Changing the Algorithm: Changing brain patterns after age 25

Starting a school is a big job. Starting a school that doesn’t operate like any other school…that is enormous. It can be a lonely task; while others can relate to starting a school, being an administrator, or being an eduprenuer, very few do all three at once.  It is a lot like treading water. Every. Single. Day.

When I have a moment to really sit and reflect on what has been the biggest hurdle to overcome, I keep coming back to the same thought: The greatest challenge has been changing the mindset of adults about what education is.

The kids are agile and make this transition in no time.  They are flexible and have a neurological plasticity that is ready for new connections and new neural pathways to be built. At Anastasis, this equates to a week of “detox” every year. Our Detox Week gives students a chance to unlearn some of the false messages they’ve come to believe about themselves as learners. It is about giving them “spaces of permission.” It is about helping our students think about education differently. For the great majority of them, this thinking about school differently doesn’t take long. They are agile.

But the parents, the parents are a bit more challenging. This week I’ve run into a video and an article that have me considering how to face the challenge we have with changing the algorithm for adults.

Michelle shared the following video with our staff this week:

It is fascinating to me that something like riding a bike can be SO engrained that even when we know that something works differently, and make an effort to change the way we think about it, the neural pathways in the brain are so heavily relied on that it is near impossible! Something tangible like riding a bike where you can actually feel and see the change seems like it would be relatively easy to relearn. As the video shows, it is not! This had me thinking about the parents that send their kids to Anastasis. There is 12+ years of schooling and thinking about what education is and how it works that is in play. And that kind of thinking isn’t so tangible. That thinking is pathways and assumptions that are made. It is a lot to overcome!

This morning I read this article from Fast Company What it Takes to Change Your Brain’s Patterns After Age 25. It asserts that after the age of 25, we have so many neural pathways forged as “shortcuts” for our brain, that it is nearly impossible to change the way that we think about something. Our brains are lazy and choose the most efficient paths…I’d call these efficient paths assumptions.

The article suggests ways to keep our “lazy” brains agile. The first is by using parts of the brain that we don’t frequently use. A new task that is challenging enough that it makes you feel mentally exhausted.  You know, the kind of tasks that we generally try to avoid as adults. The next is deliberate practice and repetition. New connections and pathways are forged only through practice and repetition. Without both, the connections won’t be established enough to become habitual. Depending on the complexity of the activity, this could take up to four and a half months!! Finally we have to have the right environment for change. We have to be physically healthy, build strong relationships with others, and generally do all we can to keep our brain out of “survival mode” which shuts out innovative or new thinking.

So, the question remains. How do we help adults (I’ve called out parents here, but it could just as easily read educators) change their mindset? How can we help challenge and engage people to use a part of their brain that they don’t normally use to rethink education? How can we help offer enough support for repetition and practice? How can we help provide the right environment for this change in thinking about education to happen?

I haven’t come up with the answers. I’m not sure exactly what this could look like, but it does have me considering the problem from new angles. What have you found to be useful in this process of helping other adults change their mindset?