Reply to comment

Joyce's discussion of her Mini Project on the development and evolution of the Brain Drain techniques she uses in her classes generated a lot of discussion about unconscious/conscious situations such as dreaming, sleep walking, night terrors, and sleep paralysis. It was a leap from developing mechanisms to get to where your students are with the course ideas to brain activity during sleep. We shared personal experiences, worked to understand these, and then attempted to relate our discussion to the classroom. Susan described her article on blindsight and blindsight of emotions and we related this to our classroom. Joyce shared a story about a lone and quiet student who became a significant presence in the classroom without any change of his pleasant but quiet personality. The only change was that Joyce, in fun, made notice of his silence by telling him he would have to change his noisy ways. The other students became aware of him and included him in the ambiance of the classroom. Every time something happened, students would turn and say it was this student. He would smile. He was still silent, but went from being alone to being a valued member of the group. Joyce brought attention to the two students who helped him with his work by communicating the observation to the parents of the two students.