[MUSIC] Welcome back to course 8 on Developing Relationships. And, this is week two, when we're focusing, in particular, on how to develop positive teacher-student relationships. And, in this first lecture, what I would like to do is to look at the connections between what we think and how we behave. Some people might work on the understanding that there's a fairly simple connection between what we think and what we do. And, it works this way. We see something, and we act. Whatever we're looking at triggers very, very quickly, some sort of an immediate reaction in our body. As I said, this is a very simple way of looking at it. However, when we think of what happens in classrooms, sometimes this is what teachers see. So, teachers have a tendency to respond to young people's behavior. We see people behaving in a particular way, and so we act. If a student does something, we respond in a particular way. So, what we're focusing on is the external, the actions that we see. The line which things can occur in the classroom is described by this slide. If we imagine, for instance, that there is a stimulus for the student, and the student simply acts. And, the student's action becomes a stimulus for the teacher, and then the teacher acts. The teacher's action then becomes a stimulus for the student, and responds again. And this can continue onwards and onwards. So, for instance, just imagine if a student, yesterday, had, had a fairly bad day. And, I as the teacher was pretty hard on that person. I may have punished them, I may have excluded them. I may have treated them in a way that they didn't particularly like. And, they went home last night quite angry at me. Then, the first thing that happens this morning, is that they see me. And, their immediate response is a negative one. Now, if I respond to the student in a negative way because of their action, this can set off the chain reaction that's described here. And, the end point of it is that there are stories. There's the story the student has, and the story that I, as the teacher has. So, what we end up with is the student might turn around and say this teacher doesn't like me. And, I as a teacher may say this student is not a very good student. Now, if these stories repeat themselves over and over again, the student might eventually say, I don't like any teachers. And, the teachers might all say about this student, this student's not very good. But, this is a very simple view of this stimulus action response. And, what we might be able to do, as Randall Clinch has done, is to call this habitual behavior. Where we've learned to respond to a stimulus in the same way as we always did. But, he also talks about intelligent behavior. And, intelligent behavior is really interpretive to stimulus. And, we do this by asking ourselves questions. So, we end up with a much more complex way of looking at what is going on. And, we could argue that if we take a more complex approach to the difference between stimulus and action, then we could argue that with habitual behavior, it happens in this way. If we see something that thing triggers our memories, which is our understanding that we have of this particular thing from the past. Then then generates out imagination, which is how we think this will happen in the future. The memory and the imagination, together, becomes our perception of the present. That leads us to a particular emotional state, and the emotional state drives our actions. And, again, the actions become the story. But, as you can see, habitual behavior is much more complex than what we originally identified. And, it works a bit this way. Let me give you an example. An example would be, I'm looking at people riding a bike. So, people riding pass me on their bicycle is a stimulus that I have. Now, for most people, when they think of the concept of bicycle, they would have, you know, perhaps some positive memories. And, maybe a couple of negative ones at all, as well. But, in the end, the reality for most people is, their concept of bicycle is positive. In the past, I've enjoyed myself, when I've ridden a bike. If we then argue that for some people, all of their experience of bicycles might have been negative. Whenever they've ridden a bicycle, they've crashed, they've fallen off. Whenever they've had a bicycle, it was stolen, it was broken. So, their concept of bike is a negative one. If we have a negative understanding based on our memories of bicycles. We're also likely to expect that our next experience of bicycle will be negative. If we have a negative feeling, based on this, we're likely to avoid being involved. So, what will happen is that as soon as I say to people next to me, would you like to go for a ride on a bicycle? They will immediately say no. They won't know why they've said it. But, this process has occurred that leads them to that behavior. So, what we're now doing is arguing that there's a much more complex understanding. So, we have a switch in our head which are our senses. We see something, we hear something, we smell something, and that triggers our memories, which then moves to our imagination, which leads us to our current perception of the world. Which brings us to our motions and then our actions. So, what we now need to look at, if we're looking at this interaction between teachers and students, it's a more complex set of interactions than we had before. So, where does all of this fit? If we try to address young people's behavior, we may be falling into exactly the same problem that they're having. It's a stimulus leading to a response. But, he also argues, if we address how young people are thinking. We have a different set of experiences. So, lets look at where thinking fits. In between the switch in our memory, our thoughts, we think about the things that have happened in our past, in between our memory, and our imagination, our thoughts. The way in which things have happened in our past, we think about will also happened in our future. So, thoughts are connecting all of these things. So, perhaps we need to look at intelligent behavior as using thinking. And, asking yourselves questions about the stimuluses that we have. So, for instance, if we asked ourselves a question about the environment, rather than simply responding to the environment, we would end up with a different set of experiences. How do we choose our thoughts? How do we make sure that our thoughts about bicycles are positive? While we change the ways which we ask questions. So,if we ask ourselves the question, what are the enjoyable times I've had on a bicycle? We only think about those times that are positive. We remove all of the ones that are negative. And, if we've had enjoyable times on a bicycle in our memory, we will then have enjoyable times in our imagination and the future. And, we will think that riding a bicycle is a good thing, because we've had fun times in the past. And, we will want to get involved in that activity. So, how do we turn our thinking? If we want thinking to occur, most of our thinking happens when we ask ourselves a question, or when somebody else asks us a question. It's not possible for your brain not to answer. So, for instance, if I ask you the question, what color is an elephant? Your brain answers for you. If I ask you the question, what is two plus two, your brain will answer for you. Questions will always lead to us thinking about what the question means. And, about what the response should be. So, the best way of getting people to think, and that's adults, and it's also our students, is to ask them a question. Now, what we need to think about are what sorts of questions we ask. Because, some questions are better than others. And, in our next lecture, we're going to look at the power of positive questioning. So, I will see you again soon, thank you. [MUSIC] [SOUND]
