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True StoriesRichard Piazza: Veteran Educator Creates Brain-Compatible Workshops
Five years before he left public education, Dick created a company called 'Awakenings.' "The idea emerged from extensive reading in current brain research which suggested to me that how we work with students and design schools needed to reflect our new knowledge about how the brain naturally learns. Drawing from neuroscience, psychology, and my experience as an educator, I designed Brain-Compatible Learning Workshops." The workshops have become the vehicle to take current brain research to schools throughout the country, "challenging educators and parents to think of intelligence not as a fixed entity, but as an interactive process with infinite possibilities." He first encountered this innovative approach to learning in 1971 during a sabbatical year at Oxford University, which included volunteer teaching in four progressive schools in Oxfordshire. All were using a child-centered and interdisciplinary approach, as opposed to "a predigested notion of what adults think kids ought to know. I was in a class where the theme of that day was 'Flight’. The classroom was bedecked with everything from space ships hanging from the ceiling to birds' wings bone structures to the story of the Wright brothers to poems about flying creatures. The ideas around the theme just exploded with the teachers acting as coaches who were facilitating, asking key questions and keeping that growth going." As both observer and participant in the curriculum, Dick became convinced that significant reform was needed in order to make our schools more student-centered and brain-compatible. "The linear approach never felt comfortable to me in my years of teaching school. In England, I saw a kind of organic explosion of learning that seems random on the surface, but was actually one thing hooking to another, and another, taking directions that were unprecedented in my experience," he said. "Returning to America I decided to use as much of this insight as I could. So I started creating courses in the high school I was working in. I created a writing workshop using the principle of letting kids go with their interests, letting that grow into something. My role was to encourage them rather than setting down limits of how long or in what form it should be. I coached them by teaching them how to edit their own work, and asking them questions like, ‘What are you trying to convey?’ Teaching became self-teaching. They started asking themselves, ‘What do I want to say?’, then found the language for it." The conviction that "each of us approaches learning in a different way" stayed with Dick Piazza when he left teaching to move into school administration. One result was the creation of Paramus Community School in 1978, "to provide a setting in which the whole community could come together to share in the joys of learning." The following year, he was instrumental in launching the "Transitional Program" out of the Community School, aimed at high school students who were not fitting in to the standard curriculum and considered at risk for dropping out. "We were losing them intellectually and spiritually. Yet the truth is, some of the most important people in the world were like these kids, misfits, because their genius was unrecognized. These were Special Ed kids, emotionally disturbed kids, learning disabled kids. I was given considerable freedom in running this program. I was delighted to have the opportunity to grow with these young people. My thought was, if this new learning approach could work with these kids, it would be revolutionary for all kids. That was my premise." The program graduated 85% of its participants, is still in existence, and has won State and Federal recognition for excellence and compassion. One of Dick Piazza’s proudest possessions is an oil painting, a gift from one of the graduates of the Transitional Program who is now a certified art teacher with a thriving art business. Awakenings Workshops are directed at teachers and parents to help them design "brain-friendly" approaches to learning. The workshops have been presented in schools districts in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Connecticut. In demand as a keynote speaker at educational conferences, Dick Piazza has widened his focus to include PTA's and early childhood teachers. He is also a national consultant for About Learning, Inc., based on the work of Bernice McCarthy, the developer of 4MAT workshops which integrate the latest understandings of brain research, learning styles, and multiple intelligences. He is a past president of the New Jersey Association for Lifelong Learning. Getting Started Dick Piazza
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Ask not, "How smart is this child?"
Ask, "How is this child smart?" For veteran educator, Dick Piazza, 64,
rephrasing that question is not only his personal mantra, but the focus of a educational
consultancy that draws on his 40 years of teaching and a vision he has nurtured
"since I walked into my first classroom: Schools must honor the diversity of ways
that human beings learn."