Why Do I Need a Teacher When I’ve Got Google

dopamine. 4 What this all means in your classroom is that they will seek out dopamine either with your help or despite you. They will either get their fix by the way you present lessons and learning opportunities that engage positive emotions combined with novelty and engagement. Or they will mess around, take risks, challenge you because you stand for ‘The Man!’, push the boundaries and do anything else that can take them ‘to the edge’ (whilst pushing you over it).
    Dopamine can be, then, the teacher’s friend or the teacher’s foe. Which one it ends up being is, as with so much in the twenty-first century classroom, down to you.

Chapter 15
The ‘f-word’
    If I had had a pound for every time the word ‘fun’ was mentioned during my teacher training I would have been a very rich student teacher and would have worn a better suit. (If I had had a pound for every time the word ‘brain’ was mentioned I would have had £3.50, and that was only because the scheduled lecturer did not turn up so someone stepped in at the last minute who had just read a book.)
    Fun seemed to be the Holy Grail of good learning yet no-one in authority really seemed to be able to say why or even cared that much when the lessons were palpably not fun. There was certainly no space given over in the lesson planning sheets for ‘Insert fun here’ not to mention any of the other positive emotions we are capable of experiencing. A lesson without any positive emotions could still be deemed to be a good, solid lesson, despite what Plato said over 2,000 years ago –‘All learning has an emotional base’–and what neuroscience is telling us now – ‘Learning (the building up of connections between nerve cells to form templates) is therefore largely directed and controlled by your emotional/ limbic brain’, in the words of the ubiquitous Dr Curran (2008).
    By the way, in case you are worried about having fun when the inspectors come to call remember, you are not having fun, you are using positive emotions to access the limbic system to optimize dopamine secretion to facilitate autonomic learning.
    It just looks like fun.
    What Plato knew 2,000 years ago, a pioneering nineteenth century educationalist whom we will meet again in chapter 18 , called Samuel Wilderspin knew 150 years ago:
    Accordingly, the utmost attention is given to the cheerfulness and happiness of those on whom (the system) acts. Instruction in reading, arithmetic, geometry, and various other things is made exceedingly amusing; smiling countenances and sparkling eyes are observable allaround when it is communicated; and what was dull and soporific, according to the old plan, is now insinuated so agreeably, that the child, while literally at play, is acquiring a large amount of valuable knowledge. At play he sees Nature’s book, that world of beauties: he loves to look into it, there is no flogging to induce him to do it. All is enquiry and anxiety on his part. ‘What is this?’ ‘What is that?’ ‘What is it for?’ ‘How did it come?’ With numerous other questions of similar import. Oh, that we had teachers to teach more out of this divine book! Oh, that we had a public who would encourage and cherish them for so doing! What blessed results even have I seen, by one’s being able to answer such enquiries!
    ( www.gutenberg.org/files/10985/10985–8.txt )
    So, the question for the twenty-first century teacher is, are you specifically planning for the use of positive emotions during your lessons to make learning more effective all round?
    Fun, of course, means different things to different people and whilst chopping up a pig’s eyeball may get half of your class going it may have the opposite effect on the rest. Especially if you’re using it to teach irregular verbs. Fun is also just a part of the picture. Here, according to Barbara Fredrickson, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology at North Carolina and author of
Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive
, are the top ten scientifically accurate ‘proven to make us feel good’ list of positive emotions:
    Joy
Gratitude
Serenity
Interest
Hope
Pride
Amusement
Inspiration
Awe
And, of course, at number one, Love.
    (Fredrickson 2009)
    What if you were to plan lessons that, rather than just focusing on what you wanted them to learn or the skills you wanted them to develop, also included how you wanted them