Teaching to Every Kid's Potential

One of the greatest challenges facing scholars such as Dr. Kalbfleisch is to connect neuroscientific research and concepts to real world applications. This excellent book builds the bridge and points the way to future possibilities.--Jack A. Naglieri, PhD, Research Professor, University of Virginia, Emeritus Professor George Mason University and Senior Research Scientist, Devereux Center for Resilient Children This is a remarkable book. It is an essay on what I imagine as an emerging double helix of education of best practices and evolving neuroscience. The author, an educational psychologist, challenges many current educational sacred cows and offers creative, imaginative, emotionally-informed, and science-based alternatives. Kalbfleisch offers to educators of all types a vision of the world in which teachers and students are not inanimate stick figures or electronic data storage silos for uploading and downloading. Her 'four imperatives'--flexibility, readiness, connection, and (un)masking--provide the cognitive/affective/relational architecture to help realize 'every kid's potential' (to which I add: 'and every teacher's potential as well').--Howard F. Stein, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center Teaching to Every Kid's Potential is not a dreaded 'flavor of the year' educational reform. Instead, the approach in this book is to slightly tweak what we do every day--in the classroom, out on the playground, on the favorite end-of-the-year field trip--to connect with and spark the fire of learning in each student. Layne Kalbfleisch has shared with us invaluable neuroscience research on learning, great insight about its practical application and, most importantly, the belief that all children can learn, and that we are capable of providing the enriched environment to enable all children to learn. This is a must-read for every student teacher, teacher, school administrator, and university education professor!--Vannetta R. Perry, Ed.D., Former Superintendent of Schools, Magdalena, New Mexico The opening chapter of Teaching to Every Kid's Potential contains a sentence which is both a statement of fact and a call to action: 'We haven't yet achieved the rapport to really marry the fields of education and neuroscience.' Written by someone who is both an accomplished cognitive neuroscientist and a seasoned hands-on educator, this book goes a long way toward accomplishing that rapport. In a concise and accessible manner, Layne Kalbfleisch places some of the central concepts of cognitive neuroscience in a direct educational context.--Elkhonon Goldberg, PhD, Director, Luria Neuroscience Institute, and Clinical Professor of Neurology, Grossman NYU School of Medicine