Dr. Diamond Came Calling

The day Dr. Marian Cleeves Diamond called me at home marked a pivotal moment in my life. I had written her eight days earlier that September 16 after having discovered her research on the web. Enriched environments had become my new love interest since Mary’s retirement...Dr. Diamond’s research reflected this newly discovered passion.

The nearly five years of volunteering in Mary’s primary intensive language class in an elementary school north of Toronto, became ‘field study’ for me, revealing more than I  had  ever dared  dream.  Studying her students, ages 6-9, provided  a unique window on the world of the mind of the  primary at-risk child. It was special education at its best with profound implications!  

Dr. Diamond’s incredible, information-laden website appeared, seemingly, out of nowhere one day as  I toured the web, an exciting and unknown medium, for me, back then... Her research, books she had written and  her biographical  information all garnered my  immediate attention. Her phone call that morning has resonated with me for nearly 13 years! She has become the light at the end of a very long tunnel.

I felt a kinship with this neuroanatomist, the Professor of Anatomy in the  Integrative Biology Department of the University of California at Berkeley.  She was a warm, familiar voice in a vast unknown wilderness, showing me the way. I had won the lottery.

My letter  had drawn comparisons to her work and mine. I was in awe of this great mind from afar who had taken time out of her hectic schedule to call me, offering praise, encouragement and most of all, an extra dose of motivation...The differences in our study of the effects of enriched environments on the brain were small. She had been observing rats  in the laboratory while I had been watching young at-risk children  in the classroom... Her tools of choice  for her  research subjects were wheels and mazes. For me it was yeast dough, discovered that first day in Mary’s class.

I had been validated by one of the foremost scientists in the world. Dr. Diamond had been named California’s Professor of the Year in 1990 and was one of a select few who had studied Einstein’s brain under the  microscope. I remained on cloud 9 for the rest of the day.

My first visit to Mary’s class had begun innocently. I watched the students with no prejudice, hoping that something  would come to mind that would spark and sustain the attention needed for learning to occur... By the end of class, yeast dough was born... (It was a safe, 5 sense brain stimulation activity.)... It was history in the making, to the delight of the children.

Yeast dough was the miracle in the  primary special needs classroom. Its application and implication in special education was quickly showing itself to be the greatest show on earth. It was about the development of higher order thinking, language skills, self-confidence and  a sense of wellbeing that was strangely enveloping the children in Mary’s class. It was all about the art of questioning... Yeast dough was the all encompassing enriched environment about which Dr. Diamond had been researching... Its grip on Mary's class was nothing short of miraculous as it began to manifest itself in ways that I could never have imagined...