By Steve Lichtenwalter – Dallas South News Contributor

I’ve recently completed an interesting physical training workout called P90X. It’s been quite a learning experience for me. Let me explain the program and a little of my experiences with it before I get into some educational similarities that intrigue me.

P90X is a 90 day workout program based on a concept called “Muscle Confusion”. It gives you an intense variety of training blocks such as yoga (which I absolutely hate), plyometrics, core synergistics, weight lifting, and several others (there are twelve in all). The program switches up the workout order about every three weeks and then gives you a fourth week that is easier. The intensive variety causes the muscles to have to work harder to keep up and so the results are greater. This continuously challenges new growth.

I’ve noticed in the past that whenever I undergo a physical training program (and I’ve done several) that it goes really well at first. But at a certain point I level out or “plateau”.  At this point, no matter how long I continue the workout I make little or no progress.

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So what does P90X have to do with education? Doing this workout at 49 years of age and making more progress (getting in better condition) than I have ever been in, it really made me think about how we train ourselves and our children educationally. Are our children making excellent results academically on a continual basis? Or do they have too many long periods of plateauing going on? Are our children bored with their educational routine or do they look forward to their educational workout program at school or home each day?

Teachers and parents could learn a lot from this concept of muscle confusion. Perhaps our children go through the same process educationally.

Our minds, like our bodies, become accustomed to the same old routines, leading to diminished effectiveness. Maybe we give them the same things to do each day or teach them at the exact same level as the other children who are way behind or way ahead of them and so they plateau and become bored, which may even lead to other problems, such as emotional or behavioral issues.

Perhaps our children need their teachers and parents to help them experience some ‘brain confusion’. Just as muscle confusion causes a person to experience excellent physical strength and results, so brain confusion can help our children become strong problem solvers and experience excitement and desire about learning. It may be about time you make the switch to a more rigorous educational workout for your child.

I teach at a Montessori school in Dallas that incorporates the principals of brain confusion very effectively. There is a large assortment of training blocks in a wide variety of interesting subjects. These training blocks are interesting materials that begin easy and always become more and more rigorous. There are a lot of brain confusing challenges that bring amazing results.

If you were to walk into a Montessori classroom, you would see different age groups of children (I teach first, second and third grade together) working on many different subjects by laying out materials and having to solve problems independently.  Students must use the program solving steps that the Montessori guide or teacher has demonstrated to them. The children will independently push themselves to the next level of difficulty so that they can become stronger and stronger by incorporating brain confusion.

There are many good schools, teachers and parents that are avoiding boredom and plateauing by challenging their students to push themselves through many tough and challenging educational workouts that are helping their children to develop more and more of their learning abilities.

There are also many parents in schools that incorporate very little brain confusion and have many bored, plateauing, misbehaving, confused, spoiled children. When we plateau physically, we are a lot more apt to develop injuries to our bodies. Similarly when we plateau educationally, our brains do not develop and we are more apt to develop learning, emotional and behavioral disorders and difficulties.

What educational program do your children do? Is it based on some brain confusion resulting in real growth and excellent results or has your child plateaued and become bored with their education? If you are not satisfied maybe there’s a need for more rigorous brain confusing workouts for your child?

Steve Lichtenwalter has been teaching for more than 20 years. He is currently a teacher in a Montessori school in the Dallas area.