Being Sweet: Caring for the Brains in our Bodies

In our quest to be more holistic in our approach in Bayan, we asked students to consider the concept of “sweet”. Not “sweet” as in sugar or candy, what FIlipinos would call mamatis. This "sweet" is an acronym to help us remember what we need to do to take care of the brains are in our body, to make sure that we attend to, crudely put, the physiology of learning. 

Sweet stands for Sleep, Water, Eating Healthy, Exercise, and Time to Relax, practices required to take care of our bodies, which in turn, keeps our brains working at top conditions for the cognitive challenges we face in our classes. 

With the exception of time, the elements of being sweet are easy to grasp. Time, in sweet terms, has to do with giving our brains and bodies “down time”, perhaps meditating or purposeful relaxation. Not channel surfing or binging on Netflix, but intentional practices to allow our bodies and brains to rest. Like the kind of "diffuse thinking" that Barbara Oakley discusses in her book Learning How to Learn. 

Jose Bowen, president of Goucher College and author of the provocatively titled  Teaching Naked discussed the “sweet” acronym on an episode of Teaching in Higher Education. We introduced sweet the first day of class. Every so often, we'd revisit the concept to check ourselves. Below is a Flipgrid, a video recording, of students' sweet self-evaluation we did right before the Thanksgiving long weekend because after the weekend, we only have one more week before finals. We figured that just before a break it would a good time to review how well we are treating the brains in our body. Have a look, and leave a comment about your sweet status below!