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Dr. Grauer's Column - Zenbells

Sound impacts our attention. When used in the right way, sound has the ability to shift our perception of the world and ourselves. What role does sound play in a naturalist education?

Zenbells
Trade Secrets of Naturalist Education

It is a bit of a running, inside joke at The Grauer School that I have never purchased a clock for any classroom. 31 years—never bought a school clock. This could take some understanding on your part, and I’d love to help with that.

So, let’s start out with an experiment. Click on this sound from YouTube (and first turn up the volume):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gC_VkZeNywM

How about that! Can you think of or write down a feeling you get from this sound? Try it again. Play it loud.

Now you are ready to imagine this: You are a student in class and deep in thought, crafting out a beautiful vision in writing or art. Or maybe you are deep into a complex trigonometry problem requiring you to juxtapose two or three thoughts, consuming what feels like 200% of your attention. Just then, you hear this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gC_VkZeNywM

What happens?

American Sign Language teacher Patricia Young teaching her students new words in ASL as they walk around Grauer's campus - December 2, 2021

Consider that there are about 15 total warning and ending bells that happen every day at a school, or 65 of these drilling buzzers per week, times 35 weeks of school. So, imagine you hear this buzzer, which sounds pretty much like a tiny hammer on the inside of your skull, 2275 times over the course of the school year. Year after year. Here is the question: Is it possible that this experience has no impact on your state of mind?

I’d like to add this question to my thick and ever-growing file called, “What they don’t cover in the graduate school of education teacher training program.” 

You are doing well in this experiment, so far. Now let’s turn the volume down to half. Imagine you are deep in conversation around the Harkness table, 12 minds, 24 eyeballs, in the room and in tune with one another. Just faintly, you begin to hear this (again, turn the volume down low):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NIbSVv-gA0

That is a typical sound from Grauer ZenBells. Can you identify an emotion or state of mind this sound evokes?

Touring The Grauer School and learning about naturalist education, you might not even notice ZenBells. In fact, it seems like few other schools have noticed this impactful aspect of daily aural life at schools: the sounds of a school. Poking around on the Web, I found this one, a Japanese school bell:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibNYpcohwIg

Not bad. Not Zenbells, but not bad. 

Grauer Music students sing "Carol of the Bells" at the school's weekly assembly - December 7, 2021

The book, “This is Your Brain on Music,” and much other research, documents how random noise over time can trigger or contribute to high blood pressure, heart disease, sleep disturbances, and stress—and how other sound promotes greater peace of mind and learning. To me, the school buzzers, with their grating, mawkish tones, qualify as random noise. 

To grasp at the obvious: Sound impacts our attention. We all know that music can produce some of the strongest emotional reactions in humans, whether it's happiness, sadness, fear or nostalgia. History is filled with tribal traditions of drums beating in time to unite tribes in ceremony, or songs that bring communities together in celebration. These traditions show the powerful effects sound can have on us individually and as connected groups. When used in the right way, sound has the ability to shift our perception of the world and ourselves. We become attuned.

For all these reasons, some years ago at Grauer, I wrote the program called Zenbells to replace the drilling bells that jolt you into the end of a class period and out the classroom door. If you want to see instant evidence that it works, watch Grauer students drifting out of our classes in their own time. No rows of students abruptly standing up mid-sentence, slamming books closed, no doors bolting open. Many of our classrooms are outdoors, anyway.

ZenBells is programmed to our regular class schedule and plays before and after school, and during breaks. We are softly reminded that a class is starting or ending as natural sound whispers into the room through classroom speakers. This is your brain on ZenBells.

The most active part of the human brain is the cortex—this is the home of the prefrontal cortex where we develop executive function. [Executive function and self-regulation skills are the mental processes that enable us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and juggle multiple tasks successfully.] Unlike the amygdala, which alarms us, the cortex keeps us thinking in abstract terms: metaphors, symbolic, higher order thinking—creativity and invention. Experiencing baroque music, calming sounds from in nature, smooth jazz, or other ZenBells programmed sound has, over time, transformational impacts on student ability to have peace of mind and concentration, i.e., to engage the prefrontal cortex rather than the amygdala. 

What happens in education when a person experiences alarm? A brain like that can mainly focus on non-creative tasks, replication, things we do for extrinsic reward rather than for inner motivation… we don’t make decisions as well. We are less social, more disconnected, more pressured by time. Anxiety impedes performance.

Grauer Music students and Music teacher Tom Hopper play guitar while performing "Carol of the Bells" at the school's weekly assembly - December 7, 2021

Nature sounds and baroque music are examples of sound that has a proven impact on student peace of mind. The sounds of ocean waves or the mental images of the soft slack key Hawaiian guitar, or Baroque music, or smooth jazz help us establish high concentration and high trust environments in our classes at Grauer. We have replaced 2275 drilling buzzers a year with the sounds of our ZenBells program to impact our concentration and mood.

I love the slow-motion, contemplative look of changing classes at Grauer, and I note how different it looks here compared to other schools. We have replaced the doors bursting open with students calmly drifting out of class in their own time, when they are ready. It’s beautiful to see, even though people touring the school most likely don’t even notice it.

We recommend you try nature sounds or baroque music at home during study times, at low or very low volume. Nature has its own ways of marking time, and the human mind experiences time in the most natural way in the world, if we let it. When we are exposed to natural sounds of nature and to soothing music, we are more liable to be non-anxious, trusting, low threat. We are using and developing those parts of the brain. Time slips away without distraction.

Educators and mental health experts are not just concerned but extremely concerned today about how our country’s students are experiencing disturbing thoughts and mental troubles. We are supposedly in a time of record-breaking anxiety—all-time highs—literally emergency levels according to the American Pediatric Association, and other educational and medical studies documenting this seem to come out weekly. This is a trend that we thought was bad for 10 or so years—but it seems to keep getting worse and, of course, the global pandemic along with shocking levels of political discord could not have helped much. 

At home on the weekend, since I am not close enough to the beach to hear the waves, I often have ocean waves playing at low volume through my home sound system or even streaming on the TV where the visual input can soothe my mind. We hope you will have natural sounds playing in your home, too. When we think of how very distracted our students can become through disruptive technology and through the constant barrage of popular music competing for their attentions, we hope you will take this recommendation to heart—because anatomically, that is exactly where it will go!

Grauer 9th Grade Biology students display the fossil models they created for an evolution project - December 7, 2021

With sounds like ocean waves or white noise, our students study better, block out distractions, and focus their minds more easily. Sound is powerful, and it helps us concentrate when the world is trying to distract us every which way. Soothing sound helps keep our students on track while they are studying for tests, writing papers, reading, doing homework and any other tasks that require intense concentration.

Hundreds of refined design features at Grauer support a culture of peace of mind, concentration, high trust, and low threat. Add to this the fresh ocean air permeating every corner of every classroom on our campus. At Grauer, almost all doors and windows open out into our green quad, set in our hilly natural bowl of coastal sage and maritime chapparal. Add to this a campus stream bed and fountain, a stone fireplace, interpretive trail markers, native trees, and natural colors used on walls and materials exclusively throughout the campus. There are live streaming nature scenes and nature photographs throughout the rooms.

This is a naturalist education. It leads to our students feeling more creative, less anxious, and more connected. It’s not only about nature. It starts with the idea that you are not concentrating on any results, but on the values and rightness of the work itself, and the education becomes less tied to time and place and more about the people and the relationships they are forming, and about the beauty of creative thought and flow.

Creating a high trust, low threat environment is the basis for the naturalist campus design. It always has been. It’s why we have dogs and chickens on campus, why we have outdoor classrooms, and why we go off together on expeditions to ecosystems all over the world. And it’s why we have Zenbells.

I love belonging to this community.

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Photos for Dr. Grauer's Column

American Sign Language teacher Patricia Young teaching her students new words in ASL as they walk around Grauer's campus - December 2, 2021

Grauer 9th Grade Biology students display the fossil models they created for an evolution project - December 7, 2021

Grauer Music students sing "Carol of the Bells" at the school's weekly assembly - December 7, 2021

Grauer Music students and Music teacher Tom Hopper play guitar while performing "Carol of the Bells" at the school's weekly assembly - December 7, 2021

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by Dr. Stuart Grauer


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"Grauer’s writing reminds us that Great Teaching, singular, rare, unusual, is something that should be sought after and found. Thank you.”
Richard Dreyfuss, Actor, Oxford scholar, founder of The Dreyfuss Initiative

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