Guest Blogger ~ Shadeed Abdul-Salaam~ Preventing Brain Drain and Amplifying Learning During our “New Normal.”
Introducing Shadeed Abdul-Salaam my husband. He’s a great dad, an educator & research scientist trained at Morehouse, UCDavis, Princeton, Emory, and Kennesaw. He’s a master hibiscus tea brewer and founder of the Atlanta-based non-profit Core2Globe, where he works diligently to improve the world. He is currently serving at his Alma Mater Morehouse College, and is also the founder of Core2Globe an Atlanta-based non-profit aimed to improve the world. To learn more, volunteer or donate you check out this site out here.
Shadeed weighs in on the ‘summer slide’ from a scientist’s perspective.
Preventing Brain Drain and Amplifying Learning During our “New Normal”
by Shadeed Abdul-Salaam
“Education is the main influence behind progress.”
What does it all mean?
Educar: Entomology to bring up or bring forth to extract out” (bring out uncover the benefit utility from the natural world) references one moving from a paradigm of not knowing (ignorance) into awareness or enlightenment.
So when we seek to prevent lag or the lack of enlightenment for our children and ourselves during long breaks without traditional schooling/acquiring knowledge that will benefit; we must fairly assess what education has looked like for most of the country and maybe the world.
First I’ll start with some questions:
Will our learners lack of face to face schooling impact what they learn?
Can you really advance using a solely digital platform?
Whose responsibility is it to teach/learn?
How can we incorporate our “new normal”/ digital learning platform to advance and amplify education?
We live in the most advanced time for innovation, technology, and access to information:
So why aren’t we advancing, extracting out and accelerating discovery at the same rate?
As an educator and research scientist I have some theories, but if I rely on empirical evidence like studies comparing reading physical books, writing and manual utilization of knowledge seeking demonstrate better results than digital platforms alone. Digital doesn’t win.
As I reflect on a conversation with a young woman I mentor, Layla a Senior neuroscience student at Yale; we evaluated how multiple access points where more of the 5 senses are engaged in learning bring about a deeper association and implantation of concepts. Educational frameworks, identify learners as kinesthetic, gifted, 2E, Auditory, visual learners but according to several ecological based studies, the more sensory engagement the deeper the understanding. Even if we utilized Bloom's Taxonomy learning index the greatest level of understanding points us back and gives inference to how we can amplify teaching/learning.
Whether planning with the end in mind/backward design has been adopted in your framework we all can agree, we seek mastery and deep understanding therefore increasing learning activities/exercises that create this deeper sensory understanding is critical in order to reach optimum understanding/enlightenment.
In order to access the highest level of Blooms which is to create, innovate, and spawn improvements to advance society; we will have to effectively blend traditional fundamental tried and true learning manipulatives like the “old world” abacus/counting device with “new world” implementation to create, innovate and advance our learners to avoid brain drain and spawn mastery.
Blog posts goes here….