1/ imagine there's a forest that'll represent how we think. In the middle of the forest is a small clearing. It is a dense forest. The newborn wants to survive/feel safe/have needs met. In doing so, it wears down a neural pathway to the center https://twitter.com/Idil_A_/status/1353354347736944641

2/ The center is "safety w/needs met." It is easier to wear down paths from here than clearing in from the edges of the forest, because here you can see a little around you for critters/poison ivy, and you can rest, build a fire, whatever, without fear.

3/ Fast forward to first few years - pathways are worn down now based on reading parent reactions, acquiring language, and other sensory organization of world. Touching poop=mom upset=don't. Emotional cues help shape new pathways along with genetics and environs.

4/ important to pause here - if no safety, no consistent emotional cueing, etc, then pathways will be impacted - elongated, energy inefficient, unpredictable, or simply not made, who knows? Trauma impacts development, so does anxiety/depression/constant stress (obvs the body too)

5/fast forward to school - teacher says, "look I have a map of the forest that will help you build this new pathway you've never heard of" without asking you what your pathways look like or where they are, which is dumb, b/c Older pathways are more energy efficient (more worn)

6/perhaps your landmarks are different than theirs (exec functions), or you can't see your way to their end of one pathway from your safe spot (fear/anxiety), or the only way for you to get to their end point is to use a series of routes not marked on their map (compensation).

7/compensation happens in normal healthy brains all the time, but because we hate children, no one's looked at why normal healthy brains do the insanely fascinating things they do when compensating. Some kids legit invent "research-backed pedagogy" methods but we crowd them out

8/rigidity, belief in the idea that pre-constructed curricula can actually address these individual pathways is foolish. Look at Leibniz and Newton. Same end point, different paths. We should be seeking to better understand how to build off of Ss pathways, but....

9/ instead we force algorithms that may or may not connect their paths, and we just assume practice will ingrain deep functional comprehension. But carving those paths or cutting new connections between existing ones = learning task that enables fluid transitions to new contexts

10/when we preference or sequence math ideas/algorithms we're just plunking down lines on an arbitrarily drawn map like an angry lumberjack saying, "CUT DOWN THESE HERE TREES!" It'll clear the same paths for all the kiddos, sure, but unclear how limiting/beneficial it'll be

11/later, when sufficient complexity emerges and the student doesn't understand why these newer paths were made, or how they loop back to the deeper/older paths, they struggle to compensate.

12/Guess what happens if they don't feel safe doing that? Because it's not the prescribed way of thinking? They don't think. They're not encouraged to "be gritty" or have a "growth mindset" because of implicit messaging and context (learning).

13/And if they don't feel safe in school at all, same result but faster and more damaging to child body+mind+soul. Safety, emotional AND physical, should be the concern of every educator. Society "teaches" deeper than we ever can.

14/Mary Helen Immordino-Yang: "We think in service of emotional goals" - she's an essential read. But 1st point is all of this is moot if a child doesn't feel safe learning. right now @DenaSimmons is doing stellar work around safety/trauma/anti-racism with SEL as the vehicle

15/So if learning happens in an emotional envelope, and all these paths get pushed and pulled by genetic, environmental, sociological, cultural factors - why the fuck are we pretending knowing a difference of squares at a certain age is how we should teach math? We have no clue!

16/when we love math, we love it because our pathways lead us to a place of peace or wonder - but then we're also teaching from this place of "I have this cool view of something i worked at and I'm attributing it to ____", which may or may not be accurate.

17/All you know is your own pathways. if you teach newtonian notation for calc 1 and then just randomly introduced leibniz notation in implicit differentiation, some kids, who struggle w/ auditory processing and visual-spatial processing in the same field of vision will struggle

18/ but to most math teachers, that's "knowing the different notations" or it's "you need this trick". That's not wrong, but it's not helping the Ss at all with navigating math on their own for the rest of their lives. So instead, A). Strive for Ss safety by confronting own bias

19/ B). teach in a way that engages as many neurons as possible by hitting the three processing domains (auditory-words, written or spoken, visual - numbers/math symbols and visual-spatial - fractions/exponents/diff height planes/shapes/charts/graphs)

20/ C). stress the core exec functions may need to happen sequentially rather than simultaneously - those are 1. inhibit (stop) 2. initiate (start) 3. sequence/order 4. prioritize/relative rank 5 segment 6 synthesize 7 shift/take in new info/change tasks 8. self-awareness

21/ And also that some may work better than others depending on the context - i.e. you might break up polynomials really well (visual processing) but fuck up rational functions (visual-spatial). Presence- doing one step at a time, helps a lot with ingraining complex algos for Ss

22/ D). become a fucking badass at differentiating the material by educating yourself as much as possible on likely issues facing struggling learners, so you can lumberjack pathways when needed at minimal intrusiveness.

23/ resources to do all of this and put it into play -
any Mary Helen Immordino-Yang books
Neuropsychology of Mathematics - Feifer/Defina (free short-versions linked somewhere in my feed a while back)
Exec function and child Development - Yeager/Yeager

24/ @DrPamelaCantor is working on this holistic child ed model - best model I've seen so far, sans the neuropsych stuff.

But in short: strive to know how pathways get made and leverage the old ones to help build workarounds when compensation fails to get to desired endpoint

Also at some point I will put this into a book and then i can say, "Just buy my fucking book, Twitter Strangers!" but for now just DM me if I can help any more at all.

If this was helpful, nominate me for a TED talk! Would love to get this out to more ppl.