On the first day of class I often challenge my students - name something
that's not connected to psychology. And of course the joke is, if they can think
about it then it's connected to psychology.
I had no idea that like hunger and even sleep and just everything we do really does stem from psychology.
How your brain works. How like different hormones can affect your
actions. How sleep affects how you act. How drugs can affect how you act.
It could be small things like why do you laugh when someone says this, or like why
do you smile when someone touches you, or like gives you a hug.
It can be cutting-edge research, business, ethics, issues of diversity, relationships.
I think that too many classes in high school sometimes feel disconnected and students don't see
the value and why they're learning whatever they're learning. In psychology
is just not that class.
A high school psychology course is a survey course that addresses core units
related to the scientific study of the mind and behavior. The content addresses
ranges from research, biology, cognition, behavior, social cultural components, and life.
Since psychology itself is such a broad science high school psychology is
a broad science. We talk about things as small as a molecular
neurotransmitter fitting in a receptor site and something as so big as a whole
society influencing each other. The most interesting thing that I learned in
psych was how like the brain actually functions when processing things.
I've always really been into like anatomy or biology and of course like medicine and
just like learning about how different chemicals, like how simple chemicals are,
but they can influence an entire personality and change an entire outlook
on life that's amazing to me. I think the most important skill they
learn is how to learn. The most interesting thing I learned in psych was
the memory and cognition unit. Learning how to learn was really fun and it also
helped me like with me being a student and everything. I thought all the things
we've learned about mental health and also our own personalities were most
interesting in the psych class just because it offered a new perspective on
things that we generally don't cover in much depth in other courses. I think my
favorite part of psychology class was learning about the child development
because at the time when I was taking psychology my baby sister was three
years old so she was just wilding all over the place so I want to know why she
was doing what she was doing. You don't expect it to be so research-based and so
scientific when it is. I find it to be one of the most applicable and relevant
fields. There's never a time a student can say when am I ever gonna use this in my life.
The content from psych that's most relevant to my life was how stress
effects my body and how to deal with it because
especially in school is really hard to you know balance all the work and you
know like extracurriculars and sleep. There are great many skills that
students learn in psychology and they're very transferable, whether that be
academic reading and writing, critical analytical skills, abstract reasoning and
thought, creativity, relational skills, research abilities. The class has kind of
been a place where I can learn a lot about other people. We do surveys and
class a lot so sometimes looks like how much do people sleep and you can see
like how your classmates rank or like what their personalities are like so you
can see where you fall in the spectrum. So, how sociable you are. How stressed you
are. Things like that and I thought that was really interesting because you kind
of connect with your classmates. My promise to students is that it's
everyday will be relevant to them and I think it is a class that is so relevant to the students.
Psychology is all around them and for them to really understand
themselves in their world we need to have that foundation in psychology.
I think psychology is more than just an important class to take. I think it's almost a
necessary class to take. In high school there's a lot of pressures and you know
different things like for example peer pressure that make us do a lot of things
that maybe we wouldn't do if we took psych or we had the opportunity to learn
about that type of thing. I think that psychology should be mandatory for all
students, really all people. I think that it helps us just learn to be better
human beings. I don't know a single person that will learn something from
psychology and not enjoy learning about it