 Another concept has to do with the constant changes in the brain. Your brain is not static. At a molecular level it is literally changing every single day. What's really important for us to understand, however, is that sometimes these changes in the brain are complex, they're dynamic, it's an integrated system and it's constantly changed by the individual's learning experiences. These changes at the molecular level can happen simultaneously in parallel or even before you can see the behavior. So for example, if I'm teaching a young kid to read, I can spend, you know, days, weeks, months, you know, fingering the letters, going over and over and over again, and the kid doesn't seem to read. But then one day he reads. Now it's not that in that second, in that moment he just learned to read, it's because all of those other pieces were finally coming into play. There was all of these very complex networks that have to be linked before he can have that ability to show us this behavior I can read, right? So one of the things that we have to remember as teachers is that the changes are occurring, but they're at a level that's invisible to the naked eye, it's invisible to behavioral observations. So sometimes with teachers, you know, we can be a little frustrated, you know, that we've tried so many things and the kid's just not getting it. It may be that he is getting it, but he's getting it slowly but surely at a level that we just can't visualize. So what does this mean about our teaching? This has a really big impact on what we would consider a natural learning cycle, right? So we connect the learning to prior knowledge. We have them see that concept in a larger concept. You know, you can describe what happens. You have input or you do activities with this kid. You can see that they can demonstrate that they can actually do that math problem or read that book or whatever it is. Then you review it and you have to have constant repetition for that to really solidify and become a habituated type of behavior. But do we as teachers, you know, permit these natural learning cycles to run their course or do we expect too many things too fast? Are we up against too many deadlines that we don't allow for this natural process? Are we allowing that slowly but surely those connections to form at that molecular level and then have that display of behavior that shows us that that kid learns? Or are we now rushing off to the next topic before he's actually solidified his understanding or has had enough repetition that that action can now become more automated? So have we built in the time necessary into these learning moments to really consolidate understanding and new learning? This is why some of the most successful education systems in the world, for example, Japanese Germans who always tend to score quite high ends, it's kind of impressive to see that once something is learned, it's really learned. But why is it learned? It's because there's constant regression to prior knowledge to re-strengthen those connections. So for example, a teacher in a Japanese classroom might walk in and say, okay, guys, get into groups of four, here's a problem. Is anything that we've talked about in the past three weeks, or the past month or the past year or whatever to resolve this problem? So basically it's saying, go back and retrieve it, go back and reinforce it, make sure that we've solidified those connections. There's enough rehearsal that that kind of knowledge can be retrieved easily in the future. So do we allow enough time for that learning cycle to occur?