Recovering schema after brain surgery

My best friend T was diagnosed with epilepsy, a brain disorder characterized by sudden recurring attacks of loss of consciousness or convulsive seizures, when she was 7-years-old. I’ve known T since birth because our mothers were also close friends. She learned how to read by age 3, went on to the mentally gifted program in school and was always very smart. T had her first big seizure at age 7 (the end of Piaget’s second state of development), a few weeks before we were going to perform in a ballet recital. One night, when her mom went to check on her after she fell asleep, she found T in bed shaking and chattering her teeth until a large portion of them fell out. Normally after a seizure patients experience what is called a post-ictal period, where they slowly return to normal awareness. After a month of hospitalization, she had to re-learn how to walk. She also seemed to have a different personality, she became more child-like – using shorter sentences and simpler words, and had difficulty expressing herself in words, but after a few months she slowly returned to her pre-seizure personality. Piaget said that the biggest achievement at this second stage of development is representing the world symbolically, especially through language.

Throughout our teenage years, T took medicine to control her seizures but would still get them if she got over-stimulated because of stress, fun, fireworks, loud music or alcohol, for example. After graduating college and working for a year, T decided to get brain surgery to stop having seizures or taking medicine to control them. If the operation and recovery happened successfully, she would be able to do things such as operate a car or have the option of having children. The doctors had to remove a chunk of her brain above the left temporal lobe, which is close to the “language center”, and warned her that her speech might be disabled as a result of the surgery. She decided to take the chance.

Following the surgery in January of 2005, T went to therapy and had to re-learn how to read. But the surgery didn’t push her back all the way to the first stage of development, because T was still able to recognize letters, people and speech. Having a keen interest in politics, she started by reading short passages in the Metro, a free newspaper that contains short summaries of local, national and international events written at an elementary reading-level. The doctor said it helped her recovery because she was bilingual, and bilingual patients have a more developed language center.

As you can see, I’ve known T all my life and have seen her develop according to Piaget’s stages of development. I’ve also seen her regress after seizures and quickly return to her previous stage.

A year and a half after brain surgery, she is in graduate school and although she is able to comprehend the material, she feels frustrated at times because she is not at the stage of development that she was pre-surgery. She needs to study and read differently and re-read more than she had to in the past. Piaget would say that T is adjusting to her environment post-surgery, and creating new schemata to learn all the new vocabulary one needs to when studying Educational Policy. When I asked her how school was going, she wrote in an email,

“I think the hardest part for me is not what I have to do to remember things now but that I never had to do it before. Its basically having to change the way I learn and get used to it. I'm doing the highlighting and all that but remembering it well enough to be able to discuss it in class is different. Hopefully, I'll get used to it.”

Quitting Smoking

I have been a casual smoker for about a decade now. I say casual because I think for the most part, I was never physically addicted to nicotine. I smoked casually – bumming from friends at bars, from strangers outside restaurants after a heavy meal, and buying “emergency packs” that I kept at home in a drawer and smoked during times of stress, anxiety or anger. But mainly, I smoked when I was around other smokers. This confirms to me Vygotsky’s view of human nature – that no one is a sole learner. I doubt that I would pick leaves from a tobacco plant, dry it, roll it in paper and smoke it if I never saw anyone else do it.

I have quit several times by changing environments and “going cold turkey.” But I always returned, most recently because I was in a relationship with another smoker. A sociohistorical theorist like Vygotsky might say that I learned to smoke through participation and being social with other smokers. But for this journal entry I am not going to talk about how I learned to smoke, but rather how I quit.

In mid-November, I signed up for a six-week, holistic smoking cessation program where I met Sandi, a Reiki healer who helped me look deep within to identify triggers and patterns and help me help myself quit. Sandi did this by encouraging me to journal, practice mindful breathing, exercise and practice Reiki and guided imagery. For the first two weeks, I had to record EVERY cigarette I smoked and journal what I was doing at the time, how I was feeling, and where I was. Once I identified what my triggers were (coffee, stress, social, wanting to take a break), she helped me come up with coping strategies and activities that I enjoy that are not connected to smoking. Vygotsky might say that Sandi was helping me deconstruct my pre-established “signs”, or disassociating stimuli from response, which in this case was smoking. When I wanted to do something with my hands I crocheted and doodled. I ate cookies, carrot sticks and pretzels when I needed an oral fixation. Sandi never told me what activities to substitute smoking with, but rather by meeting hourly every week, we engaged in conversation and she helped me come up with the solutions on my own. She also gave me some rules, such as waiting half an hour after drinking coffee, not smoking in our apartment or porch, avoiding other smokers, or doing activities that I enjoy that don’t involve smoking.

What I love so much about Sandi’s technique is that it can be used for things other than smoking! I would love to try her technique (journaling and self-reflection) with my students who might have problems in school with procrastination or fighting, for example. The only downside I can see is that it is quite time consuming for the teacher. The positives include meaningfulness, self-empowerment, and deep understanding.

Please, no more pumpkin puree!

My friend’s one-year-old son, Joshua, does not like pumpkin puree. This was a problem. When my friend would try to feed him he first moved his head a little and my friend would move Josh’s spoon into his mouth. After doing this for a few weeks Josh started pressing his lips together tightly whenever my friend approached him with a spoonful of the mushy orange stuff. This became a game. My friend would then wedge his lips open with the spoon to get the food into Josh’s mouth. When Josh ate, we felt like we “won.”

I saw her a month later and she informed me that Josh came up with another combative technique against eating the flavorless, (yes I’ve tasted it) but nutritious food. Now when approached with the pumpkin puree, Josh covers his top lip with his bottom lip to protect his overly sophisticated taste buds from the baby food. This technique eliminates the possibility of breaking and entering his mouth through wedging the spoon. My friend later added, “I have no idea where he learned that.” Josh’s slight modifications built from past negative experiences lead him to solve his problem of having to eat undesirable food. This is an example of Dewey’s principle of continuity, which means that every new experience builds on past experiences, and mental models are reinforced, added to or challenged. In Experience & Education, Dewey says,

Different situations succeed one another. But because of the principle of continuity something is carried over from the earlier to the later ones. As an individual passes from one situation to another, his world, his environment, expands or contracts . . . What he has learned in the way of knowledge and skill in one situation becomes an instrument of understanding and dealing effectively with the situations which follow. (Dewey, 1938, p. 44)

In Josh’s case, pressing his lips together was unsuccessful since his mom got the spoon through by wedging his lips open, so his mental model was challenged and adjusted. He adjusted his food-blocking technique by experimenting in different ways and finally was successful. This practical experience is a clear example of “learning by doing.”

This observation reinforces my idea of meaningful learning. Infants are naturally curious, and I have faith that Josh will use his learning experience with other foods in other places and situations.

Living in a Skinner box

In November of this year, I tried breaking up with my boyfriend after a year and a half of verbal, psychological, and eventually physical abuse. One time, as I was trying to pack up my belongings to leave, he grabbed all of my clothes off the closet hangers in a fit of anger and attempted to throw them out the window of the 8th floor apartment that we shared. In addition, he also threatened to throw my schoolbooks out of the window. Worst of all, he threatened to call Penn and get me kicked out. These are all examples of aversive stimuli. I reacted to these aversive stimuli by saying “sorry” and staying in the apartment and in the relationship (even though I later reflected that I did nothing wrong). If you examine abuse through behaviorist lenses, the above makes perfect sense. Behaviorism is the philosophy that all things that people and animals do (actions, thoughts and feelings) are all behaviors. Abusers “teach,” or rather condition, their victims to behave the way they want them to using positive and negative reinforcement.

In my case, my boyfriend would punish my “negative behaviors” - which included wanting to spend time alone with my friends or mother, saying hello to another male, not answering my phone, using up the hot water in the shower, questioning his drinking or drug use - by yelling, grabbing or restraining me, threats, giving me the “evil eye” and kicking me out. Getting worn out from the endless arguing and reasoning, I eventually surrendered and stopped going out. I would stay in the controlled environment of our Skinner box apartment to avoid the aversive stimuli. But as Boeree wrote about Skinner, “the environment doesn’t travel well!” When I would visit my mother on the weekends I returned to my normal [unafraid] behavior or left the controlled environment in a mental way – by reading books. We would have discussions of the books I read and he didn’t have any strong opinions on them usually. However, when I was enamored with Rita Golden Gelman’s book, he veiled his controlling behavior in “romanticism” by saying “please don’t ever do that [travel abroad alone], I would miss you terribly.”

Skinner and Thorndike claim that for behaviorism to work, we must start with someone’s core beliefs. My belief was that human beings are good by nature. Another reason why I believe I put up with the abuse for so long is because I was eager to please and driven by rewards and punishments. My rewards were kindness, love, attention, a soft tone of voice and material things such as ipods, clothes and getting taken out to eat.

Now that the relationship is over, I take away many important learning experiences from it. Just like Skinner learned in his rat experiment, I learned that you grow immune to constant negative reinforcements. When my boyfriend saw that I was no longer affected by aversive stimuli such as yelling, he needed to find stronger negative reinforcements and graduated to physical abuse.

This past week I finally dealt with it by giving him back a taste of his own medicine. I filed a report and put the responsibility of aversive stimuli (threat of jail) in the hands of the police.

What did Lindsay Weir really learn?

A few weeks ago I was watching this high school comedy-drama Freaks and Geeks on DVD, which was recommended to me on Netflix. I became entranced with the show and the cast of characters and was sad as I started to watch the finale because I didn’t want it to end.

For those who have never had the pleasure of watching, Freaks and Geeks centers around a teenage girl, Lindsay Weir, and her family, friends and school in a Detroit suburb during the early 1980’s. The students of her school, McKinley High, like in most other schools, must bear the burden of being labeled. Although there were many different subcultures in the school, the show revolved around the academically unmotivated, adventure-seeking and fun-loving “freaks” and the intelligent, nonsexual, rule-abiding but socially awkward “geeks.” Lindsay did not fit into either crowd, but tried to mold herself into a freak because she was drawn to their love of adventure and new experiences, and disregard for academic pressure. But she also was a Mathlete champion and discontentedly drops out of the club so she doesn’t portray herself as a “geek.”

In the final episode, Lindsay embraces her “inner geek” after her “freak” friends get her into trouble with her parents by encouraging her to break the law. She re-joins the Mathletes and wins her way to the top and is given the opportunity to attend a prestigious summer program at the University of Michigan that only a handful of the brightest students in the state get to attend. Her parents, teachers and guidance counselor are all very happy for Lindsay because they always saw her as a star student, and not one of the freaks. But Lindsay is not sure she wants to go to this program and is overwhelmed by the looming expectations and academic pressures. Her hippie-like guidance counselor gives her his copy of the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty and tells her to “think about it.” That same day, two “Dead heads” see her carrying the record and comment that “it will change her life” after she listens to it. When she goes home and listens to the record, she looks entranced and “freed” as she dances around her room. The next day she tells her folks that she will go to the academic summit. The show (and the season) end with Lindsay on the bus with the Grateful Dead playing in the background as her family waves goodbye. I was sad that Lindsay was forced to choose between her friends and being academically successful, but when she gets off the bus one of her “freak” friends is there to give her hugs and smiles and together they hop on a van with the two Dead heads and go to spend two weeks following around the band while her parents think she is at the academic summit.

As soon as the episode ended, I knew that I wanted to write a journal entry about Lindsay’s learning experience. But then the tougher question emerged, “What did she actually learn?” It is hard to put into words, but I know that she learned something, because I have been in Lindsay’s shoes before, and I remember feeling like I learned something.

I looked through my notes and saw many aspects that rang true in Anna Sfard’s Participation Metaphor for Learning. According to Sfard, a person learns by being part of a team or community and acts according to its norms. In the participation metaphor, you can’t look on as an outsider and learn about a group, like Lindsay you have to learn about a culture by becoming a part of it. The “teacher” in the participation metaphor is the expert participant who preserves the practice. In this particular case the teacher is probably the two Dead heads, the guidance counselor and maybe Jerry Garcia. Lindsay’s job as student now is to participate and try to “belong.” Looking at McKinley High now through Cognitivist glasses, I see students everywhere who are trying to make sense of their environment and molding themselves to fit into it. You see Lindsay strip off her pastel-colored cardigan and slip into an oversized army jacket before heading off to the concert.

The guidance counselor did a very cognitivist thing by lending his copy of American Beauty to Lindsay. He gave her the space and environment to listen to the album and reflect and explore until she came up with an answer on her own. This observation contributes to my view of learning because what better way to think deeply and reflect on something than by listening to music? I remember before introducing us to the next book we were to read in class, Ethan Frome, my English teacher made us listen to “Elenor Rigby” by the Beatles. At the time I didn’t see the point. You read many books in high school and college and can easily forget them. But now I listen to the lyrics “I look at all the lonely people, where do they all come from?” and think of my English teacher and how she was getting us to understand what loneliness meant. I grew up in a very loving family and always had tons of friends so I can say that I never experienced deep loneliness, but that song helped me experience it in another way.

What were the greatest lessons you learned in college?

There was an interesting piece in today's New York Times called Don't Worry, Be Students where they interviewed the young alumni of various institutions (Penn was one of them) instead of current students (like they do for U.S. News and World Report). I thought this offered a new insight since alumni had a few years to reflect back to their college experiences and weren't in the midst of it. Its also interesting what people remember. Say you got an "A" in Physics, but 5 years later you don't remember how to calculate centripetal force, does that mean you really learned something if you don't retain it?

What I thought was interesting is when recent graduates were asked what they valued most in their undergraduate experiences, that most Penn students gave "Education, skills, training and research skills" the same value as "Friends." Only 5% of Penn students valued "Intellectual Stimulation, Learning and how to think" compared to 28% of Reed students. I didn't know much about Reed until I read this article, but they are a selective, small liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon.

I've been out of my undergraduate years at Temple for more than 5 years now and wonder if I could even list all the courses I took. But I would say my most valuable learning experiences were through working at the college newspaper, becoming close friends with people who have very different backgrounds than me, and taking this course called Intellectual Heritage, where we read Karl Marx, Gandhi, the Bible, the Koran, and Machiavelli to name a few. I'll talk more about this later after class. Check out the New York Times article in the meantime.

My earliest learning experience

Our first class assignment was to write about a time where we learned something. In my group everyone had a completely different learning experience which occured at different ages and places. I learned a lot from this exercise because I realize how little learning actually occurs in schools. In class we tried to find themes that cut through all of our little learning vignettes and found that it was almost never driven by grades, there was a sense of discovery or exploration. And as Oprah Winfrey calls it, "an AHA! moment."

Here's mine:

Learning my mother’s language

The greatest teacher I have ever had is my mother. By the title of this vignette, you are probably thinking that this is going to be a short story about a language lesson taught by my mom. However the lessons were much more than that for me. This is about a time in my life where I learned to have humility. Not only did I learn language I learned about learning itself. To me, a good learner is someone who is open to new information, and the cause they have taken up to learn.

My grandfather died when I was five years old. As my father was the eldest son in his family, he had to return to his homeland of Bangladesh to look after the family business. My mom and I followed him a few months later. I was excited to go because I had cousins there my age that I could play with. Unfortunately, reality hit a few hours after we landed in Zia International Airport. I spoke fluent English and yet I spoke just four phrases in Bengali. “Amar kheeda peyechey” (I am hungry), “Amar bathroom peyechey” (I have to go to the bathroom), “Tumi kemon aacho?” (How are you?), and “Tomar naam ki?” (What is your name?). My cousin Monti, who only spoke Bengali, literally cried when he learned that he couldn’t communicate with me.

Since my parents had to enroll me in school in Bangladesh within a few weeks: my mom decided to teach me Bengali herself. She told the whole family to only speak to me in Bengali and only respond if I spoke in Bengali to them. I remember watching Bengali television programs with my cousins and catching on quickly in speaking and understanding the language. The reading and writing part was going to be more difficult. My mom bought a selection of Bengali alphabet books, poetry books and comic books to help me.

I clearly remember my first writing lesson with my mom. She nailed a scroll made out of jute with the Bengali alphabet painted on it next to our study desk. Since the Bengali alphabet starts with the vowels, she first taught me shorrey oh (the ‘O’ sound).

“First you have to draw a roshogolla, and then the juice drips from the roshogolla and falls in a downward loop before you bring it back up. So its like you are making the letter ‘O’ but you don’t close it up. Then you draw a stick that goes down diagonally from the side, and then straight up. Finally, you give it a “roof” and draw another stick on top of the roshogolla and sticks.”

Right. Got it mom. I grew over-confident in my new skill. I enjoyed practicing writing my letters and copying the print from newspapers and felt ready to go to school. I expected it to be like school in Philadelphia. My school that I went to in Philadelphia was more of a playgroup compared to what I was about to step into at Little Flower Primary School in Dhaka, Bangladesh. I heard the name and imagined walls covered in lots of colorful posters and maybe a beautiful pond with lily pads and flowers and ducks in it. There would be little tables and chairs that were my height and friends who I can talk to and create wonderful things with using play dough. Oh, and my teacher would love me and always smile. Instead, Little Flower was a dark place with strict rules, unsmiling teachers, and big rows of large tables where the boys sat on one side and girls sat on the other. We weren’t allowed to talk. I remember the teacher would say something and the whole class would repeat her in unison. I copied the other kids. Repeating, but not really understanding anything. Sometimes when the teacher called on me I stared at her blankly…. She used vocabulary that I never heard before and her Bengali was spoken much more quickly than what I was used to hearing at home.

I’m not sure how much time went by before I had my first test. This was my first test not only in Bangladesh, but ever. Five year olds didn’t get tests in Philadelphia. Honestly, I don’t even remember what the test was about, but when I received my results I was so happy I ran home after school flailing my test in hand and screaming “Ma! Ma! I got a roshogolla! I got a roshogolla!”

My mom took the test from me, looked at it, rolled it up and smacked me across the head with it. Shocked by her reaction, I asked her what was the matter.

“That’s not a roshogolla silly. That’s a zero!”