![\"Dr](\"http:\/\/myjhb.co.za\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Dr-Judy-Willis.jpg\")
<\/p>\nDr Judy Willis<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
One of the African EduWeek keynote speakers in the opening session is Dr Judy Willis, a board-certified neurologist in California, who left her practice after 15 years to become a teacher. At the time she says there was a marked increase of children being referred to her with suspected neurological conditions, and she discovered that this was due to the vast amount of material that students had to learn at school.<\/p>\n
Dr Willis explains: \u201cI realised that these stresses of frustration and boredom had wiped out the joy of learning and kids were unable to be engaged in learning through curiosity, but instead by drill and forced memorization. I felt that this was something I could make a difference in and influence a better way of teaching.\u201d<\/p>\n
She continues: \u201cI believed that because as a neurologist I had a strong background in things like memory and how the brain processes information, I felt that if I had the opportunity to become a classroom teacher and receive the training, I could take what I know in neuroscience and see if it worked with students in the classroom and that\u2019s what I did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having ideas coming together in \u2018aha moment\u2019<\/p>\n
Dr Willis taught for ten years to 2nd grade, 5th grade and 7th grade mathematics. \u201cDuring this time I was delighted by the power of neuroscience to shine a light and suggest strategies from education that would be most correlated with the neuroscience research that was increasing in quantity and with more specificity, thanks to neuro-imaging. So as I found correlations between strategies and neuroscience research that guided me to apply certain strategies at different intervals depending on what the brain responded to best.\u201d<\/p>\n
She eventually gave up teaching children, reluctantly, but today enjoys sharing her insights with fellow educators. \u201cI have always loved watching learners experience the thrill of developing their own knowledge, of discovering, of capturing the meaning of something, of having ideas come together in an \u2018aha moment\u2019. That same joy is my greatest pleasure in teaching other educators now. It\u2019s seeing the \u2018aha moment\u2019 when they realize that their best strategies, things that have been most successful, are indeed highly supported by the neuroscience research. It is not that neuroscience is suggesting a whole new way of teaching, but the excitement to me is when educators recognize the \u201cwhy\u201d.<\/p>\n
Read and hear the full interview with Dr Judy Willis as part of the African EduWeek expert interview series on www.educationweek.co.za\/interviews<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/img.zemanta.com\/pixy.gif?x-id=b2da6658-4351-414d-b811-4e7a4064ed4f\")
<\/div>\nMyJHB<\/a><\/p>\n Read more on MyJHB<\/a>.<\/p>\n Join the fun:<\/strong> Add Your event<\/a> | Submit a Press Release<\/a> | Add your listing<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A neurologist who became a classroom teacher will explain how best to stimulate young people\u2019s brains to process information into knowledge and wisdom during the upcoming SABC Education African EduWeek in Johannesburg in July. Thousands of teachers and education experts will attend the annual conference and expo from 10-11 July at the Sandton Convention Centre […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3332],"tags":[5572,5571,5573,5568,5570,5569],"class_list":{"0":"post-37352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-johannesburg-south-africa","7":"tag-aha","8":"tag-explain","9":"tag-moment","10":"tag-neurologist","11":"tag-teacher","12":"tag-turned","13":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}