Brain Rules

Travis is creating a middle school Sunday school curriculum for the summer. It is going to be topic-based, and each week there will be a video clip from a popular movie. There will also be a slideshow with lots of pictures, so that the students are never just sitting and listening or discussing for more than 3 minutes without some new visual stimulus.

He got the idea from a book his boss gave him called Brain Rules, about the way our brains really work. If you click on this link, it will take you to the Brain Rules homepage where you can watch a really interesting short video by the author. Based on what Travis has told me about the book (and the little exerpts he sometimes reads to me), it sounds like a lot of the ways American society expects us to work actually run counter to the way our brains work. For example: our brains are made to rest a little bit in the mid afternoon. Taking a short nap around 3pm can boost our energy, focus, and brain-power for the rest of the day. Most of Latin America knows this. But that's when we often schedule meetings, tests, practices, and rehearsals! I'm looking forward to reading the book when Travis is done with it. The little videos on the website are great too.

But back to the Sunday School curriculum. Each week, when the students walk in, there will be a strange or funny picture on the projector to grab their attention. This week's topic is freedom.

This week's picture is: Travis showed me this picture, and said "I don't know where he's jumping from." The whole thing (the picture, Travis finding the picture and using it for his lesson, and his response to it) was so cute I had to give Travis a hug :)