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The National Basketball Association's San
Antonio Spurs have won five titles since Gregg Popovich took over as head
coach, guiding them to 19 consecutive seasons winning at least 60 percent of
his games. No team in history, not even the Boston Celtics of the 60s, has come
close to that. He is a skilled tactician and will, at times, be very critical
of his players, professional athletes in an unusually competitive and demanding
atmosphere.
However, Popovich comments:
Relationships
with people are what it's all about. You have to make players realize you care
about them. And they have to care about each other and be interested in each
other. Then they start to feel a responsibility toward each other. Then they
want to do for each other. I think that communication thing really helps them.
It engenders a feeling that they can actually be in charge.1
This is reflected in the fact that veterans
Manu Ginóbili and Tony Parker could have chosen more lucrative contracts with
other teams but opted to re-sign with the Spurs knowing 'Pop' would still be
their coach.2
Popovich in his unique way
built a trusting relationship between the coaching staff and players. His
accomplishments reflect on his teaching style by validating the talent pool in
the NBA and his players. Can elementary
and secondary school teachers find relevance from his methodology? While his
pedagogy is targeted to
professional athletes we find his words to be pertinent for educators and
parents: relationships, care,
responsibility, communication, and
being in charge.
The amygdala
Researchers in neuroscience have determined
some of the biochemical processes related to socialization and trust. They have shown that establishing trust between people
leads to positive consequences and betterment in communities.
The amygdala is the emotion
clearinghouse of our brain. In conjunction with life's recorded experiences, it
decides how to process events as they occur moment by moment. It will
immediately sound the alarm if a car comes hurtling your way in the middle of
an intersection, starting with the visual stimulus, followed by signals that go
to the sympathetic nervous system.
First to receive the signal is the hypothalamus, which then sends neurohormones to the pituitary gland,
followed by hormones through the circulatory system to activate the adrenal
glands to produce cortisol and adrenaline. Both help in the production of glucose, the energy molecule needed in an emergency to get the
legs and other muscles working. This fight or flight response occurs
along with rapid breathing, sweating, higher heart rate and blood pressure, to
escape the potential accident.
In non-emergencies, however, the amygdala 'weighs' the
emotional cost/benefit ratio associated with the circumstance in conjunction
with the prefrontal cortex, the place that may have memories about the stimulus.
Often, they are benign, and we move on to the next task without tension.
However, pressures at work, home, or school, while not urgent, nevertheless
produce stressful encounters and deadlines, and the amygdala-hypothalamus-pituitary system keeps the flow of cortisol going. Because there
is no immediate need for that energy, the excess glucose is converted to fat,
noticeably accumulating in the midsection and other regions of the body.
The other consequence is the flooding of the
memory storage region, the hippocampus, which under calm situations initiates the chemical
lowering of cortisol after an anxious
experience. The excess cortisol that circulates in the blood in a chronically
stressed person, however, floods the hippocampus, causing atrophy as the
memory-building dendritic formation to main
nerve axons is reduced.
Stress
Remember jumping when another person sneaked up
behind you? Or consider someone that has post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and falls to
the floor after hearing a loud noise. In general, an anxious personality starts
a metabolic snowball, that leads not only to the shrinking of the hippocampus but cell damage
throughout the body. The amygdala becomes
hypersensitized, resulting in a socialization pattern that is mistrusting and
depressed.
A host of biochemicals affect our thinking and
emotions, but oxytocin, a hormone, has caught the attention of researchers in the
trust realm. It is released
in association with maternal behavior such as childbirth
and breastfeeding but also in both genders in the areas of commitment, romantic
attachment, and calm feelings.
When teachers and coaches create scenarios where student
talents are validated,
a set of biochemical reactions is triggered, particularly the secretion of
oxytocin, and with it trust.
It is in the context of what Jenifer Fox calls "creative
dreaming" where children do far better when they focus on their strengths.
That is beneficial because interpersonal relationships can be fearful at times
but stimulating oxytocin flow reduces the activation of fear by the
social-sensitive amygdala.
Furthermore, the prefrontal cortex, a place for long-term memory storage, will reduce the
frightened signal if it remembers that stimulus as not threatening. Getting up
in front of a group to speak, for instance, is scary, but after one or more
opportunities, it may prove enjoyable because the prefrontal cortex has been conditioned
through repetition that there is no safety hazard in speaking in front of
audiences. Oxytocin is secreted in conjunction with that memory and attaches to
the amygdala's receptors and quells the fear response.
Oxytocin
experiments
Furthermore, the prairie vole is special in
that the male has continuous contact with its female partner for life after
they breed. If the female prairie vole dies, the male does not look for a new
partner. Other species of vole such as the montane, do not show this pair
bonding conduct. This monogamous behavior in the prairie vole is related to
oxytocin concentration and
the large numbers of receptors in the brain for that hormone. In the montane
vole oxytocin is not as abundant.5
Oxytocin and
fMRI
Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg of the NIMH Genes
Cognition and Psychosis Program and colleagues asked fifteen healthy men to
sniff either oxytocin or a placebo prior
to undergoing an fMRI scan, which reveals
what parts of the brain are activated by designated activities. While in the
scanner, the men watched angry faces and threatening scenes, triggering strong
activation of the amygdala during the placebo
scan, but markedly less following oxytocin ingestion, suggesting its pivotal role in regulating social
fear, dampening the amygdala's communication with sites in the upper brain-stem
that inaugurate the fear response. The
researcher suggests:
Because increased
amygdala activation has been
associated with fear the mode of action of oxytocin in humans suggests a
potentially powerful treatment approach toward socially relevant fear.6
Tonia Singer and her team at
University College London showed how empathic responses are modulated by
learned preferences. They asked
volunteers to play a game with employees of a laboratory company secretly
instructing the employees to play either fairly or unfairly. Afterward, the scientists measured brain
activity in the same volunteers under quite different circumstances: looking at
videos of their former game opponents when undergoing various degrees of pain. In both male and female volunteers, the brain
areas that signal pain became active as they saw pain, giving neural evidence
of their empathy as discussed earlier
in the context of mirror neurons.
However, empathy did not extend to
all the employees who were hurting. The
male volunteers showed significantly less empathetic brain activity
compared to women volunteers when unfair-playing employees were observed
experiencing pain. Moreover, females showed empathic brain responses regardless
of their moral judgment of the employees'
social behavior, whereas the men's brain responses were conditional.7
These experiments reveal how behavior
(including gestures) has direct bearing on the trust between individuals in a work setting as we
are biochemically geared to validate trustworthiness of
others. James Wilson, UCLA criminologist and social scientist, explains that positive,
group-oriented behaviors, or any situation when people treat each other in a
fair, sympathetic manner, are demonstrating an essential understanding of the
importance of reciprocity in human affairs.8 In a recent study
related to making decisions, Tim De Wilde organized people in three-membered
groupings to examine and discuss printed information about projects. The
oxytocin ingested individuals
were more inclined to carefully examine specific items in their packets before
coming to a final decision on their designated project compared to the placebo
group that examined their packets to a lesser degree, revealing more bias and
conformity to prevailing opinions when they made decisions.9
Trust in
school
It is important that the administration, specifically the principal, create an esprit de corps, or
high morale, in the school environment so that students acknowledge that the
school environment is a special place designed for academic growth and success.
My high school principal was successful in that regard leading a campus with
four thousand students. Furthermore, the
students must hear that the most prized resource is the faculty because their
expertise in formulating lessons benefit them greatly. Acts of kindness toward
all members of the school community including the custodial, kitchen, and
office staff is part of the trust contract as well.
A trusting relationship means that students should
be granted certain freedoms including movement throughout the school during
open periods and not always assigned to a study hall. Opportunities to chat
with friends is important and giving students space to socialize is another way
to build trust and camaraderie in the school.
Students must earn that trust because roaming-freedom can be revoked. Trust in the classroom
Similarly, the school empowers you to build a
trusting relationship with students that embrace cooperation with lesson plan
activities and movement throughout the room.
Gaining their trust is crucial since it increases oxytocin production and motivates them to perform
tasks, and is part of the conflict resolution, goal-setting, and stress
management equation behind contemporary assertiveness training. Classrooms that nurture trust
between peers and teacher are validating, and likely to be engaging and joyful.
You probably engage all of them to some degree,
but several students will admit that they feel isolated and out of the mix
either in classes and/or the social scene. I believe schools sincerely try to
establish trust, and students benefit from the kindness and patience of
their teachers, but schools accommodate many children and the instructional day
is institutionally focused, naturally concerned with order and compliance, and
that is where some get isolated from their peer group and teachers. Moreover,
many children find the school day a challenge, mixed with bullying and other
social complexities that are trust related. They are likely to have some of the
hypersensitive amygdala concerns mentioned
earlier that hamper the hippocampus from retaining
information. Conversely, as teachers and administrators build trust, more students experience the effects of
oxytocin flow, fostering a comfortable environment conducive to learning.
In this context, Ron Ferguson, Senior Lecturer in Education and Public Policy
at the Harvard Kennedy School, surveyed 1,892 classrooms in a Gates Foundation
study. He found that students are happier, volunteer effort in class, and have
college aspirations when their "teacher seems to know if something is
bothering me" and "my teacher wants us to share our thoughts".
He also found that happiness was also linked to these attributes: "my
teacher accepts nothing less than our best effort", "students in this
class behaving the way my teacher wants them to". Ferguson emphasizes that
astute teachers not only promote competence but student well-being, engagement,
and high hopes for the future.10 (pp. 98-133)
David Yeager and Geoff Cohen investigated the nature
of persistent support of students by having teachers provide written feedback on
student essays, as well as suggestions for improvement, in the margins. This is
common practice for English teachers, in this case for seventh graders. Their research intended to "assuage
mistrust by emphasizing the teacher’s high standards and belief that the
student was capable of meeting those standards", what they refer to as wise feedback.
One study revealed how wise feedback pays big
dividends. Instructors were told to use wise feedback with Post-it notes
writing: I'm giving you these comments
because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them. The researchers found that twice as many
students edited their essays compared to a control group that received the
statement: I'm giving you these comments
so that you'll have feedback on your paper. The study clearly reveals how
actions that communicate warmth, respect, and lofty expectations promote trust
and the consequential motivation to improve. Furthermore, the effects were
generally stronger among African American than among White students, and
particularly so for those who experienced more mistrust in school.11
(pp. 804 – 824)
Trust Comments
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I am not sure what Gregg Popovich tells his players at the first practice of
an NBA season but it must be interesting and engaging because they have
successful campaigns repeatedly. He earned his players' trust and was empowered to create game plans to win contests.
Several years ago, I compiled first-day statements and added them to my
introductory handouts to the students. I believe they validated their worth as competent learners and built
trust in my classroom:
1) I am happy to be a teacher and am glad I chose it as my
career
2) I look forward to helping you grow as a person
3) I respect your intelligence
4) Feel free to communicate your thoughts and opinions
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Interacting with premature infants
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How important is trust? Consider this finding: Massaging a
preterm baby enhances oxytocin production that stimulates relaxation,
encourages bonding between parent and child, and lowers cortisol stress hormone levels. Furthermore, studies found premature babies
gained an average forty-seven percent more weight, were more active and alert
and showed more mature neurological development than infants who did not
receive massage.12 I am not recommending massaging your students
but establishing a trusting classroom atmosphere will nurture oxytocin production and the associated effects
described in this chapter.
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*******
References
1. Freeman, E.,
March 6, (2014). Spurs coach Gregg
Popovich explains how he gets players to buy into his system Ball Don't Lie,
Yahoo Sports.
Retrieved
from
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/spurs-coach-gregg-popovich-explains-how-he-gets-players-to-buy-into-his-offensive-system-224429957.html
2. Scaletta, K.,
Breaking Down Gregg Popovich's Extremely Successful San Antonio Spurs System,
Bleacher Report: Retrieved from:
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1870815-breaking-down-gregg-popovichs-extremely-successful-san-antonio-spurs-system
3. Sapolsky, R.,
(2001). Depression, antidepressants, and the shrinking hippocampus, Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States of America. 23; 98(22): 12320–12322.
4. Ingram C.,
(2006). Gonadal steroid modulation of stress-induced
hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal activity and anxiety behavior: role of central oxytocin, Endocrinology.
May; 147(5):2423-31.
5. Young, L.,
Murphy Young, A., Hammock, E. (2005). Anatomy and neurochemistry of the pair
bond. The Journal of comparative
neurology 493 (1): 51–7.
6. Meyer-Lindenberg,
A., (2005). Oxytocin modulates neural circuitry for social cognition and fear
in humans. J Neurosci. 25(49).
7. Singer, T.,
(2006). Empathic neural responses are modulated by the perceived fairness of
others, Nature 439, 466-469.
8. Wilson, J.,
(1997). The Moral Sense, Free Press
Paperbacks
9. De Wilde, T.,
Ten Velden, F., De Dreu, C., (2017), The Neuropeptide Oxytocin Enhances
Information Sharing and Group Decision Making Quality, Scientific Reports 7, Article number: 40622
10. Ferguson, R.,
Danielson, C., (2015). How Framework for Teaching and Tripod 7Cs Evidence
Distinguish Key Components of Effective Teaching, Designing Teacher Evaluation Systems: New Guidance from the Measures of
Effective Teaching Project. Editors(s): Thomas J. Kane, Kerri A. Kerr,
Robert C. Pianta, Jossey-Bass, Ch. 4, pp. 98-133
11. Yeager, D.,
Cohen, G. (2014). Breaking the Cycle of Mistrust: Wise Interventions to Provide
Critical Feedback Across the Racial Divide, Journal
of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol. 143, No. 2, 804 – 824
12. Field, T.,
Diego, M., Hernandez-Reif, M., Dieter, J., Kumar, A., Schanberg, S. & Kuhn,
C., (2008). Preterm infant massage therapy research. Infant Behavior & Development, 33, 115-124.
