[photo of tile work, Guell Park, Barcelona]

You gotta love her method:

• “A”
• “B”
• “C”
• “Discard ‘C’”

(Martin Seligman’s wonderful book, Flourish, is full of these kinds of nuggets.)

Research keeps pouring out about the importance of sleep. Inadequate sleep is implicated in anxiety, depression, other emotional disorders, attention issues, unhealthy weight gain and poor cognition.

And sleep is essential to learning, because the material we learn during the day needs to be processed during sleep. All that studying is counter-productive if students are staying up too late to then “sleep on it” and let the information sink in.

This is the most hectic, fragmented, high-pressure time of the school year, and I know we all feel pulled in a million directions. But Mother Nature doesn’t care about all our ambitions; she still insists that the #1 Priority must be sleep.

Here are a few suggestions for making enough sleep happen:

• Get homework done immediately upon arriving home. Don’t take a break first; just dive right in and plow through and save the break for evening.
• Look for small bits of time during the day to get started on studying; even those two minutes before class begins can be used to begin reading an assignment, thinking about a paper topic, start a math problem (you need not finish it right then and there), etc.
• No electronics in the bedroom. Keep them downstairs.
• Set a bedtime that allows at least 8 hours of sleep (and really really really it ought to be 9+ hours for students), then reverse-engineer the day to make sleep the top priority. Some favorite activities simply will not fit into the daily schedule; save them for summer.
• No glowing screens after 10 PM (or whatever is one hour before bedtime). The light from computers, TVs and smart phones disrupts sleep.
• Review flash cards, vocab words, etc, before bed: You’ll wake up remembering them better!
• Read something relaxing and/or boring in bed before you go to sleep.
• Record your favorite shows and look forward to watching them this summer. DO NOT watch exciting TV shows right before bed!

Regards and pleasant dreams,
-Leigh

[photo of a ceiling in the palace at Versailles]

Math homework is necessary for the same reason practicing the piano is necessary: it’s one thing to “get” what the teacher taught during the lesson, but it’s another thing to be able to perform that same skill independently and fluently.

Yet, all too many students practice math incorrectly, and they therefore gain little benefit, or even worse, they solidify misunderstandings and bad habits.

Practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect, but enough practice does make permanent, which is why guitar teachers, ski instructors, and golf pros are all such sticklers for proper form; they know how hard it is to unlearn errors that have become ingrained.

Many students will do a whole page of math and never check their answers. How do they know they were doing the right procedures? (Answer: They don’t.)

Or, students check their answers after completing the entire assignment, and only then discover that their answers don’t match up with those in the back of the book. In both such cases students tend to declare: Oh, well, the teacher will go over it in class tomorrow.

But in each of these scenarios, the student has now thoroughly practiced BEING WRONG.

Here’s the right way to do math (or math-related) homework:

1. Locate the answer key. If it’s in the back of the textbook, insert a bookmark or Post-it note for easy back-and-forth flipping.
2. Do the first problem.
3. Check it on the answer key.
4. If you were correct, move on to the next problem.
5. If you were incorrect, figure out what you did wrong before you move on.
6. Check your arithmetic; did you make a careless mistake?
7. If you realize you don’t understand how to do the problem, go to your notebook or your textbook and page through until you find the topic and carefully follow the explanation.
8. Still stumped? You can get help on www.KhanAcademy.org. Or, ask a friend or parent or sibling for help.
9. Only as a last resort, put a star next to the problem and make sure and ask the teacher for help tomorrow.
10. Proceed to the next problem.

Remember, the reason for doing math homework is to train your brain into automatically performing the CORRECT procedures. This is why you need to check after every problem and make sure your thinking is on target, and, if you are off-track, to fix your misunderstandings right away.

In fact, it’s beneficial to make mistakes and learn from them. Research shows that when lessons are too easy, students don’t learn them very well!

Believe it or not, thinking hard and even battling with confusion will make you smarter in the end. These experiences may not feel good, but they’re good for your brain. (So many sports and music skills are also like this, such as learning to swing a bat properly or bow a violin correctly; tedious yet vital!)

And the last step in math homework should always be spiral review. This means going back and practicing a problem or two of older material from the night before, the week before, or the semester before. Math is cumulative, which means those older skills are always important and need to be kept honed.

Of course this method of doing math homework is more time-consuming and effortful up front, but students who follow this plan will then be thrilled to find that they hardly need to study for tests; they know the material already and feel prepared and confident.

Like so many things, doing math homework the right way is a pain at first, but developing this habit will have a huge payoff!

[sculpture on lawn at Tulane University]

I’ve been teaching an SAT preparation class at one of my local community colleges.

It’s my third time teaching this class, and I’m finally feeling like I’m getting the curriculum shaped into a form I like a lot.

I’m trying to create something more than just an SAT class:  I blend in research-based study tips, plus I’m trying to get my students embarked on some good habits that they’ll need to succeed in college and in life:

• Studying with focus (which includes doing without cellphone and music)
• Studying consistently, over time (not cramming the day before the test)
• Keeping a Study Journal so as to plan, track progress, and stay motivated
• Practicing by writing (annotating, working math problems on paper) not by just looking over one’s notes (a very ineffective method)
• Quizzing and testing oneself as a study method, as well as to assess progress (good old-fashioned flash cards are a great learning method, because the brain learns best with quizzing and repetition).

After each class, I’ve been posting on my website my outline, notes and assignments.

I’ve also inserted links to many useful and free online videos, worksheets and interactive practice. My students use these posts for review or to catch up if they miss a class, and…

Anyone who wants to follow along at home each week is welcome to access all of these materials and use them as a FREE do-it-yourself SAT prep class!

We’ve had two classes so far (there will be six in all):

Ever since our trip to Iceland in July I’ve been enamored of all things Icelandic, including the language.

Every Icelander we met spoke lilting, perfect English to us, and then chattered to one another in a jaunty Nordic blur punctuated by frequent smiles and exclamations of Yow!

I love TED talks; I watch them often, I show them in my classes, and I routinely share them with loved ones and students.

There are a number of TED talks that have, without exaggeration, profoundly and permanently changed my own life for the better.

Several have demystified aspects of my own mind and emotions, thus helping me feel more confident, serene and happy. Others have provided perspective on cultural forces which shape and form our lives in ways that are usually invisible to us, the knowledge of which I found to be deeply empowering.

I’ve selected twelve of my favorite TED talks, each addressing aspects of happiness, emotional health and well-being, and I’ve assembled them in what feels to me like a user-friendly order, beginning with one that will literally change your life in two minutes flat!

My fondest hope is that you will check out at least a few of these talks. They contain real science in comprehensible form, real knowledge about how our minds work that can be applied to your own life, right now.

Guaranteed, you will find fresh perspectives, answers to important questions, and a bunch of practical life hacks perfect for incorporating into your New Year’s resolutions.

Twelve Days of Happiness

Wishing you a happy, healthy and serene 2013!   -Leigh Pretnar Cousins

[photo of the ceiling in the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona]

Why don’t they listen to us?

Along with academic tutoring and test preparation, I teach study skills: how to study for a biology test, how to write a term paper, how to learn vocabulary words.

Parents are eager for these lessons, and also jaded.

• He knows this stuff already.
• Her teachers repeated this over and over all last year.
• I’ve already told him a thousand times!!!

Any kind of personal change is difficult. Old habits are hard to break and new habits take, on average, a month or more of consistent practice before they stick.

It’s especially hard to change behaviors which were learned as protections against  emotional discomfort. Kids (and all of us!) develop reflexive habits of “carelessness” or “forgetting.” We all tend to “forget” about doing activities that are bound to showcase our weak spots and tweak our pride.

And so much of schoolwork is like this! It seems a cruel irony, that the very subjects a student “is bad at,” are the subjects she most needs to focus on and practice more diligently.

When teaching study skills, I don’t just explain the skills, because the student will tend to listen but then not change his behaviors. So, I also look for ways to make sure the student uses and practices new skills and creates new habits.

When forming habits, it’s very helpful to incorporate Visible Results and Accountability. Here are some of the strategies I use with my students:

• Keeping an assignment calendar posted in a highly visible place (bedroom door, refrigerator, bathroom mirror, etc), and using brightly colored markers to check off finished assignments.
• Finding a responsible friend and report to one another every day.
• Being accountable to a parent.
• Being accountable to me, by requiring the student to e-mail me every evening after she’s done her homework.

I always offer lots of encouragement and support, and I avoid dishing out criticism (I do correct errors, but always in a gentle and positive way).

Often it seems as if kids “should be more independent,” “should be able to figure these things out on their own.” Parents wonder at how the very same kid who can strategise and master a complex video game can’t seem to get organized to do his research paper or plan ahead to get math help before the big test.

Dr. John Gottman tells us that when anxiety rises, higher level thinking skills shut down. People become less capable of planning, organizing, and processing what they hear, especially if what is said is delivered in a harsh, insulting, or impatient manner.

And Dr. Brene Brown reminds us that shaming another person does not produce lasting change in their behavior; it merely makes that person recoil in self-protective pain and tune out even more completely.

This means that when kids (and all people!) are trying to accomplish difficult, ego-threatening change, they need a LOT of hand-holding and patient repetition.

Telling a kid a thousand times won’t change his behavior.

Assisting him to do the behavior over and over, even if it’s a thousand times!…while offering consistent, patient support and encouragement…is what will eventually turn the behavior into a permanent habit.

[One Step at a Time; photos from our summer hike in geothermal Iceland]

Get rid of the thing that is causing the stress.

Does this sound unrealistic? Impossible?

When my kids were growing up,  we had a big house with an acre of lawn and an in-ground swimming pool. We enjoyed the space and made good use of the pool. Even so, that big spread was a lot to afford and a lot take care of.

I spent a lot of stressful hours, many of them sleepless early-morning ones, fretting over maintenance issues and bills. Paying the cleaning lady, the lawn guy and the pool guy meant I had to work more hours. Letting those folks go and doing the work myself meant spending tons of time doing chores I did not enjoy and couldn’t keep up with.

One summer night, I was floating alone in the big, warm backyard pool. This was one of my great pleasures in owning such a place, one of the enjoyments that kept me clinging to this chunk of real estate. There was something so luxurious about this expanse of dark, private water, and so majestic about the grand house rising three stories above me into the night sky. I was proud of owning this place, proud of the achievement it represented.

What, I wondered, would it “say about me” if I gave this up? It would be “a step down,” wouldn’t it? An admission that I had “made it” but then “lost it”…and what was this “it” I had gained and then let slip?

Floating in the deep, languid water, my mind and body had both slowed down enough for a realization to rise into consciousness: My identity was mixed up in this house, and not in a way that felt healthy.

We cling to our stuff, to our routines, to our relationships, and if they are truly precious, then of course we ought to hold on tight.

But all too often, we cling because we fear the discomfort of  loss and the uprooting of a chunk of our Self.  We’re terrified that we will never be the same without those things which have become symbols of Who We Are.

Dan Gilbert’s TED talk on “Synthesizing Happiness” is so reassuring as to be profound. The pain of loss, even the most severe loss, doesn’t last nearly as long as we fear, because we have a “psychological immune system” which protects us. Knowing this makes me feel bolder, less needy, more confident about taking risks and letting go of things that are causing stress in my life. I know I will survive, even though at the moment of loss I might feel devastated.

I missed my big house and especially my luxurious backyard pool, but not for very long.  And the changes I made to my sense of self were for the good. I’m no longer a person who defines herself by what she owns.

[I took this photo of a water lily at the Bronx Botanical Gardens. There are many lovely bodies of water for me to enjoy without the stress of owning and maintaining my own pool.]

Next time, I’ll call the class How to Talk to Your Sons.

The parents of boys report a common set of problems. Their sons are lazy. They procrastinate. They don’t talk and they don’t listen. They don’t ask for help and they resist advice.

The boys approach their studies with attitudes of defiance and bravado. They under-prepare for tests and then shrug off the poor grades.  School is stupid, reading is boring and why do we have to learn this math, anyway? They seem immune to learning from their mistakes. They study even less for the next test, not more.

Of course, not all boys are like this, and plenty of girls fit the profile. Still, this constellation of typically male character traits and attitudes plays less and less well in our evolving economy and culture. David Brooks wrote:

To succeed today, you have to be able to sit still and focus attention in school at an early age. You have to be emotionally sensitive and aware of context. You have to communicate smoothly. For genetic and cultural reasons, many men stink at these tasks.

In elementary and high school, male academic performance is lagging. Boys earn three-quarters of the D’s and F’s. By college, men are clearly behind. Only 40 percent of bachelor’s degrees go to men, along with 40 percent of master’s degrees.

Thanks to their lower skills, men are dropping out of the labor force. In 1954, 96 percent of the American men between the ages of 25 and 54 worked. Today, that number is down to 80 percent.

Brooks was responding to Hannah Rosin’s new book, The End of Men, in which she suggests that men are suffering from a lack of adaptability.

Women, Rosin argues, are like immigrants who have moved to a new country. They see a new social context, and they flexibly adapt to new circumstances. Men are like immigrants who have physically moved to a new country but who have kept their minds in the old one. They speak the old language. They follow the old mores. Men are more likely to be rigid; women are more fluid.

Here are five facts I’ve learned from my male students:

1. Boys want to do well. My male students often greet me with an attitude of bravado or “I don’t care,” which masks the shame, self-doubt and fear they are feeling. When they begin to succeed in their schoolwork, boys wind up caring a lot and becoming interested in the material.
2. Boys thrive on extra doses of support and enthusiasm. They need what Martin Seligman calls Active and Constructive responses to their successes.
3. Boys stonewall to shut out painful, threatening messages. Parents often believe that their sons tune them out because the boys “don’t care.” The opposite is true; boys are frightened and wounded by harsh words, and they stonewall as an attempt to shut them out.
4. Boys often need specific, concrete help. Sitting down next to your son and helping him start that term paper or showing him how to make flash cards for his Spanish test, is worth more than ten lectures on “working harder” or “you’ll never amount to anything in life.”
5. Boys are highly emotional. They need lots of compassionate listening and validation to help them understand and process their emotions. If we want our sons to become effective communicators and empathetic partners, we need to take extra care to cultivate these qualities in them.

[photo of a boy acrobat riding on the shoulders of an adult troupe member at a street fair in Barcelona]