CAMPUS CULTURE

Over the nearly eight years that I’ve been teaching at CCDS, I’ve come to see this school as a very special place, and in many different ways.  In this piece I want to emphasize one of these ways, one that has particularly applied to me:  CCDS as an institution conducive to serious intellectual development, where ideas are valued and perspectives changed as people interact in and out of the classroom.  Of course as a thriving school this intellectual growth occurs in students, but it may be less obvious that teachers also can and do grow in their viewpoints because of this environment.   

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Before coming to CCDS, I spent most of my days in NYC studying bird brains and how they control a bird’s ability to learn and produce its complex song.  A typical day would find me performing brain surgery on birds weighing only 12 grams (we used very small instruments and all the work was done under a microscope), following these birds through their anesthetic recovery, and then charting their singing behavior as they courted females I would present to them.  (Among the females birds I would present in an adjoining cage was one who could get any bird to sing to her on demand, which earned her the moniker “sexy female!")  These surgeries were not done for the reason human neurosurgeons do their operations—to help a patient live a better life—but rather for scientific reasons, to understand how brains work.  I injected fluorescently-labeled toxins into these birds’ brains, and these toxins (which had their toxic portion removed but their transport function intact) were picked up by specific brain cells and shuttled along neural circuits required for the bird to sing.  With the help of several collaborators, I would dissect individual neurons labeled in this way and analyze the molecules contained in those neurons, always looking for clues to how these neurons function.  Our particular focus in this research was a comparison between neurons that regenerate within these birds’ brains, and those that do not.  Songbirds have a remarkable capacity to kill particular types of cells in their brains, only to have new ones take their place, and this had for some time been a model in which to study neuroregeneration.  We isolated several interesting RNAs that specifically distinguished replaceable from non-replaceable neurons, and we discovered a link between one of these molecules and degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.1  Described in this way, it becomes obvious how far removed this research was from teaching psychology.  Both have to do with brain function, but there’s not a lot of overlap beyond that. 

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As soon as I was hired to teach psychology here (and a serious thank you to Mr. Less for taking the chance on hiring someone with my background to teach high school students—I was his first hire back in July of 2011), I knew I would need to expand my horizons.  The AP and IB curricula focus on human behavior in its many manifestations, and breadth of knowledge in the field—particularly for AP—is a hallmark of what students are expected to learn.  I’ve been fortunate to be able to bring a “neuro” spin to all of my classes, but at most I spend an hour each year talking about birdsong neurobiology in particular.  From the wide-ranging questions students pose in class, to their curiosity about related issues or experiences they’re having, to practical matters of educational psychology such as the influence of technology on brain development or learning, I have tried to use my interactions with students, fellow faculty members, and administrators to further my understanding of how our minds work, and how this impacts every aspect of our lives.  I quickly became aware of the limits of my knowledge in human psychology (and the limits of the field more generally), as well as how subtle the variables can be that affect our behavior.   

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As part of my learning curve, and in an effort to make my curricula as relevant as possible to CCDS students, I came upon a paper about the effects of stress on the human brain, and specifically how meditation could blunt or reverse these effects.  This revived an interest I had in meditation from my own high school days, and in the summer of 2014 I took a course in “mindfulness-based stress reduction” (MBSR) at CMC-Mercy in Charlotte, funded by CCDS.  The MBSR course and my ensuing pursuit of meditation has changed both my intellectual and emotional life.  I have now become what someone once called a “retreat junkie,” going on regular silent meditation retreats where participants disconnect from all worldly affairs (technological or otherwise), practice sitting mediation for 45 minute stretches up to 5 hours per day, and have no distracting outlets for their thoughts save introspection. The “goal” of these retreats is to experience moment-to-moment awareness of where one’s mind is focused, wherever that may be, and to come to accept those thoughts and feelings as part of the ever-changing flow of consciousness.  I’ve gone on more than a dozen of these retreats since my MBSR course, including a week-long retreat over the New Year for each of the last five years.  This October, in retirement, I’ll be heading to Barre MA for a 6-week silent retreat of this kind, which I look forward to with great anticipation and some trepidation, since these can be very psychologically demanding environments, becoming more so with time.  I owe the opportunity to pursue meditation both as a practice and as an intellectual study to CCDS, as it has become a point of focus for my teaching of emotion processing.  As I shift to a new career path in writing, I will continue to read the burgeoning research on how meditation affects the brain, and I intend to synthesize some of this literature with my background in neuroscience, perhaps to help advance the field with new ideas and perspectives.  The benefits of meditation for psychological and physical well-being are legion, and Western science is only beginning to understand some of the myriad ways meditation exerts its effects on our psychology and neurobiology. 

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To those students of mine who suspected that I was actually “undercover” at CCDS, carrying out experiments in adolescent psychology with them as subjects, I have to admit:  it was never the case!  I do owe a tremendous thanks though to all the students I’ve had the pleasure to teach and interact with, as without their questions, enthusiasm, insights, and (as importantly) forward-looking, upbeat outlook towards life, I wouldn’t have had such a stimulating and enjoyable time teaching here.   

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I know CCDS will continue to be a school where intellectual activity is highly valued, nurtured, and can flourish, and I encourage all members of this special community to take a moment to appreciate the opportunity they have here, and to use this wonderful institution and the special people that are its lifeblood to grow their own intellect, and in so doing to find a fulfilling path (or paths) in life. 

1.  Lombardino, AJ, Li, XC, Hertel, M, and Nottebohm, F.  (2005)  Replaceable neurons and neurodegenerative disease share depressed UCHL1 levels.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA  22:8036-8041.  https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0503239102