| Friend,
As I said yesterday, it's time to start putting all this info on brain chemicals together in the context of improving student retention.
Let's start by revisiting...
DOPAMINE AND STUDENT RETENTION
As you'll recall, dopamine is the brain's "reward chemical." Our brains are designed to release a little shot of dopamine when we're about to find or acquire something that made us feel good in the past.
From a survival perspective, that could mean food, water, or warmth. And from a modern social perspective, it could mean landing that new job, getting a raise, or having a fantastic date with a new potential love interest.
When we anticipate success in finding whatever it is that we're motivated to seek, chase, or hunt (or whatever verb you want to use to describe our survival instincts for hunting and gathering), BOOM! Dopamine is released, and we feel awesome.
The key to using this knowledge is to understand how it works, and find ways to trigger dopamine releases for your students in class. This means creating opportunities in every class for them to experience small successes.
Now, the trick to this is that they can't happen too often or the student will no longer see them as unique and rewarding. So, one small victory or so in each class is sufficient.
And, this is where honest praise comes in; as an instructor you should be praising your students when they do something right.
Let me repeat that - when they do something right.
I've visited too many schools where the classes were just one big empty praise-fest, and it rings hollow to everyone involved. If you're constantly high-fiving and atta-boy-ing your students for no good reason whatsoever, eventually they're going to realize that receiving praise from you is no big deal.
So, you need to make sure you're paying attention to every student in your class. And in each and every class, you need to find a reason to give each student targeted and specific praise.
And so long as you don't cheapen or weaken the power of your praise by making it commonplace and false, it WILL have the desired effect.
Now, tomorrow we'll talk about the other happy chemicals and how we can structure classroom experiences to trigger them WITHOUT MAKING OUR CLASSROOM A FREAKING ROMPER ROOM OR LOVE-IN.
And then next week we'll talk about how to keep classroom workouts tough and how to keep the training intensity high, without excessively triggering our students' negative brain chemicals.
Stay tuned...
Until next time,
Mike Massie MartialArtsBusinessDaily.com
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P.S. - Be aware, if you're a good instructor and doing your job properly, students will naturally experience a dopamine release when they have big breakthroughs in their training. The problem with relying on this for motivation is, these big breakthrough moments are often few and far between. That's why they need you to keep them motivated by complimenting them on their smaller victories in every class.
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