Biography: Elaine is the Executive Director of MBM Associates and an adjunct professor of English at Marylhurst University. Johnson served for about twenty years as an English professor specializing in Renaissance literature, a community college dean supervising programs ranging from international studies to graphic design, and a high school department chair. In the late 1980’s, however, she shifted her interest to neuroscience, and has since then studied and written not only about literature, but also about how the brain’s structure and function aid learning. In her writing, she demonstrates that the brain’s demand for meaning must be a teacher’s primary consideration. Teachers succeed when they connect lessons to the student’s daily life. This is a central theme in Contextual Teaching and Learning (2002), The Dismantling of Public Education and How to Stop It (2004), and Literature for Life and Work (1997) , a co-authored series of literature textbooks for grades 9-12. Named a Lifetime Honorary Fellow of Huron College, Johnson is also the recipient of a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and various teaching awards.

Presentation Title: The Brain’s Transformation of My Space In2 OurSpace

Abstract: Relationships sculpt the brain’s physical structure in ways that make it possible for us to connect our space with someone else’s. How do you interact with others, regard yourself, and view the world? Relationships helped make you that way. Relationships helped wire your brain, for instance, so that you are able to feel compassion for others. Elaine will explain how the brain, incomplete at birth, develops by drawing on environment. Her talk will examine the brain’s plasticity, IQ, today’s relational poverty, and the power of meaning to transform understanding.