hours by foot. When I left Tyler for college I didn’t really think it was a big deal. Now, it feels significantly farther than I originally imagined. In my sixth year of life away from Texas I can say there is much I have learned while I’ve been away. I wouldn’t change my decision to leave if I had the chance. I love the city where I live and the university where I studied.
But there is this simple, lingering question I am asked every once in a while that I can never completely answer: “So, how’d you end up in Richmond?”
Like most, I tend to focus on the “pull” factors of migration. Oh, I came here for college and fell in love with the city. I usually also make a joke about how the University’s website was easy to navigate or that Richmond wasn’t as cold as Boston, another city I considered for school. But why, as a senior in high school, did I not consider a single school in Texas or even somewhere closer like New Orleans or St. Louis? Why the 1,000-mile trek? There are a few easy answers I can think of:
But that doesn’t really answer the question. While there was a draw to move away, there were also significant “push” factors that sent me away from my southern home. In the land of football and Rick Perry, I didn’t really think there was a place for a friendly writer trying to make a difference. I made lots of unfavorable generalizations to justify my move away, but at the same time I was more focussed on where I was headed. When I applied to college, I dreamed of a place where people liked to read and write, where Christians didn’t all look the same, and where it wasn’t weird to suck at basketball. I didn’t know if I would find that, but I figured it was worth a shot. Everywhere I went in Texas, I saw the same story and realized that, while I think it’s a great story, it would be a hard one to fit into.
So I got out. I became one of the many confused Texpatriots simultaneously displaying a Texas flag and critiquing that beautiful, mineral-rich place.
And here I am: living in an old mansion in Richmond, working at an amazing university that also happens to be my alma mater. My neighborhood is both dangerous and beautiful depending on who you ask. My house is used as a tutoring site for hundreds of kids each year. My city has representations of American architecture going back to the 1700s, fine art, public murals, excellent restaurants, and more. It’s not D.C., but it’s also not snooty and it suits me well.
And yet, if you notice, all the positives aren’t really adding up. There’s always the question, “But what?” Living in Richmond is awesome, but it involves this thing I call the golden triangle of growing up: the pull between a career, a significant other, and family/hometown.
This is how it plays out:
Whenever I think about moving home (or at least near family), my first thought is that I can’t go back until I get somewhere in my career. There’s not much of a market in Tyler for someone who made up their own major in college. Then, whenever I think about advancing my career (a word I routinely misspell) which might involve grad school somewhere far away, I immediately think about my girlfriend and wonder how the timing of both will work out. Thinking about our relationship then takes me back to thinking about moving home and I imagine a life of holiday swaps and long-distance in-laws. Again, when I think about home, I think about my career pulling me all across the nation and I wonder what my little sister will be up to as she finishes high school and enters young adulthood herself. I wonder if my parents will be sitting on our back patio enjoying those cool spring afternoons in Tyler while I’m who-knows-where doing who-knows-what. I think about my three older brothers who are all living in this golden triangle as well and I wonder if we will ever manage to live near each other again.
I wonder if I will ever get to move home and whether it will still be home when I get there.
When you’re in a relationship with someone that’s in a similar situation, you also realize that at some point one of you will have to bend for the other. That’s the compound reality of this golden triangle: both of you can never have all three at the same time. And since both people in relationships today have educations and aspirations, it takes a lot of energy to make it all line up. Often people choose to go their separate ways, some struggle through the long-distance life, and others manage to work it out in the same place. Even when it does work out, it can be a gauntlet of long-term planning and flexibility.
That brings me back to my trip to Charlottesville. I’m currently sitting at a coffee shop with four friends I’ve met since moving out to Virginia. Between the two couples and myself, we represent five home states: Tennessee, Ohio, Maine, Virginia and Texas. We are all living in the reality of the triangle:
I am from Tyler, TX and my girlfriend is from Medford, NJ and Sanibel, FL. We both currently live in Richmond, but our families are scattered from Florida to California. My friend, Max, who is originally from Portland, ME, currently works and lives in D.C. where he met his girlfriend, Shannon, a native Tennesseean (who also moved around growing up), in D.C. just before she moved to Charlottesville for law school at UVA. Max is currently applying to law schools around the mid-Atlantic region and hopes to end up somewhat close by. Margo, another friend from college, is currently living in her hometown of Cincinnati and hoping to start medical school in the fall. She got into the University of Cincinnati program but is trying her darndest to get into a med school in Virginia so she can live near her boyfriend, Joe. Joe, a native of Richmond (the only native Virginian in the group), is currently in the UVA post-bac program so that that he can apply for med schools this summer and start a year from now in the fall. If Margo starts the program in Cincinnati, he will likely move to Cincinnati to work while he does his best to get into the same program or, if he only gets into a program in Virginia, she may try and transfer after her first two years.
It’s no wonder some are calling us the most stressed-out generation.
Max made the comment last night that we are living in an era of “progressive instability” as young adults in Twenty-First-Century America.
“Dramatic instability,” he added.
Since the best opportunities are no longer nearby, we find ourselves settling into LDRs (long-distance relationships) while we find jobs or attend grad school. Even if you don’t want to go to grad school, you’ve most likely thought about it. Max made the comment that the economy expects us to have graduate educations, but doesn’t facilitate the experience. Also, with MBA programs like UVA’s Darden that charge $76,000 a year for in-state tuition, our generation is making history in the way of personal debt.
With the sluggish economy, vertical mobility is synonymous with geographic mobility and cross-country job searches are the norm. This was once the time of life when people began to build stability, moved home, and started a new chapter of life. Some of my friends have managed to work that out, but many of us genuinely didn’t know it was an option. We, the mobile, have followed the allure of big cities and fresh lives.
No longer a time for building community, the twenties have become a very dynamic stage of life. One misstep and you’ll be roadkill in this “Great Recession” that sees unemployment as a mark of personal failure: you can’t get a job if you don’t have experience and you can’t get experience if you don’t have a job. Of course, it can work out, but it’s a little terrifying at the same time. And we are all living in this reality from day to day. Every once in a while I think about all of this and I take a very deep breath. It’s just too much to consider it all at the same time.
In a decade, I hope I look back and laugh at the golden triangle of growing up. I hope we will have a chance to tell stories and swap war wounds on the other side. I hope we all keep our sanity in the process and I hope we remember what matters most. What makes people happy today is what made people happy thousands of years ago: close relationships, good work, and unconditional love.
In the world of the golden triangle, it’s simply a question of where.
Posted in Ambition, Education, Movement
Tagged becoming an adult, Bon Air, Darden, golden triangle, grad school, Richmond, TX, Tyler, young adult life
So, it’s time to come clean. A few weeks ago I published a nice post about how exciting it is to finish a book and then listed all the books that I had started and finished in 2012. But as Susan Boyle so eloquently put it, “That’s just the one side of me!” Something like that. So I decided to type up the list of books that I started, loved for a time, and put down for something else (see, Necessary Endings, if you have trouble letting go of a good book for a better one).
As I compiled the list, I realized that for some reason it’s a way more eclectic list than the list of finished books. There is some psychology, some horror sprinkled in, more short stories, and some really amazing history. I guess I didn’t finish these books because I’m getting “practical” and growing up. Or maybe I just enjoy books with more applicable wisdom at this crazy stage of life. Either way, I’m still planning to keep these unfinished books. Some I’ll finish later and others I’ll reference from time to time. In no particular order, the 2012 rejects:
On Writing Well, William Zinsser
The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Nine Personality Types, Don Richard Riso, Russ Hudson
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson
The Human Side of Human Beings: The theory of re-evaluation counseling, Harvey Jackins
Silver boxes: The gift of encouragement, Florence Littauer
Everything’s Eventual, Stephen King
The Fantastic Book of Everybody’s Secrets, Sophie Hannah
Letters to a Young Poet, Ranier Maria Rilka
The History of White People, Nell Irvin Painter
Cultivate: Forming the Emerging Generation Through Life-on-life Mentoring, Jeff Myers
A Guide for Listening and Inner-Healing Prayer: Meeting God in the Broken Places, Rusty Rustenback
I haven’t blogged much lately. Most of what I’ve written in the past five months has filled the first half of my journal and the margins of the books I have read. This post is a digest of those books.
In 2012, I discovered that reading is more enjoyable as a hobby than as a job (big surprise). As a student for 16 years, I learned to resent the books that were assigned to me for book reports, essays and those dreaded Accelerated Reader (AR) tests. I watched as my hobby became points on a chart, grades and boxes to check. Most books I read during high school and college were left unfinished or skimmed at the last minute to meet deadlines and find quotes. Of the photo to the left, I probably finished a few.
Since finishing books wasn’t much of a priority, I did a little happy dance for each of the first three books I finished last year: another milestone. The authors of these books have since inspired me to read more authors in new fields. Following their suggestions has made for a delightful rabbit hole full of entertaining stories and thoughtful prose. These books have also reminded me that my childhood was full of days spent lost in the joy of books. I am thankful, once again, to be a reader.
This is the list of books I read in 2012. It’s nothing spectacular, but it’s a first for me and hopefully a sign of good things to come. Enjoy:
I still have a hard time spelling the word, Isaiah. Every time I write it, I have to sound it out and double-check. After spending almost a year reading this book of Old Testament prophecy, that just about sums up my knowledge of the book as well. While I didn’t always know the context of the prophecy, I appreciated the content of each chapter and verse. Often, Isaiah caught me off guard with romanticized highs and lows. What was once beautiful is destroyed, the place we loved has been defiled, and great skill has been corrupted by great delusion. I could say more, but it’s probably best to read it yourself. Along the way, this book inspired me to write two blog posts: “Delusions” and “Haunted Houses.”
The Spirit of the Disciplines, Dallas Willard
I’m almost ashamed to admit that I read this book last year. It’s not that I’m ashamed of the book, it’s more that I’m ashamed at my lifestyle. While I read and appreciated this book (strong recommendation), I’m just barely beginning to apply the spiritual disciplines to my life. As Willard writes, “If we refuse to practice, it is not God’s grace that fails when a crisis comes, but our own nature. When crisis comes, we ask God to help us, but He cannot if we have not made our nature our ally.” This book inspired me to write a blog post about silence: “Our Haunted Selves.”
Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality, Dr. Henry Cloud
My grandfather, Orville Rogers, gave me this book when I graduated from college. When I started it in May of 2011, I realized it was nothing like the books that I had read all my life. It was not “heady” or theoretical, it was practical and wise. While it took me a year and three months to finish, it sparked something in myself I never (ever) expected: an interest in business management books. Also, reading this book gave me more of an appreciation for Dr. Henry Cloud and I highly recommend his work. While reading this book, I wrote a blog post on decisions, “Gamble and Risk.”
Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time, Susan Scott
This book is out of control. When I finished my yearlong internship at Church Hill Activities and Tutoring (CHAT), I mentioned to one of the board members that I wished I’d had more difficult conversations. “Oh,” he said picking up a book beside him, “you might be interested in this book my daughter’s team at Capitol One has been reading.” A year ago, I would have said forget it, but Cloud had already softened me on business books and two weeks later Susan Scott changed my life. This book is a hard-hitting, unpredictable look into your relationships and the conversations you have each day. If you’re avoiding it, Susan Scott will be sure to let you know and tell you how to have the conversation in a productive way.
The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, David Brooks
This book says so much about who we are and how we develop from toddlers to adults. In typical David Brooks fashion, this book highlights the incredible connections that scientists are making between the brain and human behavior without being boring. Brooks trades science jargon with fiction and tells the story of cognitive science through the story of one couple from infancy to death. That’s not a spoiler, it’s all about the journey.
Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Move Forward, Dr. Henry Cloud
Not every ending is necessary, but determining when something needs to end is a hard process for all of us. This book taught me that if we don’t end things in life well (from jobs to friendships) we can’t move on in a healthy way. Cloud calls this process “metabolizing” endings and I think it’s the best description I’ve ever read.
The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter–And How to Make the Most of Them Now, Dr. Meg Jay
Forget everything you’ve read in the tabloids: the twenties are an important decade of life. That’s pretty much the message of Meg Jay’s new book that’s been taking over my social networks since it was published. For me, it all started when my brother Steven sent Will and I a link to an interview with the author titled, “Thirty Is Not The New Twenty: Why Your Twenties Matter.” Since then, Eunice read it, Will read it, I read it, Nina read it, Stacy and Stephen read it, Elizabeth read it … it’s out of control. Read the book — It’s not always necessarily right, but it’s good and helpful.
The Five Love Languages Men’s Edition: The Secret to Love that Lasts, Gary Chapman
I am selfish. That’s pretty much the biggest takeaway from reading Gary Chapman’s often referenced (and suggested) book about the ways we give and receive love. One thing that was fun about reading this book is that tons of people talk about the 5 love languages, but most people I know haven’t actually read it. It’s practical, thoughtful, and entertaining. Especially talking to all the fellas right now, you will not regret reading this book.
BUMBLE-ARDY, Maurice Sendak
From the author of Where the Wild Things Are comes a book about a pig who wants to party and a domineering aunt that doesn’t see the point. Bumble-Ardy follows in line with other works from Sendak as creative and childish with a depth of human understanding. As in the case of Wild Things, when you read about Bumble-Ardy you simultaneously become the child and the adult: reckless and responsible. I love this book for it’s cadence and rhyme scheme and a reminder not to let control prevent me from enjoying a party. In an interview with an aging Sendak, Terry Gross noted a section in particular where Bumble-Ardy is punished for his party and makes a profound commitment to get back in line:
“Okay smarty you’ve had your party! But never again!”
Bumble-Ardy replies, I promise! I swear! I won’t ever turn ten!”
Here’s to another year.
P.S. I’ve been collecting books in my Amazon Wish List (a service I highly recommend) that I may or may not ever read.
Posted in Education, Significance
Tagged 2012, Accelerated Reader, Bulble-Ardy, Church Hill Activities and Tutoring, Dallas Willard, David Brooks, Dr. Henry Cloud, Dr. Meg Jay, Fierce Conversations, Gary Chapman, Integrity, Isaiah, joy of books, Leuchtturm journal, Maurice Sendak, Necessary Endings: The Employees, Susan Scott, The Defining Decade, The Five Love Languages, The Social Animal, The Spirit of the Disciplines
Over the course of the past year, I have written and thought about the effects of stress and trauma. I have wondered about how the major traumas and micro traumas might have affected how we inhabit our communities and the ways in which we react to the stress of life. Yesterday, I listened to the This American Life podcast, “Back to School.” It’s a very well-done take on early childhood development and what some believe teachers should be expected to “actually accomplish” in their work.
In it, there is an amazing conversation about the affects of stress biologically and the long term affects of stress psychologically. What does it do to the brain when each day there is a stressful event that triggers a flood of adrenaline? How do humans develop when they are always tensing up, afraid of the unwarranted (and unpredictable) verbal or physical lashing? What Ira Glass says, is that, “When the brain does something over and over and over again, it creates pathways that get more and more ingrained.” The fight or flight response thus becomes one of the primary responses in the affected brain and one of the primary responses in the child’s life. Fight or flight.
If you’ve ever been a teacher this is perhaps not news to you. You might have experienced one of these two responses as you placed a worksheet on a student’s desk or passed out a graded quiz. You may have seen a student place his or her head on the desk during class because the numbers on the page might as well be written in Chinese: their brain is not connecting. Glass shares that over time the adrenaline rush during these traumatic moments stunts the development of a section of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, “where a lot of these non-cognitive skills happen — self-control and impulse control, certain kinds of memory and reasoning. Skills they call executive functions.” Without these executive functions, students cannot sit still, engage information, and reason a thoughtful response.
There are even ways that I can see these pathways in my own brain and and how stress has affected my own experience. How I interact with some sorts of people, how I believe I am perceived when I walk into a room, when and where I feel confident. All of these have developed over years through a series of unstructured, unplanned, semi-traumatic events that have brought me to this point in time. Granted, these traumas are minor in scale in comparison to many. I have been blessed to grow up in a world where I felt safe to play outside and to spend vacation with my relatives.
Still, as I grow up (however reluctantly) I am finding that I have these reflexes within me that emerge under certain types of stress. Because the prefrontal cortex is where a lot of non-cognitive skills happen, I am not totally in control of these responses. I can only be aware of myself and the ways in which I affect others in order to preempt my more negative, learned reflexes. Also, I believe that leaning into these harmful reflexes and embracing activities that may conjure up these responses (in a safe space) will allow me to reteach my brain new responses and to integrate new positive experiences into my identity. I can effectively relearn a reflex. This is is most commonly called therapy or, more simply, personal growth.
Below is a transcript of the excerpted conversation on the effects of stress. I highly recommend listening to the whole piece, but also take some time to read through and contemplate the conversation below. For me, it is a profoundly important take-away because it has everything to do with my current work as well as my life of personal evaluation. Enjoy:
But in addition to all the bad things that are likely to happen to them as adults, there’s also the effect that long-term stress has on them when they’re still kids, especially on their brains and their ability to learn.
If you look on the molecular level, you’re walking through the forest and you see a bear, right? So you can either fight the bear or run from the bear. That’s kind of your fight or flight system. Right?
Right.
And your body releases a ton of adrenalin, right? Which is your short-term stress hormone, and something else called cortisol, which tends to be more of a long-term stress hormone. And this dilates your pupils, gets your heart beating fast. Your skin gets cold and clammy. That’s because you’re shunting blood from anywhere that isn’t absolutely necessary to the muscles that you need to be able to run from that bear.
The other thing that it does– now, you can imagine that if you’re about to fight a bear, you need some gumption to fight that bear, right? So it kind of shuts off the thinking portion of your brain, right? That executive function cognitive part. And it turns on the real primal aggression and the things that you need to be able to think that you’re going to go into a fight with a bear and come out on the winning side.
Yeah.
And that’s really good if you’re in a forest and there’s a bear. The problem is when that bear comes home from the bar every night. Right? And for a lot of these kids, what happens is that this system, this fight or flight response, which is an emergency response in your body, it’s activated over and over and over again. And so that’s what we were seeing in the kids that I was caring for.
When the brain does something over and over and over again, it creates pathways that get more and more ingrained. So this kind of repeated stress affects the development of these kids’ brains. And especially affected in this situation is a specific part of the brain that’s called the prefrontal cortex, which is where a lot of these non-cognitive skills happen– self-control and impulse control, certain kinds of memory and reasoning. Skills they call executive functions.
If you’re in a constant state of emergency, that part of your brain just doesn’t develop the same. Doctors can see the differences on brain scans. Dr. Burke Harris says that for these kids, the bear basically never goes away. They still feel its effects even when they’re just trying to sit there quietly in English class.
And if right at that moment someone asks you, “Oh, could you please diagram this sentence? Or could you please divide two complex numbers?” You’d be like, what are you talking about? And so that’s what we were seeing in the kids that I was caring for, is that a lot of them had a terrible time paying attention. They have a hard time sitting still.
And you hear about this in lots of schools. Head Start teachers in one survey said that over a fourth of their low income students had serious self-control and behavior problems. Nadine Burke Harris says that it’s true for her patients, the ones with adverse childhood experiences like neglect, domestic violence, a parent with mental illness or substance abuse.
For our kids, if they had four or more adverse childhood experiences, their odds of having learning or behavior problems in school was 32 times as high as kids who had no adverse childhood experiences.”
Posted in Education, Memory, Perception, Significance
Tagged childhood development, education, Ira Glass, Nadine Burke Harris, reflex, stress, therapy, trauma
I was looking back through The Houses of History the other day and I was struck (once again) by Hayden White’s article “The Fictions of Factual Representation.”
Here are two excerpts:
“Most nineteenth-century historians did not realize that, when it is a matter of trying to deal with past facts, the crucial consideration for him who would represent them faithfully are the notions he brings to his representation of the ways parts relate to the whole which they comprise. They did not realize that the facts do not speak for themselves, but that the historian speaks for them, speaks on their behalf, and fashions the fragments of the past into a whole whose integrity is—in its representation—a purely discursive one. Novelists might be dealing only with imaginary events whereas historians are dealing with real ones, but the process of fusing events, whether imaginary or real, into a comprehensible totality capable of serving as the object of representation, is a poetic process.” “These fragments have to be put together to make a whole of a particular, not a general kind.”Posted in Education, Memory, Perception
Tagged Hayden White, History, identity, Narrative, rhetoric, The Houses of History
Highways and Hallowed Halls 