[MUSIC] Welcome back to course eight. This is week two, where we're looking at developing positive teacher-student relationships. And what I want to look in Lecture two, is the power of positive questioning. If you remember from our first lecture, we looked about the connection between thinking and doing. Between what we think about, and how we behave. We argued on the one hand, that if we have negative feelings about things, if we have negative memories about things, then we might try to avoid these things in the future. And on the other hand, if we have positive things that we remember about something, and if we believe that this is a good thing to do, then we're more likely to want to be involved in the future. So what we need to do, is to remember that we have to try and be positive about our questioning. We have to try and get students to have positive memories, positive feelings about themselves, and that will respond in positive behavior. How does all of this happen? The research tells us that all of our learning, all of our memories, are associated with this little thing, which is called the brain cell. And the brain cell is a very important component to learning. And as you can see there, there are various parts. The dendrites connect to other brain cells. The cell body generates electricity, which sends something along the axon. And then the axon terminals, also lead to other brain cells. The most important thing there, though, is something called the myelin sheath. And the myelin sheath is a sort of pillow that builds up over time. Every time electricity goes from the cell body down through the axon, towards other things, this pillow gets bigger and bigger. And what this means, is that our thinking about this thing, gets quicker and quicker. The reason that this happens, is that although electricity only travels at the one speed, the pillows that are built up, which you can see in this diagram, are actually electrostatically charged. And what that means is, instead of the electricity having to travel the whole length of the axon, it jumps from one pillow, to the next pillow, to the next. And that means the electricity gets from the cell body, to the axon's terminals, up to 12 times quicker. So the more we think about something, the more we do something, the better we get at it, and the quicker that we get. Let me give you an example. When you first started to tie your shoelaces, it took you a long time. You fumbled, you got the wrong thing done, you couldn't do it properly, you taught nonsense All of these things occurred because you had to learn how to tie your shoelaces. But as you practiced, as you did it more and more frequently, you got better and better and better. And what you would now be doing, is you could almost tie your shoelaces without thinking about it at all. Now what this is, is an example of how the brain cells work. In order to tie your shoelaces, all of the different cells that are connected to shoelace tying, are having electricity go through them. And as you get better at it, the electricity goes quicker and quicker. So over time you become better at doing this. Exactly the same process happens when you're doing your three times tables. When you first went through the three tabs tables, it was difficult. You had to think hard in order to get a grant. But as you practised it, as you did it more and more often, you were able to get it quicker and quicker. So what we're talking about here, are the various concepts that we have, and how they're connected. We have a concept of mathematics. We have a concept of shoelace time. And they're all connected in various ways by our brain cells. So if we think of a particular concept, let's say the concept of school. When I mention school, your thoughts will generate the memories that you've had of school in the past, your thoughts will generate an imagination which will be what you think will happen in the future, and this will lead to your current perception about school. People's perceptions about schools can generally be positive, or in some cases, they can be negative. But what then happens, is that within the brain cell, we will have all these concepts. There's another concept. There's a concept of learning. So there may be a million brain cells that have something to do with learning. And when you think of anything that is to do with learning, these brain cells will light up. The electricity will fly. But we will have positive views of learning, and we will have negative views of learning. It depends on how we perceive the world. Look at this slide. Is this a good day, or a bad day? Well, what is your answer? The answer is, it depends on what you look at. It depends on how you feel about what is happening. For instance, if you were the photographer t, that took this slide, it's probably a very good day, because this slide would be sold to places around the world. What if you're the shark? Well it depends. It depends on what happens next. What if you're the person on the ladder? It depends. It depends on whether the shark gets you or not. And if he misses the person on the ladder, you can see two little heads of people in the, in the water. Now at this stage, they're probably thinking that the person on the ladder has a bad day, but there is no such thing as just a good day, or a bad day. It depends. It depends on how we think about something, and what we think will happen next. So our concepts are really important. And our concepts in schools, really revolve around five primary understandings. Our concept of learning, our concept of teacher, our concept of school, our concept of self, and our concept of future. What we can argue, is that two of these concepts are much more important than the others. And we can argue this because, the long term success a student will have, is not with their relationship with any teacher, or any particular teacher, but the relationship that they have with learning. So of those five concepts, the two that are most critical, are the concept of learning, and the concept of future. And why is this? The concept of future is that the hope we have for ourselves, and the concept of learning is how we get there. But we can have quite simple views that are positive concepts with learning. If we want to develop a concept of learning in our students, the concept we might like to consider is this one. Learning is the ability to know something today, that I couldn't do yesterday. It's the ability to gain knowledge. And if we want to develop a concept of future in our students, we need to develop a positive concept of future. Something that hasn't happened yet, but I'm really looking forward to. And if we can develop these two concepts in our students in a positive way, a positive concept of future, and a cos, positive concept of learning, then we're able to work towards a very positive concept of school. What we could argue, and if we go back to our original statements last time. There're two types of teachers. The tellers and the askers. Sometimes teachers tell students what to do. If they don't get the answer right the first time, they tell them the answer. They tell them how to do things. And there're other teachers who lead students towards learning, by asking lots of questions. The question we ask as teachers are very, very important. We can ask questions that lead to positive thoughts, or we can ask questions that may lead to negative thoughts. So we need to practice asking new questions. We might ask for instance, what did you do on your holidays? Now this can lead to the students thinking about a range of different things. They could think about where they went for their holidays. They could think about living in the sunshine. But they could also think about, well, my dog died, or my bicycle was stolen. These are possibilities by asking this general question, what did you do during the holidays? However you can ask a different question just by changing a couple of words. What did you enjoy about your holidays? Now people are not going to enjoy their dog dying, and they're not going to enjoy their bicycle being stolen. So they're not going to think of these. But they did enjoy lying around in the sun, and they did enjoy going on holidays, and they might have enjoyed swimming at the beach. These are the things that they will remember. So we can change our questions from being general questions, to being positive questions. You could ask, for instance, as parents, what happened in school today? Could lead to nothing, or could lead to something negative. But if a parent asks, what did you enjoy about school today, that would lead to different responses. So how do we establish a process that will allow us to ask positive questions? The first step would be to engage the intellect. To get people to be thinking about something. Here's an example of what you could use. Perhaps you could just draw this little dot, or this little squiggle on the board. It could be any color, it could be any shape. And at the start of the day at school, you could ask the children, what is this for you? You would get a few responses. Some children might say it's just a squiggle. Other people might say, it looks a bit like a bird. Other people might say, it's an autumn leaf. The next question would be, who is right? And the answer is, we all are. And why is that? Because of the question that we asked. What is this for you? We're not asking what is this, which allows people to have the wrong answers. We're asking, what is this for you, which allows everybody to have the right answer. So what we've been able to do, is get people to start thinking about whatever it is that we drew on the board. And we got everybody thinking that they're able to be right. So we've engaged their intellect, we've asked them to respond to something. We also need to explain to young people how perceptions are built. And of course, we've already talked about that in our last lecture. Perceptions are built by looking at our memories, at our imaginations, our perceptions, our emotions, and our actions. But we also need to remember that they're built because of the thoughts that we have, and the questions that we ask ourselves. So we need to have students practice asking questions, that are really positive perceptions. How do we get students to think positively? Here are some questions that you might use. Do you have a pet? And you might ask a lot of questions about that pet, and what the student does with that pet. Where is your favorite place to go on holiday? What does that place look like? What do you do there? What are you really good at? Though you'll notice that all of these questions lead to positive responses, because we're asking really positive questions. We could then work our way through a series of questions within our classroom. Questions that will make our students stronger, and more positive about themselves. Here's a list of positive questions that you could use. What are the things you like to do? What are your most enjoyable memories? What do you love about life? What do you love about yourselves? Positive questions, that lead to positive responses. Now what we could do at the end of every day, or even at the end of every class. Let's say you've just completed a mathematics lesson. You could get the students to talk to each other and ask each other questions. So, two students in pairs. What did you enjoy about that lesson? What rewarded about that lesson? What satisfied you about that lesson? And what did you contribute? Why? Because each of these questions, trigger different sorts of memories, different sorts of responses. One last thing. If we could give you one word as a teacher that would change your life, would you use it? We have a tendency to use the question, why? The problem with why questions is that they always lead to answers, and at the end of answer, there is always another why question. Why didn't you do your homework? Because my dog ate it. Well, why did that happen? Why did you let your dog near it? Because, why, and so on. Anyone with a four year old child will know, that every time a Rye Christian comes about, another Rye Christian follows. So stop asking why. Instead, we can ask how? Instead of asking why didn't you do your homework? I can ask you, how can I help you to do your homework? What we're doing here is creating a partnership between myself as a teacher and you as a student. But we're also looking forward. We're not trying to justify the past, which is what the Rye Christians do. We are looking for positive actions into the future. So if we think about, more questions about how can I help you? How can I work with you? How can I get you to do something? Rather than asking people why. We start to look into the future, rather than into the past. In the next lecture, I want to start looking at some strategies that we might use, that will help you to provide really positive, good relations in the classrooms, between students and teachers. So I will talk to you again soon. Thank you. [MUSIC]
