The Psychological Impact of Child Separation at the U.S-Mexico Border," by Dean Luis H. Zayas

Dr. Zayas is Dean of the College of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin. I am so glad to know that he did this TED Talk because it helps to inform broader audiences about this cruel travesty heaped upon society's most vulnerable, namely, children. Many will have enduring, life-long effects, and our school systems, caretakers, and our criminal justice system will be contending with the effects of their traumas for many years to come, sadly. 

 -Angela Valenzuela 

 How does psychological trauma affect children's developing brains? In this powerful talk, social worker Luis H. Zayas discusses his work with refugees and asylum-seeking families at the US-Mexico border. What emerges is a stunning analysis of the long-term impact of the US's controversial detention and child separation policies -- and practical steps for how the country can do better. This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.

Bilingual Mind, Brain, and Child Development Symposium at UT on Monday, May 9, 2016

Bilingual Mind, Brain & Child Development Symposium at UT BMC 2.106 - Auditorium.  FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.

The link between emotion and working memory

Important, interesting research on emotions and the brain from

Lumosity.com.

-Angela

Emotional control and the brain.  Could you learn to have better control of your emotions? A 2013 study in the Journal of Neuroscience suggests that a certain type of working memory training can help people regulate their emotions in high-stress situations. 


The link between emotion and working memory
Emotional control, or the ability to regulate your emotional responses and stay focused on a goal, helps determine success in personal relationships as well as in professional ones. The researchers in this study noted that emotional control and working memory rely upon some of the same brain areas, including the frontoparietal area and the amygdala. Since these two functions share brain pathways, they posited that strengthening one could strengthen the other.

Working memory, your ability to store and use multiple pieces of information at once, is a skill drawn upon in many aspects of daily life. Every time you mentally calculate a tip while splitting a bill or hold on to your original train of thought when interrupted, you use your working memory.
Special emotion-oriented working memory training
Researchers divided the study’s 34 participants into two groups: one trained working memory for 20 days, while the other placebo group played simple games for 20 days.

The group that trained worked with a special version of the dual n-back task, a common neuropsychological task used in many studies. The traditional dual n-back task has people observe sequences of two types of stimuli, typically an image and a sound. People must compare the current item with what they heard or saw 1, 2, 3, or more trials ago.

Researchers added a twist to the dual n-back task to refocus it on emotions. Training participants heard words that evoked strong emotional reactions (dead, evil, rape) and saw images of people making negative facial expressions (fear, anger, disgust).

Training helped lower emotional distress
After 20 days, all participants watched a series of emotionally disturbing films on topics such as war, famine, or accidents. While watching, participants were asked to either control their emotions or not attempt any control.

As a group, those trained working memory self-reported less distress when they watched the disturbing films while trying to control their emotions. Self-reported distress was significantly higher in the placebo group. Furthermore, fMRI brain scans showed that those who trained working memory also had different patterns of brain activation.

The future of emotional training
The ability to rein in your emotions and keep a cool head is crucial to success in many avenues of life. While there are still many open questions about emotional control, this study suggests that researchers may find a clue by exploring its relation to other well-studied brain functions. The more we learn, the better we may be able to help people understand not only their intellectual capabilities but also other aspects of their cognitive well-being.

Still learning to talk but muy bueno at other languages - news - TES

Glad to see this positive report on dual language schools in Austin, Texas.  

Dr. Pauline Dow, Chief Academic Officer of Instruction, has brilliantly led this overall dual language initiative for several years.

Drs. Deb Palmer​ and Leo Gomez are quoted herein.  For us in Texas and many other places throughout the Southwest, English only should become a relic of the past, particularly when bilingual education is imminently do-able throughout so many places in Texas and because bilingually educated children outperform their monolingual peers. 

Our Academia Cuauhtli / Cuauhtli Academy​ is a further testament to our district's focus.

• KLRU/PBS Video (May 1, 2015), Academia Cuauhtli Works to Bridge History with Language
• Cuauhtli Academy/Academia Cuauhtli Facebook (Like us on Facebook!)
•  AISD Office of Academics Website

-Angela

Still learning to talk but muy bueno at other languages - news - TES

news | Published in TES magazine on 12 June, 2015 | By: Laura Dixon

11 June, 2015

How Texan schools are creating bilingual three-year-olds

It is almost 3.30pm on a typically sticky Friday afternoon in Texas. There
is an end-of-the-week feeling in the air, but the three- and
four-year-olds at this Austin infant school have one more class to go.

“Hola, buenas tardes,” their teacher says, counting “uno, dos, tres” as they filter into the room. In the background, a singer wails “baila conmigo” – Spanish for “dance with me”.

Although English is the usual language of instruction at St George’s Episcopal
School, this weekly Spanish class aims to bring children up to scratch
in Texas’ unofficial but increasingly important second language.

For years the aim of bilingual education in places such as Texas was to
ensure that children who spoke another language at home reached a good
level of English. But as the face of the US changes, English-speaking
parents are keen to get their children educated in Spanish so that they
can keep up with their bilingual peers.

Laura Gonzalez-de Leon, teacher of the Spanish immersion class at St George’s, says the best
time to start is “as early as you can”.

“Many parents wonder why the schools are not teaching [the children] Spanish when we are so close to Mexico,” she adds.

With the Texan population now almost two-fifths Latino, Spanish is the
lingua franca in many parts of this southern border region. In
supermarkets you often hear more Mexican accents than Texan. Spanish is
everywhere – and parents are increasingly realising that their children
will have more opportunities if they can speak it.

‘Competitive advantage’

“When I first came here, I thought a large proportion of the families coming
to the school would be Hispanic, but we mostly have Caucasian,
English-speaking families – I’d say 70-75 per cent,” says María Isabel
León, headteacher of the privately run Magellan International School in
Austin, which has a dual-language programme for children from the age of 3.

When she arrived in 2009, the school had just 45 students.
Today, it has more than 450. “These parents really want their children
to become bilingual in English and Spanish,” she says. “It’s now about
competitive advantage. Having a second language – having Spanish – is a
necessity now.”

Dr Deborah Palmer, an expert on bilingual
education at the University of Texas at Austin, says that about 60 of
Austin’s 80 elementary schools now offer some form of bilingual
schooling. In the 1980s, the programmes were largely seen as
transitional and “mainly interested in using the primary language as a
tool for students to acquire and shift over to English within a few
years”, Dr Palmer says. But today they have a wider goal: bilingualism.

“These kind of dual-language programmes are beginning all over the state in
increasing numbers and include a number of children who are English
speakers,” she adds.

One of the architects of the push for
bilingual education in Texas has been Dr Leo Gómez, now a retired
professor and consultant, whose bilingual education model is used by
more than 600 schools across the US.

“When I was in elementary school, 40 years or so ago, there was no bilingual education going on,”
he says. “The position of the state and federal governments was that all
kids should be communicating in English only. There were federal laws
mandating English-only instruction into the mid-1960s.”

But as evidence mounted that Spanish-speaking children were falling behind
under the English-only policy, border regions such as Texas and New
Mexico began to provide native language instruction as the children
learned English. That led to big improvements in the drop-out rate for
Latino pupils.

Look who’s talking

Texas now tells school districts that if they have 20 or more students at the same grade level
who speak the same language (other than English), they must by law
provide those children with some form of bilingual education.

This has had a huge impact. According to the Texas Education Agency, of the 5
million children currently enrolled in Texan state schools, more half a
million are registered for bilingual classes. A further 400,000 are
taking supplementary English courses to complement the language they
speak at home, and nearly a million (974,000) are currently enrolled on a
Spanish course.

“When kids are educated in two languages, where
they truly reach that level of biliteracy, these kids develop what we
call cognitive advantages,” Dr Gómez says. “As they continue in school,
the data shows – especially by middle school – they are beginning to
outperform their counterparts who were educated in English only.”

María Isabel León says that by the 2nd grade – when pupils are aged 7 or 8 –
monolingual children perform better on spelling tests. But by the time
children reach the 6th grade (aged 11-12), she says, the bilingual
students in her school are performing better than their peers.

“They have access to a lot more connections in their brain, access to Latin
routes in both languages; they can interpret better,” she says.

Around her, children shout to their friends in English, Spanish or “Spanglish” – a mixture of the two.

‘After puberty, we fall off the map’

In her TED talk on bilingualism and babies, Patricia Kuhl, co-director of
the Institute for Brain and Learning Sciences at the University of
Washington, says that when it comes to acquiring a second language,
“babies and children are geniuses until they turn 7, and then there’s a
systemic decline”.

“After puberty,” she continues – the age when many children first take up language learning at schools – “we fall off the map.”

Realising this, many parents in Texas are choosing to put children who can barely count into their first Spanish lessons.

“They can learn a language so effectively at that age, before the crucial
period of language development,” says Kathy Cloyd, whose two children
are studying at the Magellan International School. “We live in Texas so
they are learning Spanish – I don’t know it very well but I wish I did.
If I can give them this while they are learning English, it’s a
no-brainer.”

More on the research in bilingual education and its positive impact on our brains:

Researchers now believe that when people learn another language, they develop cognitive advantages that improve their attention, self-control and ability to deal with conflicting information.

-Angela

Could Bilingual Education Mold Kids’ Brains to Better Resist Distraction?

MindShift | September 29, 2014 |

By Samara Freemark and Stephen Smith, American RadioWorks

For decades, psychologists cautioned against raising children bilingual. They warned parents and teachers that learning a second language as a child was bad for brain development. But recent studies have found exactly the opposite. Researchers now believe that when people learn another language, they develop cognitive advantages that improve their attention, self-control and ability to deal with conflicting information.

Today the benefits of bilingualism are being put to the test in schools all across Utah.
Arrowhead Elementary is just one of the more than 100 public schools in the state that have launched language immersion programs in the past five years. At Arrowhead, that language is Mandarin. Other schools across Utah have created programs in French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German.
Supporters of immersion education argue that learning a second language is valuable preparation to participate in the global economy. But parents are most excited about what language learning could do for their children’s brains.
WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?
The first-graders of Arrowhead Elementary in Santa Clara, Utah, are giggling. Their math teacher, Jing Sun, has just made a little subtraction joke. She drew red circles on a whiteboard, erased one, and asked, “Where did he run away to?” The kids think it’s hilarious.
It’s a joke that could be made in any first-grade math class across the United States — except that here, in southern Utah, in front of a classroom full of blond children in braids and crew cuts, Sun is speaking Mandarin Chinese. That’s the only language she speaks in the classroom: English is, emphatically, not allowed here. And the students in this class, who have been in Arrowhead’s Chinese program only about two months, seem to understand almost everything Sun is saying.

Students in a Chinese immersion program learn their numbers in Mandarin by counting pieces of cereal. (Stephen Smith)

At Arrowhead Elementary, half of the kindergartners, first-graders and second-graders spend half of each day in classes taught entirely in Mandarin Chinese. This model of language education is known as dual immersion: The students learn civics and reading in English, and math and science in a second language. Arrowhead implemented its immersion program three years ago, hiring native Mandarin-speaking teachers through a partnership between the Chinese government and the state of Utah. Principal Susan Harrah initially faced some resistance from parents and staff.
“Our faculty just weren’t ready for it,” Harrah said. “A lot of them weren’t dual immersion teachers, so a lot of them had — not bitter feelings, but they didn’t want to have any part of any type of a language program at all.”
Arrowhead kindergarten teacher Jackie Fonnesbeck did not support the change. “I was very worried about the math, because that’s where they’re learning the basics, and I felt like they needed to have a good, strong base in English before they learn it in Chinese.”
Three years into the program, Arrowhead’s immersion skeptics have become its greatest fans. Test scores for immersion students at the school are slightly higher than they are for non-immersion kids. There’s a waiting list to get into the program. And the school’s teachers — even the English-language ones — are now big supporters.
“It’s fun to see them learning and talking in Chinese,” Fonnesbeck said. “It’s amazing these children can do this, because I sure can’t. The younger they get started, the better off they’re going to be. You’re in awe when you see it.”

Teacher Ping Ji at Arrowhead Elementary. In Utah immersion schools, teachers speak no English to their students. (Stephen Smith)

WHAT’S GOING ON INSIDE THE BRAIN?
Brain researchers who study bilingualism believe that the act of juggling two languages strengthens the brain system that helps people pay attention. That strong capacity to focus might be what leads to better academic performance in some children who grow up bilingual or attend language immersion programs.
Canadian psychologist Ellen Bialystok, at York University in Toronto, studies how the brains of bilingual people work in comparison to people who speak just one language. She wires up the skulls of test subjects from both groups to an electroencephalograph (EEG), a device that records electrical activity produced by neurons in the brain. One of the experiments she performs is called the Eriksen flanker task, which measures a person’s attention and ability to screen out unwanted stimuli. Bilingual people generally perform better on the test than monolinguals.
In Bialystok’s cognitive performance lab, the test subject watches a computer monitor that flashes a set of five arrows arrayed in a line. Depending on where the center arrow is pointing, the subject clicks a computer mouse in her left or right hand. The arrows flanking the central target add cognitive noise to the pattern. The subject has to ignore those arrows and focus on the center one. The speed and accuracy of the test subject’s reactions are measured by the computer. The EEG detects how hard her brain had to work to sort out the target arrow from the flanking noise.
Bialystok believes bilinguals are better at tuning out the noise. Their brains may have a stronger “executive control” system because of the need to switch, mentally, between languages.
“What we now know based on massive research is that both languages are always active [in the brain] to some degree,” Bialystok said. So if French were her first language and English her second, “Why don’t half my sentences come out with French words by accident?” she asked.
That rarely happens in bilinguals, Bialystok said, because the executive control system — a network in the brain’s frontal lobe — is busy focusing the mind’s attention on English, screening out the French words. The network is a kind of traffic control system that helps organize and regulate thinking. When a bilingual person calls on the network to manage the traffic of dual languages, it gets stronger.
“Bilinguals are more efficient in resolving mental competition,” said psychology professor Judith Kroll, an expert on bilingualism and director of the Center for Language Science at Penn State. “They’re apparently able to keep languages separate while keeping them both available and active in their minds at the same time.”
Today, bilingualism is seen as having cognitive benefits, but that wasn’t always the case. When Bialystok was an undergraduate in the 1960s, psychologists saw bilingualism as a disadvantage.

Facing Challenges as Dual-Language Programs Grow

Age of Distraction: Why It's Crucial for Students to Learn to Focus

“There was a profoundly pervasive belief that languages were hard for children,” Bialystok said. “And that if you made a child bilingual you risked, to quote a textbook of the 1950s, ‘mental retardation.’ ”
In our contemporary, multitasking society, notions have changed. A bilingual person with a strong executive control system may have an edge. “Everything that we do that requires focused, selective attention — ignoring salient distractors that are trying to compete for attention, shifting between two things that we are trying to do at the same time, manipulating information — that is all frontal lobe, executive function stuff,” Bialystok said.
In functional MRI scans of test subjects doing the flanker task, researchers can see that the part of the brain that is believed to house the executive control system uses less blood flow in bilinguals. It’s not working as hard.
Researchers have also discovered that bilingualism may provide some protection for the brains of aging people. Studies show that the onset of dementia occurs later in the brains of bilingual people. The executive control system, researchers say, is the last one to fully develop (think teenagers) and the first to decline, but strengthening it may slow that decline.
Bialystok and Kroll say one reason language can have such a profound effect on the brain is because of how deeply we are steeped in language. We use language constantly, to speak, to read and to think. Compare that to time spent in other cognitive activities such as practicing music or making mathematical calculations.
“Over the course of your life, you have vastly more experience using language than most of these other domains,” Kroll said.
Kroll and Bialystok caution not to get too far in front of the research by making assumptions about the benefits of bilingualism. Scientists are still working to determine exactly what mechanism makes bilingual brains gain greater executive control. And there’s no guarantee that growing up bilingual, or in a language immersion program, will prove beneficial for any given individual.
NATIONAL STATUS OF BILINGUAL PROGRAMS
Immersion education is growing in the rest of the country. California and Minnesota have long been leaders in immersion, and Delaware recently implemented a new program modeled after Utah’s. According to the most recent numbers from the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), immersion education has been steadily increasing in the United States since the 1970s. In 2011, CAL counted almost 450 immersion programs across the country. Today, that number is almost certainly higher, as Utah in particular adds schools to its statewide program.
But language education in general is actually declining across the country, especially in the lower grades. Between 1997 and 2008, the percentage of elementary schools offering foreign language instruction dropped from 31 percent to 25 percent. And the numbers are even more striking when you consider only public schools, where the percentage of elementary institutions offering language education dropped from 24 percent to 15 percent over the same period.
Numbers like these make Gregg Roberts, Utah’s dual language coordinator, irate. “What are you thinking?” he says. “Why are you staying monolingual? Why do you think this will benefit your students in the 21st century? Why would you not be offering this benefit to your students?”
PARENTAL REACTION
When it came time to register her boys, Tiger and Justin, for first grade, Stacy Steiner of Southern Utah had a choice: put them in Horizon Elementary School’s Chinese immersion program or enroll them in the school’s standard English program. Stacy was intrigued by immersion, but she was also nervous, particularly about Justin, who sometimes struggled in school.
“I was a little concerned about him not having the foundation they get in first grade,” Steiner said. “I thought that adding a language to that would be a challenge. So there was a lot of angst over that at the beginning.”
In the end, she chose immersion. On the first day of school Justin said he expected his instructor to teach Chinese “the normal way”: by saying something in Chinese and then telling the class what the words meant in English. But when they went into class, “She [couldn't] talk any English — only Chinese!” he said. “And so I was like, ‘OK, how do we do this? This is going to be so hard.’”
Steiner said that she worried through the whole first month of classes about how her boys were doing, immersed in a language they had never heard before. That changed at the first parent-teacher conference.
Steiner has a recording she made of the meeting. On the screen, Justin sits with his teacher, reading from a sheet of Chinese characters. “Justin wasn’t reading English that fast last year,” Stacy marveled. “I was warned ahead of time that I would be surprised at how much they’d learned. But nothing really prepares you for that.”
Last year, Justin struggled in school. This year, he’s making A’s. She says the boys’ success learning Mandarin Chinese has changed the way she pictures their future.
“It has absolutely broadened my plans for my children,” she said. “I’m excited to see what they do with it.”
This article originally appeared on American RadioWorks and is part of an hourlong radio documentary called the Science of Smart. You can listen to the full documentary here and download the American RadioWorks podcast on ideas in education.