 Hi, my name is Tracy Tagamaspinosa and this is a video on module one of the course Mind, Brain and Na'au. In this module we'll be looking at learner's general well-being and the overall eola concept in the context of learner outcomes. To do this through the vision of a mind, brain health and education perspective, we're going to approach learning as the natural state of the brain. And if it's so natural then it sort of begs the question, why is it then that it's so hard to sometimes achieve? And to respond to that we're going to be considering risk and protective factors in learning within each of our own individual contexts. So the core premise that we start with is that your brain cannot not learn. It's basically its natural state, which then begs that question, you know, why then is it sometimes so difficult to achieve this natural state of being? And to approach this with a transdisciplinary lens, we use this mind, brain, health and education vision of the ways that we have risk protective factors in our lives, the types of things that can either facilitate or get in the way of our learning. And if we look at this through the mind perspective, this is from the angle of psychology, how do feelings get in the way of what we are able to learn, how interpersonal relationships can influence learning, motivation for example. And we'll also consider neuroscience, the ways that emotion, which are different from feelings, how do emotions influence learning, the way that synapses are formed in our brain, what actually stimulates memory and attention for example, as well as the health perspective, how does your mind affect your body and vice versa, how do sleep patterns or nutrition or physical exercise influence your brain's potential to learn. And finally the educational perspective, which most of us are very familiar with, but it's worth reexamining how problems that kids might have in our classroom, their roadblocks to learning, might be affected by for example, the age groups that they're put in or the classroom dynamics of individual kids or the ways we choose to plan or assess student learning. And we'll look at all of this through the lens of risk and protective factors. The main idea here is that we hope that we can leverage the good things in our lives, the protective factors to outweigh risk factors, which would be to the benefit of student learning outcomes. And this takes on an even more important role when we realize that the balance of risk and protective factors is really what determines resiliency in individual students. Those people who have learned to leverage the good things in their lives, the protective factors are the ones who tend to have more resilient traits. And we always consider risk and protective factors at multiple levels. They go from the level of for example, the genes that are in your body, your own personal potential, as well as the ways that your family, community or society might influence what you're able to learn. And one final very big idea about risk and protective factors is that they have the same origins. Your family, for example, can be a protective factor or it can be a risk factor. So it's very important to remember that all risk and protective factors have the same roots and that no two people are going to share the same combination of factors in their lives. Some concrete examples of risk and protective factors include things like time. For example, your age could be a risk factor or a protective factor. We know that since all new learning passes through the filter of prior experience, the older you get, the more cognitive load it is to learn something new. So while it's really clear that you can and do learn throughout the lifespan and you can leverage prior knowledge to learn new things easier, it does take more energy to sift through all of those prior experiences that you might have that could influence your ability to learn something new. Another example relates to stress. Different levels of stress can either be very beneficial when it's called you stress. This is positive stress versus when it's negative or distress. The main idea here is that different people have different stress points and what stresses you doesn't necessarily stress me, right? So we have to take into consideration is highly individual and can either be a risk or protective factor depending on the context and the individual person. A final example of risk and protective factors relates to culture and to your society. There are some countries in which it's just frowned upon that a woman would study or that they would go into a science field, for example. So we know that sometimes cultural norms can serve as risk or protective factors in different people's lives. We also know that societal norms become habituated behaviors. So the ways that we interact with each other become harder and harder to change over time because of the sheer number of exposures to a certain pattern of behavior. So those are the main ideas for Module 1. We're really looking forward to having a good, rich conversation about all of these points, coming through questions, come with your observations and then let's dive into how this has an influence within your own class structure. Thanks.