Grayson Parker

MUED 271

Dr. Maynard

24 September 2020

Brain Matters Documentary Reflection

This was such an intriguing documentary. While watching I found myself learning so

many new things about the brain and its development, but I couldn’t help but also thing about

what I am currently learning in Psychology 160 with Dr. Claire Lyons here at JMU. We have just

finished our first unit which included a large chunk of Piaget’s theory. While watching this

documentary I found myself adding on to the basis of the child’s brain that I have been learning

about it. It truly was a very interesting experience. I was very intrigued by the moments when

many labs were monitoring the brain activity of babies and what their results were. When the

still face experiment was being conducted, I was immediately drawn to what the child’s

reaction would be and the action they would take. It was so cool to me that at such a young

age, the baby still knew what to do to try to win back the attention of his mother in this case.

The most powerful portion of this documentary was when they discussed the effects of

stress on the brain of a child. I never really thought about children being stressed, but when

they mentioned that nearly half of the children in the world suffer from it, I couldn’t look away.

Al Race, of the Center of the Developing Child at Harvard University, and Kathryn Shea of The

Florida Center for Early Childhood both made excellent points. Shea mentioned that

“everything is perceived as a threat, whether it is a threat or not.” Race continued on to say

that the studies of stress and children’s brains explains a ton of the things that teachers see in
the classroom. Students may not be able to handle all of the stress that is put on them. I really

think that every teacher past, present, or future needs to watch this. We owe it to all of our

students to understand what they are going through so that we can provide them with the best

education possible.