Week 2

 Week Two

In the second week of the Institute, I feel like our understanding of the brain and education has improved quite a bit, that people are starting to open up bit by bit. That is, not just revealing more about themselves, but perhaps letting go of some of their hardened preconceptions and misconceptions about the brain.

Using Inception has opened up a lot of doors for me, thinking about popular media and other facets of the world in context with the brain—it isn’t hard because everything is a construction of the brain and the fact that the teachers in the Institute have started to make those connections is really exciting.

We looked at the structure of the brain and of the eyes this week, which helps provide a deeper understanding of the way that everything is filtered.

An education instructor came and spoke to us about education and ways of preparing, and was able to show the group that there were many different ways of being prepared—and that, maybe, it isn’t always necessary to formally prepare for a class or a teaching session. Warm and affable, she was well received by the teachers.

The session done by another instructor on the human heart was interesting. I liked the lecture quite a bit, but the activity following it was troublesome for several reasons. I feel like she was more of “do as I say, not as I do” instructor, because while she explained different modes of teaching that would open more doors for students, instead of condemning their thoughts and saying “wrong” or “no,” she walked around and critiqued everyone for their use of the scientific method and for getting things “wrong.” While she admonished one BSIE participant for making fun of another, she then turned around and said “No” when the participant suggested something to the class.

Many of the teachers were disgruntled with her approach to science, despite being originally interested in the subject matter and the prospect of playing with the heart, I think they were upset with Ingrid’s rigidity when it came to acquiring data.

A third instructor’s session on wine and tasting and the way that the brain is able to interpret different sensory information, the means by which people can integrate the conscious and the unconscious to work and inquire and discover amazing things about the world around them.

Loved it.

A fourth instructor session on the Loops was also very interesting—and well received by the teachers. The ideas of the centres and abandoning them linked directly back to things that I had learned in other classes, English classes, that talked about Modernistic views of literature and understanding—these classes linked together subjects and topics in a way to show that everything is connected—because, as we know, using the brain to filter everything means that it is going to be a common link to everything.