Brain Test 2 Crazy High School Level 8

[Martez Fields]

JosephChernach committed suicide in 2012, at the age of 25. A year later, brain tests revealed that had chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE. Though he played youth and high school football for eight years, he is one of few football players to develop the degenerative brain disease without competing at the college or pro levels. His parents, Debra Pyka and Jeffrey Chernach, told their story to Joseph Stromberg.

Jeffrey Chernach: He really changed completely. He went from being an honor student, a team captain, a class clown, to a total hermit. He became angry, and paranoid, and totally unmotivated.

I'm not sure whether he had any idea that head injuries had anything to do with what was happening to him. But he did once tell me that he thought counseling and medication weren't going to help him. Maybe that meant he had an inkling that there was a deeper problem.

Jeffrey Chernach: He was just a very vibrant, very outgoing kid. People liked him. He always wanted to be around other people, and was always cracking jokes, trying to get people to laugh. I guess you could say he was a bit of a class clown.

As he grew up, he also got to be a very motivated kid, with a strong work ethic. He has always done really well in school, and after graduating from high school, he started at Central Michigan University, and wanted to be a physical therapist.

For fun, he liked to go hunting and fishing with me on our family farm, and he loved the Green Bay Packers and the Michigan Wolverines. And he liked to hang out with his friends. He had a lot of them, and that showed at his funeral. The church was full. You could tell how well-liked he was.

My husband ran inside, saying that we needed to call 911, and trying to stop me from going out there. But I ran out to the shed. I guess I imagined him alive in there, bleeding or hurt. And there he was, hanging.

Debra Pyka: In September 2013, after we'd sent his brain to the Sports Legacy Institute, the doctors called me to tell me the diagnosis. The report said that his degeneration was the most severe they'd ever seen in a person his age, 25.

So he again asked what I would do. I said, "Talk to her." And he invited me to go over and try it right then. So I did. Dressed in my three-piece suit, I sat down at her table. She looked at me for a minute and said, "Who the f**k are you, a***ole?" I was a little stunned and didn't have time to read a book or check my notes. So I relied on two strategies I had just taught the teachers in my morning session: meet the real needs of students and use challenge instead of threat.

I said, "I'm someone writing a book on teenage violence, and I think you know better about it than me. If you have the courage to tell the truth and answer one question (challenge), I'll put your name in my book (need to be noticed)." She asked what the question was, so I replied, "Are there any teachers who you listen to, follow directions, show respect and learn from?" She said she had one like that, and I asked her what made that teacher different from the others.

Her answer is one that I will never forget and has been one of the constants in my work ever since. It's a movie scene that replays over and over in my mind. Right before my eyes, her answer transformed her from a tough, hardened criminal to a frightened little girl.

Sometime later, I traveled the country doing trainings. I asked administrators if I could meet with about ten of their most troubled students. I did this for grades K-12, in urban, rural and all economic areas. I did it on two Indian reservations. I asked two questions: "Who is your favorite teacher and why?" I expected most to say they had no teacher who was a favorite. But they all did. Among the top reasons was, "They believe in me."

Believing in students is not simply telling them that you believe in them. These words matter only if they are true and if you demonstrate them by your actions. There is no way to fake it, because kids have built in crap detectors (a phrase taken from Neil Postman, and Charles Weingartner, in Teaching As a Subversive Activity), and they can tell if you don't mean it. Here are some ways to express it.

Not every child can meet the unrealistic goals of a test-mad curriculum. Every child can try to do his or her best. Ironically, the harder students are encouraged to try, the better they do on our crazy high-stakes testing.

In many states, the law says, "Three strikes and you're out." In most schools, the most troubled kids get only one strike. The message is, "Be the way we want or we don't want you." School is for all children and mistakes are part of the learning process, not just for academics, but also for behavior. Rather than strike them out, teach them the skills they need to overcome their deficiencies.

Encourage hope by letting students know that, no matter what they do, they can still do better. Safety always comes first in a school environment, of course. Sometimes safety concerns override points 3 and 4, but not as often as we think.

Pope and her colleagues found that too much homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive. They cite prior research indicating that homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night, and that 90 minutes to two and a half hours is optimal for high school.

* Greater stress: 56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data. Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.

* Reductions in health: In their open-ended answers, many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. The researchers asked students whether they experienced health issues such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems.

The results offer empirical evidence that many students struggle to find balance between homework, extracurricular activities and social time, the researchers said. Many students felt forced or obligated to choose homework over developing other talents or skills.

In every generation, it seems, the same lament goes forth from the parents of adolescents: "What's the matter with kids today?" Why are they so often confused, annoying, demanding, moody, defiant, reckless? Accidental deaths, homicides, and binge drinking spike in the teenage years. It's the time of life when psychosis, eating disorders, and addictions are most likely to take hold. Surveys show that everyday unhappiness also reaches its peak in late adolescence.

Plenty of explanations for teenage turmoil are available. Adolescents need to assert their independence and explore their limits, taking risks, breaking rules, and rebelling against their parents while still relying on them for support and protection. ("What's the matter with the older generation?") They have to cope with disconcerting new sexual impulses and romantic feelings. Cultural change heightens incompatibility between the generations. Now scientific research is suggesting a new reason for the clashes between teenagers and their environment. Unsettled moods and unsettling behavior may be rooted in uneven brain development.

It's not a question of intellectual maturity. Most studies show that abstract reasoning, memory, and the formal capacity for planning are fully developed by age 15 or 16. If teenagers are asked hypothetical questions about risk and reward, they usually give the same answers as adults. But the emotional state in which they answer questionnaires is not necessarily the one in which they make important choices. In real life, adolescents, compared to adults, find it more difficult to interrupt an action under way (stop speeding); to think before acting (learn how deep the water is before you dive); and even to choose between safer and riskier alternatives. It is easy for them to say that they would not get into a car with a drunk driver, but more difficult to turn down the invitation in practice. Adolescents' judgment can be overwhelmed by the urge for new experiences, thrill-seeking, and sexual and aggressive impulses. They sometimes seem driven to seek experiences that produce strong feelings and sensations.

Resisting social pressure is also more difficult for teenagers. Much of their troubling behavior, from gang violence to reckless driving and drinking, occurs in groups and because of group pressure. In a psychological experiment, adolescents and adults took a driving simulation test that allowed them to win a reward by running a yellow light and stopping before they hit a wall. Adolescents, but not adults, were more likely to take extra chances when friends were watching.

Another revealing psychological experiment is the Iowa gambling task. Subjects can choose from one of two decks of cards in the hope of picking a card that provides a reward. The "good" deck contains many cards that provide some reward; the "bad" one, many cards that provide nothing and insufficient compensation in the form of a few that hold a jackpot. The choices of adults correspond fairly well to their tested reasoning capacity. In adolescence, the correlation is much weaker.

Evidence is appearing that these differences have a definite basis in brain structure and functioning. Recent research has shown that human brain circuitry is not mature until the early 20s (some would add, "if ever"). Among the last connections to be fully established are the links between the prefrontal cortex, seat of judgment and problem-solving, and the emotional centers in the limbic system, especially the amygdala. These links are critical for emotional learning and high-level self-regulation.

Another circuit still under construction in adolescence links the prefrontal cortex to the midbrain reward system, where addictive drugs and romantic love exert their powers. Most addictions get their start in adolescence, and there is evidence that adolescent and adult brains respond differently to drugs. In both human beings and laboratory rats, studies have found that adolescents become addicted to nicotine faster and at lower doses. Functional brain scans also suggest that teenagers and adults process reward stimuli differently; the adolescents are hypersensitive to the value of novel experiences.

3a8082e126