TED Talk English Club 2022: Vol 3 on 28 Feb &  7 March

Welcome to TED Talk English Club active each Monday from 31 Jan through 16 May:)

Click the black box below for a SUMMARY of 28 Feb Meeting:)

Club Meeting on 7 March 2022 = Meeting 2 of Vol 3 

7 March TOPIC: Are we still hooked on sugary foods?

VIDEO for 7 March discussion: click 'How sugar affects the brain'

WORDS for 7 March video (4.49 min, 2016, 13 M views): click here

SCRIPT for 7 March: on the video site click 'Read transcript' (next to the video title) video veebilehel klõpsa 'Read transcript' or scroll down või keri allapoole, et lugeda siin lehel 

• 7 March Question 1 for discussion: Do you think the video includes any info that is truly new to you?
• 7 March Question 2 for discussion: Hooked on sugary foods-is there anything you feel like sharing from your own life experience?
• 7 March Question 3 for discussion: Is there a way we could better control our crave for sweet taste - in oneself and kids?

Access 1: open to all of them who at some point--since 2012--have taken a course with Terje Keldoja😊

Fee: 8 eur for a 30-minute Meeting, incl Quizlet & Script & the SUMMARY (= follow-up based on the ideas of the participants--about the video/topic)

NB! Access 2: Everybody else is indeed welcome, too. However, the fee is a little less generous (12 eur per 30 minutes one-on-one ) for the 'newcomers'.

Participation: Choose between 7 March and 28 Feb or attend both.

Register: with terje.keldoja@gmail.com or submit the form above või täida ülal olev vorm

Club Meeting on 28 Feb 2022 = Meeting 1 of Vol 3       

 28 Feb TOPIC: Grit--what is it?

VIDEO for 28 Feb discussion: click 'Grit: The power of passion and perseverance'

WORDS for 28 Feb VIDEO: click here

• SCRIPT of the video: on the video site Click  kui video avaneb, klõpsa 'Read transcript' (next to the video title) video pealkirja kõrval or scroll down või keri allapoole to read it below
  
• 28 Feb Question 1 for discussion: How would you explain the metaphorical concept of 'grit' in a direct/simple way? 
• 28 Feb Question 2 for discussion: Angela says that talent/IQ doesn't make one gritty. Can you share something relevant from your life experience?  
• 28 Feb Question 3 for discussion: Can one build grit/resilience - in oneself or kids? (vrd nn säilenõtkuse projektid Eestis)

Click on the brownish box above to download the script for 7 March 'How sugar affects our brain'

SCRIPT for 7 March 'How sugar affects our brain'

00:00 Picture warm, gooey cookies, crunchy candies, velvety cakes, waffle cones piled high with ice cream. Is your mouth watering? Are you craving dessert? Why? What happens in the brain that makes sugary foods so hard to resist?

00:23 Sugar is a general term used to describe a class of molecules called carbohydrates, and it's found in a wide variety of food and drink. Just check the labels on sweet products you buy. Glucose, fructose, sucrose, maltose, lactose, dextrose, and starch are all forms of sugar. So are high-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice, raw sugar, and honey. And sugar isn't just in candies and desserts, it's also added to tomato sauce, yogurt, dried fruit, flavored waters, or granola bars.

00:55 Since sugar is everywhere, it's important to understand how it affects the brain. What happens when sugar hits your tongue? And does eating a little bit of sugar make you crave more?

01:05 You take a bite of cereal. The sugars it contains activate the sweet-taste receptors, part of the taste buds on the tongue. These receptors send a signal up to the brain stem, and from there, it forks off into many areas of the forebrain, one of which is the cerebral cortex. Different sections of the cerebral cortex process different tastes: bitter, salty, umami, and, in our case, sweet. From here, the signal activates the brain's reward system. This reward system is a series of electrical and chemical pathways across several different regions of the brain. It's a complicated network, but it helps answer a single, subconscious question: should I do that again? That warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you taste Grandma's chocolate cake? That's your reward system saying, "Mmm, yes!" And it's not just activated by food. Socializing, sexual behavior, and drugs are just a few examples of things and experiences that also activate the reward system. But overactivating this reward system kickstarts a series of unfortunate events: loss of control, craving, and increased tolerance to sugar.

02:13 Let's get back to our bite of cereal. It travels down into your stomach and eventually into your gut. And guess what? There are sugar receptors here, too. They are not taste buds, but they do send signals telling your brain that you're full or that your body should produce more insulin to deal with the extra sugar you're eating.

02:31 The major currency of our reward system is dopamine, an important chemical or neurotransmitter. There are many dopamine receptors in the forebrain, but they're not evenly distributed. Certain areas contain dense clusters of receptors, and these dopamine hot spots are a part of our reward system. Drugs like alcohol, nicotine, or heroin send dopamine into overdrive, leading some people to constantly seek that high, in other words, to be addicted. Sugar also causes dopamine to be released, though not as violently as drugs. And sugar is rare among dopamine-inducing foods. Broccoli, for example, has no effect, which probably explains why it's so hard to get kids to eat their veggies.

03:13 Speaking of healthy foods, let's say you're hungry and decide to eat a balanced meal. You do, and dopamine levels spike in the reward system hot spots. But if you eat that same dish many days in a row, dopamine levels will spike less and less, eventually leveling out. That's because when it comes to food, the brain evolved to pay special attention to new or different tastes. Why? Two reasons: first, to detect food that's gone bad. And second, because the more variety we have in our diet, the more likely we are to get all the nutrients we need. To keep that variety up, we need to be able to recognize a new food, and more importantly, we need to want to keep eating new foods. And that's why the dopamine levels off when a food becomes boring.

03:57 Now, back to that meal. What happens if in place of the healthy, balanced dish, you eat sugar-rich food instead? If you rarely eat sugar or don't eat much at a time, the effect is similar to that of the balanced meal. But if you eat too much, the dopamine response does not level out. In other words, eating lots of sugar will continue to feel rewarding. In this way, sugar behaves a little bit like a drug. It's one reason people seem to be hooked on sugary foods.

04:24 So, think back to all those different kinds of sugar. Each one is unique, but every time any sugar is consumed, it kickstarts a domino effect in the brain that sparks a rewarding feeling. Too much, too often, and things can go into overdrive. So, yes, overconsumption of sugar can have addictive effects on the brain, but a wedge of cake once in a while won't hurt you.

Click on the brownish box above to download the SCRIPT for 28 Feb 'Grit: The power of passion and perseverance'

SCRIPT for 28 Feb 'Grit: The power of passion and perseverance'

"Eesmärgi- e meelekindlus e südikus (vrd tragi, hakkaja, paindlik, "säilenõtke"): kirglik huvi + järjekindlus (vrd visadus, tahtejõulisus, sihikindlus)"

•  'You just have to grit your teeth and keep going.' Kiristad hambaid ja lased aga muudkui edasi.
• 400 grit sandpaper = liivapaber, mille karedus on 400

00:00 When I was 27 years old, I left a very demanding job in management consulting for a job that was even more demanding: teaching. I went to teach seventh graders math in the New York City public schools. And like any teacher, I made quizzes and tests. I gave out homework assignments. When the work came back, I calculated grades.

00:24

What struck me was that IQ was not the only difference between my best and my worst students. Some of my strongest performers did not have stratospheric IQ scores. Some of my smartest kids weren't doing so well. And that got me thinking. The kinds of things you need to learn in seventh grade math, sure, they're hard: ratios murdarvud, decimals kümnendmurrud, the area of a parallelogram. But these concepts are not impossible, and I was firmly convinced that every one of my students could learn the material if they worked hard and long enough.

01:04

After several more years of teaching, I came to the conclusion that what we need in education is a much better understanding of students and learning from a motivational perspective, from a psychological perspective. In education, the one thing we know how to measure best is IQ. But what if doing well in school and in life depends on much more than your ability to learn quickly and easily?

01:36

So I left the classroom, and I went to graduate school läksin magistriõppesse (uuesti) to become a psychologist. I started studying kids and adults in all kinds of super challenging settings igasugustes olukordades, kus tuleb katsumustest läbi tulla, and in every study my question was, who is successful here and why? My research team and I went to West Point Military Academy. We tried to predict which cadets would stay in military training and which would drop out. We went to the National Spelling Bee Üle-Ameerikaline õigekirjavõistlus and tried to predict which children would advance farthest in competition kes edasi pääsevad (järgmistesse voorudesse). We studied rookie teachers algajad õpetajad working in really tough neighborhoods nö rasketes (nt suure kuritegevusega) piirkondades, asking which teachers are still going to be here in teaching by the end of the school year, and of those ja omakorda nende hulgast, who will be the most effective at improving learning outcomes kes oma õpilaste edasijõudmisele parimal moel kaasa aitavad for their students? We partnered with private companies, asking, which of these salespeople is going to keep their jobs? And who's going to earn the most money? In all those very different contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks, physical health, and it wasn't IQ. It was grit.

02:49

Grit eesmärgikindlus is passion kirg and perseverance visadus for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina vastupidavus. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint.

03:16

A few years ago, I started studying grit in the Chicago public schools. I asked thousands of high school juniors keskkooli tulnud to take grit questionnaires, and then waited around more than a year to see who would graduate kes kooli lõpetab. Turns out that grittier kids eesmärgikindlamad were significantly more likely to graduate, even when I matched them on every characteristic I could measure isegi kui nad kõige muu suhtes olid teistega sarnased, things like family income, standardized achievement test scores, even how safe kids felt when they were at school. So it's not just at West Point or the National Spelling Bee that grit matters Seega pole eesmärgikindlust vaja üksnes militaarakadeemias või õigekirjavõistlusel. It's also in school, especially for kids at risk for dropping out lapsed, kellel on suur tõenäosus koolist välja langeda.

03:57

To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it. Every day, parents and teachers ask me, "How do I build grit in kids? What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic kuidas õpetada lastele töötegemise eetikat? How do I keep them motivated for the long run?" The honest answer is, I don't know.

04:18 (Laughter) 04:20

What I do know is that aga ma tean, et talent doesn't make you gritty. Our data show very clearly that there are many talented individuals who simply do not follow through ei vii asju lõpule, annavad nö alla on their commitments. In fact, in our data, grit is usually unrelated or even inversely related to pöördvõrdelises sõltuvuses measures of talent.

04:40 So far, the best idea I've heard about building grit in kids is something called "growth mindset." arengule keskenduv mõtteviis This is an idea developed at Stanford University by Carol Dweck, and it is the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed õppimisvõimet saab arendada, that it can change with your effort. Dr. Dweck has shown that when kids read and learn about the brain and how it changes and grows in response to challenge kuidas aju muutub ja areneb, kui me pingutame, they're much more likely to persevere when they fail, because they don't believe that failure is a permanent condition.

05:17

So growth mindset is a great idea for building grit. But we need more. And that's where I'm going to end my remarks, because that's where we are. That's the work that stands before us. We need to take our best ideas, our strongest intuitions, and we need to test them. We need to measure whether we've been successful, and we have to be willing to fail olen (vaimselt) valmis ka läbikukkumisteks, to be wrong tean, et võin eksida, to start over again (olen valmis) otsast pihta hakkama with lessons learned kui olen oma õppetunni kätte saanud.

05:44 In other words, we need to be gritty about getting our kids grittier olgu meil meelekindlust õpetada oma lastele meelekindlust. 05:50 Thank you. 05:51 (Applause)