Ben Cardenas

Natural Human Learning Process

     According to Smilkstein’s research there are six stages to a human attempting to learn how to do something. These stages are motivation, practice, advanced practice, skillfulness, refinement, and mastery. During motivation the person is usually eager to start doing something usually based on something they've previously seen before, but it can also come from their own mind. The second stage is practice, which may be one of the hardest steps because its easy to get motivated and start something. To keep at it for awhile is the real trick. Step three is usually when you are already good at practicing regularly. Advanced practice is when you really start to focus on the thing your practicing and wanting to get better at it and practicing even more often. Once you start to practice often then comes the skillfulness. This comes from practice usually, but more intensely focus on technique and style. Refinement is the next step in this process. This is basically cleaning up any sloppiness in your activity that your practicing and making sure its nice and clean. The last step is mastery, this is basically all about you feeling good about what you do and doing it with confidence. This is the most important step above all because this is when people start to pay attention to you doing this activity because they’re good at it and it impresses them. Smilkstein goes on to explain that the brain constructs the knowledge using these stages, about how “learning creates synaptic connections.” The result of these connections are knowledge and skill. Skill which is formed in the brain. The brain is like a network of people, each brain cell helps us complete our task. How we feel affects our flow of synapsis. The more confident we are the more likely we’ll succeed. 
     A lot of times we use this process even though we may not realize it. There is always a reason for learning something, whether it’s because theres motivation to want to learn it or because its required to have to learnt it. To this day I still use the process when playing the guitar. My motivation to start playing guitar was to be cool. Everybody who played guitar seemed very cool to me and they inspired me to be like them. Once I got my guitar practicing was my new challenge. It got really aggravating in the beginning. Soon after it grew into a passion then practicing became playing or “advanced practice.” I began pushing myself to try new styles and techniques. I’d keep playing them until I got it 100% right. The constant practice built up skill and then I had to work on refining it. I definitely wouldn't say I’ve mastered it, nor will I ever, but I believe I’ve become good at it and its all because of the natural human learning process. 
    The neuron is a truly remarkable thing. One of them alone contains about 100,000 braincells. However, whats most fascinating about the neuron is how similar it is to a tree. The Neuron has a tree like structure, roots, trunk, branches, and even leaves, but of course the actual names of the parts of a neuron are different. The neuron also starts out in a seed like form, much like a tree and then eventually sprouts, or develops, into a fully functional Neuron which contains the braincells needed to process how to do things. Not every neuron fully develops to have as many dendrites though. Dendrites, in comparison to a tree, are like its branches. These Dendrites receive messages from other neurons’ axons. Axons are the trunk like part of the Neuron. They’re the inner part of the trunk where all the messages get sent and received through. they begin at the axon terminal bulbs, or the roots, all the way through the axon up to the dendrites. 
    Synaptic firing needs something to get it started. Some type of fuel to kick it into gear. That fuel is called endorphins. Endorphins are what causes the body to feel good. In comparison to a car, its like gasoline. It is the feeling that keeps us going. However, when there is something that makes us feel good there’s also something that does the opposite which is norepinephrine. It’s produced whenever we feel stressed. It’s like putting water in a gas tank because when synaptic firing occurs it’s significantly less than what happens when endorphins are in your body. Synaptic firing is what makes the brain process knowledge and it happens a lot more when we aren't stressed. In fact its quite the opposite. When we’re feeling happy synaptic firing happens a lot more frequently which is why how you feel matters when learning. 
    We might not realize it, but emotions have a big effect on our learning process. We could be motivated and really want to learn something, but if things aren't going so good that day it’s possible that we might not learn everything we need to learn because we may be so preoccupied with another stressor thats been a bother. Teachers tell us to practice breathing techniques to help reduce our stress levels especially when a test is coming up because stress, usually prevents us from remembering everything we may need to remember for said test. 
    This has happened to me on several occasions. Even as I write this I’m stressed, but it isn't enough to where it is conflicting with my studies. Stress is sometimes good because it can make us worry about something we otherwise wouldn't worry about if we didn’t even have a little bit of stress theres no telling if we were to get what we needed done ever. One specific example from my life is when final exams were coming up for my last year of high school, but while that was already stressful, I had an earful from my significant other at the time and it was non-stop. It caused me to fail my U.S. Government exam and then I got an earful from my parents which only added to my stress. It happened more than once, but that particular year was the most stressful because it was the last one before graduation and if I failed even one class, I’d have to retake it next year because when we moved from Washington, the amount of credits needed to graduate was less than the amount of credits I needed to graduate in Spain. I ended up having to take summer school the summer before senior year which took up all of my time, but after all that hard work it eventually paid off and I got to graduate on time. 
    Everybody everywhere experiences stress at one time or another and it can be due to personal life issues, possible work, and even internal issues. With issues comes ways to deal with them which would be called “stress relievers”. Everybody has they’re own methods to help them relieve some of the stress that they have built up. One strategy I use is “BRAVE”, which is an acronym for; breathe deeply, relax, attitude is everything, visualize yourself in your favorite place, and end is in sight. The beauty of this technique is that it works for nearly everything. With every exam that comes up I usually resort to that because I wouldn't know what to do otherwise. Breathing deeply helps to focus on breathing which eventually leads up to relaxing. Its hard to relax on command, but the breathing helps build relaxation. Having a positive outlook on everything really helps with completing the test and taking it slowly opposed to the antithesis. Having a bad attitude about it would ultimately lead to failing the test because of lacking in confidence. Lastly, visualizing yourself in your favorite place really does help with the relaxing part, but its important to be careful not to get too caught up in your favorite place because sometimes that can take us right out of the moment, then we'll be too relaxed. There are a lot more strategies that can be used to help relieve stress. I find this one to be most helpful, but everybody has a method that works for them. “Brave” works for me very well and I doubt that I’ll change my method anytime soon, but all are worth trying. 

Source

1)"The Learning Toolbox - BRAVE." The Learning Toolbox - BRAVE. James Madison University. Web. 14 Feb. 2016. <http://coe.jmu.edu/learningtoolbox/brave.html>. 

2) Smilkstein, Rita. “teaching with the brain-based, natural human learning FACES.” Brain-Based natural human learning process. Web. 19 Oct. 2011. <http://facweb.northseattle.edu/RSmilkstein>