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community including students, teachers and families. For our teachers, it was an especially emotional transition.

Any change in a school’s daily schedule impacts the entire school

One of the most enjoyable parts of our journey was when we piloted the new schedule for a week in February 2018, seven months before our permanent launch date. While this pilot highlighted some of the schedule’s flaws, it also assured those who were not yet on board that this was a good move.

Teachers have reported that longer class periods are elevating the use of multiple modality instruction and allow now students time to go deeper into discussions and projects, or even begin homework during class time.

ence of learning to rethink their daily schedule is truly the next frontier.

I never heard anyone of them say “we love our daily schedule.” For many school leaders, leveraging research in the sc

It has been emotional, and it is a process that makes school systems, administrators, teachers, students and parents think deeply about their priorities and what student-centered truly means. But it is worth it because we now know more about how the brain learns, works, thrives and changes, and we can use that understanding to create a daily schedule that allows each student to be more challenged, creative, healthy and engaged.

The ability to concentrate was the strongest predictor of success.

He advocates for a “digital sabbath” everyday, some time when kids aren’t being distracted by devices at all. He’d also like to see schools building exercises that strengthen attention, like mindfulness practices, into the curriculum.

Perhaps the most well known study on concentration is a longitudinal study conducted with over 1,000 children in New Zealand by Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi, psychology and neuroscience professors at Duke University.

“The attentional circuitry needs to have the experience of sustained episodes of concentration — reading the text, understanding and listening to what the teacher is saying — in order to build the mental models that create someone who is well educated,” Goleman said.

“This ability is more important than IQ or the socio economic status of the family you grew up in for determining career success, financial success and health,” Goleman said.

These are signs that educators may need to start paying attention to the act of attention itself. Digital natives may need help cultivating what was once an innate part of growing up.

“There’s a need now to teach kids concentration abilities as part of the school curriculum,” Goleman said. “The more children and teens are natural focusers, the better able they’ll be to use the digital tool for what they have to get done and then to use it in ways that they enjoy.”

the idea of multitasking is a myth, Goleman said. When people say they’re  “multitasking,” what they are really doing is something called “continuous partial attention,” where the brain switches back and forth quickly between tasks.

“I don’t think the enemy is digital devices,” Goleman said. “What we need to do is be sure that the current generation of children has the attentional capacities that other generations had naturally before the distractions of digital devices. It’s about using the devices smartly but having the capacity to concentrate as you need to, when you want to.”

Rather than trying to do everything at the same time, the most productive people prioritize and block off their schedules to focus on one task at a time.

the basic principle of focusing in on one task at a time holds true for anyone.

“When they’re doing something, they’re really doing it,” Levitin said. “They get more done because their brain isn’t half somewhere else.”

“People who take regular breaks — and naps even — end up being more productive and more creative in their work,” Levitin said.

“You need to give your brain time to consolidate all the information that’s come in, to toss it and turn it.”

The brain has a natural way of giving itself a break — it’s called daydreaming. “It allows you to refresh and release all those neural circuits that get all bound up when you’re focused,”

“Children shouldn’t be overly scheduled,” Levitin said. “They should have blocks of time to promote spontaneity and creativity.”

Daydreaming and playing are crucial to develop the kind of creativity many say should be a focal point of a modern education system.

The world has changed much more quickly than the genome can keep up with, which means schools have a responsibility to help kids develop the skills to sift through the overwhelming stimuli.

It can be hard to focus on one thing when there’s a long, nagging list of things that need to get done in a day, both personal and professional. Levitin recommends writing all those things down on notecards, externalizing the memories into digestible bits that can be shuffled as priorities change. “My brain knows I’ve written it down and it stops nagging me,” Levitin said of his method.

he hyperactive child might be able to help develop a more creative set of ideas, while the more focused child knows how to take that idea

to fruition.