How Limiting Language Impacts the Brain

Next time you are in a staff meeting or a collaborative team meeting in a school or district office, listen. Are terms like “low” or “red group” or “those kids” thrown around with regularity and little thought? Do these labels define these students? Do staff talk about other grade levels, departments, or schools in the district as being incompetent, lazy, or untrustworthy? These descriptors are a real concern because “at least subconsciously, language is full of built-in assumptions and prejudices” (Burton, 2018). The main assumption in limiting language about students is that students labeled as “low” cannot or will not learn as much as their peers, and so the expectations for these students should be different. Students defined as the “red group” will never achieve proficiency. After all, these students have so many things working against them. They are English learners (ELs) or go to special education programs, and we all know what that means. They don’t care about their own education. Have you seen the part of town they live in? All last year, they were virtual; just getting them on campus regularly is enough. When limiting language extends to other adults, it assumes other educators are not as capable as the speaker and distances the speaker from students who do not reach proficiency. I don’t believe any of that team’s data, because when the students arrive in my class, they don’t know anything. Did you see who his teacher was last year? What I have always done has been just fine, why should I change now?

Let me be clear, when educators begin using language that limits expectations for students or professional growth for themselves and their colleagues, that does not mean they are bad people or unsuited to the profession. It is possible for caring, hardworking teachers to fall into the trap of limiting language because they have heard that language so much from others. Sometimes this language comes from outside the educational setting; the media is rife with commentaries from noneducators deriding students, teachers, and curricula. Sometimes, colleagues who have low expectations for students use limiting language so much that it becomes accepted. Ultimately though, the purpose of education is to help all students become successful. Limiting language keeps educators from completing this fundamental mission. In fact, such language actually opposes educators’ belief systems. Teachers are dedicated people who have chosen to invest copious amounts of time, often their own money, and parts of their souls to help all students succeed. So how does this shift to accepting some students not being successful happen? Part of the reason is because of how our brains function and how we incorporate information.

The language we use matters because our brains are always trying to find patterns and make connections. When we allow ourselves to talk negatively about certain

students, the brain will subconsciously assign the same labels to any future student who has similarities to “those kids.” When we disparage our colleagues, the brain assigns blame to those colleagues for any perceived shortcoming the students may display. Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman (2013), authors of Words Can Change Your Brain, explain that not only does spoken language inform one’s inner thoughts, but it can also rewire one’s brain. Psychologist and cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene (2020) points out that any repeated cycle sets neural pathways that lead us to expect similar results in the future because “the brain seeks regularities on increasingly vast scales” (p. 11). In fact, it is the function of the brain that plays a large role in why well-meaning, hardworking educators fall into the trap of limiting language.

From a psychological point of view, bad is stronger than good. It takes four positive interactions to balance out a single negative one (Tierney & Baumeister, 2019). Bad memories resonate much more powerfully than good ones. A bad experience from ten years ago might appear in your mind’s eye in sharp focus with strong, clear emotions attached to it. A happy memory from the same time period may have fuzzier edges and just an overall sense of pleasantness. This is known as negativity bias or the negativity effect (Cherry, 2020; Tierney & Baumeister, 2019; Vaish, Grossman, & Woodward, 2008). The human brain is organized to survive by avoiding negative experiences and emotions. Our brains and emotional systems developed under evolutionary pressures to better keep us alive by remembering dangerous situations very clearly so we could avoid them in the future (The Week Staff, 2015). In modern times, we are unlikely to die from getting split off from our tribe and becoming prey to a wild beast, but our brains still look for negativity in every situation. In education, we remember the few negative experiences we’ve had with students, parents, or colleagues much more vividly and in greater detail than the thousands of positive ones we experience in a school year.

The good news is, if we understand how the brain works, we can train ourselves to overcome its propensity for negativity and bring intentional positivity to the language we use when discussing students and their challenges and successes. The following sections describe a few of the brain structures that play important roles in how we think and talk about students. For context, refer to the diagram of the brain with key structures labeled in figure I.1 (page 6).

Amygdala

The amygdala is located near the middle of the brain in the temporal lobe and is part of the limbic system, which is involved in memory and regulating all emotion. Once thought to be the center of fear, the amygdala is now seen as the

Cerebral Cortex

Prefrontal Cortex

Corpus Collosum

Thalamus

Amygdala

Brain Stem Cerebellum

Figure I.1: The human brain and its key structures.

center of emotional learning—both positive and negative—and the regulation of emotions (Salzman, n.d.). The amygdala plays a key role in keeping us safe. Part of that role is to recall negative events more quickly and with more detail than positive events. The amygdala even assigns a negative connotation to neutral clues if they appear during negative events (Admon, Vaisvaser, Erlich, Lin, Shapira-Lichter, et al., 2018).

To illustrate how the amygdala can have a negative influence, imagine Mr. Hawking, a first-year teacher who works with a few students who do not speak English at home. These students struggle academically and do not make the same progress as their native-English-speaking peers. The amygdala ensures Mr. Hawking recalls, in clear detail, the struggles he had in helping these students. The inadequacy and frustration he felt at the ends of days when he couldn’t reach these students are imprinted in the amygdala in sharp detail. Without conscious thought from this teacher, his brain seeks patterns and decides that “students who do not speak English at home will not learn as much as their peers.” This information becomes imprinted clearly on his amygdala and stored until he encounters the next group of students who are learning English, then all the struggles and frustrations come crashing back unbidden into his conscious mind. Mr. Hawking may even begin sharing these frustrations with his colleagues.

Cerebral Cortex

The cerebral cortex is the layer of brain tissue covering the outside of the cerebrum. It helps with language processing, planning and organization, and processing sensory information. With all these functions in one place, the brain can easily compress information. According to distinguished neuroscience researcher Lisa Feldman Barrett (2020), “compression enables abstraction. Abstraction permits your highly complex brain to issue flexible predictions” (p. 118). For example, a pedestrian walking down a sidewalk takes in the sights, sounds, and smells of the street, observing a puddle to avoid, and noticing the color of the traffic light hovering over the street. As the light turns red, all this information is processed and organized, and subconsciously the pedestrian predicts all cars will stop on the red light and it will be safe to step into the street.

Taking in multiple stimuli and processing and organizing it into a useable form is something teachers do all day long as they teach lessons. They make real-time, on-the-fly decisions: when to ask questions of students, whom to pose those questions to, where to move in the classroom to redirect student attention. All of this is thanks to the cerebral cortex. But educators need to be aware that the cerebral cortex also encourages predictions. Many of these predictions will be evidence based and correct (like all the cars will stop because the light is red), but in trying to make sense of stimuli, the cerebral cortex can also make much more speculative assumptions. Before students ever arrive in class, teachers begin predicting how they will learn and behave. Unfortunately, with the help of the amygdala, those cerebral cortex predictions trend toward the negative. This is particularly true when teachers have prior experience with a student’s siblings or other family members.

Educators might also make negative predictions about colleagues before getting to know them. For example, before the start of the year, Mrs. Barega looks over the staff list, curious about who will be replacing the team member who retired over the summer. She recognizes the new team member’s name: Mr. Divis. Mr. Divis was a student teacher on campus last year. Mrs. Barega’s amygdala begins pulling negative memories of other first-year teachers she has worked with during her career. They were needy, unorganized, took all the advice she gave but offered nothing in return. Their classes were zoos because they lacked the classroom management routines that come with years of practice. Her cerebral cortex processes and organizes those negative memories, and she makes a prediction, even as she is unaware that she is doing so: this guy is going to be a mess. Her collegial team will be ruined. Mrs. Barega braces for a difficult year.

Thalamus

The thalamus is an egg-shaped mass of grey matter near the middle of the brain. It is involved in movement, integrating sensory perceptions and emotional responses, and controlling one’s level of consciousness (Thalamus, 2020). Interestingly, the thalamus treats thoughts the same way that it processes input from other senses, not differentiating between the inner and outer worlds (Newberg & Waldman, 2013). This means that our thoughts have a large effect on how we perceive reality: “If you think you are safe, the rest of your brain assumes that you are safe. But if you ruminate on imaginary fears or self-doubt, your brain presumes that there may be a real threat in the outside world” (Newberg & Waldman, 2013, p. 57).

In 2020, neuroscientists Bin Wang, Lara Schlaffke, and Burkhard Pleger published an article in the Journal of Neuroscience showing that the thalamus also plays a key role in decision making and learning. Wang and colleagues (2020) note that through intentional learning—learning done consciously, with intent— predictions can be modified. Examples of intentional learning include professional learning sessions and reading a book. The thalamus processes the learning the same as it does experiences. This new learning can morph negative predictions into neutral or positive predictions. However, negative experiences in the classroom or with fellow staff members can reinforce the cerebral cortex’s predictions. The more a prediction gets reinforced, the longer it takes for learning to replace that prediction.

Consider Mrs. Shabazz, another teacher who is looking at her rosters for the upcoming year. She recognizes the last name of Tierce and is sure that this student is the younger brother of the Tierce she had in class last year. Last year’s Tierce stood out in her mind because he made it through the year without ever turning in an assignment. The thought “here we go again” comes unbidden to Mrs. Shabazz as her brain predicts how this student will behave. But she recognizes the thought and quickly shakes it off; after all, she just completed a class over the summer on making connections with students who have socialemotional deficits. She begins to plan how to make connections with this Tierce if he shows similar behaviors to his brother. Mrs. Shabazz’s thalamus is now engaged as she has accessed her past training and made the conscious decision to help this student and make it a good year. Her positive thoughts have begun to override the amygdala’s negativity and the cerebral cortex’s predictions.

Prefrontal Cortex

The front portion of the brain, near the forehead, controls planning and decision making. Researchers have also identified this area of the brain as the center

of optimism (Wang et al., 2018). In other words, the prefrontal cortex, in the healthy brain, can work in concert with the emotional part of the amygdala to counterbalance its pessimistic tendencies. University of Bern researchers Laura Kress and Tatjana Aue (2017) note that the prefrontal cortex is vital in updating optimism based on the most recent learning. For educators, this means that the more they learn about students or the effort their colleagues put into meeting students’ needs, the more likely the negative memories of the amygdala and negative predictions of the cerebral cortex can be replaced by optimism. However, for optimism bias to take hold and overwhelm the default pessimism, the new learning needs to be tied to a reward that is meaningful for the learner (Kress & Aue, 2017). Once established, though, such learned optimism can be long lasting.

For example, Ms. Cait is a strong educator with a decade’s experience planning lessons and carefully pondering how to ensure students have acquired the knowledge she knows they will need. She turns in paperwork to the office on time and complies with what her administration asks of her. She often calls parents when needed. The only part of her job she hates is professional learning time. Her practice is good enough as it is. She likes her students, and they like her. Most of the students turn in work on time and study for her tests. She has never given an F to a student who did not go out of his or her way to earn it. What can someone tell her that her experience has not already taught her? Most guest speakers who come into the district give rah-rah keynotes or wildly exaggerate how easy and effective some new program will be. So, when the principal talks excitedly about the nationally known Kerri Veran coming in for the next professional learning day, Ms. Cait is not impressed and assumes it will be like any other session.

The day Veran comes on campus to work with the staff, she presents research study after research study. She gives Ms. Cait and the other teachers time to process the research and discuss how it applies to their students, specifically the ones who have been struggling in class. Ms. Cait begins to see that by applying this research and working with her team, it might make a difference. The teachers ask many questions and Veran answers them. The day flies by, and Ms. Cait leaves feeling like this professional learning might have been a good use of her time for once. Without Ms. Cait knowing it, her prefrontal cortex overrode her amygdala’s negativity and her cerebral cortex’s prediction that all professional learning is a waste of time. After Veran’s visit, Ms. Cait approaches professional learning without an impending sense of doom. She views it with a sense of optimism.

In summary, the human brain is designed to take in information, organize that information into recognizable patterns, and make predictions based on those patterns. Thanks largely to the amygdala, people expect the worst from those