Emeritus Classes and the Brain

We’ve talked about lifelong learning in the past and the cognitive benefits of learning new things. There are specific elements of instructional design that can make learners brains more fit when strategically applied to the learning process.  Our SDCE faculty know about these design elements and incorporate them into their classes.  Understanding and recognizing these brain-strengthening learning techniques, can help you to focus on them to improve your brain fitness through the powers of education. 

This page reflects a series of lessons that will introduce you to brain-healthy San Diego Community College Emeritus classes and explain how they strengthen your brain.  This semester you will meet some of our Emeritus instructors in these lessons and hear about the amazing classes that are free to you through this program.

Learning is most helpful to the brain when it incorporates specific learning elements that grow new neurons, increase the production of beneficial brain chemicals, and improve synaptic connections (for faster and more accurate transfer of information).  Our instructors incorporate these strategies into their classes.  Take a look at this list of learning techniques and think about how you might find ways to incorporate more of these elements into your learning activities. 

• Practice – makes memories and learning more permanent.  Even mentally reviewing or visualizing what you learned in class, regardless of the subject, provides regular, daily cognitive stimulation and exercise for your brain. Making this part of your regular “cognitive health routine” is a good way to promote positive neuroplasticity. 

• Learning in Incremental Steps – produces the feeling of multiple successes in your brain.  Breaking a “lesson” into smaller bits of information allows you to feel successful more often as you learn each small piece of information or step in a  new skill.  The more success your brain feels, the more beneficial chemicals (neuromodulators) it produces and the more efficiently it works.  Neuromodulators are for the brain, like oil is for your car; they help the brain to function more efficiently and effectively. 

• Group learning - encourages socialization which facilitates both learning and brain health.  When you feel connected to others you are more likely to try new things together and to strive for success rather than giving up on learning new things.  When connected to other learners you are more likely to engage in other beneficial activities.  Socialization produces feelings of wellbeing and belonging and promotes independence.  

• Focus, focus, focus – remembering to focus on the task at hand is a good way to center your thoughts and focus your attention.  Multitasking hinders learning and your memory.  Focus produces acetylcholine (a neurotransmitter that helps to control the nervous system), as well as making learning easier by priming the brain to receive and assimilate new information.  Just like physical exercise wakes up and primes the brain for learning, concentrated focus on a new idea, lesson, skill, or task primes the brain for learning, remembering, and even decision-making tasks.

• Repetition – improves long-term memory.  Finding innovative and diverse ways of learning the same information (auditory, visual, tactile, etc.), and various times and places throughout the day to repeat it, helps you to retain information longer and more accurately.  Googling a subject or looking up a related YouTube video will help your brain to retain it better and will encourage the growth of more and healthier neurons in response to the banquet of new information you feed your brain.

• Movement – circulates blood and transports oxygen to the brain and throughout the body.  Stretching, grouping, creating physical models and acting out scenarios while learning all work well to get you moving.  Field trips are an excellent way to keep moving (consider our Rediscovering San Diego classes).  Participate in physical exercise outside of class too to promote a healthy lifestyle (and join one of our Health/Fitness classes).

• Novelty – produces norepinephrine (a beneficial neuromodulator) that builds grey matter in the brain, helping to create stronger neuro-systems and to ward off neurodegenerative diseases. Exposing yourself to novel experiences and new information in your lessons wakes up the brain and promotes the production of this beneficial chemical.  A boost of norepinephrine comes with every aha moment when you realize you just learned something new.  

• Relevance – Remember to choose educational activities that are relevant to your needs.  Talk to your instructors about your educational needs and expectations.  It will show them that you care about what they are teaching and allows them to adapt their lessons/curriculum accordingly.  The more meaningful the experience, the more the brain is motivated to learn and the greater the cognitive benefit.  And it’s also more enjoyable for both you and the instructor.

• Take Advantage of Multiple Opportunities to Learn -  Our instructors pride themselves on offering their lessons in multiple modes - in writing, on a website, in videos, Power Point Presentations, and tutorials.  They create quizzes, activities, homework, Zoom sessions, and (someday soon) face-to-face instruction; all to give you multiple ways and opportunities to learn.  Focusing on new information in a variety of ways employs repetition, challenge, primes the brain for learning, and improves success rates and your brain's health. 

• Employing all the senses – information learned through a variety of senses is learned, understood and remembered more easily, more accurately, and longer than something simply delivered verbally or read in a book.  The more senses you can employ, the more neurons the brain fires. “Neurons that fire together, wire together”, creating healthier neuro-pathways and stronger cognitive processing systems (for stronger brains). 

This dynamic learning community is open to all adult students seeking greater joy and fulfillment in their lives. We will also discuss topics and questions that students bring to class each week so that we can learn and grow with one another. This will be a fun and meaningful adventure.

Topics include

• Remembering your creative self

• Connecting with your spiritual identity, and expressing yourself as a unique and valued human being

• Discussing effective coping skills

• Strategies to adapt to changes in life and environment

• Incorporating sustainable wellness activities into our daily routines, and methods to reach personal goals

Art is good for the brain.  Including things like these (Cohen 2006):

• Helping individuals relax

• Providing a sense of control

• Reducing depression and anxiety

• Assisting in socialization

• Encouraging socialization

• Novelty

• Encouraging playfulness and a sense of humor

• Improving cognition through focus, repetition and practice

• Offering sensory stimulation

• Fostering a stronger sense of identity

• Increasing self-esteem

• Nurturing spirituality

• Reducing boredom

Now let's meet some of our Emeritus Art Instructors and learn about what they teach.

Mary did an outstanding job in our lesson of explaining the power of listening to, singing or playing music.   It's never too late to learn something new.  Check out some of our amazing music instructors and the classes they teach:

As Mary's lesson taught us; Music is a multi-modal activity.  Many areas of the brain are involved at the same time (motor, visual, auditory, audiovisual, somatosensory, parietal, and frontal areas of both hemispheres). Playing a musical instrument engages every area in the body as well:  It incorporates visual, auditory, and motor cortices.  Playing the piano is a great example of engaging both physical and brain functions through the power of music.

Interested?  View a flyer for Jean and Marcia's classes

Other Music Classes you may not have known about:

The Emeritus Program understands the positive impact that travel can have on the brain, as Mary has demonstrated in our lesson.  We offer some wonderful classes that provide unique opportunities for students to see (popular as well as unfamiliar) places in San Diego from a whole new  perspective, and currently, some creative virtual travel experiences all over the world (as part of our designed-for-Covid selections)

The videos below are short clips prepared by our RSD instructors to introduce themselves, their class, or a specific venue.  Take a look to get a better idea of how the classes are taught.  Then visit the class schedule below if you'd like to register for one of the classes this semester.

Check out the Emeritus Class Schedule at:

 sdceschedule.com

Some classes may be closed now but many are still open for enrollment or will open again in the summer.  Scroll through the class schedule to view, or search by subject or instructor (when on the schedule headings can be found below the box).   

Bagan, Barbara PhD. "Aging: What's Art Got To DO With It?" Retrieved from ttps://www.todaysgeriatricmedicine.com/news/ex_082809_03.shtml

Cohen, Gene D. “Research on Creativity and Aging: The Positive Impact of the Arts on Health and Illness.” Generations: Journal of the American Society on Aging, vol. 30, no. 1, 2006, pp. 7–15. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26555432. Accessed 17 Feb. 2021. Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26555432?seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents