donuts

I was working with a student one on one the other day.  I noticed that he seemed much more confident with me than he did when I called on him in class.  When I asked him why, he said, “we have a lot of very smart students in our class.  I do not want to look dumb in front of them”.

To try to overcome this feeling that students have I started the year implementing the fifty-blunder challenge.  That challenge is when the students catch me with fifty blunders then I buy them all donuts.  Last week the fiftieth blunder was recorded (I probably blunder 50 other times that they missed), and my students enjoyed the donuts.

The message was that the person who made the most mistakes in the class was the teacher.  If the teacher is making mistakes than students should feel comfortable making mistakes

What prevents many people from asking questions is fear and self-doubt.  How many great ideas, how many great questions go unheard because people are scared?   While it would be great to promise you that nobody is going to judge you, the truth is that there will always be the critics.  What we need to do is tune out the people who criticize us but are too afraid to take the risks themselves.

The second critic we would need to shut out is ourselves.  Many of us are our own worst critics which often prevents us going beyond our potential.  We need to realize that if we take risks that we are going to find failure.  The key is how we handle this failure.  Do we learn from our mistakes?  Do we fall like a five and rebound like a ten?

This is not to say that we do not need constructive feedback.  I am trying to put together a group of teachers who will watch each other teach, give constructive feedback which will help all of us improve+.  All of us need to be vulnerable for this group to be truly successful and trust each other.

I will leave you with some questions you can ask yourself as you try to change your mindset to be more comfortable taking risks.   What did you disagree with today?  What did you learn from somebody who disagreed with you?  What have you failed at recently?  Is there another way to solve that problem?

The challenge is to make sure that the good questions and great ideas get out in the open.  Without risks there can not be rewards

Finals

With finals approaching I thought it would be worthwhile to provide some tips that I have seen work for other students.

The first thing is to plan out your study time.  There is a lot of research that supports studying a little each day is better than cramming the night before the exam.

  For example, if I was studying for the AP micro exam I might dedicate 30 minutes a day.  The first day I would take the biggest unit and spend the entire 30 minutes using some of the techniques below.  The next day I would spend 25 minutes on the next unit and then use five minutes to go over the first unit.  As you continue to study a new unit remember to go back and review the previously studied units.  This allows you to continue to reinforce the concepts of the biggest unit.


Secondly, develop a list of all the terms that you will need to know.  This list can be provided for you by your teacher or you can go through your notes and textbook to develop this list.

Once you have developed this list one of the best methods of studying is retrieval practice.  Using simple flash cards with the concepts on the front and the answers on the back is extremely effective.  If there are certain concepts that give you trouble I would put them in a pile so that you can go over them again the next day.


One of the things that I find effective is to take a concept and then build on it.  So, for example I might be thinking about Average Total Cost and then I work to see how many other concepts I can link to Average Total Cost.  Immediately I would think about average variable cost, average fixed cost, productively efficient, economic profit, exit, shutdown, supply curve, fair return etc.  When I connect these concepts to each other it allows me to recall them better but also increases my understanding of the concepts.


Thirdly, as you go through the concepts try to find examples that are relevant to you.  Whenever you can provide an example that relates to your own life you have a better chance to recall it later.  As you go through your day think about thinks that happened which might relate to the material that you are studying.


If you have been provided practice questions by your teacher this is a great way to study.  If not than you can make up your own practice questions.  When you take these practices, questions do not use your notes or textbook.  At the end of the practice session see which ones you did not get correct and go back to your notes so that you can understand your mistake.


I am confident that if you stick to your study schedule and use some of the methods above that you will improve your results.

divided attention

It is always a great pleasure to run into a former student.  This student triggered off a memory because at the start of the school year she was really struggling.  She was normally a high B student who was consistently getting D’s on my assessments.  I remember when she scored an A on her second straight assessment I asked her what changed.

I was truly expecting, came to reviews more often, spent more time but instead she told me that she used to read the text book while talking to her boyfriend and for the past two units she would call her boyfriend after reading the book.  What amazed her was that she read the book quicker and understood the information better.  To make things even better her boyfriend appreciated that when they were talking her focus was on him.  So, for her it was win, win, win.

She mentioned to me that what really made her realize that multi-tasking does not work was the demonstration we did in class on dichotic listening.  A student volunteered to sit in the middle of two people who would be reading to him.  The student in the middle would repeat word for word everything the person on the right was saying. The person on left at the same time was reading a different text book to him.  At the end of the minute I would ask him what the person on the left was reading about.

The student in the middle had no idea what the person on the left was reading about.  They did not even realize when that person changed languages during the reading.  The only thing that they might have noticed is when the student on the left mentioned the name of the student in the middle.  This demonstration made her realize that she often did not know what she had just read because her focus was more on her boyfriend’s conversation.

Now with exams approaching, how can we get the most out of our time.  Try modifying your situation like my former student.  Make sure when you are reviewing for exams that you have no electronic devices around you.  Give them to your parents or just put them in another room.  When studying at school make sure you are in a place where there are no distractions.

Hopefully, like my former student, focusing on one task might help you learn the material better without spending more time studying.



Next week some tips on studying for finals

Kindness

I was having one of those weeks in which things were not going my way.  My children were sick, there were some stressors at school, and is often my way I took it out on the wrong person.  The next day the person came up to me and asked, “are you okay, is there anything I can do for you?”  Instead of being mad or judgmental about how I acted they were being kind to me. 

I realized that this kindness surely helped me, but can it help the person being kind?  Sonja Lyubomirsky tested this in her lab.  She had a group of people that were instructed to do five good things one day a week for six weeks.  As examples the participants were told that they can feed a parking meter of a stranger, help a person study for a test, or write a thank you note.

The results were that these people who committed kindness over the course of the study showed an increase in happiness

    The character lab (kindness)  suggests that we ask ourselves these questions

• I pay attention to what other people want or need to try to figure out how I can help.
• I go out of my way to do favors for others, speak up to support them, share what I have, or simply listen when they need a friend.
• I consciously make small sacrifices to be kind to others, like taking a few minutes to do an extra chore or listening to a story even if I’m not in the mood for it.
• I try to think about how much my actions mean to others instead of how much of a burden they are for me.

In the above story my friend paid attention to what I needed and tried to figure out a way to help me.  So, I am going to focus in the next couple of weeks on trying to get better on the first question.  I challenge you to pick one of these out and try to improve.

After all, not only does kindness make others happy but it also improves our own happiness.

As always, I appreciate your feedback.