Building Brain Reserve: WHAT IS THE COST PER STUDENT to build better young brains?

This post is part of an open letter to teachers and principals.  If you have read Dr. Amen's work, you have probably thought about the cost of introducing his procedures into your school.  What can you add to this discussion?   Steve  +1 954 646 8246 or email at ManyPosters@gmail.com

What is the cost to “build brain reserve?

A selection of quotes from Dr. Amen’s book to begin a discussion between students, parents, principals and teachers.

Dr. Amen’s book Magnificent Mind at Any Age has numerous observations from his practice that can inform the choices that teachers make in their classrooms.

1. Observations
2. How to increase your brain reserve
3. What is the cost to “build brain reserve?

1. Observations

Have you ever wondered why certain tesses affect some people and not others?     Brain reserve is the cushion, margin or extra neurons that we have to deal with unexpected events or insults.

Comment by a high school teacher:  INSULTS!  That’s what causes 90% of the chatter, distraction and disruption in my classes.  “Perv”  and “Where did you get that shirt, Goodwill or Salvation Army?” and “MotherF, get out of my face” and “You can’t sit there.  Only cool people are at this table.”   If my students had larger brain reserves, then they could ignore the trivial insults.

2. How to increase your brain reserve

Make positive social connections

Engage in new learning

Maintain a healthy diet

Take a daily multiple vitamin

Take a fish oil supplement

Learn music (learn to play an instrument)

Drink more water.

Exercise regularly.

Dance

Use positive thinking.

Show gratitude (write at least one thank-you note each day)

Meditate.

All of these activities increase blood flow to the brain and build “brain reserve” -- which helps us respond to stress and insults.

The list comes from page 19.

I like what Dr. Amen writes:

Do a better job of taking care of younger brains (page 15)

Most people think that we become adults when we turn 18 years old.  The prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that governs forethought, judgment, impulse control, learning from our mistakes, the stuff of maturity, does not finish developing until we are about twenty-five years old.  The insurance industry knew this long before neuroscientists, since 25 is the age when our car insurance rates go down because you become a more thoughtful driver.

Parents spend billions each year trying to help their children to learn more:  summer camps, lessons, tutoring.  Spending money and time on youth brains is one of the smartest investments in your teenager’s future.   Some simple things to teach teens :  1) how to take care of the brain, 2) how to protect it, 3) feed it property, 4) get enough sleep and exercise, and 5) avoid toxic substances.    Once properly educated, children are much better at taking care of their own brains.  (page 15-16)

1. What is the cost to “build brain reserve”?  I assigned costs (either a volunteer cost or what it would cost a school to hire a teacher to lead each of these activities).  The range appears to be between 73 cents and more than $3 per day per student.

Procedure	Cost for administering to 25 students	Cost per student Low             HIGH
Learn a game with new rules (teachers bring in games)	A chess board is $16 plus postage  $20/ 25 students	0	0.80
Make positive social connections TinyURL.com/sunbibpenpals Teacher $20/hour	BIBBI***   free ... 15 minutes at least once a week  $5 for staff time	free	0.20
Engage in new learning:  drei neue Sätze am Tag / tres frases por dia	Add Translate Google to your mobile phone	free	free
Maintain a healthy diet Give students an egg and a PNB sandwich   80 cents a day?  $4 a week?	24 Eggs  $3 2 loaves of bread at $4 each Peanut butter $5 Jelly  $4    total $20 per day $100 a week?	0.15 for a boiled egg	0.80 per student
Take a daily multiple vitamin	$30 for 90 tablets	0.33	0.33
Take a fish oil supplement Softgels 60 capsules at $15	Liquid  $25  40 servings	0.25	0.63
Learn music (learn to play an instrument)  teachers can bring in spare instruments	Buy two electronic pianos $130 Casio CTK-2400  keyboard	free	$10 per year ** annual cost
Exercise regularly, teacher walk-runs with students and does pull ups	Staff volunteer runs, 10 minutes  ⅙ of an hour $20/hour $3.34 for 10 min	free	0.14
Dance (swing, charleston, cha-cha, waltz)	Staff volunteer runs, 10 minutes  ⅙ of an hour $20/hour $3.34 for 10 min	free	0.14
Use positive thinking print 2 posters at $2 in color each = $4  “talk back to your ANTs”	Posters about Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs) (described by Dr Amen)	free	** annual cost $4
Gratitude:  students write a thank-you note	Envelopes 500 at $15 and paper  500 sheets for $5	free	0.04
Smile (see TED talk about “benefits smile ron gutman”)  print 2 posters at $2 in color each = $4	Two posters “If you want the people around you to live longer, smile.”	free	** annual cost $4)
Meditate:  teacher shows students how to stare with no thoughts	Free video of a candle flickering, 10 minutes $20/hour $3.34 for 10 min	free	0.14 Teacher time
TOTAL per student per day		0.73	3.22
TOTAL per student 180 days	Typical school year	$131.40	579.20
Purchases for the Year **	$260 pianos  + $8 for posters  = 268	Divided by 25 students	$10.72

On the low side, the cost per student is $142 (assuming two pianos per 25 students) and $580 per student (if staff time is added and higher quality food and supplements are purchased)

This estimate does not include 16 cents per student per day for a bottle of water (0.5 liters), since many students complain about the taste of the tap water in the drinking fountain.  Another brain-building activiity that reinforces long-term helath is flossing and brushing.  A roll of 55 yards of floss costs $1, so the 25 students would use a roll every other day, or about 2 cents per student per day (2 cents x 25 students x 2 days = $1).  

The ONE PAGE MIRACLE might be another procedure to eventually introduce.  The cost per student per year would be a two- or three-page worksheet, produced at 10 cents per page.  The staff cost might be two sessions of 30 minutes at $20/hour x 1 hour divided by 25 students = 80 cents per student for the year.  Four posters could be created to put “reminder messages” on the stalls of bathrooms at a cost of $2 per poster x 4 posters =  $8 divided by 25 students or about 32 cents per student.

These estimates are for a credit-recovery school where the teachers are focused almost entirely on academic work.  Any “extracurricular activities” like guiding meditations, serving healthy snacks, leading physical education sessions and other non-academic activities would need extra pay.  Our school does not serve meals, so the food prep is another issue.   However, this is a start for a discussion about “how does our school deliver better programs and materials to help students develop better brains?”

“How can we continue to focus on delivering lessons and asking students to pay attention in class when we overlook the known gaps described by Dr. Amen?” (poor food quality, chronic automatic negative thinking and lack of exercise).

***Building International Bridges by Internet (BIBBI) asks teenagers who speak English (U.S. monolingual kids) to volunteer time to allow kids no Skype and Google Hangouts to converse.  The “conversation assistant” helps the international student with English and perhaps the U.S. teen learns some phrases in Mandarin, Portuguese, Arabic and French.

Dr. Ken Robinson made the following observation

“If you are a teacher, YOU ARE THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM for the students in your class.   You don’t have to wait for the transformation of education.  You can transform the experience of your students today.”

Introducing the Amen steps (and his ANT technique called “talking back to Automatic Negative Thoughts”) is a step in that direction.

Steve McCrea +1 954 646 8246

This information was posted at tenessentialskills.blogspot.com/

Read this at www.TINYURL.com/sunamencost