Editor Spotlight: Julia
By: Think Tank Team
Editors’ note: We thought this would be a good time to tell you who we are. Not counting our inner stable contributors, this magazine has a staff of seven, living all over the world, who gather at Think Tank Towers in Waikiki every month to produce this magazine. The MindBrainEd Think Tanks are not funded, nor are the contributors or editors paid, so they produce this magazine out of love for language teachers and students.
Why? The reason lies in our training as teachers. Until the eighties, language teacher training, in college, at conferences, and in the literature, was focused on the language, in other words, linguistics. Before acronyms like TESL or EAL eventually came out, language teaching was actually known as “Applied Linguistics.”
However, language teachers everywhere realized that their training in syntax parsing and case grammars was of little benefit in their classrooms and demanded more information about learning in general. The spotlight then shifted from language to learners, especially in terms of motivation, communicative approaches, language functions and notions, and so on. And this helped.
Nonetheless, there were two areas of language learning that still remained in the dark: how the brain actually does language and how it does learning. This was not known in neuroscience either. But at the turn of the century, some of us noticed that neuroscience was starting to figure that out, as well as unravel attention, disabilities, emotion, and so much more. Unfortunately, these discoveries were not being taught to us. Because it is so new, and because neuroscience is so hard to understand, most teacher training programs still lag in teaching these things. The price we pay for this deficit, however, is the well-being of our learners.
Now, however, scattered all over the world, there are a few teachers who are trying to change this; teachers who study neuroscience and psychology and try to pass it on to their peers in an understandable way. They speak at conferences (if they can get accepted), they include brain studies in their research, and they write articles. For teachers like that in language teaching, we, The MindBrainEd Think Tanks, are their home base and launch pad.
This month, meet our computer whiz: Julia
It’s hard to say when I first became a brainy nerd, but an early, concrete example would be a brief internship I did with the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGEN) glioma unit while I was in high school. While I didn’t handle any brain cells directly, that early experience with nitty gritty cellular research did shape my future career trajectory. As much as I loved reading research, I quickly realized that doing the research, at least at the cellular level, was not for me.
Later on in university, as I was studying Secondary English Education, I had to take a course on developmental psychology. Cognitive Load Theory, in particular, just “clicked” with me from the moment I first learned about it. The theory really helps me to look at my teaching more analytically and troubleshoot problems as I encounter them.
I presented about Working Memory and Cognitive Load Theory at the 2017 TESOL International Convention & Expo. The audience was larger than expected, but Curtis managed to squeeze into the back and listen to my presentation. Afterwards, he enthusiastically introduced himself to me, and then he spent the rest of the conference introducing me to a whole bunch of other BRAIN SIG members. Before I knew it, I was back in Japan and part of the Think Tank team.
These days, I mostly handle running and updating the website. I look forward to working on more articles for future Think Tank issues during my school vacations.
Hobbies: Wherever Julia goes, she’s listening to music–even when there’s no music device playing, she can still hear her personal soundtrack inside her mind. Metal, rock, classical, jazz, pop, folk, nordic chants: there’s very few genres that Julia doesn’t enjoy listening to. Julia also enjoys playing video games, watching TV and movies, and reading books.
Office: Julia’s office is full of windows, letting in lots of natural light. Plants would probably thrive here, if only she could keep them alive. Her desks and shelves are covered in an assortment of postcards and knick-knacks from her travels around the world.