"The goal of Positive Behaviors Interventions and Supports is not 'perfect children.'  Rather the goal should be creating the perfect environment for enhancing their growth."
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"FLIPPING YOUR LID" BRAIN MODEL
DR. DAN SIEGEL
SAFETY, CONNECTION, AND​
PROBLEM SOLVING

"Providing safety and connection is an adult-first endeavor that is essential to children's wellbeing and brain function. We must learn to recognize children's brain/body states and our own,
​and then respond in healthy, helpful ways."
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Dr. Becky Bailey
METACOGNITION & NURTURING 
SELF AWARENESS IN THE CLASSROOM​
When students practice metacognition, the act of thinking about their thinking helps them make greater sense of their life experiences and start achieving at higher levels.

By Marilyn Price-Mitchell
How do children gain a deeper understanding of how they think, feel, and act so that they can improve their learning and develop meaningful relationships? Since antiquity, philosophers have been intrigued with how human beings develop self-awareness -- the ability to examine and understand who we are relative to the world around us. Today, research not only shows that self-awareness evolves during childhood, but also that its development is linked to metacognitive processes of the brain.
Making Sense of Life ExperiencesMost teachers know that if students reflect on how they learn, they become better learners. For example, some students may think and process information best in a quiet library, while others may focus better surrounded by familiar noise or music. Learning strategies that work for math may be different from those applied in the study of a foreign language. For some, it takes more time to understand biology than chemistry. With greater awareness of how they acquire knowledge, students learn to regulate their behavior to optimize learning. They begin to see how their strengths and weaknesses affect how they perform. The ability to think about one's thinking is what neuroscientists call metacognition. As students' metacognitive abilities increase, research suggests they also achieve at higher levels.
Metacognition plays an important role in all learning and life experiences. Beyond academic learning, when students gain awareness of their own mental states, they begin to answer important questions:
  • How do I live a happy life?
  • How do I become a respected human being?
  • How do I feel good about myself?
Through these reflections, they also begin to understand other people's perspectives.
At a recent international workshop, philosophers and neuroscientists gathered to discuss self-awareness and how it is linked to metacognition. Scientists believe that self-awareness, associated with the paralimbic network of the brain, serves as a "tool for monitoring and controlling our behavior and adjusting our beliefs of the world, not only within ourselves, but, importantly, between individuals." This higher-order thinking strategy actually changes the structure of the brain, making it more flexible and open to even greater learning.
Self-awareness plays a critical role in improved learning because it helps students become more efficient at focusing on what they still need to learn. The ability to think about one's thinking increases with age. Research shows that most growth of metacognitive ability happens between ages 12 and 15 (PDF, 199KB). When teachers cultivate students' abilities to reflect on, monitor, and evaluate their learning strategies, young people become more self-reliant, flexible, and productive. Students improve their capacity to weigh choices and evaluate options, particularly when answers are not obvious. When students have difficulty understanding, they rely on reflective strategies to recognize their difficulties and attempt to rectify them. Improving metacognitive strategies related to students' schoolwork also provides young people with tools to reflect and grow in their emotional and social lives.