*Week 5 ~ T2P*

By looking at the inner workings of our brain's development throughout the course of our lives, we as teachers can better understand the intricacy of how our students think and act. If we factor in the ideas of synaptic density, it is apparent that many different factors affect the how, what, and whys of education. How our mind develops over the course of our lives is a process that never stops, and it continuously building upon itself. Our brain self-generates through the "pruning" of ideas, relationships, interests, experiences and many more aspects of life. Pruning is a way of maintaining the connections that our brain makes which we feel are important, or have a profound affect on us. Pruning also "weeds out" those which do not have a profound affect in our lives. This weeding out allows our brain to expand on our connections that do make the cut, so to speak.

Focusing on this aspect of pruning is one component of today's lesson that I found to be particularly interesting and applicable to teaching. I feel that it is my job as a future educator to provide the means for pruning to occur in my students. I can do this by providing many different components to my lessons which can include different theories and applications. These can help build networks of connections, and even provide "hot spots", i.e. profound experiences, that impact the inner workings of their brain. On the other hand, we must look at the other side of pruning. These experiences and ideas we bring to the mix as teachers may not have profound affects on our students. Rather, they may be what gets pruned out by their brain. This isn't always negative though, because this pruning out may help the student realize where their true academic interests lie. Thus upon looking at this scientific theory of brain development, we can better understand what inner processes may be occurring in the minds of our students.