Using science to direct educators how to activate student feelings of happiness, motivation and the ability to build relationships

This summer has been a wonderful opportunity to feed my ongoing commitment to providing strategies and best practices to educators and administrators that empower student learning. I am a firm believer in life-long learning. I attend conferences, coach administrators and classroom teachers and I am an avid reader; therefore I am frequently exposed to research, studies, ideas and experiences on social and emotional learning and the effects it has on organizational behavior, particularly in a school setting.

Organizational behavior plays a very significant role in student success. My passion and purpose revolves around how adults can support all children to be successful in a school environment; focusing on their relationships, building self-esteem, improving academic achievement and developing life dreams and goals.

These last couple of months I have been studying the chemical makeup of the human body and how each of us can activate those chemicals in our own bodies in order to be genuinely happy and develop relationships for a positive, supportive an inspiring learning environment.

A colleague of mine forwarded me a video of a talk given by a speaker named Simon Sinek discussing how we can activate the chemicals inside our bodies in order to be good leaders.

I find the science behind the way we “feel” just fascinating and I decided to use this new found knowledge to look at how the Generation Text Online modules, practices, routines and learning activities align with how our bodies are wired and how that can encourage increased academic achievement with our students.

Inside our body there are systems that are trying to get us to do things that will allow us to survive. In other words we are wired for survival. These systems inside our bodies produce chemicals that allow us to feel happiness, joy, pride, love, motivation and the ability to possess positive relationships. This series of posts we will discuss specifically how we educators have the power to activate a chemical reaction that will either help or inhibit our students in their ability to contribute to a positive, respectful and safe school climate.  These chemicals are:

• Dopamine
• Oxytocin
• Serotonin
• Endorphins

Stay tuned for my next post in which I look at strategies and routines that teachers can use in order to activate each of these four chemicals in the bodies of our students, enabling them to succeed to the best of their academic ability and guiding them how they become successful members of their school community and their world.